555 | Acing Your Goals and Establishing Processes With Your Team

Chris LoCurto 0:00
On today's episode, let's discuss what it takes for a team to get it right. Stay tuned as we explore the stories, strategies, and secrets behind these incredible moments that is coming up next. Welcome to the Chris LoCurto show where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are.

Chris LoCurto 0:36
Welcome to the show, folks, I hope you're having a fabulous day, wherever you are. Today, we've got an episode that's all about the amazingness of teamwork when your team gets it, right. So I want to talk first about how important it is for leaders to create a clear roadmap so that the team can, as I do my air quotes, get it right. This is the most important piece of everything we're going to be talking about in this episode. Okay. So if you do not paint a clear roadmap, then you can't have a clear expectation. So let's just start with that concept. With so many folks, they hire people, they put them in a position and they just expect that they know what to do. They expect they know exactly where to go. They expect that they know, you know, all the things that must be done correctly. And yet so many times I haven't even paid in a clear roadmap to them, they haven't given them a clear vision. So as a leader, if you want to have great team success, if you want teams to be able to accomplish things together, then you've got to become a great map maker, you've got to become somebody who can draw a map, paint a picture, help people to see what the destination looks like. Now, whenever we're talking about things like vision. For us, we use the understanding the definition, that vision is a destination, you know, if I, if I'm going to give my team a vision, then it's a vision of where we're going, sort of vision of where we are,

Unknown Speaker 2:27
it's not even technically a vision of a couple of steps forward. It's here's the destination, here's where we want to end up. Why? Because the destination has a clear expectation to it. Now, the caveat to that is now and then you'll move in the direction of a vision and some things may change so that the direction of the destination may be a little bit different may or may have changed. But we're we're just talking about in in general terms. If I want team success, I must paint a destination, this is where I want you to go, and then I must give incredibly clear goals or what we would call strategy. So for us mission is your purpose for existence or in that can be a purpose for anything to exist. If you're married, you should have a mission for your marriage. If you're you know, if you're raising kids you should have a mission for raising your kids. If we're having a team

Unknown Speaker 3:27
project, we should have a mission, what's the purpose of this project that we're doing? So mission is the purpose vision is the destination where we're headed to in strategy is how we get there. Many times people interchange the words, you know, strategy with goals, right? So that's fine. A lot of people tend to use goals, we use strap plan, we focus people on having a strategic plan of where they're gonna go, right. The key is, how am I going to get to that destination? What does it look like to get to the destination? So an example I use all the time as many people have been to the beach or you've been to the mountains, you've gone on vacation somewhere, but let's just say the beach, everybody's been to the beach, or most people have been at the beach. If you've been to the beach before, then you know what it looks like. You know what you're going to do when you get there. You know, if you're going to sit under an umbrella or throw a Frisbee out in the hot sand, you know if you're going to get in the water or if you're going to read a book, you know where you're going to probably go eat dinner if you're going back to the same beach, you know what, what kind of foods you're going to eat. You know how long you're going to be hiding in the shade after you get a bad sunburn, all of these things. You already know what it's like to be at that destination. But how do we get there? So the goal are the strategy of getting to the destination is going to be all of those pieces. We have to call and we have to get a reservation at a place that we're going to stand if it's a hotel or an Airbnb or whatever.

Chris LoCurto 5:00
If we're flying to the beach, we gotta book airplane tickets for driving, we've got to make sure that we've got good GPS, we've got to have gas in the car. And, you know, we've got to pack our suitcases and all the things that we want to take and go through our laundry list of all the items we're going to need. While we're down there, and all these different pieces, we have to make sure that you know, we've got time off on the calendar, we're taking vacation, the kids are not supposed to be in school, and yada, yada, yada, all those all those different pieces. Those are the little strategies, that's the strategy of how we're going to get to our destination. Now, we have to have a strategy of how we're gonna get home, right, all those all those aspects. And then along the way, you can have goals. So I don't like to say that a strategy is a bunch of, you know, every aspect is a goal. Because it's not right, we can set goals along the way of where we're trying to get to. Either way, what we're trying to create in having a successful vacation at the beach, is the strategy of how we get to a successful vacation, if the expectation is that we have a specific type of vacation, a specific type of enjoyment, you know, whatever it is, if we plan on reading three books, or we plan on just sitting there and, you know, drinking margaritas, I don't know, whatever it is, we need to make sure that when it's done, it lives up to the expectation. And the strategy is how we're going to get there. So as a leader, to have team success, you've got to paint that roadmap, draw that roadmap of what it looks like to have a successful destination. Now, the thing you have to do is you must communicate effectively.

Unknown Speaker 6:56
So every aspect of that strategy must be communicated well, and every opportunity for failure. And what we're going to do about it must be communicated well, every goal, if we have a mapped host of you know, this is going to be the first goal that we're going to get to you on our way to our destination, it's got to be communicated clearly, every expectation of tools and things that are used in resources must be communicated effectively. So all of the stuff that helps somebody understand how to execute the strategy, as well as what the expected result of the project is, has to be communicated super clearly.

Unknown Speaker 7:43
On top of that, I have to communicate effectively, what my specific role is, and how this fit into my carries. How does this fit into my KPIs? What does it look like for me to do? Am I still doing my regular job? While I'm pulling this thing off? How much time are you expecting me to, to spend on this, all of these things are not only a must, but you will be amazed at how well team members work when the picture is clear. When the roadmap is clear.

Chris LoCurto 8:15
On top of that, you have to create trust. Now, to create trust, there's a there's ton that goes into this vulnerability obviously, is the biggest key to creating high levels of trust, right? So if we are going to embark on a new project if we are going to go after something big, and I as a team member, don't currently trust you as a leader, then I'm going to probably hold back a bunch, I'm probably not going to put every bit of myself into this thing, I'm probably going to be very cautious. So that I don't make mistakes, because I don't want to get in trouble. There's gonna be a whole lot of things that I'm going to do to change the way that I approach this new project. Right? All of all of that I'm I'm sure it makes sense to you. But what if I have trust in you? If I trust you as my leader, then I'm man, I have no problem. sticking my neck out. I have no problem taking risk. I have no problem taking ownership. I have no problem having buy-in. Why? Because I trust that if I fail, then you've got my back. Yes, I'm it may be tough. I may need accountability, all that stuff. But if I understand how you handle failure, and I understand how you treat people, I know that I can expect your response. I can anticipate you as a leader, and I trust you then I'm going to put my neck out. I'm going to take risk. I'm going to tackle this with everything I've got because I trust you. So there's a massive difference of what you can expect out of a person out of a team member or out of a team productivity-wise. When it comes to trust, if people can't trust you as a leader, and they can't trust that you're going to treat them well when they screw up. And by the way, you should be expecting failure.

Chris LoCurto 10:13
I tell my team, that when we work through projects and things, my brain, always the first thing my brain goes to is how can this fail? I want to know how it can fail as soon as possible. So we can already start fixing those pieces, those aspects. And then everything after we've thought through if we've done a good job ripping this project apart and thinking through this project, and, you know, we've come up with as many failures as we could think of, and then something lands, and something hits or something fails, that we didn't think about. Okay, that was the unexpected. How do we fix it? Now? I'll talk about that in a little bit, too. So trust is a big, big piece. the fourth piece of this for leaders is it's got to be it has to be it must be a shared vision. Well, of course, Chris, we're all going in the same direction. Nope, nope. Sorry. I can't tell you how many leaders for some strange reason, decide not to share the entire vision with the team who's accomplishing or pulling off the project. Folks, we all need to understand not just what our part is, but what is the expected result as a whole. And this is going to go into some great pieces that I'll talk about in a little bit. But if I know the bigger picture, I can see my role in that picture. I don't have to be the champion behind all of this stuff. I just need to know what am I doing, and why is it important. But if I can see that I'm part of a project that's bigger than me, if I'm part of something that's bigger than just what I'm doing daily, then an amazing thing happens with that shared vision. Team members like to go accomplish things together. They like to be a part of even if they don't want to be you know, centerstage or recognized, they still want to be a part of something that is accomplishing something that they consider to be bigger than what they're doing today. Right. So the more you share this vision, it becomes a shared vision among team members, then it means that I'm a part of something that's bigger than just my day to day, the same thing that I do every day, day in and day out, right? So it helps them to have ownership. It helps them to have buy in this is powerful when it comes to team success. So what does it look like? What are the essential, kind of of of team success? While I've talked a lot about setting that clear goal, here's a very important thing. The goals, the the the strategy must be achievable. So as you create this strategy, no matter how big it is, if it's small or big, and you put some goals to it, they've got to be achievable goals, can I get to this part. So let's say we're doing a year long project, man, that's a big project, right. So if you're doing a year long project, you don't want to set up the goal of being one year long. You want to create aspects of this big project, break them down into at bare minimum, 90 day, smaller goals, smaller, achievable goals, so that we can see that we're getting some wins to this thing right now, for me, what I'm going to tell you is you take the length of the goal, when we do Strat Plan, most Strat Plans have at least a six to 12-month process that goes with all of the things that we've discovered. So it's a lot, it's a lot of stuff that they're gonna go and accomplish. And it's huge. It's big for a business, right? It's great for a company to cut. And by the way, you don't have to be a big business to go through that most of our businesses that come through our small to medium sized businesses that go through strapline. So I don't want this to sound like oh, gosh, this is colossal, I couldn't pull this off, we wouldn't let you in the door if we didn't think you could do it. Right. So we have the six to 12 month process that we line out the bulk of the stuff that needs to get done and who's going to do it. But then we break it down also into what's going to get done by when. So that people don't just look at this and go so we just work on this thing for 12 months, and then at 12 months, we get to see if it worked out Nope. We have processes and goals and achievements all along the way. We put timelines together so we can see what should be done first, how long is it going to take? What's it going to look like when we get there, all that kind of fun stuff. So not only do you need to set clear goals and strategy, but they must be

Unknown Speaker 15:00
achievable if they are not. If you're putting things on the table that are too much of a stretch for your team, then just plan on there being a failure. I mean, it's gonna fail, right? So instead, make sure we can accomplish this. Now, I will tell you, so many folks put out goals in the aren't any defined ways of getting the goal accomplished. You must must make the goal measurable. What are the tasks going to be? So like, let's say if we were working on, you know, what's, what's a common thing that comes out of strapline, a lot of times, we will have, oh, I talked about this recently processes, which is a big thing, processes inside of a business usually take

Unknown Speaker 15:48
at least six to nine months to get done, because the people that are doing it are also still doing their regular role, right? So we're implementing new things. Well, we don't just go, hey, you've got to go get all your processes done. Instead, we go through a heavy detailed process of saying you have to first find out what processes are needed? What processes do we have? What processes are needed? Which processes need to be optimized? Which processes are documented? Well, you go through step, step, step, step, step, and find all these pieces of information before you start creating any new processes. Or before you start optimizing any old processes. We go through all these different aspects. So somebody can go, oh, my gosh, we've never even thought about that. We haven't even looked at that. Okay, great. Now we have all of these elements that we need to do. That is clear, it's measurable, all I have to do is go do number one, number two, number three, each time I accomplish one of these things, it's measurable, I can come up with a clear understanding of did I accomplish that or not, because the details were good enough. So let's just say take one aspect of something that's measurable, every leader must sit down and review every process that they currently have, while reviewing all the processes that don't exist yet that their team needs. And they must give, you know, steps to the current processes of how they must be optimized. And they must give information on whether or not all of their processes are documented. Have they been trained on? Are they easily accessible? All of these little details? Believe it or not, it sounds like oh, gosh, that's a lot. It's actually not, when it's broken down into clear, measurable goals, then you get success. When you have it broken down this far. Oh, my gosh, Chris, that sounds like so much work.

Unknown Speaker 17:57
Hey, folks,

Unknown Speaker 17:59
these are the things that are holding you back from greater success. You've learned how to make a widget and sell a widget.

Chris LoCurto 18:07
We don't actually the funny thing is, is that we tell people the power in strat plan is we're not teaching you how to sell the widgets, you've already learned how to sell, we're showing you all of the things that are holding you back from greater productivity, from greater profit. From greater success, fix these things, the money comes easy. It's crazy. So when you do it this way, it may sound like a lot of work. But believe it or not, it makes all of your future work way easier. It makes the work of all the team members who are doing those processes way easier. So as you're creating these goals, the strategy, make sure that you're making the the the tasks, the steps, the goals measurable, also put accountability to them. What does it look like for there to be accountability to the tasks actually being accomplished. Now, this is big. I talked about this recently about how a lot of folks are using a program that's been out for many years. And unfortunately, they go, you know, full bore into this program, and then find out that the accountability is terrible to it. But this program is very popular. And unfortunately, the lack of accountability causes there to be a lot of problems. People will be moving along in their project, only to find out you know, hey, everything's great, everything's great. Everything's great only to find out three, six months later, things are falling apart. Why are they falling apart? Well, I thought everything was okay. It's lacking massive accountability. You have to have accountability pieces to your strategy. You have to have accountability to your goals. So what does it look like to line out the accountability to accomplishing the specific steps. Who's there who's checking on these things? Who's making sure that when somebody says that everything's going well, they're getting deeper into it and finding out what that looks like, who's there to run through all the expectations and make sure that the expectations are being met? I'll tell you one of the things that we do. One of the tools that we use, and I've talked about this before, but we use Asana. And so whenever we assign, you know, six to 12 months worth of stuff for a whole company to do, we put it in a system that allows them to see all the aspects of accountability, who's going to do it, what are they going to do it? What's it going to get done by? Who's going to be a part of that process? Are there other team members? I'm going to dig in on this. Did anything get shifted or adjusted? And we needed to change some timelines? Did anybody mark something off? That wasn't completely done yet.

So all of the stuff that goes with these pieces, the strategies have to have accountability to it. So make sure that you're assigning that as well. Now, as I said earlier, one of the first things that I will do is I will go straight to what will make this fail. How would this fail is what I tend to focus on first, how can this possibly fail? Why? Because my brain loves to solve the failures before they happen. It's everybody hates me, you know, that failure in the midst of a project or you know, something that they're doing? Yes, we all understand. But my focus is not being afraid of failure. My focus is the failures of failure is going to happen. failure is inevitable. Somehow, somewhere, failure is going to happen with something. My question is, can I figure out as many possible ways that it could fail, and then mitigate that risk? What can I do to reduce the risk of failure happening? If I can figure that out, I can help the team to discover that as well. Oh, my gosh, we can solve a lot. We can fix a lot of stuff at that point. So for me, I want to sit down and identify all the possible obstacles I can think of, before we put this thing in place. I want to get the team on it. I want to I want everybody to think through how can this fail work. Can you see the problems? What do you think is going to work and what's not going to work and you will be amazed at how well the team will see things that you won't see. There are a lot of team members who can see failure a heck of a lot faster than you can, why because they're usually on the front lines. They're in their work and doing the things that you know, they need to be doing,

Chris LoCurto 22:49
that you don't do every day, right? So they're gonna see it from their perspective. Now, as a leader, or as a business owner, you're gonna see it from a, a more experienced just business position, you're probably going to see some things that they're not going to see. But guess what, when we put us all in the room, and we all try to figure out what failure looks like. It's amazing what we can see that some stuff is probably going to be silly. Some stuff is probably going to be you know, you might find some people who are trying to be impressive that might come up with some stuff. That just sounds ridiculous. That's that's going to happen. Help them to walk through it talk through, how do you see this going? That way? You know, you just mentioned that this thing is going to completely fall apart. Explain that to me, why? Why are you using the term completely fall apart? You know, sometimes you need to call that out and help them to see that they're being a little over the top. But sometimes they might be right, you might be shocked to find out that they're actually correct, you know, they may see something that you don't see. And if you're looking at this project as being your baby, and this is your thing that you're so excited about, then anytime anybody tries to tell you something might not go well, probably not going to receive it very well. So get everybody in there and ask the question, you know, how can we reduce risk on this? How can we what where do you see this failing? What obstacles do you see? And how can we solve this stuff? If you are doing all these things, if you're creating a shared vision, if there's a mission behind the thing that we are doing, if you're setting up measurable success, if you're putting accountability to this, guess what this is going to create in your team motivation.

Unknown Speaker 24:33
Not only motivation but unity. These types of things draw people together because what they're looking at is what looks like a plan that can succeed. If they can see these steps broken down into you know small enough goals that they can accomplish they can see that goal well before the destination and they can accomplish goal after goal after goal. Then they will be you know

Unknown Speaker 25:00
itad in this process, they will be motivated in this process, they will be excited to tackle this process if they've been allowed to speak up on potential failures. And they've been treated with dignity because they're the ones that are going to be expected to go pull this thing off, you're going to have happy team members. It's amazing what happens when you put all of these pieces in place. On top of that, what you tend to get is better team member engagement. So not only are they excited as individual team members, but they will start working with other team members better they will be excited to work with other team members. They look forward to accomplishing these things. Now. Keep in mind, there's gonna be problems There's something's gonna happen down the road, you might have some team members struggling with each other, solve those things, right? Well, we'll get you can get over there fixed those things when they happen. What we're trying to accomplish is how do we get to that ultimate success. Right? If you don't do these things ahead of time, what you're probably going to find is people who are going to already tell you or not even say it out loud, but believe this whole thing is going to fail no matter what. Right, because they don't feel appreciated. They don't feel like they've been treated with dignity, and you feel like they're being dictated to just gotta go do this thing. This is the boss's new pet project. And I've just got to go knock this thing out. So you might be shocked to find out that some folks may not have great excitement to go pull off this new project, right? As a team. Why? Because they don't feel like they're being treated. The way that they should

Unknown Speaker 26:40
help them to feel on board, help them to feel appreciated, help them to feel a part of the team, help them to feel like their input matters. Help them to feel like you care by asking them what they see and what they feel how they think this thing is gonna go involve them in the process, and you will have very motivated and unified team members. It is amazing. Now with all of this in place, we have to celebrate, we have to celebrate the process, we have to celebrate the goals being accomplished. We have to celebrate the end result being accomplished. You can't just do you can you can just do a project like this and then move on to the next project. But I will tell you, you will start to lose motivation.

Unknown Speaker 27:34
Team members will feel great that they accomplished the project. But then when everybody disperses, it'd be like. Okay, I guess we're just doing stuff, right? We're not, we don't get to celebrate the fact that we just accomplished something that seems like it was big, you need to celebrate, you need to have team celebrations about the team's success, it is crucial, it is vital, it creates a phenomenal feeling of belonging, it creates loyalty to your organization. Great thing is, is it creates loyalty to the team a lot of times, but it will create loyalty to your organization. Now I can tell you, we my team. I just always brag about my team, because they're just phenomenal. They've done incredible jobs. They're constantly helping constantly leading other people to success, serving like crazy. I just I love my team. But I will tell you it, it's never surprising when we sit down and put together a project like we did a few years back, one of the things that we tried to do is we every year, take a look at what is our team's capacity. You know, what is the capacity of the team? What can we do? What can we add? Can we increase? You know, where are we? We don't want to go after big lofty goals and not understand whether or not we can pull them off. That's ridiculous. It's always the time. And what you end up doing is creating chaos instead of success. So we like to measure what are our resources, whether it's finances, whether it's time team members, or software tools, it doesn't matter what it is, we want to measure those things and then say what can we do. Well, one year, we had some newer folks that had come in, and we were talking through what we think we can accomplish. And some of the folks like oh my gosh, we're going to be able to do, we're going to add four new events. We're going to do all this stuff. It's so our more veteran folks sat down we just looked at and said okay, here's what I want you to do. Go measure this. Go measure where the team is, go measure all of our resources, go you know, spend time looking at what we can accomplish, and then come back and tell me what it is. And they came back and they said we can only pull off one brand spankin' new event. There's a bunch of things we can do, we can do this, we can do this, we can do this. But we can't do all of this. And what we settled on is we felt like, Okay, we're going to add one new event.

So we're going to from scratch, create a brand new event, run this thing, market it down new lessons, everything. And what I was so proud of is that the team looked at the resources of the team, the time, the finances, everything and said, if we do more than this, something else is going to pay for it. If we do more than this one event, if we did two events, or if we did an event, and we did this product over here, if we do more than this, something is going to start to fail. So this is the most that we feel like we can do. And I was so crazy proud of that. It was just great to hear them not want to try and impress the daylights out of me, or the other leaders and take on too much. Instead, they knew it would be a push it would be pushing them on their current, you know, rolls, but that they could accomplish it. We went throughout that year, built this thing marketed the daylights out of it. I did a bunch of you know, interviews and teachings and all kinds of stuff. And we got to this event, and we pulled that thing off. And it was fabulous. But a bunch of new clients, we had a bunch of people telling us how great it was. And then we celebrated. Then we had fun. I think we did dinner or something, I can't remember what it was but we celebrated this, and we pulled this whole thing off. And just it was great to see what the team had done. And for me, as a leader, as a business owner.

Unknown Speaker 31:43
It's great for them that they, you know, felt like they had accomplished something. But for me, the biggest joy was seeing them so happy that they pulled something off, that they made this event happen. It was fantastic. They're tired, with big smiles on their face, right? That for me is just a great joy. You've got to celebrate those. Now we didn't have like it didn't take I think it took us about nine months front to back. And there weren't like big goals like oh, we need to go celebrate this one goal here. Sometimes you have huge projects, yes, you need to do that. Our big thing was celebrating the end, that we had pulled off something that was brand new with some new team members. And it was very successful. So out of it, it for me is a fabulous thing to do to get that excitement from the team. And you know, they've had the buy-in, they've had the ownership. They've worked together, they've enjoyed it. Great. Let's celebrate. Now, what do we do, when we do face some challenges? This is, if your team can anticipate how you handle problems, this will be a super big part of whether or not they're willing to stick their neck out. Now, for me, we have a five-step process for when things go wrong. And this handles probably 97 98% of things inside of our business failures inside of our business. We have five steps. What happened? How did it happen? Why did it happen? How do we fix it? How do we make sure it never happens? Again?

Chris LoCurto 33:26
What you will find is that your team, if they do not, and even if they do, I've had team members in the past that knew this is our process, but still wouldn't take big risks and wouldn't stick their neck out because they weren't sure that this is how it went. Right? They had to experience it for themselves. Before they could say oh, okay, I guess that's how we handle failure. Right? If your team can anticipate how you're going to handle failure, then they're probably going to hold back, they're probably not going to take big risks. Why? Because they're afraid that you're going to rip their head off. So I have had so many times in my leadership career where somebody is holding back on something or not sharing something or not taking a risk. And when I sit down with them, I'm like, Hey, what's going on? Why? Why are you not moving out on that? Or why are you not putting your whole self into that? And it always comes down to the fear of failure. And so I will always say, let me ask you a question. How do we handle failure around here? And they always go, Well, yeah, you're gonna ask what happened and how did it happen? And they'll walk through the whole process, and I go, and then what happens after that, too, like, we just get back to work. And I'm like, so nobody rips your head off. Well, no. Okay. Then what are you afraid of?

I never thought about it like that. Well start thinking about it that way because this is how we do stuff. Now Don't keep making the same mistake, I don't want you to make the same mistake over and over learn from the whole goal is how do we not do it again? How do we solve this thing and move on? But since you've never experienced having your head ripped off here, don't assume that it's going to happen. challenge our character here. How do we handle people, clients, and vendors? How do we handle things? All this is where you do great than assume that's the way we're going to do it. Again, I want you to take risks, I'm expecting that you're going to fail at some point.

Unknown Speaker 35:34
And when you do, let's tackle that sucker and move on. If your team can anticipate the way that you will handle their failure, they will be willing to stick their neck out for you, plain and simple. If that well, let me rephrase that, if they can anticipate that you're going to handle it well, if their anticipation is, is that you're going to rip their head off. And guess what, they're not going to stick their neck out, you're gonna get half of their productivity.

Unknown Speaker 36:04
They're not going to be super excited, they're not going to be super on board, they're not going to have ownership, they'll do what they need to do to please you, to appease you, let me say it that way. But if they know that they can fail, they're not going to get their head ripped off. And they can just fix it and move on. Man, you will be blown away at your team's success. Many leaders are frustrated because they don't have the time and tools to lead well, whether it's personality styles or other areas of the business period. Your day gets filled up with fires, people drama meetings that are simply a waste of time. And you never seem to get to what's important and what moves the business forward. Reading books and listening to podcasts aren't helping, and not much about your work life is changing for the better. The thing is, the reason is, that most leaders do not know how to implement what they've learned, assuming it was good information to start with what if it wasn't. And this is why we created the Next-Level Leadership Live Event. If you feel frustrated or stuck about work these days, then go to Chris LoCurto.com/events. That's Chris LoCurto .com/events. registration opens December 1, with $500 off of every ticket you buy. But that's for a short period. You'll learn lessons we practice daily in our business, that are only taught at this event, or inside one of our coaching programs. And you'll have hours of workshop time and access to our coaches right there at the event. So go to Chris LoCurto.com/events To get your limited-time offer before it slips away. So as we go through all of this stuff, we've laid all this stuff out, we've laid out clear roadmaps, strategy, goals, steps, all of these things, we've talked about celebration, we also need to make sure that they understand that failure is okay, as long as it's not fatal failure. And as long as we don't keep doing the same failures over and over again, then that leads us to one last thing. And that is the role of leadership.

Chris LoCurto 38:23
What you must understand is that it is your responsibility to help team members get to success. It's your job as a leader to make people successful, not the other way around. It's your job as a leader to help people get to a destination they wouldn't normally get there on their own. It's your job as a leader to help them tackle this strategy that you've put together help them put together, it's your job to help them to be successful at that strategy. So one of the most important things I think, is, do you have an open door policy? Now I've always had an open door policy or what I tell my team is if my door is open, come on in, you can bug me if it's closed, set an appointment.

Unknown Speaker 39:10
Right? I need my team to know that they can come and talk to me now, as the business owner, it may not be that you're the person that somebody's you know, two teams away from you needs to come to you, right, but leaders need to have so if you have multiple leaders on this project or this thing, then there's got to be the ability to have access. People need to be accessible to team members. So they can come and talk and ask questions and question things you know and share that they they don't understand something or get some encouragement on something that they're working on because they're not feeling very, you know, successful right at the moment are very motivated. You need to make sure that they can talk

Unknown Speaker 40:00
To you, somebody, some leader, when you do this, you automatically increase in build trust.

Unknown Speaker 40:11
You build trust with team members if leaders below you can come to you, you build trust with those leaders, the more you spend time helping people recognize that you have their back, you're there for them, you're going to go forward and try and find the things to help them be successful. But you're also going to be there when they have questions, the more trust you're going to get, the more trust you get, the more ownership they have, the more buy in they have, they're more than willing to stick their necks out and take risks. So make sure that you are there for the team members, the leaders, whoever it is. And if you have leaders that are over certain team members, make sure you're there for those leaders to understand how to lead all this stuff well.

Chris LoCurto 40:55
On top of that, as a leader, you must have frequent efficient communication. The meeting process must happen. Spending time talking through leading through going over aspects of the project, making sure things are done correctly, don't just ask, Is everything going? Okay? Yes, it is. and be done with it. Dig in and find out if somebody actually understands whether or not it is going, okay. Communicate often and share with the teams often make sure that everybody understands everything that's going on. Don't be afraid to over-communicate aspects of the project with other team members who may not have anything to do with that part of the project. Why? Because it's exciting, it motivates them, it helps them to be excited about their part. And keep in mind, if you've got leaders under you, then it's also your job to make sure you're training your leaders. Now me, I will tell you, I don't lead my company, my leaders lead my company.

Unknown Speaker 42:06
I don't lead the company. I spend my time making the leaders successful in training and teaching and guiding and directing on all the stuff that they need to know. And they do a phenomenal job of leading their lives. You know, Joel has his leaders, Aaron has his leaders, they have their team members, they lead them all incredibly well. My job is to lead the leaders to make sure that they're promoting a collaborative culture. So that they can make sure that the teams are working well together so that they can make sure that everything is going the way that we want it to go. And the way that we're accomplishing projects, and long-term strategies and vision and all that is all coming together. And that there's accountability for all of it. And there's great communication on all of it. And on top of that, by doing so, we do something else that's vitally important. We train good decision-making.

Unknown Speaker 43:10
By doing all of the things that we're talking about today, you do something else phenomenal. You teach people how to make good decisions, instead of fearful ones. Instead of hiding, holding back, not working together, not communicating well, and not leaning in each other's directions, you teach good decision-making, which isn't that exactly what you want when you're trying to accomplish a goal, a strategy a destination? Absolutely. So a big piece of this again, you know, we talked about it all the time as the importance of personality styles, the importance of communication, especially for something like this. If your team does not know how to communicate well together, then it's going to be the thing that holds all this back. If your team cannot lean in each other's directions and understand and communicate and set each other up for success, then it's going to be the thing that holds us back. So make sure you go to CrystalLoCurto .com/store and get the disc products make sure you get at least to the disk, I highly suggest that disk plus has the values. Make sure that you watch the video with your powerful team. It's great. It's very funny. And it allows them to have great conversations afterward and start leaning in each other's directions. So folks, keep working together and keep striving for excellence. Keep making incredible team moments happen.

Chris LoCurto 44:40
Help your team to accomplish big things, and then celebrate the daylights out of it. And then move on to the next thing. Set up the next thing and you will be amazed at how excited they will be to accomplish the next big thing. Now here's the deal. We would love to hear from you. We want to hear your story. Is your insights, your questions, and your comments, so feel free to share them with us at podcast at Chris LoCurto.com. Well, folks, that's all the time we have for today. I hope this information has helped you. As always take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life. And join us on the next episode.