577 | Leading Ahead of the Curve: The Power of Proactivity

One of the most important roles leaders have is looking into the future and leading ahead of the curve... 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.

Welcome to the show, folks. I hope you're having a fabulous day wherever you are. Today we're talking about being proactive and the importance of proactivity, which tends to be something that gets lost in leadership.

It tends to be something that is not viewed as being incredibly important until you, you have ended up being so reactive so many times that you realize you're missing out on something, that something is not going correctly.

Something is not going right. And so that's what we're talking about today. So, so many leaders find themselves kind of trapped in a reactive mode.

It is common that people end up in this reactive mode dealing with, you know, the pressures of the moment, rather than steering the ship and, you know, having foresight and strategy for where we should be going.

But what if I told you that shifting towards proactivity could not only ease your leadership burden, but also open up new avenues for growth and opportunity?

I mean, sometimes I think we think being proactive just means make sure that you're watching out for the next thing that's gonna go wrong.

You know, try to be ahead of the next shoe dropping, but it's well beyond that. Being proactive is a massive part of your growth, of your innovation, of being able to, to capture new opportunities before they even happen.

So let's dive in and kind of explore how you can lead your team by embracing proactivity. So the first thing we have to think about is the cost of reactivity.

Now we're all reactive to some level, to some extent. Every one of us has, you know, situations that arise and surprise us and shock us, and that we have to react to.

So as we get into this, I don't want you thinking that, you know, there's, you're, you have the ability to be 100% proactive. You can't, right?

If you can be 100% proactive, you're not doing anything. You're just not moving the needle on anything, right?

You're not, you're not busting into anything. You're not taking risks, you're not taking chances. Everything is pretty static.

What we're talking about is continuing to move forward, continuing to push things forward, continuing to challenge yourself and your team and your business to grow to, to take advantage of new opportunities, right?

And when you do that, there are gonna be times that surprising things happen. Things are gonna pop up that you weren't expecting.

So you can't handle a hundred percent of that. It would be great if you could, but you just can't. So we're not talking about those men. This is something I never could have seen.

Moments we're talking about those moments that had we been even just a little bit proactive, we could have solved it ahead of time. We could have seen it before it happened.

We could have taken advantage of it. Those are the things that we are talking about.

So what happens when we're thoroughly reactive, when we just continue to be reactive? Well, unfortunately, this leads to an incredible amount of stress.

Something that, you know, some of you're hearing me talk about proactivity and going, oh, crud, you're gonna pile up a bunch of stress on my plate.

Listen, not being proactive and having to be reactive to situations all the time is what we call firefighting. We have plenty of people out there who are professional firefighters and they don't work for a fire department.

They work in their own business. They work in their own team, because they're not proactive. They're consistently reactive to situations. Unfortunately, they're always putting out fires.

It's become so common that you have some folks who are actually proud of being a great firefighter, being able to put out fires. That is not something I ever want.

I don't ever want to be somebody who's super excited that I could put out fires. I don't want that many fires. I'm hoping for zero fires.

I'm hoping for one or two a year at best, right? Because we've done such a phenomenal job, right?

Of, of planning ahead and thinking and preparing that when something does pop up, it doesn't even turn into a fire.

We just handle it quickly and we move on. So stress is a massive thing that comes with reactivity.

You may not recognize it, you may not know it, but if you stop and think about how many things that have gone wrong that you were reactive to, how much did it stress you out?

How much in the moment did it create fear? Oh my gosh, what's gonna happen? What are we gonna do? How are we gonna fix this?

You know, how is this gonna affect our business? You know what I'm talking about? Not only does it create a lot of stress, it creates an incredible amount of inefficiency.

So, so I always like to go to the numbers on this. You know, think about your productivity. Think about how much you're paying people to do what they do.

And then reactivity happens because we weren't planning ahead, and now we've got to shift 1, 2, 5, a whole team, you know, the whole company.

We have to shift direction so that we can solve a problem that we weren't prepared for. How much money is now being spent in salaries in staff to take care of that, right?

It becomes ridiculous. So inefficiency is terrible. So we're losing money from a inefficiency. We're losing hair from being stressed out.

What about the missed opportunities? What about how many opportunities? Because we weren't prepared for them, fly right by us.

You know, we get to watch 'em pass us by because we weren't ready to be able to tackle them, to handle them, to grab hold of them.

So, another terrible pitfall of reactivity is that we lose out on great opportunities.

And sometimes I've seen some folks just get to a place where they're just so used to missing out on good opportunities because they're not prepared for it.

That they just stop seeing opportunities. I mean, how sad is that? What a terrible place to be where you don't even consider the opportunities.

You don't even see 'em anymore because you've been so disappointed on missing out on so many of them. But if we just fix the reactivity part, we could fix that.

We could change that. So reactive leading leads to setbacks. It leads to failures, it leads to frustrations, it leads to inefficiencies, it leads to loss of profit.

And again, it leads to the missed opportunities of new profit. So what about being proactive? What does it look like?

You know, how do we develop the proactivity concept as as a leadership philosophy that anticipates change, that that challenges things, that seeks opportunities, that grabs hold of those, right?

So what we have to do is we have to be thinking beyond where we currently are. How do we do that? It starts with awareness.

Where are we currently consistently reactive? Where are we currently having issues? Not thinking ahead, not being prepared.

Take a look through your team, take a look through your business and take an evaluation of where you are. Self-awareness, self-awareness.

You hear me say that a lot. It's super important to know where you are, to figure out where you not being proactive. So where are you on strategy?

This, believe it or not, almost every single company that comes through StratPlan, we see that strategy is not a big importance.

It's not a high priority until we get into breaking down strategy. And then it becomes incredibly important, right?

So a lot of businesses do not realize, they think they're incredibly strategic, feel like they're proactively planning strategy only to find out that they're way behind, that it's really not that big of a priority.

It's not even happening as much as they think. Now, that's a difficult place to be if we're not planning and strategizing.

And, and so let's just, we'll use my definitions here of what strategy is. 'cause people have all different kinds of definitions. Mission for me is your purpose for existence.

So your business should have one mission, one purpose for existence. Why do we show up every single day?

Vision is destinations. This, you can have 700 different destinations. Where are we headed to next? Where are we going to after that? Where are we going after that one?

You should have a lot of destinations, you know, working on one, planning another one or two, maybe even more, depending upon how big you are. That's what vision is. It's the destination of where we're headed to.

So everybody knows what it's like to go to the beach. That's where we're headed. We're going to the beach. We've got to, we know what it's gonna look like.

We know what we're gonna do when we're there. We know if we're gonna throw a Frisbee on the beach, sit under an umbrella, swim in the water, whatever we're gonna do, we know that's the destination.

That's, that's the end point, right? For that one, vision strategy is how we get there. What are all the steps it takes for us to get to that destination?

So I'm laying all this out because a lot of folks believe they strategize because they put down ideas, they put down dreams. Here's something we would like to do.

Here's something we would like to accomplish. And they never proactively put together a solid, solid plan of how to get there. That's what we do in StratPlan.

So as we go through this process, what we discover is a lot of folks come in believing that they're being very strategic, only to find out that there's very little proactive processes to any strategy whatsoever.

Instead, a lot of folks look at strategy as what they're currently doing, not what they should be doing, or what are the steps that it's gonna take to get to the next destination? Crud.

A lot of businesses don't have a next destination in mind. So that's why it's so important to be proactive. If we are going to set vision, how are we gonna get there? What does it look like? Who's needed?

What KRAs should be pointing in this direction? Is this a whole company thing or just a team thing? Is every team a part of a whole company strategy? There's so much that by not being proactive, we're missing out on.

And the incredible thing, and we've had so many clients that have that have talked about this, that when they finally came through and put in a solid strategy, solid StratPlan, moving forward, how they accomplished more in one year than they had in like three, four years.

That's what the power of proactivity is. It allows you to point your people, your team, your resources in an incredible direction, planned out vision, and then with strategy, show them exactly how to get there.

This is a incredible piece of the power of what you need to be doing. That's just strategy. That's just taking a look at what direction we're going in. What about proactively focusing on culture?

What about proactively making sure that we are creating the kind of culture that we want inside of our business, not just something that we're dreaming of, not something that we are kind of working on, but instead, absolutely making sure that we're going after what we want, guiding and directing the team to this place instead of allowing people, situations, emergencies, to guide and direct our culture.

Because you know what happens? You know that when something goes wrong or something messes up, if we don't have a solid cultural response to it, a solid cultural directive, and unfortunately, whoever's there, part of the problem, process, whatever it is, their focus on culture is gonna drive how the culture reacts.

So how powerful is it for us to be proactive on building our culture? What about encouraging innovation?

When we become proactive and we lead our teams into doing more than just your everyday task, we start creating this amazing thing called innovation.

At least we start creating the, the ideas for innovation. The the, the courage comes out of our team and our leaders of saying, well, what, we're sitting in a really good spot.

Could we do this? What about this over here, I'm seeing these trends in the marketplace. I'm seeing, you know, other teams doing this. I'm seeing other companies experiencing this. I'm seeing a vacuum over here.

I'm seeing, you know, some stuff that I think nobody's really paying attention to that we could probably grab hold of, and you know, be on the forefront of it. Innovation doesn't happen.

Listen to me. It doesn't happen in a stagnant, stale business. It just doesn't. Why?

Because we keep doing the same thing over and over and over again, wishing that we were having something new happening, hoping that doing the same thing over and over again is actually gonna create a new process, a new, a new thing.

Some new growth. And sometimes it does. I'm not saying that it doesn't. But where are we on innovation? Where are we on innovating our own business products? What about adaptability?

How difficult is it for us to be adaptable when we spend so much time being reactive? Now, you would think that being reactive causes you to be adaptable. Not really.

It may teach you how to put out fires in different ways, but how is that helping you to make sure the fire doesn't happen?

How is that helping you to adapt to that situation, to put in new things or new processes to make sure we don't get there anymore?

So when you are proactive, not only are you focusing on something beyond what you do on a daily basis, but it helps you to see where it's going to work, where it's going to fail, where you need to change things.

You know, you don't wanna hold onto this thing like crazy. And you know, if it starts failing, you don't just keep holding onto it until you, you know, drive it straight into the ground.

Instead, what you do is you learn how to adapt. Well, what do we do? It's not working out as well. Change. Hey, this part's going great. Should we change any of that?

Could it be better? It's a constant process of what do we do? How do we adapt? How do we take something going really well and make it better?

How do we take something failing and fix it, even if that means getting rid of it? So adaptability is a great, powerful piece of proactivity, resilience.

Oh my goodness, I cannot overstate the importance of a resilient team, a resilient culture, a resilient leadership team.

And I can tell you, I have been on some teams that were phenomenal and phenomenally resilient, and I have been on some teams that were just painful to experience the lack of resilience, the lack of proactive leadership.

That is something that I just can't ever have on my, on any of my teams or in my businesses. I just can't. It's just terrible. It's painful to watch.

When you lead your culture to being proactive, then when things do go wrong, 'cause they will, the more proactive you get, you're taking a chance of having more things go wrong.

What happens is, is it creates the ability for resilience inside of your team when you lead the fixes. Well, when you lead, because keep in mind, we're not behind the eight ball.

We're trying to get out in front of it. We're trying to make things happen ahead of time. We're trying to see where things are gonna go ahead of time, where things are gonna fail ahead of time.

One of the questions I always ask is, how could this fail? Whatever it is, how could this fail?

What happens is, is that it teaches your team to respond quickly. Hey guys, this isn't gonna work out. Something's wrong. You know, we missed this one piece over here.

We've got to adapt and, and change and shift. And what it creates is this ability for your team to be resilient.

What do I mean by that? So resiliency is that ability to bounce back. Think of a rubber band, right?

If you stretch a rubber band far enough, hard enough, does it come back to its same shape? Does it bounce back? So resiliency allows you to get knocked back and bounce back just like that rubber band, right?

So what happens is, is if you have a team that isn't very resilient and they keep taking punches and keep getting knocked back, then eventually they become like that stretched out rubber band.

They're never coming back to a, a good shape, right? Unfortunately, they can't, they can't bounce back anymore. They get tired. Champions will leave, people will leave your team.

But when you have a team that is ahead of problems and they see problems, and yeah, they get knocked back a little bit, but it allows them to work on recovery.

It allows them to work on fixing. It allows them to see that, you know, this isn't such an extreme emergency, or we're not in a situation where, you know, people are p****d off and leaders are ripping off people's heads.

We're ahead of this stuff. We see it happening, we're fixing it in the moment. Then what happens is, is that builds resiliency inside of your team.

They actually can see it's okay to fail even in the moment because we're not reacting to a fire that just happened. Instead, we're seeing it, we're working on it, we're fixing it right now.

So just incredible things that build to the power of proactivity. So how do you kinda lead that? Well, I will tell you, it starts with you actually recognizing and sharing that it's a valued thing in your culture.

So you've got to be able to view people being proactive in your team. You've got to see where somebody is seeing something that's going wrong or bringing things to the forefront.

You know, a lot of times, unfortunately, many leaders hear a team member bringing something up and they think, oh, you're just complaining. Oh, you're just being negative.

And they completely miss out on the fact that that team member sees something that they don't see, that they recognize that something's gonna go wrong and nobody seems to want to do anything about it, or nobody seems to care.

You gotta shift that mindset, especially in your leadership team, where if you have team members that are being proactive, finding problems, seeing things that you know may go wrong, recognize that if they are correct, jump on it, fix it, solve it.

Fantastic. You were just proactive. You just solved something that didn't create a fire and you didn't have to be reactive to.

It's also on the side where people are constantly bringing up great ideas. Now listen, parents, if you want your kids to help out around the house, quit giving them jobs to do.

Now, really, I'm talking to those who have younger ones, because a lot of parents have parented in a way that many of us have, where a child comes and asks to help out with something and, and your answer is, no, no, no, no. I gotta get this done.

Or No, I can't have this messed up. Or you think to yourself, no, I don't have the time for this. Oh gosh, they're gonna make a colossal mess.

A crazy thing happens when you actually allow a child who's asking to help out, to help out, they wanna do more. Oh, but yeah, I don't have time for that, Chris. I don't have time for the teaching and the training.

Don't just don't let them do something that's gonna hurt them. If they wanna help out with cooking, find an aspect of cooking that they can do.

Maybe start cooking 20 minutes earlier than you were planning on doing and see if your kids come in and say, Hey, can I help out? Yeah, here you can.

Here's a safe knife for you to use and chop up these vegetables. They might stay in there for five minutes. They might stay in there for 15 minutes.

The crazy thing is, is when you allow them to participate, guess what they're gonna do? They're gonna come back for more.

But we live in a culture where people are constantly telling their kids, no, no, no, I got that. No, no. You can't help out with that.

No, I, I can't have you messed that thing up. No, I, that's gotta be perfect for daddy that, no, whatever it is, right? And what do we teach the kids?

Stop asking. Stop volunteering to help. So if you want your kids to volunteer to help, I'm not saying don't ever give them chores that they need to do. That is not what I'm saying at all.

What I'm saying is, is you will find your kids becoming much more proactively volunteering to help out if you allow them to. They want to be a part, they want to help out.

We did this with our little girl. We implemented this, and man, within days she was taking things from us to go do stuff.

I mean, she'd grab something outta my head, daddy, I got that. I'm gonna do that. I'll take care of that. It was stunning to see how effective this process has been.

And I gotta tell you, this was a new learning for me. Having grown kids, this was a new learning for me. And praise God, it works.

Guess what? You do it to the adults that you pay. You do it to people who come along and they want to help out with something, or they see something that could be worked on, or they see something that could be better.

And we're constantly going, no, no, no, no, no. Leave that the way that that is. No, we don't have time for that. No, I don't. I can't spend time teaching you on that. No. That's just gonna get messed up.

And what happens is we teach our people to not be proactive. So you have to start by fostering a culture where proactivity is valued, it's rewarded.

People feel like you actually give a darn about what they think. It doesn't mean that you take every idea, it doesn't mean that you implement every what seems like a good idea to somebody.

What it means is that you value it. Thank you so much for bringing that up. Thank you for mentioning that. Thank you for pointing that out.

Thank you for your desire to put this new marketing plan in place. Thank you for the, the ways that you would like to change the sales process where it's not working out so well.

Thank you for helping out with the administrative areas that aren't that, that need some great help or the HR processes that aren't completed.

You need to reward people for what they are doing that is helping in things that you want them to do. And then they will continue to do it.

So if you want a culture where people are proactive instead of reactive, value it, reward it, recognize it, right? Do the things that help people to understand that you desire them to be proactive.

And the more you do it, the more they will, the more that they will start looking for things of how to make things better instead of just sitting there doing their same job over and over and over again.

You know, waiting for the next day to come. So foster culture where proactive is valued, where it's rewarded. Hey folks, a couple years ago I was visiting with a client and the CEO said to me, Chris, we're not gonna hit our goal.

I asked him what he meant and he said, we're gonna miss our three year revenue goal coming out of StratPlan by a few months.

I didn't realize it at first that he was having a little fun with me by saying they were about to triple their company in less than three years.

How freaking awesome is that, folks, these are the kinds of results that businesses get by coming through our four day StratPlan event.

On average, we find $2.1 million worth of revenue in the next 12 months that the company was not planning on.

And this event is for all size businesses. If you're small, medium, or large, it works for every single business because it's not industry specific.

It's about gaining all the information about all the things inside of your business that are holding you back from success, and then giving you a plan and a process on how to walk that out and be successful in your business by discovering the things that are holding you back.

It helps you get to all of those goals that you've been planning on for a long time.

So if you're ready to get the perspective you need to solve what's holding you and your business back so you can grow faster than you need StratPlan to learn more, go to https://chrislocurto.com/stratplan/.

That's https://chrislocurto.com/stratplan/.

Another great way for you to foster a culture of proactivity is, like I talked about a little bit ago, what does it look like to be setting clear visions, clear strategies, clear goals, things that align with future success?

So it is amazing for a team member to feel a part of something bigger than themselves, to feel a part of something bigger than just their day-to-day job, right?

So a great thing that you can do to continue to teach them to think outside the box and think proactively is when you're setting goals, when you're setting strategy for the future, when you're focusing on those visions and you're involving them, when you look into their areas, let's say, I don't know, marketing, sales.

When you're, when you're focusing on your finances and you're planning out your finances, as you're spending time leading team members, leading teams on strategies that they can do, that they can be a part of that they're gonna have actionable steps to do, then what happens is, is they start to see that this is something that is consistent.

This is something that is valued, this is something that's important. As you include them in that process, then they want to be a part of more, they want to do more.

They want to execute more. So this is another great way for you to foster that culture of helping them by seeing this is where we're headed.

How many times have you worked for a company that if I came to you and said, Hey, what's the vision of the company?

You're like, I don't know, sell more stuff. I don't know. Keep doing what we're doing. What if I went to your team members and I asked them what the vision of your company is?

What would they tell me? What would their response be? So help them to see the vision of your company. Help them to see that they're a part of something bigger than themselves, right?

Help them to experience a leader who wants their input on vision, strategy, goals, future success. Help them to see the steps that they can take, that they will be a part of.

That very thing. As you do that, what will happen is, is that your team members are gonna want it. They're gonna want more. They're gonna wanna experience more.

As you win with these visions, as you win with these strategies, celebrate them.

Point out how much people are working outside of just doing their normal job and they're focusing on making things better, making things more successful.

Celebrate the wins. Right? Now, what are some potential barriers to productivity? I, I gotta tell you, there's a bunch, a lot of things we talk about, like the leadership, crazy leader, leader, there are so, so, so many leaders.

Most if not all, I'm telling you, I don't know a leader that before coming into our programs or before coming into our stuff, who isn't stuck in the leadership crazy cycle.

I mean, it is incredible to see. I mean, unless they're brand spanking new leader in a, in, in an area or something like that, almost every single leader that we work with coming into our programs is stuck in the leadership crazy cycle.

Well, that is so, and by the way, what, for those of you who don't know what that is, what I'm talking about is this process where you were so overwhelmed with tasks and things that you do on a daily basis.

You're constantly moving things and, and, you know, touching things that you shouldn't be, like administrative tasks that somebody else should be doing there.

There's so much on your plate that at the end of the day, if I said, Hey, what'd you do today? You're like, I don't know. But it was a lot.

That overwhelm, the amount of time you actually lead people actually lead them is minimal. I mean, it's minuscule at best. That is a part of what we call the leadership crazy cycle.

And so being stuck in that is gonna keep you from being proactive. I mean, it's, it's just obvious.

How can you possibly be proactive when you're overwhelmed with tasks, you know, being task saturated when you are stuck in self-doubt yourself because you're like, gosh, I, I don't, I don't have time to do this stuff.

I don't, I don't know if I have anybody on my team who can, I sure as heck don't wanna start something that's gonna come back on me.

All of those things are, are causing you or causing your team, or causing your leadership team to be blocked from being proactive.

Another thing is the Bottleneck Boss Syndrome. You know, where everything has to go through one leader, they have to have their hands on everything, right?

Nothing can get done, nothing can get approved. You know, people instead of solving things and executing things or having to take everything to one leader, that is gonna keep you from being, there's, how could you possibly be proactive in a, in a situation like that?

Fear of failure is a huge obstacle to productivity. And folks, I gotta tell you, without a culture of it, not fear of failure, a culture of productivity, fear of failure will keep your team from taking those types of risks.

Fear of failure will keep your team from bringing up ideas and things that they can execute on. Why? Because they're afraid of failing.

Because 'cause they're in a culture that they do not trust. They have a leader or leadership team that they do not trust. Therefore, proactivity just seems ridiculous. It seems pointless.

So what are some things that you can do to break some of those obstacles down, break free from those cycles and embrace a proactive mindset. You gotta get out of the leadership crazy cycle.

You have got to focus on, I mean, that's the number one thing that we push when people come into Next Level Mastermind and say, Hey, you have got to focus on getting the things off of your plate that shouldn't be there, and focusing on the more important things that you should be doing.

You know, getting stuff delegated properly to people so that they can handle it and run with it really well. Thus giving you the time to lead incredibly well.

So that's the first thing you gotta get, you gotta get out of task saturation. What are you doing bogged down in a bunch of tasks.

Leader, the people who should be doing a lot of tasks are folks that are hired to do a lot of tasks.

Leaders are never hired to do a lot of tasks, at least they shouldn't be. But unfortunately for most leaders, the belief is, is that that's your value.

That's your importance, is getting 900 things done in a day, guys, if that's what the importance is for your company, you know, as far as viewing leaders, man, your company has it wrong.

You have it wrong. Your team has it wrong. For me, your job as a leader is to make your team successful. That's your job. Your job isn't to do 400 tasks in a day.

Your job is to lead people to becoming better versions of themselves, to be better at the roles that you, you've paid them for. You're paying them for.

So you gotta get out of that. You cannot be the bottleneck boss. You can't be the person that everybody has to run things through you.

There is no, I, I know sometimes it's super exciting for people that they're a part of everything inside of their business. Oh, for the love people, you gotta get over that.

You gotta train people up to be great and train people to be great leaders.

You need to replace you in aspects so that you can become a better version of yourself. There are so many things inside of my business I could not answer if you ask me a question about it. I couldn't give you a solid answer.

I've had newbie team members come to me before in the past asking me questions about, Hey, where can I find this on the drive and where can I find this?

Or how do I do? And I'm like, I, you know, I don't know. Don't you do me a favor. Go back to your leader. Check with your leader and see, they probably have that answer.

I mean, it's just stuff that I can't answer. I don't know why, because I shouldn't know. It's stuff that I should not have the answer to. I pay people to have those answers.

I need to focus on higher level stuff. And my team doesn't want me focused on lower level stuff.

Because if I'm focused on those things, it's funny, it's, it's funny how if ever something like that comes up, Joel's got a saying, he is like, yeah, that's exactly what we want our CEO focused on.

Because it drives a point home. I should not be focused on things like that. There's somebody else who has the answer, somebody else who knows that they can take care of it, right?

That's the goal. It one of the things that just drives me nuts and, you know, I don't know, I guess people think it's a great thing.

You know what drives me nuts is when the manager in a restaurant comes around as if they've been a part of my meal tonight, to ask me if there's, if everything is okay, if there's anything they can do.

Nope, there isn't. Keep on walking. That drives me crazy. Why? Because you come out at the end of a meal, are the close, you know, almost the end of a meal and act as though my specific meal is something you're concerned about that that drives me nuts.

You have paid somebody to take care of me all night long if they're doing their job right? That means that you have done your job right? But instead, there's this concept of people need to see that the manager cares.

Nope. No, we don't. I need to see that my server cares. I need to see that my server does a quality job. If they do a quality job, then I think you've done your job. Doesn't that make sense?

So if you're a bottleneck boss and everything has to go through, you have to have your hands on everything, the pulse on every aspect of your business, I promise you, you are losing in productivity like crazy.

Not only are you losing in productivity, you are probably having zero proactivity from the rest of your team. There's no point because they know that everything has to run through you.

So these are things that, these are cycles. The fear of failure, that's gotta go. You've got to be able to allow your team to fail.

Our team fails, our team makes mistakes, but our team understands that failing at something, as long as it's not a fatal failure, filling at something is something you can fix. It's something you can do something about.

Get on it, solve it, fix it, make sure we don't do it again. Solve that problem, right? You're not gonna get your head ripped off.

We're not in the business of ripping people's heads off. We don't care to, we don't like that. That's not a great leadership strategy, ripping somebody's head off.

Instead, we empower people to solve the problem. Fix the problem.

If you've made a mistake, what happened? How did it happen? Why did it happen? How do we fix it? How do we make sure it never happens again? Boom. Move on.

If you do these things, if you break these cycles, then you can embrace a proactive mindset and your team can embrace a proactive mindset as well.

Now, some extra things that you're going to need to do is to make sure if you're not already rewarding creativity or at least suggesting and highlighting creativity in the team, that's something you've gotta jump on.

That's something that for people to be proactive, they need to be creative, right? They need to use the creative mind to make sure that they're forward thinking, right?

That they're thinking, you know, what is, is this just handling today's stuff, which I'm already doing? Or am I thinking of things beyond what I'm doing, beyond the scope of what I'm already focused on?

You know, am I thinking strategically? Help people to understand what strategy means and how to think that way. How, what does it look like to plan a strategy?

What does it look like to plan steps to a vision, right? What does it look like to achieve being proactive for a team member?

So just telling a team member to, Hey, go ahead and I, I want you to be more proactive. Doesn't actually help them. You're gonna have to model this.

You're gonna have to emphasize the benefits of being proactive and how much it's gonna affect their day, their excitement for their own work, their, their joy of accomplishing bigger and better things, right?

The more that you help them to see that being proactive is gonna benefit them in the long run, the more they're gonna wanna do it, right? It's gonna help them to be better prepared.

Make sure that you're teaching that being proactive is being prepared. That's a big part of this process. The more prepared we are, the better we're gonna do.

As things pop up, you know, the, the less stress we're gonna have, the less firefighting we're gonna have to do, right? So we're prepared for future challenges, right?

So also focus on how, as you lead this process, how the team engages each other. Does this create an enhanced team engagement? Which it absolutely will. I will tell you that it definitely should.

You might find some people that fight it. You might find some people that are gonna push against it. Help them to come along.

Help them to see the importance. Help them to see that the more we work on this together, the greater our communication is gonna be.

The greater we're gonna work on, on projects together, the greater success that we're gonna have on the things that we're accomplishing on a day-to-day basis.

So, you know, it's gonna, it definitely should help your team to work not only together better, but also to cover each other's backs.

The more proactive we are, the more somebody's gonna see something in somebody's area and try and help them out.

Hey, here's something I'm looking at. What do you think about this? Do you see this as being a problem?

You know, should we jump on this? It, it is something I absolutely love to see when I, I have a, a leadership team who are all siloed in their own areas.

Come together and start, you know, covering each other's backs, seeing things that somebody else is not seeing, jumping in and helping them to solve problems.

It's just, it's powerful. I love that type of engagement. Also, it's gonna help your business to have a stronger competitive advantage. I mean, think about it.

If you're being very proactive inside of your business and there's a really good chance your competitor is not, there's a really good chance. 'cause most businesses aren't incredibly proactive.

If you are doing this, then it's gonna give you a great competitive advantage, right? You're gonna be seeing things that other people are not.

You're gonna be solving things in ways that other people are not doing it. So all powerful, powerful stuff to help you to be proactive, to lead your team to being proactive and to create a, a culture of proactivity.

So something I'd love for you to check out, I think this is gonna be powerful in this process, is we did a great episode on procrastination. We gotta make sure that that does not exist.

If we're gonna have a culture of productivity, go back and listen to episode 536. It's called, Is Procrastination Slowing Your Progress?

This is where we talk about how procrastination is a common obstacle. That's a learned behavior, which tends to be driven by anxiety. It tends to be driven by fear. It is absolutely mismanaging priorities.

So it's important to understand that overcoming it requires self-examination and a commitment to tackling tasks promptly doing things right now, ultimately leading to increased success and wellbeing. It's a great episode.

You need to go listen to that as well. So remember, shifting from reactivity to proactivity isn't just a leadership strategy.

It's a leadership imperative for those who are looking to lead their teams to success. Especially in today's ever-changing, you know, business landscape.

If you want to be able to handle the way things are changing so rapidly, you have to have a team who is prepared for it.

So by embracing productivity, you're not only preparing your business for future challenges, but also unlocking the potential of your team for greater innovation, for greater resilience, for greater growth.

So let's make that commitment that we're gonna lead ahead of the curve. Alright folks, hopefully this has been great for you today. This is all the time that we got.

So as always, we want you to take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life, and join us on the next episode.