579 | Leading by Example: Inspiring Change and Growth

Real leaders lead from the front. Today we're exploring how leaders inspire change and growth through their actions and behaviors. 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 are talking about leading from the front. Now, the, the examples that we're discussing is, is how we can inspire change in growth in our team.

As I get into this, I, I think everybody, as I say, leading from the front, I think everybody thinks, oh, yeah, that's a great idea, Chris, but what in the world does that actually mean?

So we're gonna talk through a lot of this today, but the, the major focus I want you to be thinking about today is how does your actions inspire your team?

Now, today, I am gonna be mostly focusing on the positives. Obviously, there's some negatives that your, your actions could inspire in your team.

If you've got the wrong team and you're, you know, you're doing wrong things, then you could probably inspire some of the negative things. That's not what we're talking about.

We're really focusing on how much can you inspire, how much can you be an example to your team? Why is that so important, Chris? Why is that the thing we're talking about today?

Because I think most leaders and most business owners don't realize that part of their role as a leader is to inspire by example, to lead by example.

Now, everybody knows to some extent that they should be a great example for their team. But how many of you out there listening to this actually wonder if you can be a great inspiration to your team?

How many of you out there wonder, you know, is any normal day, any average day, a day that you can be an inspiration to your team by your actions?

And I think as you ponder that, you probably go, huh, I never even think about it. It's not something that comes, I don't wake up in the morning and go, I hope I inspire change.

I hope in, I inspire growth today. That's probably not the first or hundredth thought on your mind when you wake up, but it should be up there.

It should be one of those thoughts of, Hey, I've got today to inspire my team. I've got today to hopefully inspire growth.

Hopefully inspire them to challenge themselves, hopefully inspire them to make better decisions, hopefully inspire them to become better leaders themselves, better team members themselves.

These are all things that you should and could be thinking about. So that's what we're talking about today. Why is that so important?

Because if you are not doing it, who is? So, step back for a second and think about your team and ask yourself the question, who is inspiring my team?

Who is inspiring my team to lead better, to make better decisions, to, to grow themselves, to get beyond where they currently are?

If it's not you, then who, if you're the business owner and you have leaders on your team, shouldn't they be be focusing on not only growing themselves, but also growing their team members?

And, and what does that look like? If you can be that example, then this can become DNA inside of your culture. And that's really what we're looking for.

We're looking for that cultural DNA that helps people to become better, that helps people to become more successful. The great thing is, is that when you are leading by example, people are gonna follow you.

If you are a leading by positive example, there's gonna be a decent number of people who want to follow you, who desire to follow a, a leader who's doing something greater than they are.

There's probably a decent number of people on your team who desire growth, but they may not be getting it. They may not be getting the opportunities, they may not be shown how to grow.

So a great thing is, is that you're gonna find solid team members, champions. They're gonna follow you in this process. That's exactly what they want.

They're looking for that, they're hoping for that. You're also gonna see some pretty amazing cultural impacts.

A great thing about when you are leading to inspire is that does become cultural DNA, if you do it often enough, and this is one of the great things I love about our team.

This is the stuff that we do. This is the stuff that we focus on, right? We're constantly trying to help people make better decisions.

We're constantly trying to help people to get rid of fear, you know, and how they operate to kick out crap, like gossip and backstabbing, and make sure that people love showing up every single day.

When you are leading by example to inspire growth and change, then it will become cultural. DNA, not only will you do it, but you'll start to see team members do it as well.

The great thing is, is that it becomes a culture of example.

That is, again, if you've ever been to our offices, if you've ever met our team, then I'm pretty darn sure that's one of the things that you're gonna talk about that team.

Just all the whole team, good morale, good culture, care about serving, wanna take care of people all the time, go outta their way.

I mean, these are the things that we look forward to doing every single day. It is my heart to serve. It is my heart to help. It is my heart to teach.

Therefore, by example, guess what I have on my team? People who love to serve, people who love to take care of others. And it doesn't mean that they all have to do it in the same way.

They don't. If you've been to a Next-Level Life, you've experienced Catherine cooking amazing meals, and you know, she's not up there leading one of the Next-Level Life.

She's not a facilitator for that process, but she is a facilitator for the comfort that you experience when you come down and you eat this incredible meal in this great environment while you're going through something that's tough, it's difficult to go through, right?

So having that as a cultural piece that I hopefully can say that I exude this because I believe that I do, because it's my heart. That's what I do.

But I don't just, I'm not just an example of it. I teach it. Therefore, my leaders are examples of it and they teach it.

Therefore, my team is examples of this, and they teach it to clients and, you know, even vendors at times. So it creates this amazing cultural impact that you'll just be blown away with.

Another great thing, and again, put yourself in the shoes of this culture.

How much is it going to increase morale when this is your leadership, when your leadership is inspiring, when your leadership is focused on growth and change, what does that do for your morale?

If you're one of the team members, what does it do for your productivity? Well, champions are going to bust it. Champions thrive. He- this-, people don't really get this.

When you have a champion on your team, and they are in this type of environment, they work even harder than they do.

If this, if the environment is just a normal environment, if they're in a positive environment, then they bust it, they go over the top. Why? Because it's fulfilling.

It's not just a job. It's something that absolutely fulfills them inside. That is, again, another great thing that I can say about our teams.

We have multiple teams working in multiple locations, and one of the things I could say is the champions bust it. They love it, they enjoy it.

You know, they're not looking at the clock waiting to, you know, get out, clock in late, clock out early, you know, well, we don't have a clock to clock out on, but you see what I'm saying?

They enjoy it. They bust it because it's something that they love doing.

Now, there's an old, old saying, and I believe it came from a statistics back in, I don't know, like the, the nineties or so, that said, if you don't love what you do, 60% of the time, you'll hate it a hundred percent of the time.

And so I like to use that on don't, don't say that. That's the, don't quote me on that being the exact statistic right now in 2024. I'm just saying that that is something that creates a great mind picture, right?

What does it look like if you don't love your job? At least 60% of the time? If you don't love it at least 60% of the time, that means that you are consistently looking to be fulfilled elsewhere.

You're consistently looking outside to find something else that's gonna make you feel good about where you're spending your time.

Because you're obviously not getting fulfilled where you spend probably most of your time, right? Most of the time in your life, at least eight hours a day.

I am assuming people listening to this episode are, are probably working, or this show are probably working at least eight hours a day, and many considerably more than that.

So it's great because when you lead this way, what you'll discover is people will have a, a higher morale. You will definitely see a difference in productivity.

There's no doubt about it. Now, nothing I'm gonna teach you today is gonna happen overnight. Nothing is gonna happen.

You come in and have one conversation, next thing you know, everybody's working 25% more. No, that's not gonna happen.

This is something you're going to need to work on on a consistent basis over time, helping people to get to this place, right?

So just consider, the stuff I talk about today is something that you just implement going forward. It's stuff that you just do, right?

So the more you do it, the more it becomes habit. The more it'll become culture, the more it'll be commonplace that you're inspiring people to change in growth through your actions and attitudes.

So I think we can all relate to having worked with a bad leader or a bad boss. I hate the term boss, right? Whenever I hear that, I'm just like, Ugh, just makes me think of that.

You know, overpowering, controlling, jerk, right? Which none of us wanna be that person. But think about it. If you've ever worked for that person, how long did you stay?

Maybe, maybe some of you are still there. Maybe some of you are that boss. I don't know. Here's the thing, nobody wants to work for that person.

Nobody wants to be under that. Instead, we wanna work with somebody that every day we're just like, gosh, I, I, I really enjoy this being my leader.

It doesn't mean you don't screw up. I screw up. I, I mess things up. I, I make mistakes. It doesn't mean that you don't screw things up.

It means that for the bulk of the time, you're leading in a way that inspires people.

When you lead this way, you will be amazed at the leniency that you will get when you screw up the forgiveness, the grace that you'll experience.

I shouldn't say leniency, lemme say grace, that you'll experience from a team who sees that you bust it and are trying like crazy, and they, they can anticipate that you're going to be this style of leader.

So powerful, powerful stuff. When you focus on it, when you make it a habit, when you make it DNA for yourself, we're gonna start off and walk through some of the great places that you can see an impact, okay?

So we're gonna start with one of the most important areas of leading by example, and that is in the area of decision making. I will tell you that this is huge for any leader.

Let's just think about it for a second. How many times have you experienced a team member making a decision or, or the result of a decision being made?

And you're like, now, why did you make that decision? Why did you do it that way? And why did you, why didn't you do this thing over here?

And how come, and you've got this, this struggle inside of your brain of why is that the decision you made? Well, here's what you need to think about.

Where did that team member or those team members learn to make decisions? Who taught them? Was it their last leader?

Was it their phenomenally decision making type parents? You know, who was it?

It's very possible that nobody actually has led them to making great decisions, and yet you are surprised that they don't make great decisions.

Now, it, it's okay, and I understand it, I get there, I've been there a thousand times myself, but you eventually have to get to a place where you realize, have I taught them how to make decisions?

Have I helped them to understand what to do in this situation or that situation, or what the process of making a good decision even looks like?

Have I helped them to get there? So here's the first thing I want you to do. I want you to examine how you or your leaders make decisions, right?

I want you to go through a process of sitting down and going, you know, pick five big decisions that you've made recently.

You know, it could be in the last week, or, and I don't, I'm not talking about huge decisions, but that, that wouldn't be a bad idea either.

But five decent size, you know, to big decisions and walk through, how did I make this decision? What was the process? What were my thoughts? Did I ask questions? Did I gain perspective?

Did I, you know, tax the collective intelligence? What did I do to get to a place of being able to make the right decision?

Then sit down and write down other great decision makers. People you think do a phenomenal job. If you can get the information of how they make decisions, right?

And then ask yourself, do you see your own decision making process? Do you see your company's decision making process? Do you have that outline?

What's good? What's bad? What do you want to teach? What do you want to get rid of? And then start leading that.

Start moving in the direction of helping people to see how to make decisions. Start being transparent and sharing information on how you make decisions.

What is the goal here? The goal is for everybody on our team to be able to have a quality decision making process that gets them to success.

That's what we're looking for. We want people to be able to make better decisions. So instead of just telling them to make better decisions, which always works, that's always fantastic.

Instead, we're gonna model it. We're gonna lead that. We're gonna help them to see what they need to do. We're gonna help them to get there.

And as we do that, an amazing gonna happen. Culture is gonna change. DNA is going to be created, or DNA is gonna change inside of our business.

We're gonna start to see, now, this is not gonna happen overnight. Don't, you know, don't think that you can do this one time and everybody knows how to, you know, make great quality decisions.

This is something that's gonna take time. It's gonna take time and effort and intentionality, leading people to make quality decisions.

But as they do, you are going to love how the culture changes. You are gonna love that you're creating this DNA of making good to great decisions.

It's one of my favorite things of being able to see my team operate at a level that they just knock it out of the park when it comes to decision making, right?

And so, I'm gonna walk through some of the other elements that you need to have in place. You need to tax the collective intelligence.

Now, I I, when I started my leadership career over 30 years ago, and realized very quickly that I was not the only smart person in the room, that's when I started doing what I call taxing the collective intelligence.

I started asking people for their information. Now, insecure people almost cannot do this. I mean, they might be able to do it a little bit, but boy, insecure people are super defensive, super self-protective.

Push back a ton on this. If you are insecure, get over it, get over it. You are holding yourself back by gaining wisdom and knowledge from other people.

Now, why would somebody be so insecure? Because what runs through your mind? Gosh, if I have to ask them what their thoughts are on this, they're gonna think I'm weak.

They're gonna think I'm stupid. They're gonna think that I'm a fraud. They're gonna think that I'm not worth this role. All of the negative junk that runs through your head is ridiculous.

It's absolutely ridiculous. I'm a guy who asks tons of questions. I'm a guy who asks people their opinions all the time. I, I guide and direct and teach and coach people for a living.

You know, I'm constantly reaching out to other folks going, Hey, what's your thoughts on this? How do you do this? You know, what is your expertise in this?

And I don't have a problem. I'm not insecure in doing that. What I have discovered is, is there are tons of smart people, and sometimes they have better answers than me, and sometimes they don't.

But my goal is to gain the information. Now, we're not talking about, you know, decision by consensus. That's not what I'm talking about at all.

What I'm saying is, is that I try to get as much information as I can to make the best decision that I can make.

Now, what happens when your team sees you doing that, they all of a sudden understand, wow, if the leader can do it, then maybe I don't have to be so worried about being vulnerable by asking.

When you start leading this inside of your team, and then you ask people, Hey, have you asked so and so? Well, well, no. Well, why not? Well, I, I, I got it.

No, why don't you go over there? It's okay. You know, be vulnerable a little bit. Gone over there and asked Frank what he thinks, because he's done this 14 times in the past. Get his input.

Doesn't mean you have to go with everything he says, but at least learn something from Frank, right? As you lead and guide and teach this, what you will see is your team becomes more vulnerable.

They will start having an easier time soliciting input from other team members, members. It will be an amazing thing.

You'll start seeing team members say, you know who you should ask about that you should go talk to, so-and-So go talk to Frank.

You will see that it becomes part of the culture. Next thing is, I want you to focus on data-driven approaches. Now, we're definitely not void of enough people basing decisions on their feelings.

We have so many folks out there nowadays that it's like, well, I feel like, or it made me feel this way, or I, you know, all, listen, okay, we all have feelings. That's great.

We all can feel our feelings. But something that I want you to do is stop making decisions fully based on your feelings.

Now, we've all pulled the trigger on, on, you know, things that were, you know, that, that, that gut hunch that you had inside, right?

That something that you think you should do, or something you think you shouldn't do. And, and I'll be honest, I think many of those times, that's the Holy Spirit telling you to do something or not to do it.

But how many times have we made, you know, feeling based decisions instead of fact-based decisions only to get bit in our backsides?

I'm not saying you can't have your feelings. I'm not saying you can't process through your feelings. What I'm saying is, is that you need to start really bringing data to the table.

You need to really start bringing evidence to the table to inform the decision making, right? We need to set a standard, you know, for objective decision making.

So it's not just our subjective feelings. It's actually something that we have hard evidence to base it on. So when we do that, we tend to get better and more informed decisions.

You need to lead your team by that, which means you need to start bringing facts. You need to start bringing evidence to the decision making process.

If you're one of those leaders who makes a lot of decisions based on your feelings, and guess what, you're never gonna be able to get your team to make all of their decisions based on facts.

Now, if you got some super High Cs out there, they're already doing it, they're probably going the opposite direction and only basing decisions on facts, and probably not a lot on feelings.

That's not necessarily the best way to go either. We should be putting a, sometimes a combination of this in there. We definitely want a lot of evidence, a lot of facts in this.

But something you do need to watch out for is when we don't think beyond the data or the evidence. I, you know, I, an example of this is when I used to race formula cars.

Yes, I sold my car last year. It was a fun run. It was a great, great, I don't know, 10, 13, 15 years, something like that. I, but it was fantastic. I loved it. I miss it.

But it was time when I started out. I've always had coaches. I, I'm, I'm a coach. I love to get coaches.

I love to get people's expertise. I don't want to try and figure everything out on my own. Did you hear that? You High Cs, you High Ss that are like, oh, I'm too embarrassed to ask an expert.

I'm gonna figure this. I'm gonna spend 17 hours figuring this out. I'm just not that person. You know, I'm an 88 S and I will tell you, I love learning people's expertise.

So I don't have to spend all that time figuring it out. I wanna know ahead of time. So I used to, to have, well, I always had data coaches.

I always had somebody who was a coach on the data. The, the, the, the car spits out a ton of information about how it's being handled, what's happening, all of this stuff.

I mean, it's a lot of, every second is recorded, and then you sit down and you go through all of that information, right?

Well, in my early days, as I was getting better and better and better, you know, I was always going by the data coach's information, but then all of a sudden I would hear, well, you did this in that corner.

And I'm like, no, I, I didn't, that didn't happen. Like, well, yeah, you did. You had to have because of this. And I'm like, no, I'm telling you that's not what happened.

And I found myself struggling to try and get the data. I mean, even to the point where I'm going, okay, let's assume I didn't do that. What are other options?

Nope, that's it. That's what you did. And I found myself in the struggle of being told something that did not make sense with what I was experiencing on the track.

And it wasn't until I got a driver coach. A driver coach is somebody who actually has raced, raced the tracks that, you know, I'm on and understands the data as well.

Once I got a driver coach, then that information changed. So what happened here? Oh, well, what happened is, is that you were losing air on the back of your car.

You gotta hammer down in that. You gotta go even harder into that turn right there because you need that car to stick.

You know, you, you, you lost some air, and you walk that thing all the way out to the edge and keep doing that, you're gonna slide off the track. Wow.

All of a sudden it started making sense that there was somebody who knew both aspects of the data, that they could see the facts, the evidence, as far as the computer was saying, but they also had the experience of being there and recognizing, oh no, it wasn't this piece over here.

It was this piece over here. That's what you need. So, as I'm saying, do this data-driven approach, definitely be bringing facts, definitely be leading, being an example of somebody who brings evidence to the table.

But also don't forget, you know, you are where you are because you probably do have some good gut instincts that need to be shared as well.

You know, some of you business owners, you get that entrepreneurial spirit that has helped you to make decisions better through that spirit.

Bring both to the table. Alright? Next thing is accountability. Goodness gracious, if you are not, folks, accountability is the number two biggest issue in your business.

I'm telling you, if you don't believe me, ask anybody who's been through StratPlan, you'll find out that lack of accountability is massively affecting your business.

It's affecting your team, it's affecting your productivity, it's affecting your profitability. We have to have accountability. What about when it comes to decision making?

Well, you've gotta hold yourself accountable for decisions, acknowledging, you know, what are the outcomes and taking responsibilities for them.

What if it failed? What if it didn't go right? What if you, you know, you missed something? Whatever it is, you've got to hold yourself accountable to that. And what if you didn't hit the expected result?

You gotta hold yourself accountable to that, okay? So as you do this, as you hold you accountable, it allows you to model and teach and hold other people accountable.

If they see that you're not accountable in, in the decision making process, what in the world makes you think that they're gonna feel like they need to be? Well, because I pay 'em.

Well, that will be the only reason, and it will only be to that extent. It won't be because they want the absolute best outcome, right?

Accountability is missing in probably every aspect of your business. I'm telling you, it's a big deal.

So the more that you model this, and the more that you teach it and train it, and then expect it from other team members, the more that you will see it happen.

Next thing is you have to teach. You have to lead. You have to guide continuous improvement, commit yourself, and commit your team, and commit individuals to learning from both success and failure.

You have to focus on both successful decisions, unsuccessful decisions, you know, fostering a culture of reflection, and then optimization.

You know, reflect on this, tear it apart, what happened? And then how do we grow from this? So this is big.

Every event that we do as a team in our company has a debriefing discussion on the following staff meeting where we will go through every aspect.

So what we do is we go through both sides. We go through all of the positives that happened, and then all of the negatives.

You know, what happened? How did it happen? Why did it happen? How do we fix it? How do we make sure it never happens again, this is DNA inside of my business.

It is second nature for people to do this. Now, if you're brand spanking new to our team, this is probably tough.

It's not probably, it is tough. It's tough until you get used to this that this is an okay thing, because you probably came from cultures where they would never do something like this.

But for us, we're doing it. We're gonna make this happen, right? We want to know the answers. We want to dig in because we want to continuously improve everything that we're doing.

How do we fix this? How do we solve this? You had a, a great guy sit down in one of our StratPlans years ago. We do StratPlans for our own company, and we were ripping apart stuff.

And then when I say rip it apart, we're just like, okay, what's working on that area? What's, you know, how do we make that better?

And we were going through every single one of our services that we provide, and at one point he stops us and he goes, Chris, I'm struggling here.

I'm like, well, what are you struggling about? He goes, these are the things that changed my life. They changed my family, they changed my business.

And right now I just feel like you're calling your baby ugly. And I was like, oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. So here's the deal. I need you to understand how I look at this stuff.

I, I hold this all with a open hand. I look at all this, and I know that what we're doing is really good and changing lives and affecting people and all that kind of stuff.

But we're not content with it being just that we are content with where we are, but we wanna improve. We want it to be better.

And as I explained that out, it made total sense to him. But man, he was like, you're just, you're saying that this thing that I went through isn't good enough.

And it's like, no, no, no, it's fantastic where it is. We want to figure out how to make it better. How can we improve on this?

As you teach and guide and direct that, then what you will see is team members won't be content. They'll be content with where you are, but they'll always be looking for, it's great, but how do we make it better?

What else can we do that is powerful for growth?

That is not only powerful for individual growth, but man, oh man, it is great to watch your team take something that you're doing and literally lift it to the next level.

I mean, it's just so powerful to see that. So next thing is empowerment. You've got to start empowering. You've got to start delegating decision making authority to team members.

You know, you've got to empower them to, to make informed choices within their areas of expertise.

This is an area that, that some people really, really struggle, that they don't want to delegate the decision making.

Instead, they still wanna be a part of it. That's, you know, that's the boss bottleneck.

You're, you're gonna slow everything down, and then you're gonna really kind of strip the authority of the person that you put in that position and said, here, go make this thing work.

You know, go do this thing. You can't just make every decision in there, right?

You've got to lead it, train it, you know, do all these good things ahead of time, and then they will know how to make quality decisions.

But then you also have to allow them to make certain decisions. Let the rope out a little bit. Let the rope out a little more.

Let the rope out a little more. I am not saying you hand them the rope, you don't go here now, make all of the decisions in this area.

But you have to understand, if they are experts in that area, then it's highly probable they're gonna make better decisions than you would, you know, there are so many things I am not an expert in, in my own business, nor do I wanna be one.

I have incredible team members doing incredible things that I don't want their job and they don't want mine, right? I'm supposed to be an expert in the things that I do.

So I allow them to make quality decisions in the areas of their expertise, right? They're not gonna come over and make decisions in areas of my expertise.

Why would they? Right? So why would I look at their area, something that they're way better at than I am and make their decisions for them?

Nope, don't want it. Instead, I want team members who are thoroughly focused on killing it and making great decisions.

I want them to own that. I want them to be great at that. I want them to be walking through all these aspects that I'm teaching you right now.

Now, when you do all of these areas that I've just laid out, and I know it's a lot, we'll have these listed out in the blog post as well.

When you do these things and when they align what the organization's values, it is absolutely gonna reinforce the values themselves.

You will see these aspects shape the overall culture, and that's what you want. You want people shaping the culture in a positiv-. Everything that I've just laid out, nothing in there is negative.

Everything in there is positive. Everything in there is, is powerful to your company. It's powerful to your team.

It's powerful to an individual to be able to, to operate in these ways, right? So what you're doing is you're creating this DNA inside of your culture.

It will shape the way people operate. And I'm not just talking about those folks.

The more that they operate in that, the more the people around them are gonna see it, and they will start making decisions as well.

Are you gonna have some outliers that just aren't, that are stubborn, you know, set in their ways? Very possibly. Okay?

So we'll probably have some tough conversations going on, but listen, just expect it and keep trucking. Keep, you know, busting it and making it where the rest of the team is making quality decisions.

And then you might have to have a couple of tough conversations with some folks to try and get them on board.

Ultimately, if they can't get there, then you probably know what you need to do. So, make sure that you're looking at how is this going to shape our culture?

How is it shaping our culture? And then make sure you're recognizing it. You gotta call it out. You gotta make sure that everybody feels like you appreciate the efforts that they've been making.

They need to hear you say it. They need to hear other leaders say it, guys, you've done a phenomenal job of doing the very things we've been teaching, right?

The more they are rewarded for doing this, the more they're gonna repeat it. So what about the leaders on your leadership team, right?

If you're a leader on a leadership team or a business owner, the leaders need to be modeling specific things to help influence this cultural change, right?

This DNA change, the first thing is they need to be modeling positive attitudes for the love man, I hate to see when we have leadership who's negative.

I hate to see when we have leadership who's complaining all the time. I hate to see when we have leadership who's not approachable for the love.

Your job is built around people. It is not built around tasks, it's built around people. So your leaders need to be modeling that.

They need to be modeling a fantastic positive attitude, right? I'm not saying that they need to be positive all the time. That they need to be fake. That is not what I'm saying at all.

But love your job, have fun, enjoy it. Model positivity so that the team can grow from that as well. They also need to be modeling emotional intelligence.

If you don't have leaders who can handle difficult situations and not be emotionally handcuffed to 'em, right?

Then you probably need to change out your leaders. You need to have leaders who are emotionally intelligent or are working hard to get there, right?

That they handle things well, that they don't lose it, that they don't become victims, that they don't become controlling on people, right?

The more that they can model emotional intelligence, the more the people in their team will learn what that looks like and probably start to make decisions for them to do the same. I, I love seeing that.

I love seeing on our team, when somebody new coming in is coming from a, a bat-- or, you know, battered culture and, and they're stepping into our place, and it doesn't take them too terribly long before all of a sudden you start to see them grow, you start to see them experience happiness in the culture, joy in the culture.

You start to see them settle down from their preconceived notions, or you start to see some of those insecurities just fall right off, and then they just start to fit right in.

We've got to see the leadership do this. Leadership must be modeling this. Every leader, every leader. Well, Joe over there, you know, he's, he's, he's pretty gruff.

We call him Grumpy, but you know, he, he's a good guy at heart. Go set Grumpy, straight. Positive attitudes. Nobody appreciates a grumpy attitude. Nobody does.

People might make fun of it, right? But nobody's sitting back going, man, I love how grumpy that guy is all the time. It just, it doesn't happen.

Another thing that leaders need to be modeling, and you need to make sure that your leaders have this and they can model that is resilience.

How resilient is your leadership team? How resilient are your leaders? So in other words, we all get knocked back. We all have bad situations that happen, have happened.

We all struggle with these things, right? We all struggle with, you know, feeling like something torpedoed our day, or our project, or our year, whatever it is, you know, torpedoed our division.

Are your leaders resilient? Can they bounce back? Can they bounce back better? Can they look at this and go, you know what, that's sucked. It's horrible, but I gotta move on.

If your leaders can't model resilience, then how do you expect your team members to be resilient when difficult things come along? Right?

It just, you just can't, I mean, unless they came from resilience, unless they came from somebody teaching them what resilience looks like and, and helping them to experience it and helping them to bounce back, then there's a good chance they don't know how to, they might not, they might be looking at a problem or a failure and going, oh, great, I suck.

I just messed that whole thing up. The leader's gonna be so upset at me. Hey, I might hide this thing so that they don't see it or realize it or recognize that it happened.

They might have all kinds of ways of dealing with this thing that is not positive, that is not good for your culture.

So just assume that people don't know how to be resilient if you find out otherwise, great, that's fantastic. It's a, it's a great plus.

But if you will start modeling this, if you will start leading your leaders on how to bounce back from stuff, how to shake things off, how to solve things, how to fix things, and then how to show other people.

We're not trying to be fake here. We're not trying to put on a fake mask. Oh, you know, everything is fine.

Everything is great, you know about to lose the business here, but everything is, that's not what we're talking about. That's not what I'm talking about.

What I'm saying is, is lead your leaders when things go wrong to bounce back. It is something I have no problem pointing out.

If something goes wrong and somebody is struggling, we might, yeah, that sucked, man, that's painful. Okay? But what gonna do about it now?

Well, I, I, I, I guess I'll go fix the thing and do the, this stuff over here. Great. Yeah, go do it. That's it. Yeah, move on. Really? Yeah, don't dwell on this. Fix it, move on. Let's go.

We got other things to do. When people see that and they realize, oh, I'm not supposed to sit in the mess. I'm not supposed to become a victim.

I'm not supposed to, you know, just lose my mind over this. I'm, I'm supposed to solve it and move on. And what happens is, is that they become more resilient.

This is a must for your leadership team. You've got to guide your leaders on how they are supposed to behave. You've got to guide your leaders on how they're supposed to inspire.

The more that leadership does, all of these things, I'm talking about a greater, your team morale is going to be a greater DNA you will have in your organization's culture. It'll be powerful.

Folks, if you've been listening to me for any length of time, then you know, the number one issue when it comes to business, when it comes to family, when it comes to friendships, is having a lack of high quality communication to make sure that you are absolutely winning in every aspect of your life.

It all starts with having great communication. The best way to get that communication is to understand your personality style and to understand the personality style of the folks that you're spending the most time with, whether it be at work, whether it be at home.

The best way to do that is to go to chrislocurto.com/store and get your personality profile and personality profiles for your team today. Get it for your family members today.

As you go through that profile profile, you will begin to see the greatest ways to communicate. Go to chrislocurto.com/store today. All right?

All that stuff just on decision making, that's just one tiny aspect of your business. So we're gonna be here for the next three years talking about this.

Now, moving on, what about when it comes to our customers? What does it look like to be a customer-centric leader, right? Or have a customer-centric leadership team, right?

So leaders must be showing the team the priority of the client.

Ugh, I cannot stand when people do not focus heavily on customer satisfaction, customer service, excellence, what the customer, it just drives me nuts.

I think we've all been there, we've, you know, I've had great doctors that I just really enjoy having as a doctor. And then I've had those doctors that I'm just like, how do you exist?

Right? You have those great doctors that just care about you deeply, have a great bedside manner, want to take care of you, and then you have those doctors who act as though they are the important one, and you have interrupted their day.

Oh my, why are you even here? I have things to do. Yeah. Aren't I the thing you're supposed to be focusing on, right?

I can't stand ever having a doctor who doesn't realize I am putting food on your table, me and all the other people who walk through your doors.

That's how you eat, right? That is something that our team is completely aware of.

The way that we explain it at our business is, Hey guys, I may put the food on your table by writing the check, but all these people we serve write me checks, so you better realize they're the ones putting the food on your table.

Just because I sign your paycheck doesn't mean that money is just falling off of trees. That's coming from phenomenal people that we are loving on and leading and taking care of.

So leaders, you must be an example in prioritizing customer service and customer excellence, customer satisfaction. These must be things that are priorities.

And if your team doesn't see that it's a priority to you, then they will treat it however they've treated clients in the past.

They'll treat it however they see the person next to them treating it, right? So if they don't realize that the customer truly, truly matters, then they might be snippy with the customer.

They might not, you know, they might bring in their own, you know, struggles from home and now they're talking to a client and they're treating 'em like crap, right?

So you gotta let 'em know. You gotta model that. They need to see the external customer is incredibly important to us. Their satisfaction and their, the service that we give them is vital to us.

If we don't have them, we don't exist. You don't have a job. So help them to see that model, that show them your commitment to customer satisfaction, and that will become a driving force for them.

That will change their actions, that will change their attitudes, or it will drive their actions and attitudes. Lemme say it that way.

It will become something that they will become more engaged with your clients.

I love watching whenever we have our, our Next-Level Mastermind folks here, or folks coming in for Next-Level Life or, or StratPlan or the big event, Next-Level Leadership LIVE Event where people come in and they get to engage with my team.

It is fun watching that. And many times they've already talked to them on the phones or they've been in coaching with 'em, and it, it's just, it, it's awesome to see my team love on people, right?

And not every one of them is a people person. Not all of them are. Some of them are super administrative. They don't like being center of attention.

They don't like being out there, you know, in front or networking or any of that kind of stuff. It's great.

But they still understand, Hey, when our clients walk through these doors, you better, I don't care if you don't want to do this, you better be treating them with respect and you better, you know, take care of them.

It doesn't mean that you have to get into a 15 minute conversation with them, but make sure they're taken care of. Do they have, do they need a drink? Do they need some food?

Do they need, you know, what is it that they need? Do they need to know where the restrooms are? Take care of the client? Always, always, always, always.

If they see your commitment to that and they see that you have an expectation of them being committed to that, you'll be blown away.

If they see that you're quick to address a client's concerns, they will do it quickly, right?

If they see that you're quick to defend, maybe you have a controlling jerk of a client and they see that you're super fast to shut that down with respect and protect the culture of your business, well guess what?

That will be a good thing for them to see that, that, you know, we serve, serve, serve, serve. But there's a point where we push back where we put in healthy boundaries, right?

So the more you influence this customer-centric leadership in your leadership team, the more that you're gonna discover your team is gonna carry that straight to the client, and it's gonna blow up your own brand reputation.

You know, you'll have people that are constantly talking about how, man, it's always so good.

I love it when we have our clients say, I just always look forward to getting back to the office, getting back here, you know, spending time with the other clients and with you guys, it's just, it's a, it's a a time that I need in my life that makes us feel amazing.

That makes us feel amazing that we're doing something that is fulfilling that in a client's life, in a, in a client's experience.

So if you want this to go, well, obviously you gotta model it, but once again, you need to make sure that you're recognizing it.

Make sure that you're promoting the fact that you see people collaborating together on how to take care of a client or, you know, make sure that you are promoting and recognizing when they are making efforts to serve the daylights out of a client, right?

Also, encourage feedback. You know, make sure that the team is talking about what did you experience?

Again, I shared with you that on our, our staff meeting after an event, we get all kinds of feedback from our team.

What did you experience? What did you see? You know, we encourage our clients to give us feedback, share that stuff, walk through that information.

The more that you do and you recognize and call out the things that we're not doing right.

Well, if we're gonna be customer centric, not only do we have to promote positive attitudes and taking care of the client and putting the client first, all that, but we also gotta call out the stuff that we're not doing right.

Are we spending enough time finding the things that we're doing wrong to fix them? Not to just to point out that we're doing something wrong, but to fix the problem.

So make sure that you're walking through these aspects. This will help and guide and inspire your team to become super customer centric.

You know, put the customers first and take care of them. So you can do all of these things. You could do all of these really, really well.

But if all of this is not coming through authentic leadership, right? Your authentic you, your authentic self.

If they are not experiencing you being genuine, that this is just a, oh, you know, LoCurto said to do all this stuff, and so I'm putting it in place, and y'all make sure you do it right.

If they don't feel like you're a hundred percent behind this, that you're a hundred percent bottom, and I'm not just talking about you, I'm talking about all the leaders.

If they don't experience the authenticity of you, then this is probably gonna tank. This probably won't last very long.

But if they can see that this is where your heart is, and they can anticipate that this is how you're gonna respond, you will be blown away at what happens to your culture, you'll be blown away at what happens to the champions.

The champions, like I say, they're gonna become so much more productive. Why? Because they love it. It's their heart.

It's not, Hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna produce more because I've got these new skills. It's because it fulfills them.

When they can do all of these things, is all these positive aspects that it really fulfills a champion, and they love, they love that culture and they love to busted in there.

So make sure that you are being as authentic as you possibly can. And if you can't be, then you have to ask yourself the question, why not?

What am I struggling with with this? Try, if possible, for leaders to have an open door policy as your teaching and training.

Make sure that your team members can come to you. Make sure that they can ask you questions. Make sure that they can run things by 'em.

Again, I'm not looking for them to come to you and you answer all their questions. That's not what we're talking about.

But for them to come to you and get quality help, you know, quality perspective. Hey, you, you were saying this thing over here.

I've got this part that I'm struggling with. What do I do about it? How do I deal with this client? How do I deal with this vendor?

They need to be able to be led really well. So what you're hearing is you gotta lead you really well. A big part of all of this being successful is leading you.

If you don't lead you well, how can you possibly expect that you're gonna be able to lead other people to doing this well?

How can you possibly expect that other people are gonna pick this up and run with it and be just incredible?

So here's what I want you to do, and I want you to go back and listen to Episode 460, which is Learning to Lead Yourself Before Others.

So if you want more insights on leading by example, which is exactly what we're talking about, then I highly recommend checking out this episode.

It is a fantastic and complimentary show to exactly what we're discussing today. It's, it's how mastering self-leadership lays the groundwork for inspiring change in those around you.

So I hope you really enjoy listening to that one, because that will really help you out today.

So as we wrap up this episode, remember that leading by example isn't just about setting a standard, it's about igniting a fire within your team to strive for excellence.

Isn't that what we're looking for? And this happens by becoming the change in growth that you wish to see in your own business, in your own culture, right?

So you become a beacon of inspiration to your team by guiding them towards their full potential. Think about that.

You helping them to become the best version of themselves in your culture, in their roles, in their expertise, is inspiring. It's fulfilling.

So here's what I want you to do. Let's commit to leading with integrity, with compassion, with purpose, focusing on transforming not only our organizations, but our lives as well as the people that we shepherd.

Folks, think of those people that you are called to shepherd, transform their lives. You wanna be fulfilled, you wanna have the most amazing life as a leader, make other people successful.

Well, folks, that's all the time that we have for today. I really hope that this has helped you.

As always, as you continue this journey of Leadership mastery, I want you to take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life, and join us on the next episode.