591 | What to do to Overcome Self-Destructive Behaviors

Introduction (00:00:00)

Learn how to identify self destructive behaviors in your team and discover actionable steps to support and guide them towards healthier habits. 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 diving into a very critical leadership challenge, and that is managing team members with potentially self destructive behaviors.

I'm saying potentially because self destructive behaviors can sometimes be very difficult to recognize or they might be too quickly assessed to be self destructive behaviors.

It's one of those things where you don't know if somebody's just had a bad day or is this something that is a consistent theme that they're experiencing in their lives.

So we're going to go through all that kind of fun stuff and try and figure out how we can recognize it and come up with some ways that we can hopefully help some folks that may be dealing with it.

We're going to discuss how to maintain appropriate boundaries and how to provide support that they need to thrive.

Recognizing Self-Destructive Behaviors (00:01:29)

The first thing that we have to do is we have to start by attempting to recognize what self destructive behaviors look like. Right. So as a leader, it is your job to lead people to success?

Well, one of those ways is to discover what's holding them back. So as we get into this, I'm not expecting everybody to act as though they have years of counseling experience, psychotherapy.

That's not what we're looking for. We're not looking for you to be phenomenal at finding and discovering and assessing somebody's destructive behaviors. However, there are certain things that do stand out. 

Common Self-destructive Patterns (00:02:18)

There are certain things that are common patterns that make it a little bit easier for you to recognize.

I mean, some of the most common would be, you know, substance abuse or self isolation or perfectionism. I know that doesn't sound like a self destructive behavior to a few of you, but that absolutely is.

That's one of the things that we need to discover. Eating disorders. I know that's a tough one for us to discuss or even assess. Right.

How do we know if somebody is, you know, binging on food?

Obviously, at the top of all of this is people pleasing. That's probably one of the most common self destructive patterns we find. But we're going to dig into a little bit more.

The great thing about self destructive behaviors is that there are many signs that you can pick.

However, quite often, the person who's having the self destructive behaviors, struggles, immensely to understand what they are doing to themselves or what they're doing to other people.

So as a leader, it's incredibly helpful if you can help a team member recognize what they're struggling with. Other things might be negative self talk. That's a pretty easy one.

You might recognize that if somebody is saying how horrible they are or how they're messing up or how they're not being good enough in an area which usually people don't say I'm not good enough, but they're talking about how they fail, you might see that somebody is sabotaging work relationships.

This is a tough one sometimes to recognize because you have to actually kind of disconnect yourself, or as we say, watch it like a movie.

Disconnect yourself from the situation and see how somebody's responding to somebody else. Is it just a simple situation that they're frustrated with?

Well, there's nothing wrong with that, but I've had times in my past where I have watched people literally destroy a relationship because they knew that there was a decision that was coming up, like maybe they were leaving.

I've had, in my earlier leadership years, I've had somebody that was leaving the team moving on to something else, and we were close.

And what happened is, is on the way out, they decided to make a very difficult time between the two of us. And as I sat that person down, because I recognized what was going on, it didn't make sense that we were having these struggles.

It didn't make sense that they were pushing back on me so hard on for no reason. As I set that person down, I let them know, hey, you don't have to destroy our relationship because you're leaving. It's okay.

You can definitely move on to someplace else that God has called you to, and we can still be okay.

And as I talked through it, this person really understood, you know, the choices that they were making and how it was going to impact us that it was, you know, if they continued on with what they were doing, then it would destroy the relationship.

Why were they doing it?

Because they hated the thought of what seemed like our relationship was coming to an end. And had they continued, then it probably would have. That's not an easy one for a leader to recognize.

For a person to recognize, it's a tough one. You have to be so focused on what they're doing and what they're experiencing and ask yourself, why is this happening?

You know, we spend so much time focusing on the content of what somebody is saying and not the actions of what they're doing.

So when you see something like that and you see somebody is appearing to really affect the relationship in a negative way, that's a great time for you to ask yourself, what is this person going through?

What is this person experiencing now? What's happening in this person's life that all of a sudden we have such a difficult relationship?

If you can do that and you can start realizing, oh, this person's leaving, this person's going through something horrible at home, whatever it is, then you might be able to start piecing together.

This is actually self sabotage. This is self destructive behavior.

This is somebody who is trying to hurt themselves and trying to hurt me or somebody else on the team so that they don't have to face the pain of, you know, whatever's coming in the future. Right.

Or the pain that they're currently experiencing. And in this situation with me, it was the separation of a relationship that, you know, we'd been to get working together for a very long time.

And so, obviously, you know, we were close. I have that ability in my life to be very close to the people I work with. I work with my best friends. So it's not difficult, right. I work with family.

It's not difficult for me to have good relationships. I'm not one who believes in the, you know, you can't be a friend and a, and a leader at the same time.

You know, the old statement is, actually, you can't be a friend and a boss at the same time. You're right, because a boss is not the same thing as a leader. I can promise you that.

Other things you might be looking for is somebody changing. You know, we talked about people pleasing as being a top one. That's. That's common.

But you might find somebody who's changing so that they can please others, that something has happened, and all of a sudden they're becoming kind of a people pleaser.

You might find somebody who's all of a sudden not interesting in having any relationship with anybody, you know, again, back to that. That isolation aspect.

You might find somebody who has increased their victim mentality considerably, maybe to the point of self pity that they are struggling with.

All of these things are pieces that you should be looking for, not saying that you should understand where it comes from.

You know, that's why we have things like Next-Level Life, is to help somebody to overcome this in their life and learn how to put tools in place so that they can live a better life and make better decisions.

I'm not expecting you to do that. All I'm asking you to do as a leader is be on the lookout, see if you can spot these behaviors. And again, don't, don't see the first sign that you've ever seen and go, aha, self destructive behavior.

I understand this person. I have, I have figured this person out. That is not, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm referring to consistent behavior. I'm referring to compulsive behaviors. Right?

Things that you're seeing that are, are consistently happening multiple times a day, every day, every week, something that you're recognizing that, that there's an issue here because this person isn't being the same person.

Now, if they came in with all of these things, it's going to be incredibly difficult, you know, from the time that you hired them.

But those should be red flags anyways, right? Those should be things that are telling you, hey, I've got to spend more time coming to understand this person, maybe spend more personal time and in discussions, but be careful.

I do want you to recognize that as a leader, they're not coming to you as a therapist. They're not looking to you to have all of their answers.

So as you're digging into some of these things, you know, asking personal questions that you know may just reveal something's going on, showing that you care, don't go into it as in, I'm going to solve your problems.

I'm going to bring out all of your negative self talk, negative situations, negative things that are going on in your life. Put those on the table and we're going to discuss these.

There is a high probability that is the last thing that they want. Some people actually will want that. But you have to remember that you're dealing with a person's personal life.

You can't necessarily take that opportunity unless they invite you in again, that's why we have things like Next-Level Life. Right?

But what you can do is ask simple questions, simple things like how's your life? How are, how is the home life? How are you feeling lately?

You know, you can ask questions that aren't specifically pointing to a destructive behavior that you believe you have the answer to. Allow them to give you information if they desire to.

If they don't, don't press it. But if they do, then this gives you an opportunity to lead them, and we'll get to some of those, some support things you can do in helping them to overcome the self destructive behaviors.

Consequences of Self-destructive Behaviors (00:11:07)

Now why is this so important? Well, obviously, if we have somebody who's being self destructive, then it's affecting everything around them that's affecting them. It's most likely damaging relationships with the people that they work closely with.

Maybe with you as the leader, it's most likely destroying communication. You know, it's. It's creating communication barriers. It's most likely leading to misunderstandings.

It's leading to, you know, strained relationships. And they may not even recognize it. You know, there's a good chance that they do, but they may not recognize the path of destruction that's happening because of whatever they're experiencing in life.

As a leader, you may be looking at this going, you just need to get over yourself. You just need to fix you. You just need to stop acting this way. You just need to stop being self destructive.

However, it's not that easy because we don't understand what is causing all of this behavior. We don't understand what is bringing this up in this person.

You know, why is it all of a sudden that they're acting this way and it doesn't seem to be going away?

The truth is, is if somebody's being super defensive, then it's definitely keeping them from learning, it's keeping them from being able to receive feedback. It's keeping them most likely in a state of victim mentality.

It's probably causing them to believe that, you know, whenever they're getting pushed on, or pushed back on, that they're being attacked. Right?

So it's going to create, um, you know, maybe little. Little blasts of anger, or it could also create passivity. It could cause them to shut down because they're struggling.

It's definitely going to hinder any level of proactive change that they could have. You know, any.

Any proactive, I'm going to work to solve this, or I'm going to bust my butt even harder on the things that are on my plate or work hard on my relationships. That usually is not going to be a thought in their mind.

So getting to this and helping somebody to see it is vitally important not only for themselves, but if they're staying in your culture, in your environment, then it's vitally important for your environment. Right. It's vitally important for your team.

Mental Health Impact (00:13:31)

So on top of all this, you've got to recognize that this brings a level of mental health impact, like stress, like anxiety, depression, low self worth, low self respect.

You know, many folks would be focused on low self esteem at this point, not only for the person, but possibly if that person is having a really negative effect on other team members, then there's a really good chance you're seeing other team members walk through the same impacts.

Stress at the very least. Right. Anxiety is definitely a possibility. Depression. Gosh, I would hate to see that they affected them that long.

And you hadn't noticed this as a leader yet. Hopefully we can jump on this before it has that level of effect. But self worth struggles. Yeah.

There's a good chance that somebody who is being self destructive and is including other people around them that they may be going on the attack. They may be saying things that they shouldn't say.

They may be saying things that are incredibly hurtful and intentionally doing so, trying to hurt somebody else with their words because it causes them to feel more powerful in the moment. Hence, again, self destructive behavior.

So if we overlook this stuff, if we don't pay attention to the stress responses, if we don't pay attention to, you know, somebody who's consistently having to be right, you know, it's one thing to be able to argue, debate an opinion, but when you find somebody is consistently having to be right, well, that could be a big indicator as well.

Something's going on, something's affecting this person. Right.

Often those are going to be things that are deep rooted issues that are coming from what we would call their Root System. So you might see things like chronic indecision.

They cannot, for the life of them, make a decision. It is a big struggle. You might be giving them small things to decide, and it just seems like every single time it comes right back onto your plate.

That could be a self destructive behavior. Self isolation, especially from somebody who doesn't typically self isolate, is going to be something that you need to recognize. You will see it. They're no longer participating in anything.

They used to maybe, you know, sit down and have lunch with other team members or they would speak up in meetings or, you know, have fun bantering back and forth with team members on, you know, just on a regular basis.

And now all of a sudden, they just seem to be sucked up inside of themselves. Something you need to recognize because that means that there's something else going on.

We usually tend to think of self destructive behaviors as being those outward signs that we can see. You know, it's not difficult to see somebody losing their stuff. It's not difficult to see somebody who's on the attack. That's actually easy.

But it is very difficult to recognize that somebody is being self destructive by isolating themselves. Right. Because we just think, oh, they're just being quiet, they're just being passive.

You know, something's going on. And I'm sure they're. They're all right and they'll work it out. It could be a high number of things that is causing that self isolation. It could be abuse that they're experiencing in life. It could be control, manipulation.

There could be all kinds of stuff that's happening in their personal life that is causing them to shut down and isolate. Right. People don't tend to think of perfectionism as being self destructive, but it is. Why?

Because what is behind the thought of perfectionism? Nothing is ever good enough. This thing that I'm doing is not good enough. This project that I'm working on is not good enough.

The product or service I'm trying to get out into the world is not good enough. I am not good enough. The people around me are not good enough. Right. You can see perfectionism and leadership. That looks horrible.

The team is always struggling because they're never good enough. Those are things that are obviously self destructive. What is it doing? What is it creating?

It's creating inside a person that they have to go to the absolute Nth degree to make something the best it can possibly be.

But even when they get there, chances are it's still not going to be good enough. So even if they push something out, they're probably going to be struggling with it consistently.

That level of perfectionism is not normal. It's not normal thinking. You can't say that that level of perfectionism is excellence because it's not. Being perfect is impossible. Can't get there.

You can't make anything perfect either. Excellence is doing the best you can and then if it's a product or service or whatever it is that you're doing, getting that out there, pushing it out, making it happen. Right.

Is it an excellent thing? Have you done the best you could? Yes. Great. Be done with it. There's nothing wrong with revising whatever it is that you're working on.

But if you've done the best you could and it wasn't good enough, and then you're trying to find more ways to make it better and you can't, and so you keep delaying the that you're trying to accomplish, well, that is a great sign that you are struggling and you're struggling heavily.

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, you will begin to see the greatest ways to communicate. Go to chrislocurto.com/store today. People pleasing I think we don't realize enough that people pleasing isn't just a struggle that somebody's experiencing.

Well, they're just. That's how they get their worth. Yes, absolutely. Being a people pleaser, and as a recovering people pleaser from my earlier years, I can tell you that people pleasing is not just a worth issue, it's identity.

It's, it's, it makes up every bit of a person's being at times. If I can't make you happy, which I can't, it's impossible. But if I convince myself I could, then if I can't, then I'm a horrible person.

So what does people pleasing look like?

Well, it is somebody deciding in their mind that they need to go to whatever length to try and make somebody happy, make somebody experience joy, make somebody feel comfortable, make somebody really pleased with the person.

Whatever it is, it is something that is not about, hey, I want to serve this person or help this person. Instead, what it actually is is I'm going to go until I feel like this person is exactly where I think they should be.

Many times you will see with a people pleaser that they feel responsible for other people's feelings, that they feel responsible for other people's happiness, that they feel responsible to take care of other people.

And in the end, you can't be right. I mean, unless caveats are you're a parent and you're taking care of your child, or you're somebody who's taking care of somebody who can't take care of themselves.

Those aren't the things that we're talking about here. We're talking about seeing a perfectly good person and making the decision.

In my mind, I'm responsible for their happiness, a family member, I'm responsible for a parent, I'm responsible for my parents happiness. Whatever it is, I'm responsible for my leader being happy.

I'm responsible for the people on my team being happy. Why are those so self destructive? Because what it does is it takes something that is impossible. Like making somebody happy.

I can't make somebody happy. You have to choose to be happy. It takes. The concept of making somebody happy makes it real. I can make you happy. I can take care of you.

I can do everything that will bring you joy, that will make you feel even complete. You know, these are thoughts that go through a people pleasers mind and putting that responsibility on their shoulders.

So when you are happy, oh, look, I'm worth something. I'm amazing. I'm incredible. Let's do it again. Let me find somebody else that I can make happy. Right?

But what happens when the person isn't happy? What happens when the people pleaser is doing all of their song and dance and the other person is just choosing to stay stuck in whatever they're in?

Then the people pleaser begins internally, a negative self talk that berates the daylights out of them. It's kind of a self flagellation of sorts, of how horrible they are, of how they're not good enough.

Many times it will turn to attacking in their mind, sometimes actually out loud, the person who is not happy and blaming them.

It is all their fault that this person who is doing so much, working so hard to make them pleased, to make them happy, it's their fault that, you know, the people pleaser is now struggling.

Now I'm doing everything I can to make you happy. Okay? Did I ask you to? Did I put you in that position? Did I give you that responsibility? Did I give you that authority in my life?

So the destructive discussion inside a people pleasers head first says how horrible they are, and then quite often internally, and possibly even externally, goes on the attack of the other person. So what is our job?

How to Support and Manage Team Members with Self-Destructive Behaviors (00:25:22)

Our job as a leader is to do our best to recognize what's going on. It's to do our best to watch our team. No, I'm not saying spend 8 hours a day watching your team to see if they're being self destructive.

What I'm saying is, is that you should be, as a leader, you should be spending enough time leading your team that you've got a good, um, you know, finger on the pulse of how they normally act, how they normally respond.

Right. It's quite often that I could look at one of my team members and go, hey, what's going on? Oh, man, I just had a bad weekend. This thing, this, this, this. Why? How'd you know?

Because I can see it. I can see it in your responses. I could see that you weren't speaking up when you normally do. I can see that you know, you look drained or you look exhausted or I can see.

Whatever it is, it's not difficult if you're spending time with team members to really take on how they normally respond, how they normally act. And if you start to see differences, then care, say something.

Actionable Steps (00:26:30)

So what are some things that you can do to kind of support, perhaps maybe even manage team members with self destructive behaviors? Uh, first, again, I want to say be cautious in this realm. Right.

This is. This is something, you know, if you dig too deep, you might find that you're offending a team member. They might find that you're responding with something that's not in the, uh, the- the agreement that you made with them when you hired them.

Right. You might find an HR issue if you get too deep on something that you are way out of your depth on, and they didn't give you permission to discuss.

Right. So I want you to be incredibly, you know, just cautious. You know, it's great to be curious and help somebody out, but I also want you to be very cautious with how you respond.

But what are some things that you can do? First and foremost, what I would do is I would encourage a team member to seek help, seek help somewhere if they want to. If they do not want to do this, then, you know, you can only go so far.

We tell people all the time, you know, we want everybody should go through Next-Level Life, but if they don't want to, then it's a waste of time. Right. It's something that they need to recognize.

Oh, my gosh, I need to be going through this. I desire input. I desire recognizing things that I'm struggling with. I desire that the responses that I'm having, I desire to know where they're coming from.

I desire to know, you know, why I'm making decisions the way that I am. So encourage them to seek help. You know, encourage them to seek insight, definitely. You could point them to therapy.

You could point them to accountability partners if they've got somebody in their life. Or maybe you can offer yourself if that's, you know, if you're in that position, but, you know, do they have somebody as a quality accountability partner in their life?

Um, you could even ask them to go seek personal development plans. Right?

Sometimes just being able to self identify what you're struggling with can help you to move forward, can help you to change some of the self destructive patterns that you're having in your life.

Healthy Habits (00:28:51)

I would also just say, you know, help them to recognize what healthy habits are, you know, healthy habits in their life. You know, I talked about depression and anxiety and, you know, things like that.

100% of depression. 100%. 100% is linked to inflammation. If you are depressed, you have inflammation. Now, am I saying that one is the cause of the other?

I will tell you, I heavily believe, with all of the information that is out there, that the inflammation drives the depression. Why is that? Because God has created our bodies with certain responses that tell us something's going wrong inside.

And it being 100% linked together. I believe that the causation is coming more from the. The things that we're putting into our bodies. The bad food, the. The emotional eating that is putting the sugar and the processed crap inside.

That is driving anxiety. That is driving depression. How do I know this? Because I have experienced it. I've helped so many folks to understand how their diet is affecting their mental outlook, their mental attitude.

Try and help them to create healthy habits.

Try and help them to create healthy eating habits, um, you know, self care habits that are, you know, take some time to destress or take some time to do some breathing exercises, take some time to get your butt out into the sunlight, you know, get some vitamin D.

Is this going to solve all the problems? Of course not.

But what it can do is it could take the edge off and make it easier for them to solve some of the issues that they're experiencing. Right?

The more healthy habits that they put in their life, the more strength that they will have to overcome whatever they're experiencing. Right? So think of some things.

Ask your team for some advice. You know, ask other leaders what are some great ways this person here, you know, take into consideration their DISC, their Values.

What are some healthy things I could guide them toward? If there's somebody who hates to run, don't suggest they go running.

But if you understand some of the exercises, that will decrease somebody's cortisol, that will increase somebody's dopamine, maybe there's some things you could help them with.

How about just having one on one conversations with people that listen, that can be there for them, that can help them by the ministry of presence. So there's so many things that you could suggest.

There's so many ways that you can support your team member as they're going through this. Some of the difficult things are, is that you still have to lead the team member.

If they're doing things that go against your culture, if they're doing things that are affecting other team members, if they're doing things that are affecting clients, whatever it is, those pieces, you still have to put in place.

But if you will start with the heart of caring and the- the mind of understanding that they're going through a specific struggle, even if you don't know what it is, then hopefully, you will have more compassion when you try and walk them through a process of fixing what they're doing negatively to the culture of the team, the client, the leader, whatever it is.

Have some compassion, have some empathy. Help them to understand that they're making decisions that are not okay, that you're going to give them a period of time to fix this.

It might be, depending upon the level, you know, if it's horrid, it's. It gets changed right now. This is something you must stop right now. If it's not so bad, it might be something. Hey, listen. We need to have better conversations with team members.

We need to not attack people. Whatever it is, make sure that you're empathizing with the person, but you still must lead. You have to. If this person is struggling, then I will guarantee you there are team members who recognize it.

And if the team members think that you're not doing anything, then they're going to believe that you're not protecting the culture, that they aren't important enough. So what do we do?

We do our best to recognize what's going on. We do our best to get in and suggest and help guide and direct without crossing any lines.

We do our best to point them towards processes that can help them and heal them. And at the end of the day, we still lead our culture. We still protect our culture. You can be helping somebody at the same time saying, this isn't okay.

It's not okay to act this way. It's not okay to do this.

Additional Resources (00:34:09)

So a couple things I'd love for you to do. There's a couple of great episodes you should go back and listen to.

The first one is 238, which is  The 6 Subtle Self-Destructive Behaviors We Miss Everyday. Right. So we talk about how these behaviors can create distance in relationships that can obviously, again, isolate us from others.

It can make us unhealthy physically. It can stop us from being our true, authentic self. It can hold us back from work and can keep us stressed out. It can keep us continuously overcommitted. It's great episode. A lot of stuff that we haven't covered today.

Another great episode is number 269 | How To Break The Self-Sabotage Spiral . Right? So often we feel rejected, we feel not good enough, we feel stupid, we feel wronged.

The question is, are we really? This is a great one to help you. It's a great episode to help you lead somebody else through something that they're experiencing. So. 238, 269 go listen to those episodes.

Well, folks, the only way that we are going to solve this in our business is by being open minded, by recognizing, by acknowledging these issues, by fostering an environment of open communication, by providing the right tools, the right support.

You know, leaders, you can help your team members replace harmful habits with healthier ones. You do have influence. So give it a whirl, give it a try.

Do the best you can. Remember, the journey to overcoming these behaviors is an ongoing journey, right? It's not just going to happen overnight.

It's not going to just happen once. But with the right strategies and the right support, it's entirely possible.

So do your best. Lead well, love well, care well. Be empathetic in the process. Well, hopefully this has helped you today.

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.