604 | How to Build a Team That Operates Without You – Part 1

Introduction (00:00:00)

We are about to dive into what it takes to build a team that thrives independently, covering strategies around delegation, leadership development, culture and communication. 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 tackling a powerful topic for any business leader, any business owner, and that is how to build a team that can operate without you.

Now, as I say that you're probably going. That is exactly what I want. I want to be able to step away. I want to be able to have my own time. Yes, that's, we're going to talk a lot about that.

This is going to be actually a two part series here that there's so much information that we need to cover. But I want you to think beyond just the ability to step away.

I want you to think about what it means for you as a business leader, as a business owner to be able to step up to a higher level of leadership.

One of the things you cannot do if you do not have a team that can work independently of you is you can't raise you up. This is a great thing about being able to have a team that operates on its own.

Now, obviously you are definitely going to be needed, but we don't want you to be something that is needed all the time. That is not the goal if that is something you're stuck with.

Now, as I say this, this is a tough one for a lot of folks. A lot of folks do not believe that they have worth and value outside of what they're already doing.

Folks, I can tell you there is so much more that you will be doing and you will have such greater value to your team, to your business when you are no longer the bottleneck, when you're no longer the one that everybody relies on.

So if you're struggling to be able to get away, spend time away, do things that you need to do, spend more time personally, then you have to realize that that's because your team can't operate independently of you. That is not good.

That is not what we want. We want to be able to lift the team up to get them to a place where they can operate on their own and that allows you to go after more important things.

As somebody who's been leading businesses for decades, I can tell you that is how I've become so successful is early, early, early on in my, my leadership career.

Even as I was stepping into my leadership career, I realized something very important. I could not do everything. And if I was doing everything or if I was doing the things just that, you know, were on my current plate, I was never going to advance.

I wasn't going to get any better. I wasn't going to be able to train anybody up. I wasn't going to be able to lift up the team.

So for me, I started walking through a process of how I could grow me, grow my team so that I could actually advance myself. The more that I was able to advance me, obviously, the more I was able to advance my teams.

That has allowed me to be able to train up teams that operate independently of me. Doesn't mean that I'm not needed, doesn't mean that I don't have input.

It doesn't mean that I'm not, you know, spending time trying to grow and do more things. It means I'm focusing on higher level stuff. I'm focusing on more strategy, I'm focusing on more problem solving.

On, on a macro level, there's a lot of stuff that I do that keeps me from being stuck in the day to day.

So let me say it this way. The more I'm stuck in the day to day, the more I hold back my entire team.

So everything we're going to be talking about, it's not just about giving out tasks. It's about building structure, it's about building culture and a team that can thrive independently of you.

And again, like I said, this is going to take two different episodes because there's so much to cover.

Next-Level LIVE Event 2025 (00:04:25)

But now that I'm talking about this, let me ask you this. Are you a business owner or leader who's deeply passionate about what you do?

You love your work, your team, your mission, but sometimes it feels like the weight of the world is on your shoulders, doesn't it?

Let's talk honestly for a moment about this. You're passionate about your business. You've poured yourself into it. But do you ever feel like everything depends on you?

That no matter what systems you have in place, the moment you step away, things start to slip? Well, if that sounds like you, the Next Level Leadership Live event is exactly what you need.

Now, this isn't just another leadership seminar. This is an absolutely transformative three day experience that's happening April 2nd through the 4th, 2025.

Now, our goal is to equip you with practical, sustainable tools so you can confidently lead without feeling overwhelmed.

Now, let's face it, trying to lead your team, grow your business and stay fully Present for your family and personal life can feel nearly impossible.

I know. I've been there a thousand times myself, and if we're being honest, it's absolutely exhausting. But here's the thing. You are not alone in this.

I work with a ton of leaders every day who express the same frustrations. They want their business to run smoothly, but the thought of stepping away is overwhelming.

But here's what I want you to know. Leadership doesn't have to feel this way. It doesn't have to be a constant drain on your time. It doesn't have to be a constant drain on your energy.

And at the Next-Level Leadership LIVE Event, I'm going to show you exactly how to break out of this cycle. So why should you take the time to join us? Well, here's some of the things that you're going to gain from this experience.

First, lead smarter, not harder. The event is built on strategies that help you lead smarter, not harder. You don't have to be the busiest person in your business to achieve real growth.

In fact, I see so many leaders burning out simply because they're over involved. One of the best outcomes I hear from attendees is that they walk away empowered to let their team succeed without micromanaging.

Second, reclaim your life outside of work. Here, we don't just talk about work life balance. We're going to help you create it. Imagine a life where you're fully present at home and in your business.

This is where you learn to lead without sacrificing your personal life. Third, join a community of leaders who understand folks.

The people you're going to meet here, they're facing the same challenges. They're leaders like you. They're business owners like you.

You'll be in a room full of leaders who understand exactly what you're going through. This isn't your cousin who's giving you all of his advice, who's never run a business before.

These are people who are doing what you are doing, or at least they're running businesses, they're leading businesses. So they've been in the same situation.

They've been in the same shoes you're in right now. They've been in the same seat you're in right now. Right?

So this event fosters a genuine community where you'll find encouragement, fresh ideas, and maybe even lifelong friendships.

Fourth, actionable takeaways you can implement right away. This isn't just an event where you walk away with inspiration and no clear steps.

There's a ton of events out there that do that. If you're looking for motivation just to leave. Motivated that dissipates within a few weeks. Well, this isn't the event.

This event, Next-Level Leadership LIVE Event, you'll leave with practical, actionable steps you can start implementing on day one. Turning insights into immediate progress.

Now, I know what some of you might be thinking. Man, I'd love to go, but there's too much on my plate. If I leave my business, well then my business might suffer.

If we're being honest, running at the pace you're currently running at isn't sustainable. Trying to do everything yourself leads to burnout. And when that happens, it doesn't just affect a few days, it impacts your long term success and well being.

You owe it to yourself and your business to invest in your leadership. Take this opportunity to break free from the constant stress. Invest these three days with us.

I promise you, you'll gain so much more than you'll miss. Join us for Next-Level Leadership LIVE Event April 2nd through the 4th, 2025.

Registration is open right now, so make sure you secure your spot. You're going to be learning from me, my team and alongside of other dedicated leaders who are ready to take things to the next level.

I've seen this event transform lives and businesses and I'm confident it can do the same for you. So don't wait until burnout forces you to make a change.

Head over to www.chrislocurto.com/liveevents, that's www.chrislocurto.com/liveevents to learn more and secure your spot.

I'm looking forward to seeing you there.

Delegation Is Key to an Independent Team (00:09:27)

Now, on with learning how to set up a team that can operate without you. First key here is most important thing is that you have got to learn how to delegate properly.

I am not talking about what you've been doing or what people have taught you. I'm talking about doing it the right way.

I'm not talking about, you know, giving stuff to people, handing out tasks, asking them, have you done that? Have you done that? Have you done that? You haven't gotten that done yet?

Okay, let me take that back. I'll take care of it. Right. If we're going to delegate, well, you've got to set your team up for success. It only works when you give clear instructions. It only works when you give the right tools.

It only works when you're following up consistently and not following up in a way of going, did you do that yet? Is that done? The things that you need to be doing so bad delegation looks just like that.

You know, it's when you, you toss out tasks at people you know, there's no clear expectations, there's no clear deadlines. They wonder what in the world they're supposed to be doing.

You're wondering why they're confused, you know, and you're just waiting to again take everything back. What does great delegation look like?

It's when your team knows exactly what's expected and they absolutely feel confident enough to run with what you've given them.

Remember, your success as a leader is measured by the leaders you build, not by the tasks that you control. So what does this look like? You've got to make sure that as you look at a person to delegate something to.

I don't care if it's a task, if it's a project, if it's something bigger than. I don't know, doesn't matter. You have to ask yourself some specific questions.

Does this person have the capacity to pull this off now? I mean that in multiple ways. Capacity as an experienced enough or can we get them experienced very quickly? Are they intelligent enough? I'm not saying that, you know, you have stupid people.

What I'm saying is, is does this person have the mental capacity to understand this? There's definitely different personality styles that tackle things in different ways.

And sometimes different personality styles can't handle things the way that a task needs to be done, a project needs to be done, right? Let me give you a clear example.

The last thing you want to do is put a High C over your hospitality program, right?

The last thing you want to do is take a High I and put them over all of your accounting.

Either way, either one of these situations, it's not going to work correctly. So you have to ask, does this person have the capacity? Do they have the personality style? Do they have the intellect?

And very importantly, do they have the capacity time wise to accomplish this? So in other words, if you have somebody who's going 90 to nothing and you're dumping more stuff on them, some balls gonna drop somewhere, right?

So maybe they get this new thing that you've handed off to them and delegate it to them. Maybe they get that done well, but then what about the other stuff that's on their plate?

It's probably gonna fall apart, there's probably gonna be problems.

So you have to go through and ask yourself the question, does this person have capacity in all of these areas? Let's say that they have capacity everywhere except for time, right?

They've got too many tasks on their current plate. Great. Ask this question. Is there somebody with capacity that this person can delegate properly to.

Right, so we can take some stuff off of this person, hand it off to somebody else who probably has capacity on their plate or, you know, is a newer team member, you know, lower ranking team member, however you want to look at that, that we can get some of the stuff off of this person's plate onto somebody else.

If that's doable. Fantastic. We've now freed them up, we can start to properly delegate. Once again, the whole process has to be done properly. Right.

We're not just dumping tasks on people then. Another important part of this is to make sure that they have everything they need, every tool.

You know, sometimes, you know, if you're an entrepreneur, if you're a business owner, sometimes you've been able to tackle things without needing a lot of tools to do it.

Sometimes you've just figured out how to do it, you've been running with it, but now that you're passing it off to somebody else, they may need some more tools, they may need something else to do it better than you did it.

And again, that's what we want. We want them doing stuff better than we did. Right? Better, faster, whatever, more accurately. So make sure that they have all the right tools.

Make sure that you're giving clear, expressed expectations of deadlines. When should things be done, how should things look? What should the outcome of this be?

Right, what's the key result we're looking for here? I don't want you to just do the task. Here's what I want it to look like when it's done.

This is my expectation of what it looks like. This is a key deliverable. If it doesn't get to this place, if it doesn't look like this when this is done, the task, the project, whatever, then it's not done correctly.

Why is that so important? Because it's very easy to hand off a task.

Somebody can do a task all day long, but if they're not getting to the result that you expect, and that's where we call that the accountability gap.

If they don't get to that result that you expect, then you're going to be frustrated, you're going to be blaming them and they're going to be like, I did exactly what you told me to do.

Don't just share how to do a task, make sure they understand what it looks like when it's done. This is what we're shooting for, this is what we're looking for.

So there's a lot more to that. But these are the basic things that I want you to get started with, if you're going to do this properly, the first thing starts there. You've got to be able to get stuff off of your plate.

You've got to get it onto other people who can do it well so that you can start setting yourself up to lead people, not do tasks. Right.

And if you've delegated well and people do an incredibly good job with this, right, we're talking about some time, you got to put some time down on this, then what's going to happen is you will not be needed in that area.

Now, don't be afraid, don't get scared. This is where a lot of leaders and business owners freak out and they're like, well, crud, if I'm not needed, then what am I doing at the business?

Trust me, trust me with this. I've been doing this for decades. Just trust me. All this, you will have more important things that you will be able to tackle and they will be less task focused.

You will not spend your entire day focused on doing tasks. Right. Instead you'll be able to focus on higher level stuff. So let's get that part out of the way.

Get delegation, proper delegation going. That will start moving everything in the right direction.

Stop Micromanaging and Start Empowering (00:16:16)

Second thing you need to do is you've got to stop micromanaging.

I know you probably think you don't. You might want to ask around to your team, they might tell you something differently.

But here's what you need to do. Even if you're not micromanaging, we need to make sure that you're empowering, right? So micromanaging is like putting, you know, training wheels on a bike that your team just already has.

They've already learning, they've already learned to ride the bike or they're learning how to ride the bike and you're slapping these training wheels on it, right? It kills creativity. It makes them absolutely rely on you.

It makes them not be able to think for themselves, solve problems for themselves. This messes with everything.

However, empowering your people by helping them to think for themselves, pushing back on them when they're coming to you for all the answers, giving them the opportunity to solve things.

And sometimes this can be very difficult. Again, depending upon the personality style, you might get a lot of pushback. You know, one thing you need to do is help people to think for themselves, help people to solve problems.

I can't tell you how many times people come in for a first StratPlan. And one of, and this is leadership teams. One of the things that we see over and over and over again is that team members aren't solving problems for themselves.

They keep coming to leadership. What do you want me to do here? How do you want me to solve this? How do you want me to fix this?

And for good reason. Leadership has been the ones who've answered all those questions and haven't pushed back on the team members to think for themselves.

What do you think you should do? What do you think you could do? How could this affect this? You know, give me some ideas. So what will happen is, is as you start this process, you're probably going to get some pushback. Well, that's why I came to you.

Yeah, I know. But now I'm going to start teaching you to think for yourself. The sooner people can think for themselves.

Now, some of you have probably just gotten this bad idea that as you do this, you're going to teach people to run away with all their own ideas.

They're going to change your business, they're going to change everything. That's not what we're talking about. We're doing this inside the leadership style. Right?

The way that you're leading this whole process, not just giving people the opportunity to go out there and make any decisions that they want, that's not what we're talking about.

What I'm saying is, is that you start pushing back on when they come to you for problems or they come to you. Hopefully they're not coming to you for problems, they're coming to you for solutions.

What you do is you start asking them how to solve the problem. You don't need a perfect answer. And you definitely should not be telling them that they're just wrong.

No, you don't do it that way. No, that's. No, no.

If you're going to foster somebody thinking for themselves, helping somebody to think for themselves, helping somebody to solve problems for themselves, then you need to make this a process where they can be vulnerable with you.

They have to be able to trust you with the things that they're saying.

If they're throwing out ideas, if they're throwing out options and you're just being a jerk about it, Right. Or attacking their ideas or telling them that it's stupid or silly, then they're not going to come to you anymore.

They're not going to want to solve it anymore. Right? So you have to be like a good parent. We have our five year old daughter where constantly she'll come to us with something and we're like, baby, solve the problem.

Well, daddy, I can't do that. I can't do this thing over here. Don't say you can't think through it. What could you do? What options do you have? Well, I can't think of any.

All right, take five minutes and think about solving this problem. And literally within one minute, the child will solve it. She'll figure it out. We have this little coat hanger on the wall, a little art piece that you hang your coats on.

I don't know if that makes a lot of sense, but it's a fancy looking coat hanger thing, wall piece, art, I don't know, whatever.

And the other day, and below it is a bench that you can sit down, take your shoes off, all that kind of fun stuff. And the other day she was like, daddy, I can't hang my jacket up.

Can you hang it up? I'm like, no, baby, you can do this. You got this figured out. And she's like, I can't. I don't. I can't reach that high. And I'm like, solve the problem.

She literally walked over there, stood on top of the bench, hung the jacket up, came back and said, I figured it out. I solved the problem. I gave her a high five.

And I'm like, way to go, babe. That's exactly what you need to do. And I asked her, I said, what did you do? She goes, I just climbed on the bench and hung up my jacket.

When you teach people to think for themselves and you don't solve all of their problems, they think for themselves. People. Now, I want you to think about this.

Think about it from the perspective of payroll. How much money are you spending on people to come to you for all of the answers? If you are the one, then you're--

You're the bottleneck in this process. But you're paying people to get answers from you.

Wouldn't you rather train them to think for themselves? Wouldn't you rather they figure these things out on their own and at worst case scenario, they're coming to you?

And this is what it would look like in the early phases, right? They come to you to solve a problem. You have them solve it with you to the best of their ability, right?

If you need to give them 20 minutes to go think about it, that's fine too. Come back and we will talk through it. And then you encourage them and you tell them what's good. You know, maybe they didn't come up with a great idea.

So ask them more questions. Well, what about this? You know, hey, I'm gonna. I'm thinking of solving it this way.

Okay, I hear what you're saying, but will that affect this thing over here or will that accomplish the thing and just start asking more questions?

Folks, questions. Ask them. You'll be blown away that the more you ask somebody questions about how they're solving a problem, they will continue to solve.

Now, if they just give up too early, if they are just like, you know, I don't have any ideas. I can't think about this. Then send them away to think about it for 20 minutes.

What's happening right now in their amygdala is, you know, inside of their, in the limbic system of their brain.

What's happening is that they have set this thing. There's this piece that's going off in the brain that says, I'm frustrated, I can't come up with an idea. Give them 20 minutes.

That will reset, they will focus, they will come back with another answer. It'll work. Worst case scenario, they may come back and they're still pissed off at you. Tell them to go for another 20 minutes. Right?

That's the most I've ever had to do, is send somebody away twice. The second time, they came back within five minutes and they had an answer.

So by doing this, you're helping them to think for themselves. When they can think for themselves, they don't need you to solve every problem.

You get to elevate to solving bigger problems, bigger business problems, focusing on more important things. Right.

Training and Development – The Gift That Keeps on Giving (00:23:18)

Third thing, this is a must, guys.

I cannot, I can't. I don't know how to say this enough. I don't know how to pound this into leaders heads. So many leaders and business owners do not reach out for training.

They don't get training, they don't get development. There's this concept in their mind now. Maybe you've spent money on somebody who sucked that.

Okay, I get it. I understand. Do a better job on the front side, discovering what they're going to do in training and developing you, your people, your business.

Right? But as somebody who literally trains, leads leaders, helps business owners, all that kind of fun stuff. I have trainers and developers that help me, that help my team.

There are people that we invest in to grow us. It's just usually in different types of areas. Right. It's in different things. So that is something I have been huge on for decades. Why?

Because the first time I got over myself and as a very young leader who had to have all the right answers, had to know everything.

The first time I started reaching out, going, hold on a second. If I've got all the right answers, then nobody else is needed, so that can't be right. Let me start asking questions.

Let me start digging in, let me start getting insight. As soon as I got over that, I think it was like 24, 25, something like that. As soon as I got over that and I started really digging in and finding out what people knew.

You know, I call it taxing the collective intelligence. Back then, I just call it asking questions, right? I want to know what you know.

The sooner I got over that, the faster I got to asking more questions. And more and more and more. I wanted more teaching, I wanted more training.

That's when I started reaching out and getting professionals. Experts, help me with this, Grow me in this, grow me in this over here.

The more experts I got, the better I got at everything I was trying to accomplish. Didn't matter what it was doing, whether it was back in those days leading and running a business or racing cars or whatever, you, you pick it.

Every exercise, physical work, you know, trying to get things better in shape, whatever it was, every time I would put a expert in place, I could solve things.

Maybe didn't solve everything, but I solved a lot. So training and development is the gift that keeps on giving. I'm telling you, a team that's constantly learning is a team that's always improving.

Training is going to be the thing that helps them handle more responsibility. It's going to be the thing that helps them adapt when things change, right? So you need to make sure that you focus on training.

That also reinforces your mission, your vision, your k raise so that it's not just about, you know, skills, but creating skills that align with those things.

You know, again, that's a big thing on, you know, I mentioned StratPlan. That's one of the big things that we do is make sure that as we're training people that they're aligning with that StratPlan that strat- that company strategy.

Otherwise, why are they on the team, right? If we don't have jobs, if we don't have team members, if we don't have roles that align with the laser focus direction we're going in, then what's the point?

We're wasting money and we're wasting resources. Our goal is get all of our resources pointing at the same direction.

Let's get to this destination over here, and then when we're almost there, let's be setting the next destination and then the next one and then the next one.

What does it take to get all of our team members helping us to get to each destination? Think about it. How smart is that, right?

How stupid is it to keep doing business the same way over and over and over again, expecting a different result? It's ridiculous. Instead, train and develop your team.

I love a phrase that Maxwell said. Geez, I don't know, 30, 40 years ago is forever ago.

He said, would you rather train your team members and they leave with the money you spent on their training, or would you rather they stay and you haven't trained them at all?

So think about that, right? What do you want to do? Oh, I don't want to spend this money for the love. Then keep them exactly the way that they are and leave them in your business.

But when you train team members up, we have so many of our clients that have not only folks in Next Level Mastermind, but they have folks in the Key Leader Program because they understand the power of when team members grow, when leaders grow, they grow the business, the whole business grows.

As a leader is developing, they're developing their team underneath them. It is just smart business, right? So don't forget leadership training.

Make sure that you're developing your future leaders. Now that means that you've got reliable people that you can be ready to, you know, step up when you need to.

You can raise them up into positions. You can get better leaders in place, or, you know, not better leaders, but you can get your.

Well, maybe if you just have terrible leaders. But hopefully you've trained your leaders to be better so that they can take on more responsibility.

They can take on, you know, more problem solving. They can take on even more strategy in accomplishing the goals of getting us to our destination.

Building Leaders Within Your Team (00:28:51)

Now, fourth thing, building leaders within your team. This is something that, gosh, I would say most businesses, before they come to us, struggle with, right?

So first thing is, you gotta look for those rock stars on your team who can take on more responsibility.

We're not just saying dump a bunch of responsibility on people, people who are ready to raise up well, but if they start raising up, does that threaten my job?

No, it does not threaten you at all. It makes you more valuable to the company. Just trust me. You will be needed in more areas and more important areas.

So start giving these people opportunities to lead projects, to make decisions, to mentor other people. Now make sure that they have a, you know, a heart of a teacher, that they're not just mentoring people and they suck at it.

Hey, this is how you do it. You're screwing that up. We want to make sure that they have a heart of a teacher, right? But start growing leaders inside of your business.

Right. That means that, that you're building a safety net. So if you're out, if you're focused on big picture stuff, the team keeps humming along because your leaders have it under control.

I will be very honest and vulnerable with you. We have gone through a couple of difficult years with a lot of stuff. God has allowed a lot of things to hit us that we are working through.

And praise God, I mean, it has grown us immensely in our faith in him and, and how we're handling things. I will say to any of you who are struggling with a parent with Alzheimer's, I am so incredibly sorry.

I am so sorry. I have, I have apologized to some of my. My friends in the past of not understanding what they're going through and not understanding how difficult that is, you know, as a child, as an adult child of an Alzheimer's patient.

Right. And I'm sorry that you're watching your parent go through. That's something that my wife and I, my family, have been dealing with. And it has been. It's been difficult. Oh, it has been difficult, to say the least. It is.

It has challenged us in many, many ways, you know, that there's just things that have been going on that we've been trying to overcome and accomplish and all that kind of fun stuff.

And because for decades I have worked on always raising up teams that can operate without me, my team has allowed me to be able to deal with the stuff that I need to deal with personally so I can come in and out.

You know, work on the thing, get to the important things that I've got to solve in the business and then be able to spend time, spend time with my mom, spend time in dealing with hospitals and all different place she broke her hip.

And just all kinds of crazy stuff that's been happening. And, you know, it's just insanity. It is nonstop insanity.

And we have been able to literally leave the business at times and just go, folks, we got to go handle things, we got to take care of things, you know, and the team has always been able to solve it.

They've always been able to run with the business. Joel, the leaders, you know, Lyneé, Aaron, they've just always done a phenomenal job well before.

Listen to me. Listen to me. They've been running this business well before I had to go handle other issues. I have always trained them up to be great, solid leaders.

I've always trained them to train their team members. That has always been a prerequisite of being a leader inside of this business.

So that at any time I can step up to something more important, we can focus on bigger things, we can continue to grow people, so on and so forth.

I had no idea that I was going to have to take care of certain things on the home front. But here's what I need you to know. Listen to this. Your family is more important than your business. Let me say it again.

Your family is more important than your business. Right. So being able to be there for family when you need to be, I think God is much more pleased with that than you focusing on continuing to put money to the bottom line.

So if you raise up a team that can lead your team, lead your business without you there, then you can focus on the more important things when they come along. The emergencies. Right.

The situations. This isn't just a overnight thing. It's not like dealing with a parent with Alzheimer's. It's not a week long deal.

This has been, this has been a couple years of just difficulty and you know, tough stuff and, and you know, praise God that we have the ability to do so.

So I want you to think about that. It's not just about you being able to go spend a two week vacation in Europe or something, right?

My team has been running. I lead the leaders, they lead the team. That has happened forever. That's just the way that I lead my business.

And what that does is that allows me to, if I need to focus on something else, if I need to step up to something bigger, if I need to focus on something that's happening on the home front, great.

But guess what? It does for my leaders the same thing. If one of my leaders steps away. Right now, one of my leaders is on a two week vacation, cruising around the Mediterranean, having a fantastic time.

And this has, because of the way that we're set up, he can do that, he can step away, he could go have fun, have a great time, never miss a beat. We have to tell him to quit checking his email.

So important things are build leaders within your team.

Clarity in Mission, Vision, and KRAs – No Guesswork (00:35:03)

Number five, you have to make sure there is clarity. I cannot stress this enough. You have to make sure there's clarity in your mission, in your vision and in your KRAs, folks.

Oh, this is something that again, it's another thing, I don't know how to say it enough.

When there is guessing, when there's vagueness, when there's lack of accountability in these areas, what you end up with is a piece of paper that seems important somewhere that nobody really cares about.

You have got to make sure if your team doesn't know where the business is headed, then they're just spinning their wheels in the same spot. Right?

If they don't understand the mission, what is the purpose of our existence here? You know, what is the vision?

If you haven't given them direction and purpose, then they're showing up every day doing a job for a paycheck. I don't want team members that are showing up for a job.

I want team members that are here because they absolutely love what they do. They feel purpose, they feel called to it. They know exactly where we're headed.

They know what they're doing. They know how they're affecting people. Right? KRAs. KRAs are a must, Key Result Areas. They are a must.

They're the guardrails that keep everyone focused on what really matters. Right? So it's just so much bigger than a job description.

It is. This is the result that we should be getting to. These are the results that we should be getting to. While you're working hard every single day, if we're not getting to these results, we have a problem.

So, like take, for example, if we have a sales manager's KRA is client acquisition, right? It's clear what they need to be prioritizing. You've got to go after clients. You have to go after clients.

You have to go after clients. If they're not getting clients, but they're working on 17 other things that seem important, well, then we have a problem.

We have a problem. We have to review it, we have to tweak it. We have to have a different conversation. We might even have to have a tough conversation.

Maybe we didn't do a good job guiding them to, hey, this is what the outcome should be. This is the results that we should be seeing. Or maybe they're not good at it.

They're not doing a good job. Maybe we haven't been holding them accountable. We haven't been having regular meetings to make sure that they're aligned and they're on target.

Making KRAs Work for Your Team (00:37:26)

So you've got to make sure that you have clarity on those, which takes me to number six, which is making your KRAs work for your team.

Now, again, they're all about clarity. They're all about accountability. When everyone knows exactly what they're responsible for, then everything runs smoother.

So if you want to see how this works, do yourself a favor and grab our free KRA sample from the notes, you know, in this episode and get started with it today.

Additional Resources (00:37:59)

On top of that, we've also got some extra podcasts that you should be listening to Number 234 which is Why You and Your Team Need KRAs (Key Results Areas).

And Number 555 which is Acing Your Goals and Establishing Processes With Your Team.

Conclusion (00:38:15)

So these are things that you need to be doing to help you to get your team and your business to operate by itself. So if you're a leader getting your team to be able to operate by itself.

If you're a business owner getting your business as a whole to be able to operate by itself. So this is just the beginning of building a team that can operate without you.

Now we covered the importance of delegation, training, developing future leaders, aligning with your Mission, Vision, KRAs.

Next time we're going to go deeper into the cultural communication and accountability systems that hold it all together. So stay tuned for that next episode.

But folks that is all the time that we have for today. Want you to take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life and join us on the next episode.