608 | Reset Your Leadership: Strategies to Lead in a New Year

Introduction (00:00:00)

Welcome to the Chris LoCurto Show. In this episode, we dive into the importance of stepping back, evaluating where you stand as a leader, and focusing on the essentials that drive your success. 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.

As we kick off the new year, we often hear about setting new goals or chasing fresh ideas, which are all great and admirable.

But what if this year, instead of chasing new shiny things, what if we reset and recommit to the strategies and the disciplines we already know are critical?

So whether it's building stronger teams or mastering your finances or improving your communication, today we're going to guide you through actionable steps to reset and lead this year effectively.

Recommit to Discipline in Leadership (00:01:20)

So we're going to talk through some key points, and the first one is recommitting to discipline in leadership. Now, leaders often struggle to stay consistent in managing their teams. This is a common thing.

I've heard it a bajillion times, but I've already told them this or, but I've already set this in place, but I already put this in motion. And my question always is, you know, as something is failing, when's the last time you checked on that?

When's the last time you reset that? When's the last time you recommunicated that? So instead of relying or winging, you know, winging it or relying on, you know, your natural instincts as a leader or instincts as a business owner, here's what I'd like you to focus on.

What does it look like to hold regular, purposeful, well executed meetings, team meetings? You need to be leading your people to success.

If you are completely bogged down with all the things you're trying to accomplish in a day and you're not spending time leading your team--

You know, it could be individual team members, it could be a team, whatever it is, if you're not spending time leading them consistently helping them to have right information, finding out whether or not projects are going well, finding out whether or not accountability is happening.

If these things are not happening, then how in the world are you going to lead that team to success? Well, Chris, my meetings suck. I get it. I understand.

Wrote an e book about it. I could give you the reasons why. Yes, your meetings may suck. Some of you out there may have phenomenal meetings and a lot of you have meetings that just suck or they started out well.

And now you don't know why you're doing them in the first place. The key is, is because you lost the purpose. You lost the purpose of the meeting. You changed things up.

You change direction. It got stale because you didn't focus on why are we doing this in the first place.

Therefore, people keep showing up, you keep spending money on payroll, and people walk out the door going, why in the world do we do that meeting?

So you have to reset, recommit to leading people through quality meetings that are needed. If the meeting is not needed, don't do it. But a mistake I see all the time is entire companies that never get together as a team.

Well, we tried that before. It was just a waste of time. Nobody cared about it. You did it wrong. You didn't do it correctly. I'm not saying you need to meet every five minutes with the entire company.

What I'm saying is, is that this. What should the purpose be for that team meeting? Communicating things, getting on the same page, making sure that we are not creating mistakes in multiple areas.

Making sure that people understand the direction we're going in, communicating vision to people, communicating purpose to people. All these kinds of things that help people to be successful in their roles.

A ton more that you can be communicating there should be happening.

You should be providing clarity on a, gosh, a weekly basis. You should be discussing goals and how we're doing with them. You should be celebrating wins. You should be fixing problems.

You should be getting input. You should be fostering better communication between you and the team. Leadership in the team, the team with the team. This should be happening. Consistency in these types of meetings can absolutely transform the team.

It can definitely align the team. That's. That's the goal. We want to get alignment and we definitely want to increase productivity. So first thing we need to do is recommit to discipline in our leadership.

Get Out of the Leadership Crazy Cycle (00:05:27)

Second thing, get your butt out out of the leadership crazy cycle. So many leaders are stuck in what we call the leadership crazy cycle, right? We've got multiple lessons on killing the leadership crazy cycle.

You got to get your butt out of this. This is where you are spending so much time putting out fires. You know, you. It's what we call professional firefighting.

You got into business and didn't realize you became a professional firefighter, that you spend so much of your time putting out fires, trying to solve, you know, the surface level of problems on a consistent basis. You're running around you.

You've done so many things in. In one day that when you get home, your spouse says, hey, what'd you do today? And you're like, I have absolutely no clue. But it was a lot, right? You know, you did a lot.

You didn't lead anybody, not with any quality. You know, if you did, it may have been five total minutes and your entire day. But the point is, is that you are stuck in this cycle that happens over and over and over again every day.

You come in, you run like mad. You have too many things on your plate. You're doing way too many administrative things that you shouldn't be doing. Maybe you're gaining too much worth by putting out 17,000 fires a day, which you shouldn't.

These are things that we have to change. You don't have any time for quality leading. You don't have any time for your personal development, much less the personal development of, you know, team members that may be helpful.

You don't have any time for quality strategic planning. You don't have time because you are stuck in this ridiculous cycle over and over and over again.

So there's things that you have to do. The first thing is become self aware. You're stuck in the cycle.

Become self aware that you are putting out fires or you're spending too much time on things that really somebody who's making less money than you should be doing, right?

You should be focusing on higher level things that doesn't have you slammed all day long, can't think, brain fog, all of that kind of stuff, right?

So one of the things that you can do is start delegating effectively the correct way. Delegate. What would, what we would say in killing the leadership crazy cycle is delegate properly.

So we use simple tools like a delegation matrix that, that really identifies the things that you can do and the things that you need to assign to the rest of your team.

We do something we call love/hate/delegate. Right? These are the things that you love. These. So maybe these stay on your plate. These are the things that you hate. These probably should come off your plate.

And then we go through those lists and we go, okay, hold on. Some of these things in the love list, I shouldn't be doing those, I need to get those out of here.

And some of these things in the hate list, nobody can do it but me. I've got to pull that back. And then that leaves you with this entire list that you can start delegating to team members.

But you don't just move on from there. What you do is you make sure that the people that you're going to delegate to, they have capacity, they have understanding. They're going to be taught.

Well, I mean, there's just so much to do to delegate properly, right? You need to do this. You need to get things off of your plate. And later on I'm going to talk about a resource, an episode you need to go listen to.

That'll take it much further than what I just shared. That will help you to actually do that. But here's the thing.

Next-Level Leadership LIVE Event 2025 (00:08:57)

I know that you're deeply passionate about what you do, but I also know at the same time you absolutely feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders.

Like every single thing inside of your team or inside of your business depends on you. That no matter what you have in place, the moment you try to step away, things start to slip.

Now, if that sounds like you, you've got to get to the Next-Level Leadership LIVE Event. That's exactly what you need.

It's not just another leadership event. It's a transformative three day experience that's happening April 2nd through the 4th.

Now our goal is to equip you, get you exactly what you need with practical, sustainable tools so you can confidently lead without feeling overwhelmed. Right?

This is what we experience. Is this overwhelm with, you know, so much stuff going on, so many problems, so many issues, so much firefighting, so many tasks to do.

The truth is, trying to lead your team, trying to grow your business, trying to stay fully present with your family, and trying to stay fully present in your personal life is absolutely exhausting.

The crazy thing is, is you're not alone. I work with leaders every day who express the same frustrations. They want their business to run smoothly, but the thought of stepping away is overwhelming leadership.

It doesn't have to be a constant drain on your time and 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 join us?

Well, here's just some of the things that you'll gain from this experience. First, lead smarter, not harder. This 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 get to 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 the people that you're going to meet at this event. It's not your cousin Frank who's telling you everything you're doing wrong in your business.

And they've never actually stepped into a leadership role ever. Right? These are leaders and business owners that are facing the same challenges.

You're going to be in a room full of leaders who understand exactly what you're going through. This event fosters a genuine community where you're going to find encouragement, fresh ideas and very possibly lifelong friendships.

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

There is a ton of motivational events out there that you can go to that you'll feel really good about yourself for a couple of weeks and then it drops off at the 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, then my business might suffer. But if we're being honest, running at the pace that you're running at just 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 to your business to invest in your leadership.

So invest these three days with us and I promise you'll gain so much more than you're going to miss.

Join us for the Next Level Leadership LIVE Event happening April 2nd through the 4th. Registration is open now, so secure your spot. I've seen this event transform lives and businesses and I know that it can do the same for you.

So don't wait until burnout forces you to make a change. Head on over to chrislocurto.com/liveevents. That's chrislocurto.com/liveevents to learn more and secure your spot.

I'm looking forward to seeing you there.

Engage with Your Business’s Financial Health (00:13:40)

All right, number three, you need to engage your business's financial health. This is so vitally important.

I know way too many business owners and leaders who hate absolutely hate being in the finances and trying to understand the finances.

Folks. Understanding the finances, understanding your P & L at the very basic is something that will help you to make your best decisions, right?

Being able to budget and being able to forecast, these are things that are incredibly important for you to make your best decisions. I live in my finances.

I get into my accounting every single week. I'm pulling reports, I'm making decisions. I'm looking at what I can do in the future. I'm looking at how we've done in the past.

I'm leading leaders, telling them what they can do, you know, go ahead and spend money in this area, hire people over here, whatever it is.

In fact, believe it or not, they're the ones that are reporting that information to me. They're letting me know what they're expecting, what they can forecast for sales, what they can forecast for expenses.

All these things help us to make quality decisions. The crazy thing is, is just getting in and understanding your profit loss statement. Your P & L can help you to realize things that you've missed.

It can help you to realize good trends, it could help you to realize bad trends.

You know, one of the things that people always miss out on is they have no clue what percent of their gross revenue is the salary that they're paying out.

That's an important thing to find out right now. There is no perfect number. I talking through somebody through Stratplan. I would, I give percentages.

It should be between here and there, you know, hopefully depending upon what you do.

The key is, is not knowing those percentages all the way down your whole general ledger, your profit loss, all the different accounts inside of your profit loss statement.

Not knowing what those percentages are, how much money is going out, how much money is coming in, you know, are we making good decisions, bad decisions?

Not knowing those things are keeping you from making better short term and long term decisions. So commit to a monthly financial review.

No matter what, commit to at least a monthly financial review meeting, you know, if you can, with, if you've got an accountant, a bookkeeper, sit down with them, talk through those things and use that opportunity to ask questions so you can start setting targets, so you can start making, you know, data driven decisions, smart decisions, short term and long term decisions.

Helping you to understand where is your money going? How's it coming in, where is it going? At its most basic, start there. Now for me, I do all of my own stuff in all the businesses.

Well, that's not, that's not actually true. I have team members that are always constantly reporting things or taking care of expenses.

But for me, I'm going through all of the P & Ls all the budgeting and forecasting because I have my team members, you know, turn in budgets in each one of their, the leaders, I should say, in each one of their areas.

They're turning in budgets, they're turning in forecasts. I take all of that stuff and put it into one master budget and forecast, and then I'm working through that on a consistent basis.

That helps me to make the best business decisions, period. You've got to jump in.

Even at the basic level of understanding A, P & L. Start there, start there. Let's build you up past that.

Reevaluate Your Team Communication (00:17:24)

Number four, reevaluate your team communication.

Now, quite often leaders assume that their, their team members, their teams, that they understand the expectations that leadership has.

The problem is because we're not clearly communicating that on a consistent basis, you're probably missing opportunities. What am I saying?

Often we tell somebody something. We might have set a clear expectation in a meeting somewhere, maybe we wrote it down somewhere.

But because we're not spending time talking through it, revisiting, recommunicating what, what those expectations are.

Somebody can be busting their butt doing all kinds of tasks, but we're not getting the expected result that we have from them. We're not getting to, hey, you know, I thought this is, this is what I'm paying you to do over here.

Well, but I'm doing all these tasks. These are the tasks that you wanted me to do. Yeah, but I want you to get to that result over there.

But I'm busting my butt doing all these things. We call that the accountability gap, where we do not see that somebody is busting their butts, but they're not getting where we actually want them to.

We're not getting to the result. They're getting results. It's just not what we expect. It's not where we need to be. It might not even be where we want to be. You don't know until you get back in there and start communicating again.

Reevaluate the expectations. Reevaluate how much somebody's on board with that. Reevaluate how well they, they're actually doing in getting to those expectations.

You know, how well are they covering the expectation? 50%, 75%, 100%, 25%? You know, are they doing a great job? Are they sucking wind? We've got to find that out.

So start by creating a habitual one on one meeting with as many of your key team members as you possibly can.

What do I mean by that? You need to have a static one on one meeting. However often, you know, I, if it's weekly, good.

Depending upon how much is on their plate, I probably wouldn't let it go more than, you know, twice a month. I probably wouldn't stretch it out to once a month unless they, they don't have a ton of stuff or do.

If they're doing a lot of repetitive stuff, you could probably space it out a little bit more, you know, But I always want to be meeting with my team members at the bare minimum, once a month.

Right now, for me, it's my leaders and we meet every single week. So we talk about things every week. But don't let a team member sit out there and they have no leadership.

They have, you know, no, no one on one meetings. They're. They're not being held accountable. Nobody's letting them know how they're doing. Don't let somebody sit out there and they don't have that type of leadership.

Set up meetings just to, even if it's a short meeting to find out how they're doing, what they're doing, how well they're doing it, and are they getting to your expectations.

So you can also, in those meetings, what you're going to discover early on is obstacles that they're experiencing.

You know, so ask things like, hey, what things are holding you back? What obstacles are you experiencing that are keeping you from being successful?

Right? When they do this gives you the ability, think about this, you could provide support, you could solve the problem. Maybe they're struggling with something that isn't that big of a fix by you, right?

It isn't that big of a fix by another leader. Put something in place, solve the problem. Imagine they go six months with the same obstacles and nobody solves it, right? That's why we have to reevaluate our team communication.

How well are we communicating? How well are we all on the same page? How well are we executing on things and getting to the expectations that we have?

Focus on Accountability and Ownership (00:21:22)

Number five, focus on big important thing, accountability and ownership. Now, so many leaders struggle with having tough conversations. I get it.

They, they allow poor performance. They allow team members not to be aligned with goals. They allow expectations not to happen because they struggle with having tough conversations.

I completely understand. That's why we teach the stuff that we do, right? I will tell you accountability, I'm a High S. I'm an 88S. I think accountability is your best friend no matter what personality style you are.

But I can tell you, for those of you that struggle more with having a tough conversation, putting accountability in place covers it.

Because you get to put something in place and you tell somebody, here's how to do something, here's things you don't do, here's things you do, whatever it is.

And then when you sit down to review it, it's not just an assumption that things aren't going well. You have the information, you have the accountability.

Hey, we said we weren't going to do this, but I see that you've done that three times this past month. Help me to understand why, right?

When you have to have a tough conversation, maybe somebody is performing badly, maybe they're showing up late all the time, maybe they're not spending that much time working, they're not getting as much stuff done.

Well, if you've already set the expectations of what they're supposed to be doing, then every single time you sit down with the accountability piece, it helps them to see, oh my gosh, this person's not going to let up.

I've got to bust my butt here, right? They're not going to be able to have excuses every single time. And so it makes a tough conversation on you 1,000 times easier because you just keep pointing back to the thing.

This is what we said you were going to do. This is what we're paying you to do. These are the expectations that we have. This is this, this is this, this is this.

So when they come up with excuses or they push back or they try to blame you or try to blame somebody else, you just keep going. I'm sorry, help me to understand. How does that have anything to do with this right here?

Right. And it allows you to lead through tough conversations so much better. I'm going to tell you, you gotta implement Key Result Areas. KRAs.

If you don't have a document for, you know, every role in your business, that shows what success looks like, right?

That helps them to see how they're contributing to the success of the business, the success of the StratPlan, you know, the vision, whatever you're doing, you're missing out.

It is a vital accountability piece. And unfortunately, sometimes people put them in place and then they don't do anything with them. We want you to come back to it and we want you to reevaluate.

We want you to have meetings, you know, with a brand new person every single month, meet once a month to find out how well they're doing on the results and rank them until they're doing 100% on everything.

And then you can start stretching that out every two months, every three months, maybe twice a year. But you need to be able to grade how well somebody's doing on the things that you as a leader expect them to do.

And as they nail it, pat them on the back and then meet with them two months later, right? As they're killing it. If they're not, then you've got a great tool that's telling you right now this person's behind and something needs to be fixed.

It's either them, it's me, it's, you know, they don't have the right tools. Whatever it is, solve the problem.

Action Items (00:25:05)

So action items I want you to take away right now.

Now, first, audit your current leadership practices, right? Identify areas where you lack consistency or discipline, which is so important, and commit to improving them one at a time.

Make a list, prioritize that list. You know, what's the most important thing that I go after right now and get after it.

Second, schedule regular team meetings. Block out time on your calendar, folks. Do it for weekly team check ins. Do it for one on one meetings.

You know, make sure that you're meeting with key players. Get that stuff on your calendar. Communicate, make sure everybody's on the same page.

Number three, dive into your finances.

You've got to set a recurring meeting with your financial team, you know, bookkeeper account, or if it's you, you've got to spend time reviewing your P & L statements, your budgets, your, your forecast, your KPIs, you know, all of that stuff, right?

Number four, implement clear, clear, clear accountability systems. I'm going to tell you, introduce KRAs or update your KRAs. You know, make sure that those documents are there so that everybody understands what the responsibilities are.

We put KPIs on our KRAs so that we actually can measure how well people are doing, get those things in place and then hold them accountable to those KRAs.

Number five, delegate strategically. And again, what we say in killing the leadership crazy cycle is delegate properly.

Properly free up your time so that you can focus on leadership by empowering your team to handle tasks that they're already capable of owning.

Now a big fear comes from this is, well, what am I going to do if I delegate these tasks? I won't be needed for the love. Yes, you are. You will be needed at such a higher level. I have leveled up my entire leadership career.

I've always seen, oh my gosh, I got to get this off my plate so I can go to that thing. I've got this off my plate so I can go to that thing. There's never a time that there isn't going to be more important things for you to level up to.

Additional Resources (00:27:20)

So here's some additional resources. There are four, count them, four different episodes that I'd love for you to listen to.

So on meetings, listen to number 532 | Three Rules for Leading Effective Meetings.

Great episode on finances. Listen to episode 430 | Building Predictability Into Your Business Finances – Part 1.

Another one. Great episode on KRAs, episode 120 | KRA: The What, The Why, and The How of Key Result Areas.

And on the Leadership Crazy Cycle, episode 523 | How To Kill The Leadership Crazy Cycle.

So folks, super important stuff. It's the beginning of the year. Let's not go after a ton of new things. Let's get things right. Things that we've been focusing on or trying to focus on.

By resetting your leadership strategies for the new year, it doesn't mean that you're going to have to reinvent the wheel. Instead, it's about focusing on what already works or things that you've been committed to.

Maybe they're not working as well, but you've got to solve them right.

Maybe they are working well and you just need to make them better. Doing that gets you to better disciplines. Doing that gets you to create real change.

So by prioritizing communication, accountability, financial clarity, you'll lead with confidence and you're going to build a way stronger and way more aligned team, which is what you really need.

We need our team aligned. So take these steps. Make this the most impactful year you've ever had.

And by the way, if today's episode resonated with you, do me a favor, take a moment to reflect on one area where you can reset and recommit as a leader. So let's lead boldly into 2025.

Well, folks, that's all the time that we have for today. I hope this has been great information for you. As always, take this information. Change your leadership, change your business, change your life, and join us on the next episod.