644 | Too Little Leadership: The Silent Cost of Missing Praise, Accountability & Delegation

Does your team feel overlooked, unsure of what matters, or unclear on who's doing what?

Today we're talking about the damage caused when leaders don't give enough praise, don't hold people accountable, and don't delegate effectively. All of 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 continuing on with our Too Little Leadership miniseries, all part of a broader focus on leadership balance.

You know, how to stop doing too much or too little and start leading with clarity and purpose.

Now, if you've ever felt like your team lacks energy or they're not taking ownership or they just don't seem aligned with the goals that you have, then the root issue might actually be because you are under leading them, especially in key areas.

So today we're hitting three big ones. We're hitting the area of praise, the area of accountability, and the area of delegation. So let's jump right in. Don't turn this off, right?

Some of you are going, oh, my goodness, here we go with that whole praise thing. Just, just stick with me for a little bit, right?

Too Little Praise Makes People Feel Invisible (00:01:39)

The first thing we're going to hit is exactly that. Too little praise makes people feel invisible.

So if you've got a team member who's crushing it, who's, you know, showing up on time or early, you know, going the extra mile, but you haven't said anything because, well, what do we normally think?

You know, especially with business owners, business owners, entrepreneurs have a tendency to think, why do I need to tell you you're doing a good job? I do that every single time I sign that paycheck.

Right? Every time you get a paycheck from me, that is me telling you you're doing a good job. If you're doing a bad job, you wouldn't be here.

That tends to be a common thought process through the mind of the business owner or the entrepreneur. And I will tell you, I absolutely get it. I've been a business owner for a really long time.

I have been leading people for much longer than that.

Decades. Over three decades. And I will tell you, I have had many times in my leadership career that I have thought, why do you need more than this? You're getting a good paycheck.

We're walking through things, we're talking through things, we're communicating well, what's the problem? Well, I will tell you early on in my leadership career. That became very apparent to me that people need affirmation, people need praise.

Any of you that have been through next level life or even strap plan, pretty much anything that we teach you have come across this process that we call the Root System.

It's the basis for Next-Level Life. And we have gotten to this place of understanding that, you know, things that are hidden in people's root systems are affecting how they need to be treated, how they need to be talked to, you know, led, directed, guided.

Now, as I say this, you might be somebody who is like, that is just ridiculous. That's just a wuss that needs to be told that they're doing a good job. And guess what?

Your Root System is leading you to think that way. It doesn't mean that you're wrong. It doesn't mean that you're right either. Right? There's plenty of folks that do not need a pat on the back.

They just go do stuff because that's how they're built, all right? They make things happen. I'm somebody who is not looking for anybody to tell me I'm doing a good job.

I'm gonna go and bust it no matter what. It's just who I am. It's how I'm built. It's how I'm.

In fact, I will tell you after years and years in my younger life of things not helping me out, things not getting, guiding me to, you know, better strength or better solutions or affirmation or I just took it upon myself, forget this.

You take care of you now. This, there's good aspects and bad aspects to this, but many of you out there are a lot like me. I decided take care of you.

You go, do you not go be selfish and self centered, just go and bust things because it's never going to happen for you. Nobody's going to take care of you. You go make things happen. And if you do that, then you can be proud of what you've made happen.

And that has been just the mindset that I've had my entire life. Now, do I like it when somebody tells me that I've done a great job? Yeah, I do. It was really hard for decades of my life to receive compliments.

But you know, I've gotten to a place where if I believe somebody is being genuine, then I totally appreciate that. If I believe somebody is trying to, you know, you know, butter me up, then I probably don't really care about that very much.

But if somebody is being genuine, that for me, I try to be very authentic when I am praising somebody, right, and letting them know about something. But even I can struggle.

And even as I say that, that sounds so egotistical, even I, that I don't mean it that way. What I'm saying is the guy who teaches this stuff can even struggle with doing it.

From time to time I have to tell myself, you need to go compliment that person.

You need to say something good about what they just did right there. And we'll dig into more of why this is so important. It's not just to do it. Don't just do it just to do it. Do it with intention. Do it with authenticity.

Do it because in the right situation, it's the right thing to do. If what you're thinking you're hearing is you should always be telling everybody they're doing a good job, that is not what you're getting from me.

I am absolutely, massively against entitlement, enabling. I'm against telling people that they're doing a great job so that you can build up this self esteem of theirs. That's terrible. Guess what?

I'm more concerned with your self worth and self respect. I have because I've taken things on myself and spent decades doing it. I have self respect, I have self worth.

I'm not heavily focused on self esteem. If you followed me for a while, you know that most of what has been added to self esteem is crap and it's not good.

Especially the, hey, even though you're doing something bad, you're still a good person. Listen, you gotta be able to take responsibility. You've got to have self respect, right?

If you're doing junk and somebody's telling you you're a good person, well then how do you reconcile that inside of your brain, right? It just causes you to be enabled to do bad stuff. That is not what we are talking about today.

What we are talking about is legitimate praise. Somebody did something that is praise worthy. Somebody has accomplished something that is praiseworthy.

That's what we're talking about. And too many folks, too many leaders, too many business owners struggle with doing this. So here's the crazy thing.

We need to understand how much our team members need that. But we've really got to dig deep down inside and find out why we struggle in giving it.

Most business owners and a whole heck of a lot of leaders have no problem finding somebody doing something wrong. But they struggle to find people doing something right.

And again, that could be because maybe you don't need that affirmation. Maybe you don't need somebody telling you you're doing a good job, that's great. But not everybody is built like you.

If that is you, if you're somebody like me who has, you know, continuously throughout my life, gone out and made things happen, not needing somebody's affirmation in the process, that doesn't mean that everybody is like me.

In fact, I think we're probably the minority out there, right? A lot of people are built differently. A lot of people have different Root Systems.

So if I will actually care more about the other person or the other people on my team than I will care about myself, then I can find this balance of affirmation and praise and helping them to see that they're doing things right.

I just not too long ago, I mean, like, literally 30 minutes ago or so, our daughter, who is 6 and her nephew, who is 3.

Yes, that tells you how old we are. He's over staying with us, and she is just knocking it out of the park, taking care of him, doing crafts with him.

Hey, let's go out here and play outside. I mean, she is literally.

Now, she is also a 400I on the DISC. She's a very high I. But she is taking care of him. She is showing him, hey, let's do this.

What if we do this over here? How about we go play with this? And she is keeping him busy and he's exploring and he's learning.

And as this is happening, I look at my daughter as I'm, you know, getting ready to come and do this show, and I just looked at her and I said, hey, babe, you're doing a great job.

Great job playing with him, leading him, great job in showing him how to do the crafts.

And my daughter was like, oh. Huh? And I'm like, no, babe, are you listening to what I'm saying? And she's like, yeah, I'm doing a good job. I'm like, you are? And I'm so proud of her. Right?

It's such a good moment that she doesn't need to hear that from me. She didn't just stop and just become super enamored with her daddy because he just said that. She heard it, she received it, she understood.

It was a legitimate thing for me. It was an authentic praise from me. And that's a great thing. If she wasn't doing a good job and I'm trying to get her to do a good job, praising her actually isn't going to help.

What is it going to do? It's going to cause her to go, oh, I really don't have to do anything and I get praise from daddy.

That's pretty fantastic, right? So I'm looking at the thing that she's doing and they're kids playing.

But if I don't stop to recognize the leadership from a six year old, if I don't stop to recognize the influence from the six year old, how in the world am I going to do it with a 26, 36, 56 year old?

How's that going to happen? That's not so these are things we need to understand.

I am not telling you to go create enabled brats. I'm not telling you to go create entitled people.

What I'm saying is if you don't recognize that people feel unnoticed when you don't recognize them, if you don't, if you don't realize that people, their motivation will fade.

You know, they're going to wonder if their work even matters to you.

If you don't realize those things, then what you're going to find is that they will stop doing as much, they won't do as much as they have been doing because it doesn't seem to matter to you.

Or it can send the absolute worst message, which is your work literally doesn't matter. You're focused on the wrong thing. You're not doing what I want you to do. Whatever.

I think we've all probably experienced a time like that where somebody is confused about how they're doing and it's because we didn't communicate well enough.

And then what happens? They stop doing the thing that they're doing or they slow down or, or, or.

So you need to understand that praise isn't, it's not about fluff. Do not. Fluff, do not. There's an old saying that I grew up with. Don't blow sunshine up somebody's skirt.

I know, I don't know where that came from, but I've used it my entire life. Don't, you know, fluff somebody up.

It's ridiculous to do so because what you're doing is you're creating a bad habit. Reinforce what they are doing that is right so they keep doing it.

When somebody is recognized for doing something that is right, then because they are rewarded, they're going to keep doing it. So that's what you should be doing.

Catch people doing things well and then say something about it. Right? Tie praise to, you know, values or goals inside of your business. That's exactly the ownership that I want you to have right there.

What you're doing right there, that's exactly the ownership I'm looking for.

Thank you for doing that. Well done. What am I saying to my daughter this morning? I'm saying, babe, this is the character that we appreciate in this family.

A character of love, a character of concern, a character of leading, a character of taking care of. Right.

So instead of recognizing, oh baby, your, your, your outfit is so cute today, or you know, I don't know, whatever, whatever people, you know, compliment people on.

How about you focus on the, the, the goals, the values and the character that you want. I want a daughter who leads others well, who cares more about other people than she cares about herself. Right.

That's not being selfish and self centered. So in folks, you do not have to wait for big wins. I didn't, this wasn't a big win. This was a great thing for me to catch her doing.

Celebrate the right behaviors right along the way. If you will do that, you will be amazed at how well they will do going forward.

Too Little Accountability Breeds Inconsistency (00:14:38)

Point number two, too little accountability is absolutely going to breed inconsistency.

So if you have team members, you know we're hitting the opposite side of this, right? You have. We, we praise those that are doing well.

But what happens when we have team members who are missing deadlines, who are, who are showing up late, who are not communicating well, who are not following our values, our goals, our core values that we have in our business?

How do we respond? If nobody is saying anything, guess what's going to happen? We already know one part. They're going to keep doing it. But what is going to happen to your culture?

Everybody around that has any, even a modicum of good quality character in them is going to notice that the standards are sliding, at least for the person who is not being held accountable. Folks, this is a problem.

Without accountability, people create their own standards. Let me say that again. Without you holding somebody accountable, they create their own standards.

And I will guarantee you most of the time, if not all the time, they're going to be lower than yours. Hopefully. Hopefully they're never higher than yours.

Otherwise we have to have a different conversation. But when people create their own standards and they're lower than yours, then you are literally allowing it inside of your business.

You're actually encouraging it. That is something you should be very concerned about. If you are sanctioning incompetence in your business, then everybody else is going to see it and they are going to start to respond differently.

You will find that your culture is going to weaken. So avoiding accountability. And by the way, everybody that we work with, everybody, every business, every leader, every Business owner. Everybody struggles with the accountability piece.

This isn't something that, like, you know, you think, oh my gosh, everybody's doing it right and I suck. No, everybody struggles with this.

This is one of the top things that we teach over and over and over again that accountability is your best friend. You have got to put accountability in place.

One of the great reasons is if you don't, you're not protecting your culture. Your culture is going to start to wane.

People are going to start slowing down. People are going to do less. If you're allowing that person over there to get away with stuff, well, then forget it. I don't want to be busting it like crazy.

Unfortunately, you not protecting your culture can be the thing that somebody with pretty decent character actually loses some of that character. What am I saying?

I have seen people who are great workers, phenomenal people do a great job, but when they see that they're not being protected by a leader, that somebody else is allowed to get away with just junk all the time, that they actually will slow down.

Because what they start convincing themselves of is this leader doesn't care. So they obviously don't care about me. And if they don't care about me, they don't care about the amount of effort that I'm putting in.

So forget that. If that person can do that little effort and get a paycheck, I can slow down and get a paycheck, too. So you have got to realize that not holding somebody accountable isn't just affecting the one person.

This is affecting your entire culture, at least the culture around the person.

So whoever's close to that person, whoever sees that person even consider gossip, you know, if you're not holding somebody accountable, then there is a good possibility you're going to have somebody who's going to be gossiping.

No, I don't believe that somebody who's gossiping has high character. But it doesn't take much.

It doesn't take much for somebody who is doing a seemingly good job to all of a sudden, you know, start gossiping about something, which if that does, then obviously that's a conversation you need to have.

The point that I'm making is, is that by you not doing something, you are sending a clear message. I don't care. I don't care what this person is doing. I don't care how they're messing things up. I don't care about you.

I don't care about this culture. Now, you may be thinking, Chris, that's exactly the opposite of how I feel. Great, then do something. But understand your inactivity is literally sending a message that you don't care.

So if that is not the message you want to get to your team, stand up and do something, make something happen. Set clear expectations from the beginning, by the way, but set clear expectations in that moment. But start there.

Whenever you bring a team member on, or whenever you're creating a project, or whenever you're leading somebody towards something, set clear expectations. Don't wait until everything goes wrong before you do that.

Now we'll give you this, this tip. And I've used this for so many years when something does go wrong. So this is a side note here, right?

Taking a little turn when something does go wrong with a team member and you're getting in there and fixing it, and let's say maybe you let that person go or things change. That has to be something you add to your hiring interview process.

It may be something brand new that you've just learned. Well, I didn't even think that this person would do this. I didn't think that this was going to happen.

Add those pieces to your interview process so you can actually put, you know, real life situations in place. Don't just ask the person, are you going to do this thing over here?

Don't ask them yes or no questions, but create messaging in a question about if this thing was going on or tell me about this situation or how would you handle this situation to see if you're hiring somebody else to fit in that same role to see how they would respond to it.

So that's just a side note. As you see stuff, get jacked up, take notes, you know, make a mental note, do whatever.

But I've always taken that if there was something I didn't think about or didn't realize would happen, that's going into my next interview process because I want to try and interview out every problem I possibly can.

You're, you're not going to be able to, but you can get everything that you can see out.

There's going to be some stuff that just slips by that you're not thinking about. So back to the accountability piece. Make sure that you're doing regular check ins. Way too many people don't do this.

Way too many people don't follow up, follow through. Are you spending time with your team member?

Are you going through what they're doing well, what they're not doing well? Are you, are you talking to them about their, hopefully you've done KRAs?

Are you talking to them about, you know, how well, they're fulfilling those. Make sure that you're spending time with regular check ins to help them see what success looks like.

Because all too often you might have somebody who's not clear on what success looks like and you see them as lazy or a bad team member and come to find out they were a great team member.

You just didn't do a good job communicating. So when things fall short, make sure that you're having the conversations.

Make sure that you're doing it. Kindly make sure that you're doing it with clarity and for the love, do it quickly. Get it over with quickly.

Too Little Delegation Leaves You Overwhelmed and Your Team Underdeveloped (00:22:26)

Now point number three, too little delegation leaves you overwhelmed and your team underdeveloped.

So if you're still handling tasks that you should have let go months ago or years ago, or if you find that you tell yourself, well, it's just faster if I do it myself, right, I'll do it better than somebody else.

I don't have time to any of those things. What you're going to discover, hopefully you'll discover this, is that your team is being underutilized because you're holding onto everything.

You're holding onto the things that you could be passing off to somebody else and training them up. Oh, Chris, I don't have time for that. You have a lot more time than you think you do because you're doing so much junk that you shouldn't be doing.

So many tasks and things that you shouldn't be doing that if you would just spend time properly delegating those things then you can actually get time freed up.

You can spend more time with your family, you can spend more time enjoying life. There's a whole lot of things you could do if you would just trust me in this area.

If you will free up some tasks that you should shouldn't be doing and get it to somebody else, then you will be amazed at what it does for you.

Now if you are stuck in the weeds, and by that I mean you're, you know, in the, what we call the Leadership Crazy Cycle, you're stuck in overwhelm.

You don't know everything you did today because you did so many things and it just seems like a whirlwind, then your team probably is not growing.

I'm going to say if they are growing, it is definitely not by you because you're too stuck in what you're doing. You're not paying attention, you're not leading, you're---

I mean if you actually calculated the amount of time that you do legitimate leading, not just telling somebody what to do, not just answering questions for somebody, but actually leading somebody to success.

I bet you will find it is an incredibly small amount of time every single week. What you've got to understand is delegation isn't about you dumping tasks or anybody on your team dumping tasks.

It's about developing team members, it's about developing people.

So the sooner you understand this and the sooner you start doing this, not only are you going to free yourself up, and I'm going to talk about that a little bit more in a minute, but you're going to start developing people to be better.

What we talk through in Killing the Leadership Crazy Cycle is when you properly delegate, you might also be taking the person you're delegating to and delegating from their list properly to somebody else.

So this is a fantastic process of not just training up one person, you might be training up multiple people and making them better for the love.

Is that not what you want on your team? Do you not want people that are growing? Of course you do. Oh, I don't have the time for that. Oh, it's just faster if I do it. Oh, I'm going to do it better myself.

I'm just going to take it back anyways. All of those things are not, not proper delegation. All of those comments come from terrible delegation. The way that people are trained to delegate.

You've probably been trained by somebody in your past to give something to somebody and ask, is that done yet? Did you get that done yet? Are you done with that yet? No. Okay, let me just take it back.

That's probably how you were trained. So you do the same thing. That is not proper delegation. We have to set people up for success.

We go into this heavily into Killing the Leadership Crazy Cycle. You have to set people up for success. You have to make sure that they have the capacity to do so.

The time, the intelligence, the, the ability, the tools. You have to make sure that they can delegate properly, stuff on, on their plate.

If they have too much, there's so much that goes into it, right? So you have to make sure you don't just hand something off.

You follow through, you follow up, you ask questions, you don't hover, but you get in there and you make sure they're doing the right thing.

The last thing you do is leave them to their own understanding of what they're supposed to be doing.

Set them up for success, teach them what success looks like, equip them with clear outcomes, make sure they have the resources necessary, and then you will be amazed at how much you're going to grow your team members.

A Lack of Praise + Accountability = Culture Drift (00:26:54)

Number four. This is combining one and two. A lack of praise and accountability will equal culture drift. So when praise is absent and accountability is spotty, then your team starts to drift toward mediocrity.

So we're now looking at, obviously you. You've picked this up. The combination of making sure that you have both of these things in place. People are getting praised, people are getting held accountable.

When those things are absent, when both of those are absent, it's one thing to not have praise. You're gonna have, you know, a team member drift. It's one thing to not have accountability.

You're gonna have, you know, your culture is gonna drift when you combine those two, when both of those are absent, then you will find that you will have not only mediocrity, but you will have confusion and you will have disengagement.

So if you are not intentional about doing both of those, and I'm going to hit delegation again here in just a second, so I know it sounds like I'm just repeating myself, but I'm trying to give you this from a different angle.

If you're not intentional, then you have to understand how your culture is not going to rise to the occasion. You cannot expect a team that is feeling unheard, unseen, unmotivated.

You cannot expect a culture that feels unprotected, that feels like nobody cares, leadership doesn't care. You can't expect all of those things to cause a culture to rise.

Your culture will settle for good or good enough every single. They might even go that far. But do you want good enough? I don't. Right?

So once again, when it comes to your culture drifting, make sure that you are doing both consistently so that your culture will stabilize.

I can tell you you're probably able to see this very quickly if both of those are missing. It's one thing to see one missing, right? Everybody sees the lack of accountability.

They just don't know what to do with it, Right? They're not following somebody who's teaching them how to do accountability, right? But when you have both of those missing, you're probably seeing a pretty dramatic change in your culture.

Delegation Is the Fastest Way to Multiply Your Leadership (00:29:17)

Now, key point number five, back to delegation. After you've delegated to somebody properly, what you will discover is that delegation is one of the fastest ways to multiply your leadership.

So if you just think about, I've had, gosh, I don't know how many leaders that have done such a fabulous job of delegating something, properly, doing a good job, handing something off and the person who is running with it, like, I don't know, take weekly reporting from your team.

Let's say that you've got somebody, that you've been handling all of that and you've passed that off to a team member and they own it.

Now that has just freed up not only your time in that area, but it has also allowed leadership to grow. It's allowed a person to grow in a leadership area.

If you've done a great job teaching them how to handle it, how to respond, how to read them, how to see what's between the lines to make sure that it's actually happening.

If you've done all of that and somebody owns that now, then that person is growing in their own leadership. You've just led them, you've guided them, you've directed them, and now they're running with it.

If they're doing a great job, that's the follow through, follow up part. Then you've just grown not only their leadership, but your leadership capacity because now you can move on to things that are way more important.

Right? So I'm not saying that that's not important. What I'm saying is, is that you're needed for bigger things.

So many leaders think that if they delegate something, they won't be needed, that what they're doing right now is their identity. And I'm telling you it's not.

I learned this in my early 20s, that if I'm going to be better, if I'm going to grow, if I'm going to, you know, back in those days, it was the, the concept of climbing a corporate ladder.

If I'm--- If those things are going to happen for me, which I could give a rat's patootie about. Climbing a corporate ladder.

Now if I'm going to grow me though, I have to grow somebody else in the areas that I'm already solid in, that I'm already doing really well, and hand things off so I can move on the things that are more important.

So here's what I want you to think about. Every task that you delegate effectively, it frees you to lead more strategically. It empowers you to help your team to grow.

It empowers your team to grow, just by default, the fact that you delegated something properly.

Action Steps (00:31:56)

So here's the action steps I want you to take this week.

I want you to praise somebody intentionally, today, intentionally, authentically, for the right reasons. Find somebody doing something right. Be specific.

Connect it to values or character or goals. Be authentic about it. No enabling. No one Making anybody entitled in something right. Find something that somebody's doing right and intentionally praise them.

Number two, review your current tasks. What are you still doing that you could or should do? Delegate. Important thing to look through those things.

What are the things that you're doing that you know we're paying you too much money for you to be doing this right?

And by we, I mean you or the business that you can actually hand this off to somebody else and be focused on more important things.

Number three, have one accountability conversation that you've been avoiding. You probably, you probably have one that's coming to your mind right now. Do it with clarity, do it with grace, but do it. Make it happen.

Number four, ask your team, hey, is there anything I could hand off to you, maybe entrust you with that I'm still holding on to?

Is there anything that you see that you are like, man, I would love to take that. I can handle that.

Now understand, if you're talking to somebody who really, really wants your approval, then there's going to be an answer of yes. If they don't have the capacity, they're going to say yes anyways.

All right, all of you, High Is out there. Don't say yes to stuff that you don't have the capacity to take on.

Now, it doesn't mean that you can't say yes. If I can delegate this thing off of my plate, you know, I would love to take this off of your plate, leader. Can I delegate something off of mine?

So just be, you know, make sure that if you're the person who's asking for the delegation, you know, to be delegated to the delegatee that you're not overwhelming yourself.

Because what you think is going to impress your leader is actually going to cause them to be really upset in the future when, you know, all the balls in the air start dropping, right?

So make sure that you're setting yourself up for success, Leader. Make sure that you're not allowing yourself to delegate something to somebody that they don't have the capacity to do.

Number five, write down your praise slash accountability rhythm, if you will. Make sure that you're building consistency into your culture.

How often can I go find somebody doing something right and compliment them on it? It doesn't mean go do it 27 times a day.

Then it won't be authentic, Right? So make sure that you're looking at at least some level of rhythm that you can go and do that.

Additional Resources (00:34:50)

Now some additional resources for you. Episodes the three episodes before this:

641 | The Role of Coaching in Leadership: Growing Teams Through Mentorship

642 | Too Little Leadership—Communication, Problem-Solving, and Guidance

643 | Too Much Leadership—Communication, Problem-Solving, and Guidance

So, all good episodes.

This is the fourth on that series. So if you have not checked out parts one, two, and three, make sure that you do that.

Conclusion (00:35:16)

Now, leading too little in these areas might feel easier in the short term, but I will tell you that it's always going to lead to a heavier load on you. It's always going to be tougher on you. You will. If you haven't noticed that, you will notice that the sooner you.

And the other thing is, you might just actually, you've never delegated, so you actually don't realize how much of a heavier load you have. But the sooner you learn how to delegate properly as we talk about, the easier and the lighter your load will be.

That allows you to focus on more important things. So recognize that your team needs your voice. They need your encouragement. They need. They need your expectations clearly.

Set those clearly. And they need opportunities to grow. Now, next week, we're going to look at the flip side. What happens when you go too far in these areas, These same areas.

And how praise, accountability and delegation can actually backfire when it is overdone. Well, folks, that is all the time that we have for today. I hope this has helped you.

I hope this has blessed you. As always, take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life, and join us on the next episode.