654 | Before You Plan 2026, Do This First

Most leaders jump into new goals without learning from the past. In this episode, we'll unpack how to reflect as a team, grow together, and stop dragging old leadership patterns into a new year. 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.

600th Next-Level Life (00:00:45)

Before we dive in, I want to share something that is incredibly meaningful to me and our team, and that is this week, we are celebrating our six hundredth Next-Level Life event.

That means 600 leaders, parents, spouses, business owners, even teenagers were courageous enough to take two days, look deeply at their lives, and choose growth. Now, this has been a phenomenal gift to us. I feel nothing but gratitude.

It is. I don't know if I have the words that people trust us, that people have allowed us to be a part of their life and walk with them and help them to process through things that they've experienced in life and.

And their root systems and. And how it's, you know, how things are affecting their lives and decisions that they make and.

And how to make better decisions and how to grow better and how to strengthen marriages and how to, you know, strengthen relationships with your kids and how to have healthy boundaries.

A massive part of what we have done in Next-Level Life is helping people who have not known how to have healthy boundaries and how to, you know, protect themselves, but also how to take responsibility.

I think one of the most powerful things that we have walked through is helping people to take responsibility for their own decision making and the freedom when people do.

When people are able to take responsibility and have healthy boundaries, things change, and it has been powerful.

So if you have ever been a part of it, if you've ever been impacted by somebody who's been through Next-Level Life, we thank you. We praise you for being a part of this process of helping so many people to choose to change their lives.

So thank you. We are so grateful. And yeah, we. We are. We are blessed that God keeps showing up and allowing us to do this, and we are honored that we've been able to walk beside every person who has been a part of this event.

All right, let's jump into today's episode, which isn't just about goal setting. It's about team setting. Before you start planning for 2026, I want to challenge you with something.

Just a simple question. Are you leading with your team or are you just leading your team? Now? It's really easy to fall into the trap of, you know, carrying the vision alone and assigning tasks and running fast, only to realize that no one is truly with you.

It is easy to get here, and it's a burden and it's a struggle, and most of the time it's unnecessary. The truth is that real transformation doesn't happen in isolation.

It's not going to. It can't. It happens when you lead shoulder to shoulder with your team. I mean, that is one of the most powerful things that you can do as a business leader, as a business owner.

And in this episode, it's about making sure you enter the new year aligned, clear, together with your team.

So let's walk through five reflection points to help you lead with your team, not just ahead of them.

1. Wins Mean More When the Team Understands Them (00:04:16)

Okay, so the first thing, the first thing is wins mean way more when the team actually understands them. This is something that we have to understand so many times as a business leaders.

It's interesting we talk about this and, and everything that we do. It is so much easier to find somebody doing something wrong than it is to find somebody doing something right now.

Why is that? Well, there's. There's a thousand reasons why. A lot of it has to do with how we were raised. A lot of it has to do with the leaders that we had in our life.

A lot of it has to do with we recognize that when something's going wrong, we have to fix it. So when we see it, we. We jump on it or we try to, or, you know, we point it out, whatever.

Why do we struggle in finding people doing things right? Why do we struggle in celebrating wins? Why is that something that we have such a hard time with?

Well, maybe it's because they weren't really celebrated with us. Maybe we worked for somebody or many people who never celebrated wins just continued to point out the things that weren't going the right way.

If you ever had a parent who celebrated wins with you, who pointed out when you were doing things correctly and doing things right, then you know how that felt.

If you are a parent who celebrates wins with your kids, then you know when you see their face light up because you told them that they did a good job.

And I'm not talking about, please caveat here. I'm not talking about, hey, they breathed today, so you're complimenting the daylights out of them.

I'm not talking about participating, participation, trophies. I'm not talking about anything like that. I'm talking about complimenting quality, character, doing the right thing, making right choices.

You know, we tell our six year old who's almost seven, you know, good choices get good consequences, bad choices get bad consequences.

There's no problem in giving a bad consequence as long as you're giving lots of good consequences as well. Right?

Pointing out, hey, you did that right, you treated that person well, thinking, thank you for doing that job without being asked all of these things that we know that when we compliment, we help our children see that they're winning.

They, I mean the hugs that I get, the incredibly neck choking hugs that I get from a six year old are fantastic. It's amazing when she knows that she's doing something right and she's getting rewarded for it.

I'm sharing the win, right? Why do we think that when we become adults that doesn't matter to us. Why do we think that when we become adults we don't need to do that?

Unfortunately, it's a mistake to think that way. Unfortunately, I think it's. Now listen, there's plenty of people out there. I was one of those, I didn't need the pat on the back, I was going to bust my butt no matter what.

But I think there's the people like that are more anomalies, right? I think, I think most people really would like that pat on the back. They would really like somebody to come along and say, hey, look, here's how we win.

Here's what we did, here's how we won this, here's how we did this so well. Here's how we affected this client in the right way, here's how we served our team well.

The thing is, is that if you don't have a group full of people that are like, no, I see the win, I'm rocking on, I'm doing it, then guess what, you need to share those wins.

And as long as I've been doing this for decades, those are people who are few and far between, that are self motivated to just rock on.

And I will be honest, there's times I am absolutely blessed by hearing wins, things that we've helped people to do. Right.

I'm just somebody who doesn't walk along expecting it, but I know how it feels when I hear it, when I see there's nothing.

One of my favorite things doing what we do for a living is client testimonials and hearing how, because I mean, that's coming from the heart.

Nobody's going to send a business a, hey, you guys are amazing. Just to send it right. It's coming from the heart. Hey, you helped me here. You helped me in parenting my kids.

You helped me with my relationship with my spouse. You helped me to see things differently or put in healthy boundaries. Those are phenomenal wins. And we are a company who shares that with our team because we want our team to understand.

Look at what just happened. Look at what happened here. Look at how this person felt about this event. Look at this response. Do we also share the things that need to be fixed 100%?

Yes, we do. We are a company who knows that we could always get better and we could always fix things. But if that's all you hear, then you miss out on how well you're doing.

And so for us, we are a company who wants to share. We share all the time. Our team just naturally does a great job in sharing wins.

We had a week here recently where all the, all of our leaders were out in different areas with clients, doing events with clients at the same time. And it was just great coming back and going, here was a win here. Here's what happened over at this event.

Here's how phenomenal this was. You know, those are the kind of things that our team needs to know. Why? Because what are they doing all day long?

They are busting their butts to make sure that we are successful. Now, you may have some folks that are, you know, working a job and they're just looking to get a paycheck. If so, then that's another thing that we need to fix.

Right? We need to try and turn that around. And one of those ways may be sharing wins that gets them excited and enthusiastic for what they do every single day.

So if you're, you know, if you're a business leader, business owner, who, you know, saw some great client feedback or you're seeing how your operations are running better...

And, and people are following processes better and, you know, team morale is up and, you know, people are encouraging each other...

Whatever it is, if you see it, but your team doesn't see it, they're not clear on what happened and why it happened, then guess what?

The momentum fades. It becomes just what we do. Just a J O B. Just making it happen every single day. Instead of being something that they get to celebrate, instead of it being something that they get to participate in.

So make sure that you're spending time, reflect together with the team.

You know, what are your top three wins right now?

Or what are your top three wins of the year? You know, we have an end of the year celebration and the team does an incredible job pulling together what our wins for the year were.

So it's not just something that we shared in the moment, but we get to reflect back on the entire year and go look at what we did here, look at how we affected this over here, how many people we touched here.

And we always talk about how many bison ribeyes we cooked for events. That's a fantastic indicator on how many lives that we're changing, Right?

Share them. We have fun stuff that we talk about. We always do. At the end of the year celebration, the team or Katie who is editing this, pulls together bloopers and plays some of Chris's fantastic bloopers. Fun stuff. Celebration wins.

So take a look at what things have happened over your year. Take a look at what wins you've seen. Take a look at what behaviors have changed for the better. Take a look at how we've impacted clients, maybe we've impacted vendors.

That's always a fantastic thing when we can say, man, we've helped our vendor out to do something better or, you know, experience something in a different way.

Whatever it is, share those things. Behaviors, systems, operations, definitely client feedback.

Share those things. Help your team see that they are winning.

2. Own the Misses—As a Team, Not in Silos (00:12:55)

Number two, own the misses as a team, not in silos.

So what am I trying to say? When only the leader reflects on misses, team misses issues, problems, you know, failures, whatever it is, then we are missing on the team having a chance to grow.

So what can happen is we see that there's a problem, we take that responsibility, we solve or we put things in place, but we don't actually spend the time with the team solving, understanding, discussing, walking through what happened.

So let's say, I don't know, you're a leader who is taking on too much. I know that never happens to anybody out there. You know, you're getting. You have this just get it done type of attitude, right?

So your team may not know how limited their role is or how they could have contributed to solving a problem or fixing it. On the front side, if you just take the miss the, you know, let's just say failure, right?

Because it's what it is. It doesn't make a person a failure. It doesn't make a team a failure. But something happened. We messed something up, right?

Something didn't go the way that it was planned to go or should have gone. If you as a leader just take that and solve it and run with it, you are definitely affecting your team's ability to grow.

Now, what I'm not saying is go in there and rip their heads off.

Hey, you screwed something up. You're never going to hear me say that. But if you will walk with your team and help them to see and walk through.

You know, we have a five step process. I say it all the time, what happened? How did it happen? Why did it happen? How do we fix it? How do we make sure it never happens again?

Nothing in that process is about throwing somebody under the bus.

Nothing in that process is about ripping somebody's head off. Every bit of that is understanding, gaining quality perspective.

What happened? How did we get here? How did we fail? How did we miss? And then what do we do about it? And then it's not enough to just stop there.

How do we make sure it doesn't happen again? Why did it happen the first time? How can we keep it from happening a second time?

That is our goal, that's our focus. So when you can look at this as an option to grow your team, then instead of it being a failure, it becomes a growth opportunity.

You've probably heard me say failure is one of the greatest teachers for the person who's ready to accept it. All right? The person who's allowing it to teach them and grow them.

Failure is a phenomenal teacher unless you take everything phenomenally personally and, you know, you become a failure yourself.

Look at what could we do? How could we fix this? How could we change this and move forward? So ask questions like what didn't go well this year, right?

As we're looking towards 2026 and we want to make sure that we're putting the right things in place. Ask your team questions, dig deep, you know, and don't just do this in a brainstorming session. Set them up for success.

Make sure that you get to them ahead of time before you have this discussion so that they can think about it, they can ponder on it, right?

We want them to spend some time going, what did go wrong? What didn't go well? What was difficult? What was a struggle?

What were pain points that we experienced this year? Sit down with them after they've had time to process and then talk through it and make sure that they know ahead of time.

Hey, guys, this is not, this is not a session of oh, gosh, look at how bad we did. This is a process for us to discuss together. Let them know that you want them to be a part of the solution, process to discuss together.

How are we going to fix these things? What does it look like? What can we do? What was painful? How would you like this to go next year?

How can we make these things better? Right? This is about making their life easier. This is about making their role better. This is about making their job better. It is not about throwing people under the bus.

It is not about blame. It's about how to improve. Do that with your team. Now, are you possibly going to get some crazy ideas? Are you possibly going to get some people who don't really do a good job interacting and speaking into this? Of course.

But start the process. What you'll be blown away with is as you continue this over time, you will see people free up. You will see people come up with better ideas. Just get the ball rolling. Yes.

The first time you do this may not be. It may not be a stroke of genius, but I tell you, it will be momentum. It will help people to start speaking in and speaking up.

So make sure that you're solving, you know, how do we fix problems with your team?

3. Check the Leadership Culture—Not Just the To-Do List (00:18:14)

Number three, check the leadership culture, not just the to do list.

So a healthy team culture begins with shared circle star. Highlight the word shared experience, not just executed tasks. Folks, it is not. Listen, you don't just run robots.

You don't have just machines out there. You have humans with emotions. You have humans that want to share the experience of how we've won.

If you want a healthy culture, then make sure that you're not just doing a checklist. Hey, get that done. Get that done, get that done.

You know, you may think that you're empowering your team, but if they feel isolated, if they feel unheard, then guess what? The ideas that they have will stay bottled up.

The risks that they could take, they're probably not going to take. So what am I saying here?

Am I saying you need to put in a counselor's couch in your office and have everybody come in and talk about what they're. No, that's not what I'm saying at all.

Treat your team with dignity. Help them to be a part of, of the culture. Help them to be a part of feeling like the to do list or the checklist is not just what's important around there. Lead them in the process.

Help them to not feel isolated. Help them to share in the experiences. Like I said before, treat them with dignity. The more that you will spend time pulling them out of isolation, listening to them, hearing their ideas.

And I'm not saying you need to spend all day long just going, tell me your ideas. Make it specific. Make it pointed towards something. Ask them for perspective about how they think something should run.

Bring them in on, you know, idea sessions. Right? Treat them with dignity. Help them to feel like what they think matters. Because it does.

And again, you may not be doing this because you've had some times where you got some cruddy ideas, I get that. But they also probably haven't spent a lot of time doing this with a leader.

So it's going to take a while for them to get to their best stuff, to their best ideas.

And it will probably take quite a while before they trust you. Now, maybe they already do.

But for some of you, you probably have some folks that don't know if they can be vulnerable with you yet, if they can share their best ideas, if they can speak into stuff, or if they're just going to be told the moment they throw out an idea, well, that was stupid. Right?

Help them to see no ideas are stupid. Right. The bad thing is, is not talking through things and sharing things. And so make sure that you're putting on your calendar time to listen to your team, to hear from your team.

Here's one of the things that I know for a fact.

You will find morale drop when a team feels like they're not heard, when a leader just doesn't care, when they feel like a leader doesn't care, and if a leader doesn't want to hear what they have to say, then you're going to see morale tank and it's.

It sucks. That's terrible. It's never a healthy thing.

When you see a team feel like a leader really cares, feel like a leader really, you know, wants to hear, doesn't want them to be isolated, wants them to be a part of everything...

Then you will see confidence grow, you will see morale climb, and you will see team members who really start to speak up. Right? They will grow in their ability to speak up.

So ask your team, what did the culture feel, the leadership culture feel like this year? You know, how did we.

How did we do? Were we unifying the team? Were we focusing on ideas? Were we digging in before we made big decisions? Not talking about, you know, what kind of toilet paper or coffee we buy, but big decisions.

Did we bring people in to gain quality perspective? Be somebody who can hear that, right?

And again, you, you might have somebody out there who's going to take some heavy swings just because that's their personality style. Just deal with it, right?

Just take in, you know, listen to the bulk, Find out if there's patterns, if there's things, have we done a good job bringing them in and being apart? If not, what do we need to change?

4. Your Systems Reflect How Much You Trust Ideas from Others (00:22:49)

Number four, your systems reflect how much you trust ideas from others.

So if your systems don't make space for team input, then you're always going to carry the mental load alone. Think about this. I cannot tell you how many leaders have so called planning meetings or brainstorming sessions.

And instead they're really just meetings to update people. They're not really bringing people in to be part of the process. When you do that, what are you putting on you?

So we talked about how important it is to bring the team in because it helps them, their morale, all this stuff.

What happens to you when you're the one who has to shoulder everything? What happens to you when you do not get your team to participate in the process?

Well, Chris, if I do that, then that's taking them away from the things that they need to be focused on. Trust me, if you do it, I'm not saying every second you have to do two, three hours every week.

What I'm saying is bring them in as a part of the planning meetings, as the discussions and get ideas and stuff and their morale will kick in, their energy.

So don't worry about that. What is it doing to you when you have to shoulder everything?

You have to be the one who does your full job, plus comes up with all the ideas, plus comes up with the strategies, plus comes up with how we're going to execute, plus has to take on all the problems and the misses.

All of those things land on you. So question, how great of a leader are you going to be when you're shouldering all of that stuff?

What do you think your team is going to see? That you are the bottleneck, that you're the one holding everybody back, that you aren't wanting them to grow and that everything has to go through you.

So instead, what if you just open the door to your team to be able to speak into what they feel like should change on things like projects, planning meetings, how we handle stuff, how we move forward with, you know, whatever projects we're doing right?

Do we spend the right amount of time on the right areas and are the right people involved? And are we having the right discussions? Take a look at it together, review it together.

You know, we are not creating space just for updates. We're looking to create space for team ideas. What needs to shift in how we meet, how we plan, how we solve problems? What are the things that we need as a team in our systems?

How do we need to adjust our systems so we get from our team the stuff that we need so that you aren't the one shouldering everything? Because at the end of the day you will discover it will wear you down.

I'm telling you. Trust me on this. Over time, it will wear you down if you're the one who's shouldering everything. I have a phenomenal, phenomenal team. It is so nice.

I have to shoulder what I have to shoulder. I have big responsibilities and as the owner and CEO of this company, that I must do to continue to put, you know, money on our table so that I can pay teams and make things happen. Right?

I have plenty of things, but praise God almighty that we have worked together for so long for me not to shoulder the rest of the business because there's no way we would accomplish as much as we do if I had to shoulder everything.

I have a team that focuses on solves, shoulders, creates all kinds of stuff. I was having a great discussion yesterday afternoon on getting ideas from one of our leaders of, hey, I want to make this happen next year.

Hey, I want to do this. Hey, I'm going to put this in motion. I'm going to. And it's just like, fantastic. I love that. That's incredible. We should be able to change a lot of lives with that.

We can touch a lot of folks with that. And it was great that I'm not the one who's shouldering it. Am I giving approval and advice? Barely. Truthfully, at this point, it's just like, no, it's a good idea.

Go ahead and run with that. But, yeah, if needed, absolutely. But they're already there. They're already there and I don't have to shoulder all of that. That's huge.

And for somebody who has had a pretty stressful couple of years dealing with some of the personal stuff that we've had to deal with, you know, family member issues, you know, my mom's Alzheimer's.

I can tell you. It is nice when you have to focus on something that the team is rocking. So do yourself a favor, open up on what it looks like to adjust your systems to get more team involvement to carry load.

5. Decide—Together—What You’re Not Bringing Into 2026 (00:28:13)

Number five. Decide together what you're not bringing into 2026. This will be a freeing and fantastic discussion. Right? You will find that change sticks when the team decides what to leave behind together.

Now, if you are dictating to your team, guys, we're not doing this anymore. Guys, we're changing this. Guys, we're not going to have this problem.

Guys, we're not going to deal with this anymore. It's great that you're saying that, but guess what the team is going to experience.

Well, that's just what Chris said. I don't see anybody changing. So I guess we're just still doing. I guess we didn't leave that behind.

Bring your team in as part of the process to discuss and to leave behind the things that we want to leave behind.

You know, maybe your team has a habit of reacting to fires instead of, you know, working from strategy and being proactive. If you have a team of professional firefighters, we have a problem.

Why are we not solving these things ahead of time before they become fires?

So what do we do about that? How do we solve that? Right? Unless that's called out and named together by the team, it'll show up again January 1 or 2 whenever you start back.

You need to work with the team to recognize things that they hate and then empower them to be a part of the process to leave that stuff behind.

If it is you who has to solve it, if it is you who has to come up with it, if it is you, then when it fails, because it comes back in 2026, you're the one who didn't solve it.

Do you see how that works when you put this on the team? Not as a heavy load, not as a heavy burden. They don't like the problems either.

Get them to be a part of solving what we don't move forward in 2026 with. When you do that, you will be amazed at how much ownership and buy in they will have.

So ask simple questions. Hey, what patterns? What habits, assumptions, things that bring pain, things that, you know, just torpedo your day?

What are the things that we want to leave behind in 2025, and what do we want to replace them with as a unified team?

So if fires, you know, we're professional firefighters right now, how do we solve that? What can we do differently?

Why do those fires keep popping up? What keeps happening? And then how are we going to change that? What are we going to do differently about that?

So when you do that, you'll be blown away at how much ownership your team takes, which is exactly what they need to, to be able to overcome this stuff.

Action Items (00:31:17)

So what are some action steps you can take right now? Block one hour this week for team reflection. Seriously, get it on the calendar.

Use these five points as conversation starters or, or just for evaluation, but for unifying ideas as you prepare for 2026.

And by the way, do this. Get. Get these, these ideas to them ahead of time so that they have time to think, so that they have time to process. Right?

Don't just bring them into that, that session and go, what do you think, guys? And they've not thought through or processed or pondered. You know, they need that time. You do as well. Everybody needs time to think through if we're going to get to good quality stuff.

You need time to think through also.

Additional Resources (00:32:00)

Additional resources go to chrislocurto.com/podcast and listen to or re-listen to if you've already done episodes 433 and 434: How Challenges Promote Growth parts one and two.

So these episodes go even deeper on reflecting with clarity and building a plan that actually works now. Don't start the New year with old patterns. Real leadership growth doesn't start with a better planner or more goals.

It starts with a better lens. The biggest change happens when your team is right beside you.

Next-Level Leadership LIVE Event 2026 (00:32:41)

That's what makes the Next-Level Leadership LIVE Event so powerful. It's not just about learning new leadership principles, it's about experiencing real transformation together.

When you and your team step out of the day to day and work through your leadership patterns side by side, everything changes.

You start seeing your business, your people and even yourself through a better lens.

And that's exactly what this episode is about. So before you start planning for 2026, make sure you're not dragging old patterns into a new year.

If you're ready to reset your strategy, regain your focus and lead with clarity, join us at the Next-Level Leadership LIVE Event.

You're still in time to register now while launch pricing is available. So just go to chrislocurto.com/liveevent one word live event altogether and get your tickets before the prices go up.

Wrap Up (00:33:37)

Well folks, I hope this was very helpful for you today. I know that if you follow this process you will make a different 2026. I know this will help your team.

I know this will remove a lot of load from you that you've been carrying and help your team to grow while you de stress. Take some stuff off your shoulders and it will allow you to lead better.

If you want to lead your team better, you've got to make these types of adjustments so that you are available to lead better. As always, take this information.

Change your leadership, change your business, change your life and join us on the next episode.