664 | Your Team Feels Your Stress (Even When You Don’t Say a Word)

If you're stressed, your team knows it. Whether you say a word or not. The pressure you carry becomes the culture they live in. But the good news is you can fix that starting today. 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're talking about your pace as a leader. And if your pace as a leader feels frantic, then your team is likely exhausted, trying to keep up or tiptoeing to avoid your tension.

And I know that as I open up with that, you might be going, God, that can't be true. Well, just stick with me through this, and you'll kind of see that most likely is.

Now, it doesn't mean that a hundred percent of people are, but probably a good percentage are. So in today's episode, we're digging into how your stress doesn't stay contained. It spreads around, right?

It spreads throughout the rest of the team. And we're giving you practical steps to slow the spread and to reset your team's culture through your leadership presence. Now, I, I can tell you I have experienced this a thousand times in the past a specific time.

You know, you've probably heard me talk about it. You. I had a, a leader decades ago that was just one of those ones that would just run up into your office and, you know, be yelling, hey, how come you did this thing over here?

And, you know, it happened so many times. And I, I, I was young, and I found myself trying to defend myself in the beginning of, like, I don't even know what you're talking about.

And then I finally got to a point where I just started saying, do you want to ask any questions other than that, you know, other than telling me that I did something wrong, like, what are you talking about?

I'm like, I didn't even have anything to do with that. I don't even know what you're talking about. That's not me. You've got the wrong person. And then they just storm off.

And I just remember every time I would be around that leader, there was a level of stress that was just carried because you just knew at any moment, this was the kind of leader that could just blow up.

Not gain perspective, not ask questions, not do anything that a great leader would do in the moment. And that carries over into the team, whether the leader cares about it or not.

That affects the way that your team operates.

I Remember a time where my wife one time I was stressed out about something and she started responding in a stressed out way and I'm like, babe, are you okay?

And she's like, well, yeah, but you're stressed out. I'm like, well, yeah, but why is that a problem? She goes, because you're never stressed out. And I go, what are you talking about?

I stress all the time. She goes, well, you never show it. And it helped me to understand something that I internalize a lot. I deal with my own stress on the inside.

It doesn't show a lot on the outside. But the time that it was showing it created a level of stress for her.

And that is something that we're going to talk about today when it comes to your team, that your stress levels, your however it's coming from you now again, I guess apparently I hide that pretty well or I just work through it, I just process through it and deal with it.

I need to ask her. But what happens with most people is they wear it. They wear it on their face, they wear it in their posture, they wear it in the way that they ask questions or talk to people during staff meetings or one on ones.

All of that comes out and when that happens, it affects your team. So what we're diving in today is kind of a roadmap of today's episode is one how internal stress creates an external ripple.

Also, why unspoken pressure affects productivity and morale. Some simple shifts to lead from peace, not panic and how to re establish a calm, focused team culture. So let's get in the, let's get in the meat of this.

Your Energy Sets the Emotional Temperature (00:04:14)

The first thing we want to focus on is that your energy. I need you to hear this. You need you to hear this. Your team needs you to hear this. Your energy sets the emotional temperature.

Now if you've been with me for a really long time, you might have heard me talking about some Next-Level Life aspects or you know, how people read each other.

And one of the things that is an important thing especially for fathers to understand is if you have a daughter that she will tend to take your temperature 4,000 times a day.

I mean it is incredible the number of times that your daughter is looking at you to see are you happy, are you sad, are you upset, is it her fault?

There's so many things that she's doing to see, you know, how you are responding, what's going on and how does that affect her, does it come from her, you know, all that stuff.

So this is kind of how invisible influence that you carry can enter into every room. So just transfer that to your team. It's kind of the same thing. Many people are looking to you as the leader, as that authority.

They're looking to you to find out, how are you doing? How are you feeling today? Are you okay? Are you upset? Are you happy? Are you stressed out? And if you are, how is that going to affect them?

Like, if you're stressed out and you tend to respond short or rude or whatever, when you're stressed, then your team already knows it. They're already aware of it. They're expecting it to happen, unfortunately.

And if they will take your temperature, this is kind of a, you know, it's a safety mechanism for them. It's a way that they can protect themselves.

If they can take your temperature and see how you're doing and it aligns with something that they've experienced in the past, then it tells them what they can expect.

And if it is something that is unfortunately not pleasant for them, then they will tend to respond in kind to that.

Now, some will respond by protection, Some will respond by setting themselves up for safety. Others will respond in kind. They will do the same thing.

So if you're stressed out, they're stressed out. If you're happy, they're happy. If you're busting your butt, they're busting your butt. If you're not, they're probably not as well. This is just human nature.

So it's important as a leader to understand that your team scans your emotions, your emotional state before they hear your words.

They're looking to see is there anything they can take? And it, it's subconscious. It's not like they're literally going, oh, I need to look at him and see.

Or look at her and see how they're doing today there. It's something that they've learned. It's a safety mechanism that, that lives inside of them. And whatever your energy is, it's communicating to them that this is how it's going to affect them.

So the great thing is that calm leaders create calm teams. Unfortunately, frantic leaders create chaos. You've probably experienced it, maybe you've added to that some yourself.

But. But if you've ever noticed it and you've noticed the chaos that comes from a frantic leader, for somebody like me, you know, I'm an 88 S. I'm a 67 I. That's the last thing I want. I'm an incredibly high Altruist. The last thing I want is chaos.

I cannot stand chaos. So for me, and maybe that's why I don't show a lot of stress externally because I don't want to bring chaos either.

So if you enjoy chaos, then you just go ahead and turn off the episode. Right now, you're probably good to go. But I don't think that's who you are if you're listening to this show. Right. You're probably somebody who hates chaos as well.

So things to understand is, we're starting with you. Are you contributing to it? And do you know or realize that your emotional presence is way more powerful than your words?

So what I want you to do is to not lead with tension, but lead with intention. See what I did there? Tension, intention. Okay, so be intentional about how you lead. I'm not asking you to be somebody or not.

I'm not asking you to shove all of your feelings and emotions down inside and you know. But understand that your leadership of it, if you are wearing that on your sleeve, if you are acting out with that, then you're driving your culture a specific way.

Do you have to... "Oh, my gosh, Chris, I'm not being true to my feelings. I've got these feelings that I need to. You know, everybody on the planet needs to understand."

No, they do not. And no, you do not. I know that that is a very common and popular thing, is that your feelings are real and you can't stop. Yes, you can. You absolutely can.

I can't tell you how many times a day I do it myself, especially when I walk myself through the ridiculousness of a response that I might be having at the time.

If I respond with bad expectations of something I'll never forget, I had a client that came through Next-Level Life one time, that every time he pumped gas, he built up inside.

So you have the amygdala inside of your Limbic System in your brain. That sets response and sets expectations and I believe, sets the level of response as well.

All right, this is also where your fight or flight is as well. But whenever he was pumping gas, he knew that he needed a receipt. And he was always building himself up for that machine not to spit out a receipt.

And if it did not spit out a receipt, he was pissed. He was just upset. And the funny thing is, I asked the question. I'm like, how long did it last? He's like, oh, about 20 minutes.

I'm like, oh, that's exactly how long it takes for your amygdala to reset. 20 minutes. So, folks, I've had times where I might have something ridiculous going on, and I respond a bad way.

Why did this happen? Oh, that was unnecessary. Oh, great. You know, something's going on or I need to be prepared for whatever. And then all of a sudden I'm like, knock it off.

That is ridiculous. It's a situation. It happened. Solve the problem and move on. Get over yourself. And I don't sit there and live in those emotions. Right?

So as a leader, please rise to the ability of recognizing when emotional responses are ridiculous and not.

They don't need to be lived out. Get there, figure that out, understand that, and then make a plan, do something about it. How do you get over yourself?

How do you change the way that you're responding? How do you set something positive instead? Right? Like, okay, I. You know what? This doesn't--

I don't need to be upset about this. I don't need to walk in this negatively. I can actually change and have a happy tone.

Can you expect that of everybody else? Nope. Not unless they're doing the same exact thing.

So maybe you can help lead people and guide people, but at least set your expectations correctly on what you can do and what you can't do.

The Pace You Set Becomes Their Standard (00:11:51)

Second thing, and this is a. Got everything on here. You just gotta know this is another must. You have to understand that your pace, the pace you set becomes their standard.

The pace that you set becomes your team's standard. So let's kind of talk about how your pace becomes your team's culture, because that's exactly what happens.

So if you've ever, I don't know, sprinted from task to task, if you've ever been, like, burning through your day without breaks, I know I have done that most of my life. I'm not the--

Listen, there's all different types of people, so please don't be offended by this, but I'm not somebody who has to take regular breaks.

I have to stop after this amount of time, take a break, simmer down, then get back to doing what I'm doing, and then take another breath. That's just not me.

I usually run, run, run, run, run. Because I got stuff to do. And at this age, in my life, and for quite a long time, I have actually said that I only work so much in a day. I have my family.

I've got things that are important outside of just work. Right? Work is not my identity. It's what I do. It's not who I am. Right. It's one of the things that I do. It's one of the pieces of me.

And so I've said, does that mean that that always sticks? No, there's plenty of times that we've, we work late hours on events, all kinds of stuff. But I try to set a pace that is not me running like crazy forever.

I do stop and take a lunch and try and eat and take care of my body and try and sit down for a few minutes. I try to make sure that, you know, I am stopping at a good time in the day, but that's not the way it always was for me.

And that's probably because of people that I worked with and worked for in my past. Now I have always had a phenomenal work ethic.

That's just something that I have. But I've also realized that, you know, there's a lot of things I can get done done and accomplish if my pace increases. I've, I guess I've just always been that way ever since I was young.

Once I got into the work environment, I just had that run, run, run pace just like other people that I had experienced as well.

So things you need to understand is that if you're always, always on, always running from task to task, always burning through your day without stopping or sitting down and taking a know a decent lunch where you can just stop and rest for a bit...

then odds are your team feels pressure to hustle and to, you know, burn through their day like crazy.

There's a really good possibility now not everybody's going to be there, but a good percentage will. And I want to talk about, you know, one of the things that I had to learn years ago, decades ago, that I had to change.

And I was somebody who would send, you know, an email at nighttime. I'm like, my team is done. They're not checking their emails. And I would send an email and then I'd have somebody respond within like five minutes.

And I'm like, oh, what are you doing? And they're like, well, you're sending email. So I'm just responding to it. And then I had to realize that my team was watching to see if I was working and then if I was working, they felt like they had to be working.

And that didn't sit well with me. Right. It was one thing for me. I'm like, hey, you know, I don't have anything else going on right now.

It's okay for me to do a little work and, you know, get something done. And I didn't like it when I saw that they were responding in kind.

So I realized I had to change the way that I do stuff like something that I will do now.

I greatly appreciate the send later text feature or the send later email feature so that I can send things at a different time and not have people feel like they have to respond right away.

Right. It doesn't mean that I'm doing that a lot. In fact, I'm usually done. Like I say, I usually get done at the end of my day. And I transition.

I've been doing this for many, many years where I transition away from work and focus on my family time, because that is more important to me. It's super important. And I think everybody should do this. But every now and then I'll have something.

I'm like, oh, I forgot that piece. Now, if you are a client and you've been through Killing the Leadership Crazy Cycle, then you understand our process of closing out your day that removes 99% of this.

You know, the problem of having to do emails, phone calls, texts, all that kind of stuff, you know, work at nighttime. We have a process that is killer at solving that. So if you haven't been through that, you need to get through that.

You need to experience that so that you're not sending stuff and doing stuff and, you know, pulling away from time, from your family.

So things you have to understand is that when you rush, you unintentionally teach your team that rest and boundaries are not necessary or, you know, correct.

Maybe you teach them that their weakness or, you know, whatever it is that the thing that they're picking up from you, maybe they're receiving that you're, you know, I'm weak if I have to slow down because, man, my leader runs like crazy.

Well, I can't be weak. I've got to be like my leader. You know, this is who I'm trying to emulate. So slowing down with purpose gives your team permission to work smarter, not just harder.

So one of the things that I really love, when the team is out on The Ridge and we can have a team lunch and spend time together, I love to do that.

I love to stop at a point and just have the team sit down together and enjoy each other's company, enjoy a meal. That's very biblical, by the way.

Enjoy each other's company. And then we get back to work and then we bust it. And then when the day is done, we go home, which I am home.

So it's important for you to realize that if you will model that stop. And I, geez, I was a mid-90s. I was running logistics at this company, and I had a leader, and I was, what, 24 years old, maybe 25 years old, maybe and 24.

Yeah. And I had this leader who would come by my desk and he would say, hey, go eat lunch. And I'm like, I'm just gonna eat lunch here at my desk.

He's like, no, leave. Get out of here. I'm like, I can't, man. I got so many things going on. I've got to get, you know, all this stuff has got to happen. He's like, it's all going to be here when you get back.

And I didn't take him seriously at first. I kept doing my work. And then one day and he kept coming by and he'd say, go get the heck out of here.

And one day he's like, I'm gonna shut your whole system down if you don't get up and go, I'm all right, I gotta go, I gotta go. And I went and just took time. Took time to just have lunch, to settle down, to chill.

And, man, the rest of my day was so much better. So since the mid-90s, I've been somebody who recognizes the need to stop in the middle of my day.

Try not to go all day long without resting and relaxing, but to stop and have a good meal, refuel myself physically and then refuel myself mentally.

Let the brain stop sizzling for a while and focus on, you know, nothing greatly important for a period of time, and then jump back in and get stuff done.

And I can tell you, I believe I accomplish a heck of a lot more by doing that. So you need to understand your team's going to mirror your speed.

So choose a sustainable rhythm. If in your mind it's like, no, I want my people to run like crazy and never take a lunch break and all that, then what you're going to do is you're going to run them in the ground.

You're going to have people that become stressed. You're going to have people that are making mistakes.

You're going to have people that have to triple check their work, or you're going to have to triple check their work.

And eventually they're going to want to go somewhere where they can work. For a leader who doesn't model that, you have to run that hard.

Meetings Reveal the Mood You Create (00:20:35)

Number three meetings reveal the mood that you create.

So let's look at one of the most revealing moments of leadership. Your team meetings. If you're leading from stress, then chances are your meetings feel very rigid.

Maybe they feel too fast paced. Whatever it is, people talk less, they take less risks, they leave with more questions than answers whenever they're in a meeting.

Where they feel like speaking up is going to be a problem or taking a risk is going to probably get them, you know, get their heads lopped off.

Whatever it is, the tone that you bring sets the stage for creativity or it sets the stage for fear.

You are either stepping into a room and allowing people to be relaxed and creative and be risk takers and enjoy the, the meeting that they're in.

Or you might be stepping into the room and creating this fear of just stay quiet and hope you don't get called on, don't say anything, don't offer too much, don't take any risks and hope that you don't get called on.

That is a terrible place to be. And I can tell you I have been in those shoes in the past. You know, sitting in a meeting with somebody who is, you just don't want to say anything.

You want to remain quiet because, you know, if you give something up, they're not going to treat you with dignity and they're probably going to, you know, drop a hammer on you for no good reason.

Well, why speak up then? So as a leader, when I approach my team meetings and I'm going to actually talk about one here in just a minute that we had to bring some awareness out on, I'll get to that in just a second.

But. But I don't lead my meetings from stress. I don't lead them from fear.

Even if I have to talk about something, if I'm talking with my upper leadership level about something that is, you know, stressful or something that we have to focus on or a concern that we have, I'm very clear about it.

I will explain it out so that they understand, so that they're on the same page. So they're not hearing Chris is stressed out, Chris is struggling.

And you just need to recognize that and you should be struggling yourself. I become very clear. I overshare.

I will give information to say, hey, this is where this situation is, this is what we're doing about it, you know, or hey, we need to work on this and get this solved or whatever it is.

I bring clarity to the situation so that my team doesn't reflect back the same stress that I have so that I don't put my team in a position where they feel like they now get locked up because they have stress and fear on the inside about what's going to happen.

Instead, I run it from a calm aspect. I run it from a all is good aspect. I don't hide things that the team needs to hear.

That's Ridiculous. I help them to see what's important. I keep aside the things that aren't important and then, you know, I really judge the information I share by which group it is. Right.

Obviously my upper level leadership team is going to hear the higher level things, but I'm not going to bring those things to the front lines. It's just ridiculous. So start your team meetings with calm, with curiosity, with clarity.

And if you do those things, then your team is going to reflect it back to you. It is powerful to see.

It is great to see that your team can get up, leave the room, focus on their day, knock things out, and they aren't walking out of a meeting, being stressed out and wondering, oh my gosh, is the ship sinking and I need to jump off?

So recognize that meetings reflect leadership, and when you get that, lead them with peace and lead them with presence.

You Can’t Hide What You Haven’t Healed (00:24:44)

Number four, you can't hide what you haven't healed. Finally, let's talk about the root why this stress shows up in the first place.

So if you're carrying unspoken anxiety about growth, about money, about mistakes that you've made, then I can promise you it is probably--

Unless you've done a lot of work and are able to deal with that stuff and not carry it around, then chances are it's leaking through your tone, through tension, through silence that looks like you're withholding.

All of those things are probably coming out. The truth is, internal stress always finds a way out, even if you never mention it.

Now, self awareness and processing your own pressure is the first step to leading in peace. And that's where we need to get to now. I will tell you, I had a meeting. This is what I was talking about a few minutes ago, a marketing meeting.

Well, we always have this marketing meeting, but back in the day, we had a team member or two that I realized in the meeting. I kept seeing fear, concern.

I kept seeing these responses that were blowing me away because it didn't make any sense. And so finally I stopped and I had to ask one of the team members, hey, what did you just receive? And she goes, I feel like you just put 100 things on me.

And I went, whoa. Oh. Oh, my gosh. Okay, stop. All right. And I processed through very quickly.

The way that I and Joel, our president of the company, were approaching the marketing meeting is that we had a switch that got flipped.

So through all of our other meetings were us where people, people were talking. Everything is great. But we would get into this marketing meeting. And for those of you that have been in good quality Marketing meanings.

There's a ton of stuff to cover. And both of us subconsciously would flip a switch, and we would become super logical.

We would just ask questions now, why is this happening? What did you guys do about this now? Have you tracked this? What's the metrics on this here? What are we seeing right now?

And everything became perspective gathering. But, like, with no personality, like, no people personality, it wasn't mean, rude, stressed out, fearful, none of that.

But it came across to some of the team members as though maybe they were doing something wrong. Maybe there was judgment. Maybe there was whatever it was.

So the moment I asked the question and got that response of going, this is how you receive. You're stressed out, freaked out, thinking that I just dumped 100 things on your plate.

And yet what we're talking through is options, brainstorming. What could this look like?

What about this over here? The moment I realized that, I realized I had to stop completely and first process through what was going on. Why was she receiving it this way? How was I coming across? How was Joel coming across?

And as I processed through that, I realized Joel and I flip a switch. We'd never thought about that before. We'd never talked about that before. It just happens, and then it can come across as judgment.

You're doing something wrong. I'm throwing all this stuff on. Whatever it was that allowed us to make a change in the meeting, we didn't change how we asked questions.

We just made sure everybody in the room understood. And whenever we had somebody new show up, we explained the entire thing.

Hey, you've been experiencing us in these meetings over here. This one, we really get, you know, down and dirty in the details and the information so that we don't spend two hours in here on this meeting.

We want to get the information and move on. So you're going to see us flip a switch, and we're going to become very, very logical on this process of gaining perspective and everything.

So just want you to know that after we did that, it changed that meeting. It allowed everybody to calm down. There was only a few people in the meeting in the first place, but it allowed everybody to see, oh, they flipped their switch.

They're getting very logical and, you know, focusing on details and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Because Joel and I don't live in details. Right.

The people on that team did, but we don't. Right? So that allowed us when. When I have to do something super detailed, I need serious focus.

It's funny to me how many times people have talked to me like, you know, if I'm focused on finances or something and somebody come up and go, oh, what happened?

Like, what do you mean, what happened? Like, well, you. Man, something must have happened. You're just super serious. Well, I'm focusing on the finances.

I'm, I'm doing numbers. Oh, okay. Are the numbers bad? No, the numbers aren't bad at all. What's going on? I've come to realize that because I don't live in C, you know, in the High C of the DISC personality profile, I don't live there.

I'm at best of 40, and that's over 30 years. It's gone up like a point a year over 30 years. Because I don't live there. When I do have to be detailed, I have to be super focused, hyper focused.

And so it comes across to other people. Let me rephrase that. They read it as being a problem, something's wrong, there's an issue. So if you recognize this and you understand what's going on.

Are you bringing stress into a room? Are you struggling? Are you, you know, the way your tone is, the way there's tension, or are you being.

Does it look like you're holding back relationship by being silent? Any of those things that you're bringing into the room?

Even if, like our case, there's no intention of anything bad, there's no stress, there's no struggle.

But the way we approached it was different than people experienced then you need to recognize that and you need to shift and bring some calmness.

Now, you can't fake calm, so you're going to have to cultivate it.

It's going to have to be something that you process through and work through things and get yourself in a place that you can have a meeting where people aren't stressed out and then that will de stress you as well.

If it is something like I'm talking about, where you just flip a switch subconsciously, you're not realizing it, then spend time digging into you.

Are you doing something that is affecting other people and you're not aware of it?

Reflection (00:31:33)

Now, you are the cultural thermostat of your business. So if you carry stress, your team absorbs it. But when you lead from peace, you model the calm, you, you bring confidence, you, you help the culture to become what they crave.

If you bring stress and anxiety and chaos and run, run, run, run, run, you're probably going to create the same thing in your team and then wonder why things aren't operating at the absolute best that they possibly can.

Action Items (00:32:05)

So here's some action items I have for you right now that you can do right now.

Audit your daily pace. Identify when you're most rushed, when you're most reactive, when you're not able to be proactive, when you're not able to lead people to success.

Take a hard look at your pace. What does it look like? Also, ask your team privately how your energy impacts the meetings that they're in now.

Ask people who are going to be honest and tell you the truth. Don't look at the folks that are going to, you know, oh no, you're fantastic, you're amazing. Don't.

You're not looking to have that type of response. You want truth, but you also don't want the person who's looking to take you down a few notches, who's just going to overdo it. Right?

Talk to people that you trust that they are going to give you good quality answers.

Also, Clarify and block. 30 minutes daily. 30 minutes for margin and for calm decision making.

Once again, if you have not been through our Killing the Leadership Crazy Cycle, super powerful how we talk about closing out your day.

Next-Level Leadership LIVE Event (00:33:13)

Now, if today's episode hit home, imagine what three focused days of strategy, leadership coaching and peer level collaboration could do for your business at our Next-Level Leadership LIVE Event.

You'll walk away with clarity and a practical plan for 2026 and and the people to help you execute it. So don't wait. Grab your early bird ticket and save $200 at chrislocurto.com/liveevents.

That's chrislocurto.com/liveevents all one word.

Now folks, remember, your team doesn't just follow your instructions, they follow your example. Lead with peace and you'll change everything. Well, that's all the time that we have for today.

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