671 | 5 Questions That Build a Team That Takes Ownership

If you want your team to take more responsibility, you don't need better people. You need better questions.

Today I'm giving you five questions that will change how your team thinks, acts and leads, starting immediately. That is coming up next.

Welcome to the Chris LoCurto Show, where we discuss leadership and life and discover the 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 discussing some very important questions if you want your team to start leading better.

You know, it is amazing to me how much there is a lot of noise out there on all the things that you need to have this successful business.

You know, many people selling the, the magic pills on more money. More money is not going to solve your problem, I can promise you that.

Ask anybody who's been through StratPlan. It's not the money issue, right? It's not that you need more hustle. That is not the thing that you need more of. It's not that you need more motivation. That's not what you need.

It's even, you know, we're huge process people. It's even not that you need more processes. What you need is leaders who lead. What you need is solid leaders who are taking responsibility, taking ownership, driving things forward.

So today we're going to actually have five questions that helps your team to lead better, right? Helps your team to take ownership. And they're not motivational questions.

These are more culture-shaping type of questions. The more that you do this, the more that you're going to find you are shaping your culture into exactly what you want it to be. That is, if you start using them consistently, right?

It's not something that you do once, but if you do, then you, your team is going to think more on their own.

They're going to think for themselves more, they're going to take more ownership, they're going to come back to you less.

Which is what you want ultimately is you want them to not be coming to you all the time because they know what to do, not because they're trying to take things and run with it and they don't know what the heck they're doing.

That's not we're looking for. What we're looking for is team members that already know the answer before they come to you.

That was one of the greatest things in my early career of leading people, is helping them to think for themselves to the point that they would actually let me know. I'd have--

Many times they'd come to me and they're like, dude, I can't tell you how many times today I started walking towards your office and I already knew the answer.

And I turned around and I went back to my, my desk and I did my thing. That is exactly what you want.

So this thing that we're talking about today are these things, I should say, these questions that we're discussing. This isn't about people change. It's about culture change. It's about a big shift.

It's a shift that most leaders need because where they currently are, so many leaders are accidentally creating dependence on them.

And they do this by giving way too many answers too quickly. Right. And solving too many problems too quickly.

Now, I do have to try to get through something. If this is something you're experiencing, if what you're experiencing is that so much of your answering questions is your identity, then this is going to be a tough episode for you, right?

If you are very glad that your team is coming to you so often so that they can get problems solved, then we have to start realizing how much is that affecting their productivity, your resources, how much stuff is getting done from the team as a whole, and how much it's keeping you from being in a more important position.

Because if you are the one that is solving everything, then I can promise you, you're not actually operating in your best gifts and talents.

I know it may seem like you are, because, man and Chris, I'm being so helpful, I'm able to answer all these questions. Yes, but you are needed at a higher level. And the next higher level you're needed at is training people to be able to answer questions.

Training people to be able to solve problems. That is the very next place where you need to be. And that is not even remotely close to, you know, the levels that you can get to as a great leader.

And I can tell you, because I've been there, this is a shift I made in my mid to late 20s, I think mid-20s, where I was seeing that if I stayed right where I was doing what I was doing, fixing everything, solving everybody's problems, then I couldn't grow any further, and they sure weren't going to grow.

I could see the faces that would come to me with stuff because they knew I would solve it for them, and it was just an easy fix. Just go ask Chris.

He's going to give you the answer. He's got the answer, right. I'm somebody who has a lot of those answers. I had been working on this for a very long time. Even at that point.

And so I discovered that if I'm always the one that people come to, I'm not getting any better, and they're not getting any better.

Right. So that's what we're going to focus on.

So the five questions that change everything.

“What do you think we should do?” (00:05:38)

The first thing I want you to do, the first question I want you to ask.

When somebody comes to you with a problem, an opportunity that needs to be solved, whatever it is, whatever they're bringing to you to get you to answer for them, I want you to start with this. Hey, what do you think we should do?

Now, the first time you ask that, and you've probably done this before, but you've also probably got, oh, I don't know. That's why I came to you.

That's why I came to you to find out what it is that you think we should do. I don't have any answers. I don't know. I can't figure this one out.

Listen to me, listen to me. That is a common response for somebody who doesn't want the responsibility of coming up with an answer.

That's common. You will see that often this is what we have to work through. That's why this is a cultural shift. So we start here, right?

What do you think we should do? And this matters because it forces thinking of the other person.

It forces them to think for themselves before focusing on dependence on you. Right. It actually causes them to start thinking before they get anything from you.

So it starts shifting that dependence immediately. No, it doesn't mean that ultimately you're not going to at some point answer the question. We'll get to that. We don't want you to.

Even if they attempt and they've got a better answer, we don't want you to just answer, well, no, that's not it. Here's the answer that's not we're looking for, Right?

Most team members are coming to you looking for answers for multiple reasons.

One, because they believe you have it, or two, because they don't want to spend time trying to figure it out. Right?

So if you just answer, if you just solve, if you do anything other than putting it back on them and guiding and directing them to get to the answer, then you're holding them back and you're holding your culture back.

Problem solvers are exactly what you want on your team.

You don't want problem reporters. You don't want people who just report problems. You want people who solve problems. As you do this, you create confidence in the decision making.

Now, depending upon the personality styles, many times they're coming to you because they don't want to be the one who makes the decision. Because if they don't make the right decision, then it speaks failure and that's the last thing they want.

The more you help them think for themselves and process through it, the more confidence they will gain. The easier it will be for them to make decisions. See how that works, build their confidence.

Not by telling them they can do it, not by just telling them to have to come up with an answer, but guide and direct and help them to get there. The more that you do that, the more you build their confidence, the less they will come to you for an answer.

It really helps in their decision making process. Also as you do this, another thing it builds is ownership of the outcomes.

So what a lot of people will do, a lot of team members, even leaders, they're not looking for what should the outcome be. That's not even a thought process.

They're just asking what do I do? What do I do? Right now we don't want them to just think about what do I do right now we want them to think well beyond this and go, what's the expected result?

What's the outcome we're looking for? If we can do that, if we can help them to see, don't just solve the thing in front of you, but let's guide ourselves to a much better outcome or let's even figure out what is the outcome that we want.

If you can help them get there, man, their decision making changes considerably because now they're not just processing through how to solve the problem, they're getting themselves to a place of going...

If I do this, this and this, it should turn out like this over here. Well, is that the outcome we want? Yeah, that's the best version. Great. Reverse engineer it. Let's get those steps, let's knock this thing out.

So if this is the first question you focus on, what do you think we should do? Just start there. Then over time people are going to stop coming to you empty handed.

They will come to you. Like for my team, I always said bring me, you know, three answers. When you bring a problem, bring three solutions to that problem.

And even if they just came with one, here's the only thing I could come up with I could at least see were they spending time thinking, were they spending time processing, were they spending time trying to solve this? And if so, I can continue to guide them from there.

But if what they did was come to me with a, hey, I don't have an answer for this. Then I would send them back to the desk, hey, go take 20 more minutes, go spend some more time, and then come back to me.

Well, but what if it had to be solved right away? If it was an emergency, then I would help them to get to a solution.

But here's what I have discovered in my decades of leading people. Yes, I am that old. Usually they can come up with an answer. I mean, almost every single time they can come up with some version of an answer.

If you give them time. Right? If. But again, if it's an urgent thing, it's gotta be handled in the next five minutes. Well, I'm probably still gonna ask them what we should do.

And then I'm gonna watch the clock. And then if we've gotta get it done, we're gonna get it done. So that is the first question.

“What does success look like here?” (00:11:25)

Question number two. What does success look like here? What does it look like if we get to success? What does it look like now, lack of clarity is one of the biggest reasons things come back to you over and over and over again.

People bring things back to you, most likely because they don't have enough clarity to make decisions. There's not enough clarity in their mind to drive them to what an outcome looks like, what success looks like.

So if success isn't defined, people are going to hesitate. People are going to redo work. You're going to see people putting things on the back burner, not even getting to it because they don't understand what it is that they're supposed to be doing.

So let's get them to this place asking that question, what does success look like Here? Help them to define it. Help them to come up with the answer of what success looks like.

Now, again, you're not expecting them to have the absolute best 100% answer. What we want is we want the wheels and the brain turning. We want them to start thinking through, what could it look like?

You know, what, what is the expected outcome? And what does success look like? And how is everybody happy? And how do we make sure we don't have any fatal failures?

If you can do this, then what you start to build in your culture is clear expectations where people don't just constantly look for. Chris, just tell me what the answer is. No, I want you to define this so that we can start thinking through what should we be expecting for success?

Because if ever, if you're just always telling them what success looks like, they don't ever get to process through in their own mindset what it would look like from their view, from their perspective, help them to get there.

And what you're going to find is considerably faster execution. Because if they could go, well, this is the problem, here's what I think the solution looks like, here's what the outcome should be.

So success is this over here. All right, well, let's just do it. If you do that, you're going to drive way less reworking on, you know, problems, solutions, projects, whatever it is, and you're going to have considerably less, fewer check ins with you.

Clarity absolutely reduces that dependency. Right now, so much of you, there's so much owner or leader dependency. And what you're trying to do is get that off your plate and allow people to solve for themselves.

But what they need is they need the confidence piece first. The more you can help them do that, the less dependency on you.

“What’s your next step?” (00:14:22)

Number three, this is a fantastic question to continue this ball rolling of, you know, think for yourself, what can you do? What should you do?

The number three question is, hey, what's your next step?

What are you going to do next? Now this moves them from just thinking about possibilities to thinking about action.

Right. Without it, then conversations just essentially stay theoretical. We need to put some action to this. And what's your next step? Absolutely gets them walking in that direction. Right.

What it's building in your culture is forward movement. Let's get beyond just the discussion. You know, they're looking for you to list out the steps. Go do this, go do this, go to this. Instead, help them to think.

Well, if I'm going to do this, I've already processed through what potential solutions are, what the best outcome could be, what success looks like.

Great, well, now let's kind of reverse engineer how do we get there? What action steps are you going to take? This also builds in your culture a big piece of personal responsibility, folks.

We want our team members taking ownership. We want our team members to have personal responsibility. This is something that we want them to, to own, to solve, to drive, to move forward.

Because the truth is the ultimate goal here, what we're talking about is momentum.

Without out your involvement, how do we make our team successful? We guide, we direct, we lead, we model, we critique, we pat them on the back.

We find them doing things right, we help them to solve things they're doing wrong. And then what comes from this process, the cultural lift that happens is that we get momentum without your involvement.

So I want you to think about this. Even if you're finding that you're somebody who loves to be the fixer and you love people coming through you, you know, coming to you to get solutions.

What would it be like if you had more freedom? What would it be like if you had more time, less dependency on you? What would your career look like?

What would your personal life look like? Because you know, when you're the one that everybody's depending on, you know that affects more than just your business.

That affects you at home as well, right? So what would it look like?

What would happen if you stopped being the driver and you moved into that role of moving people forward by causing them to think for themselves by guiding and leading and directing?

I am telling you, you will be a much happier person when that happens. When you can start lifting bare minimum, your leadership team and the rest of the team up to take ownership, to take responsibility, to solve, solve, solve.

To not just put out a fire, but to put out, make sure that fires aren't happening in the first place. This is all stuff that is super powerful for you as a leader or business owner.

Here's the deal. This is one of the biggest shifts that we help leaders make at our Next-Level Leadership LIVE Event, how to stop being the answer for everything. How to start building a team that thinks and leads.

So if that's something that you're wanting, then go to chrislocurto.com/liveevent to learn more about that event. Because that is exactly what we are focusing on and helping people to solve.

So help them to get to action by asking the question, what is your next step?

 “Where do you feel unsure or stuck?” (00:18:34)

Fourth question, where do you feel unsure or stuck?

Now, these are going in a specific order for a reason. This is how we want them to think.

Many times somebody I have watched again in my decades of leadership and leading business owners and leaders and team members, many times I've watched leaders ask this question.

First thing, hey, where do you feel stuck? They don't know. They don't feel stuck. They feel like there's a problem and the stuckness is they don't have a solution. So we don't ask this question until we get past some movement, right?

Some planning on some action steps. Where do you feel unsure or stuck?

This is where, you know, most leaders will ignore gaps or jump in too fast because they can see that the person is feeling stuck or they're not getting to an answer in the leader's time frame. Right?

You know you need to have an answer right now. No. Give them time to think. So this question helps you coach without taking over.

Do not take over. Instead, drive them to getting to this answer. What do you feel unsure about, oh, I don't know. Now, if you're talking to a high D, they're going to say nothing. Yes.

Okay, rephrase it. Hey, where do you think that this might, you know, become, you know, something that holds you up?

Just change the way that you ask the question and you're probably going to get some answers right there.

Where do you feel unsure? Where do you feel stuck? What this builds in your culture is hopefully, first thing it builds is honest communication.

Hopefully you've done enough good work in this area that people can be vulnerable enough and talk to you about it. Well, the truth is, I'm not sure how to solve this piece right here.

Or the truth is, you know, I don't know if I have the tools or the skills to make this piece happen over here.

Whatever it is, it gets that honest communication out on the table and allows you to talk through it, guide and direct. Right. There may be some pieces in here where you do have to kind of speak up.

Hey, remember when you did this over here on this project, Remember how you handled that? This is a lot like that. So do the same kind of thing here. Remember that you can make this happen because you've already been here before.

You're just not seeing it that way.

You know, this is where you might get some of that coaching in where you're not solving and giving answers, but you're helping them to realize that, you know, whatever the insecurity that they're experiencing, it may not need to be there.

They may already have the skills and the gifts and the talents to make this stuff happen.

So this helps you to get in there with that, you know, that honest communication, that vulnerable communication, and help them to get to solving their personal insecurities as well.

So this also will get you to a faster development or productivity, if you will. Right. If they are unsure or stuck on something, then a big problem you can find is them taking and putting this thing on the back burner.

Especially, you know, depending upon personality style. The more you drift from D to C, the more you're going to find the desire to put it on the back burner.

If they are unsure about it, if they feel like they don't have the right answers, if you are trying to get them to solve on their own and to come up with their own answers, then a big part is helping them to resolve when they are stuck.

Don't, you know, make sure that they understand, hey, listen, just because it may be something you're struggling with, don't put it on the back burner don't pause this thing.

Don't wait for somebody to come around with the miracle answer. Do something about it. I've had many high Cs, high C personality styles that I've had to say, hey, listen, you're waiting for somebody to come with an answer. Go get the answer.

Be proactive. Do something about it. Don't just sit back and once they hear it, they're like, oh, I didn't even realize I could do that because it's just not the way that they're initially thinking.

But the sooner you help them, the sooner they will get that done. Another thing this builds in your culture is considerably smarter support, if you will, instead of like, you know, full takeover, which so many leaders do.

You didn't answer. You didn't have the right solution. You're looking unsure. You're looking stuck. You look like you're struggling with this. I'll just take this back. I'll just take it and run with it.

Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. That is not what we are looking for. Do not take over. Right? If you do that, you're removing responsibility, you're removing ownership. We don't want that.

We want to strengthen those things. So where are you unsure? Where are you stuck?

And help them to have that vulnerable conversation, and you'll be blown away with how they will be able to see it. And then let's drive them towards solution.

“What do you need from me to succeed?” (00:23:46)

Fifth question. What do you need from me to succeed now?

Your role is not to do the work. Your role is not to answer. Your role is not to solve. Your role is to equip your people to win. So if they come to you and say, well, if you just give me the answer, that'd be great.

That's not what we're looking for. What we are looking for, because this question keeps that ownership with them while it positions you as the support.

Well, Chris, that's why they came to me in the first place. Nope, they didn't actually come to you for support. They came to you for the answer. Well, that is support. No, it's not.

It's taking control and solving things. Support would be how do I help you be successful. Right. So when you do this, what do you need from me to help you succeed? You build trust in your culture.

You empower people to know that even when they take those risks, you got their back, that you're going to help them out, that you'll be there, you know, if they need you.

But here's what I have found over my decades of doing this. I have found when I get to this point and I say, what do you need for me to help you succeed? I cannot tell you.

The percentage is incredibly high that people go, oh, I think I got it. I think I got it. Yeah. Thank you for these questions. Thank you. No, thank you for helping me on this process.

I think I've got this very rarely. And I'm not saying it doesn't happen sometimes. It's like, well, can I come back to you if I get stuck? Yeah, of course you can. Well, I think this might be a sticking point over here.

Can you help me out if I get here? Yeah, absolutely. Right. Somebody will usually come up with if they really, truly believe that there's some areas that they may get stuck, a lot of times they'll just be very honest and tell you.

But what I have seen more than not is people at that point going, you know, I think I got it. I think I have enough here, because I'd walk them through those other steps.

So you're building this trust, this empowerment, but you're also building this clear leadership support. Leadership is here for you. I am here for you. Go tackle it and do the best you can.

And then I'm here if needed. So this helps them to own the outcome, and this helps you to own the support process. What should support look like from that point on, man? Check ins, see how they're doing.

Ask them questions to see if they're stuck. Ask them questions to see if they're thinking through everything. Support them again through more question asking, more perspective gathering.

Folks, this is the cultural shift. If you use these questions once, nothing is going to change. If you use them consistently, then everything changes. Because culture is not built on one time asking a question. It's built on, you know, it's not built on speeches.

It's not built on motivation. It's not built on, you know, 73 meetings that didn't really do anything. It's not even built on intention. It's built by what leaders consistently do and say these questions are how you install ownership into your team.

Your Challenge This Week (00:27:10)

So here's the challenge for this week. Don't try to do all five. You know, if you can, great, but just start in. In one place. You know, start with pick number one.

You know, what do you think we should do? Use it all week long. Don't break the pattern. Now, I can tell you, some folks are gonna.

If they're not used to you asking that question, they're gonna be like, do you not know the answer? No, no, no, no. I know the answer. I know what I would do. I'm trying to help you out so you can kind of even tee it up.

Hey, so normally I would just give you the answer to this, but here's what I want to do. I want to start training you to think through this and come up with phenomenal solutions.

So what do you think we should do? Right. Sometimes you have to tee that up.

In my early days, I had, I could think of probably two or three times where somebody would look at me and go, you don't know the answer, do you?

And I'm like, yes, I do know the answer. It's not about that. It's about helping you to become better. Right. And so it's quite funny in those moments, but so you may just literally have to teed up and just help them to know.

So don't worry if it's slower. You know, if you're somebody who's thinking, Chris, I don't have time for this. This could take a long time.

Well, yeah, but what are you building in the process? Incredibly more productive team. You know, it is amazing to me the lack of things people come to me for on my team for answers.

I mean, the stuff they're coming to me are, you know, high level stuff. They don't just come to me for anything because they know how to solve, they know how to think. So it may be slower, it may be frustrating.

Do not stop, keep going. This is how culture change. You keep driving this change, even forcing the change.

So I challenge you this week to identify one thing your team keeps handing back to you and walk through these five steps to give it back the right way to them. Right?

Start small, be clear, stay consistent. Now, if you want a team that takes ownership and you don't have to be the one that they're dependent on, you can lead differently.

And if you're wanting help installing all of these things that we've talked about into your business, check out our live event and see if it fits you. Go to chrislocurto.com/liveevents and get to this event.

It is powerful. It is business changing. It is life changing. Well, folks, go out there. Lead with clarity, lead with courage, lead with conviction. Take all this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life.

And join us on the next episode.