You don't have a time problem. You have a leadership problem. Business isn't helping your business grow. It's keeping you stuck. 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 talking about why leaders stay so stinking busy.
And, man, it is a trap that every leader falls into. Yours truly was there many, many years ago, and that's why so much of the stuff I teach, I teach because that's where I was.
I was trained by those before me and decided that that was not the right way to go.
So if you feel slammed every day, but your. Your business still depends on you, this is why most leaders don't struggle with effort.
They struggle with focus. More specifically, they're. They're stuck in a cycle of doing instead of leading.
So through this episode, you'll identify what you're avoiding, understand how it's affecting your team, and learn how to step back into real leadership where growth actually happens.
So I have got four questions that I'm going to be asking you. This is four questions to break the busyness cycle.
So I want you to answer these things as I do as well.
1. Where am I choosing tasks over leadership? (00:01:37)
The first question is, where am I choosing tasks over leadership? And why does this matter?
Because leaders often default to tasks because they're clear, they're-- they're measurable, they can give the leader quick wins.
But, folks, that is not your role as a leader. It's just not. That's not what you're supposed to be focusing on.
You're supposed to be focusing on making people better, helping people to solve better, to make better decisions, to be better at their roles.
That's the job of a leader. Your job as a leader is to make people successful, Period. Whatever that takes, right?
So what needs to shift is instead of spending so much time in tasks, instead of being so busy, instead of having so many things on your plate that you really shouldn't be doing. And yes, I get it.
You're convinced that you have to be the one who does this stuff.
I'm telling you, you don't. Your job should not be focused on so much task. I'm not saying you won't have any task, but I don't. I have very few tasks, if you will.
The stuff I focus on is much higher level. Making the company better, making the team better, making the leaders better.
So if you will focus on getting the tasks off of your plate and leading people to greater success, then you will shift from doing work to guiding people.
And that is where real business growth happens. So just think of the leader who spends all day long answering emails, fixing small issues, jumping in a team problems while their team waits for direction that they should already own.
That's what's keeping your team from owning their roles and making decisions and moving things forward every time you jump in. So if you stay task focused, your team will, too.
You unintentionally train them to avoid ownership and just stay busy.
And I can promise you, many times, if team members think that taking ownership is going to be painful or difficult because they haven't been trained and they haven't been, you know, brought up with the understanding that, you know, the more you learn, the more you grow, the better you do, the more you enjoy what you're doing.
If they think it's going to be a problem, they're just going to let you keep taking ownership all the time.
So if your team sees you focused on tasks and nobody's driving them to owning their roles, then they just keep doing what they're doing day in, day out.
They'll just keep doing the same thing over and over again. When you allow this to happen, you create a culture of activity instead of accountability.
And I can tell you, task saturation is one of the biggest growth blockers you will ever find.
So when you're overloaded with tasks, your ability to lead drops and so does your team's growth.
2. What conversation am I avoiding right now? (00:04:58)
Number two, what conversation am I avoiding right now? I want you to ask yourself that.
What conversation should you be having that you're not having? And why does this matter? Avoiding tough conversations doesn't remove the problem.
It multiplies it. It makes it bigger. It affects your culture. It affects the person who you need to have that conversation with.
It affects the people around that person who see something's wrong or something.
They should have had a conversation by somebody at some point and they start to change culturally, they start to think, well, if so and so can get away with that, then I'm just going to do it too.
This affects your entire culture. You avoid addressing one underperformer. Now the rest of the team lowers their standard because no one is being held accountable.
Tough conversations are what create healthy environments, people. It helps resolve conflict. It helps build respect.
It helps team members know that you care about them and you're willing to protect the culture for the good team members, not the bad team members.
So avoiding them shut your team down and signals that issues don't matter, you're not going to solve it. So remove that as soon as you can. Start having the tough conversations that have to happen and get to them quickly.
Now, don't get to them quickly if you're upset. If you're angry, then, you know, wait till you chill out. Do not go after it while you're angry.
But the sooner you will get in there and start having tough conversations, you'll be blown away. You're going to be moving from passive leadership to intentional culture building.
And that is exactly what your team wants. This is where your team starts addressing issues faster instead of working around them.
So you create a culture where problems are solved directly and not ignored because you are not ignoring them.
3. What is my busyness actually costing the business? (00:06:58)
Number three, ask yourself this, what is my busyness actually costing the business? Right. Busyness feels productive, but it's often covering up leadership gaps.
Many times people don't go get the training they need and the understanding of what they need to be a better leader. So instead they stay super busy because they know that they have gaps.
Well, guess what? Your team sees that. They understand that. They know it. They see your gaps.
I promise they do so because you haven't been, you know, clarifying expectations with your team, leading them to understanding of what key deliverables you expect.
Then your team keeps coming back with questions, creating more work for you every single day. Many business owners become the bottleneck because everything runs through them.
The goal is to build leaders who can think, who can decide, who can, who can act without you.
That is where you want to be. That is where business is so fun when everything doesn't come back on you. I don't do the heavy lifting in my business.
I did for so many years, but I trained up a phenomenal team and they do an incredible job with it. And they're constantly looking for, what else can we do? So you've just got to change the way you approach this.
You have to start evaluating your time based on impact, not on activity. And when you do this, your team stops escalating every single thing to you and starts solving problems for themselves.
Oh, happy day. Let me tell you, it is great. Now, if you're somebody who finds all your identity and value in solving problems, then you're going to have a tough time with this one because that's where you get your worth, right?
But when you start seeing team members solve problems on their own and you realize you can solve much bigger business problems, that's a happy day.
You definitely reduce the dependency on you and you move Toward a leadership driven organization.
4. What would change if I handled this today? (00:09:20)
All right, fourth question. I want you to ask yourself, what would change if I handled, you know, fill in the blank this today? When leaders avoid key decisions or clarity, then teams drift.
When leaders step in decisively, unnecessary work disappears and alignment starts to increase. It's a fact. It, it just happens, I'm telling you. So think about it.
You finally clarified expectations with a team member and then all of a sudden, follow ups, corrections, stress, all of those start to drop because you did a great job leading that team member to incredible clarity on the expectations, folks.
That removes unnecessary work immediately.
And, and I'm somebody who hates unnecessary work and I see it all the time with many businesses where it's like, why are you allowing this? If you will just step in, lead it, drive clarity.
You'll be amazed at what will happen when you stop delaying decisions that are quietly draining your time and energy. Then you're going to be blown away with how your team steps up.
Your team gains direction, they gain confidence and they will start executing without having to have constant input.
This is where you build momentum. This is where you build ownership. This is where you build loyalty and trust. So busyness isn't neutral. It's literally shaping your culture.
If you're constantly doing, your team will constantly wait. If you avoid hard things, you, your team will avoid hard things as well.
This is where you have to realize leadership isn't about doing more. It's about addressing what matters most and doing it consistently.
A Challenge for You (00:11:23)
So I have a challenge for you. I want you to block 30 minutes this week. Just 30 minutes. You can find 30 minutes.
And I want you to ask yourself, what am I avoiding that would immediately reduce my workload. Then schedule that conversation or decision, whatever it is, within 48 hours before adding anything else to your calendar.
This is my challenge for you this week. Trust me. Take the challenge.
Run with this. You will be blown away. When you shift out of business and you lead with clarity, then your business stops depending on you and it starts growing beyond you.
Don't fear that you are needed at a much higher level. I promise this is where real freedom begins. Well, folks, I hope this has helped you today.
I know it's a lot of information, a lot of stuff for you to do, but just take that 30 minute challenge this week, put that in place, see what you can do, see what you can change to take workload off of you and then get it.
As always, take this information, Change your leadership, change your business, change your life. And join us on the next episode.
