You built a leadership team so the business wouldn't depend on you.
So why does every decision still circle back to you? 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 discussing why so much still comes back to you as the leader, as the business owner, whichever your position is, how come so much continues to fall on you?
That is what we're getting into today. I've got to tell you, this is something I hear constantly. You know, Chris, I have good people. I've given them responsibility, but I'm still the one that everyone comes back to. That is what this episode is all about.
Now, your team isn't coming back to you because they can't think. I know there's many times as a leader, as a business owner, you're like, how is it that I have this person in this role?
And for some reason, I don't know, they're not being able to think for themselves. They have to constantly come back to me. What's the problem? The problem isn't that they aren't able to think for themselves.
You've Made Thinking Unnecessary (00:01:33)
The problem is, is that you've made it unnecessary for them to think for themselves. Now, I know this can sting a little bit. We're going to unpack what I'm talking about. Have you done something wrong?
Not in the sense of bad leadership. In fact, you've been being a good leader by solving so much, by answering so much. The problem is that you're too available. I know.
Chris, aren't you the one who says, be available for your team? Absolutely. However, I'm also the one who tells you how to respond when you're too available, when you're too responsive, when you care too much to be the solution.
All of those things actually feel right. They feel like the right thing to do. They feel like the right way to respond. The problem is that you're creating a pattern.
The Pattern Story (Wife/Daughter Example) (00:02:29)
I'll give you an example. My wife is one, that many times she feels like she has to respond if a question comes her way, if it's from one of the kids or something or one of the grandkids.
No matter how many questions are asked, my wife feels if she doesn't answer the question, she's not a good mom or grandmother.
I've had to help her to see that is absolutely untrue. In fact, many times you're enabling the consistent non stop question asking because you just answer the question.
I remember a time we were driving down the road with our daughter, who was five at the time, I think, I think she was five. And she just kept asking question after question after question after question. And I looked at my wife and I said, stop answering.
And she goes, but if I do, I feel like I'm a bad mother. I'm like, trust me, just stop answering. And so she did. And our daughter kept asking questions, but since she didn't answer, after a couple of questions she turns to me and she's like, daddy, such and such.
I'm like, you already know the answer to that. Then for 15 minutes straight pure silence as our daughter looked out the window, she watched all the stuff going around and things going by, all of that.
And it was a kind of a shocker to my wife. How is it that she stopped asking questions? It's because there was a pattern there. The pattern that was created was I'll answer anything you ask.
Now here's the funny thing. I turned to my daughter and I said, baby, why do you keep asking mommy so many questions? And she goes, because she answers them. Literal answer that came out of my daughter's mouth: because she answers them.
That's literally what she said. Which helped my wife to see you're not being a bad mother by not answering. That's not what a bad mother is. Right.
But if you create this consistent process every single time, then what you're going to discover is, leader, your people are going to continue to come to you non stop. And the crazy thing is every time you solve, you fill a gap.
You are responsive every single time. When you're doing what they should be doing, what happens is, is you train them to continue to do the same thing over and over and over again.
And just like the way my wife felt, she felt like she would be a bad mom if she didn't answer every question. You're probably feeling the same, you're probably feeling that if you don't solve everything, you, you aren't responsive.
And again, I want you to be responsive just the right way. I want you to be available just the right way. I want you to care just the right way. I want you to fill the gap just the right way.
We're going to get into that. But every single time you fill that gap, your team learns that the gap will be filled by you. Every time you answer, they learn that the answer is coming from you.
Every time you step in, they learn that stepping in isn't their job that you're going to do it.
And the crazy thing is, is that nobody chooses to do this thinking, oh, this is going to shut my team down from responding or this is going to get my team stuck every single time. We do this for one of two reasons and you need to be very aware of the second one.
The first one is we're trying to be the best leader we possibly can be. The second one, which is something we really need to be very cautious about, is that we may be doing it because we're finding worth in it.
We may be doing it because we're finding identity in it. So this is where you have to recognize what's going on.
What the Pattern Is Costing You (00:06:32)
You are carrying so much of the weight, so much of the mental weight, you know, so much of.
You might even be doing some of the heavy lifting that you shouldn't be doing. You've got a team for this, you've got a leadership team. If you've been building a leadership team, you've got people for this.
So it's costing you mentally because you're having to solve so much stuff on your own with which is keeping you from getting to other things. So think of the opportunity loss here, right?
The opportunity cost of having to be there every single time, solving everything. It's also causing your team not to grow.
You are keeping your team from being able to make good judgment calls, to be able to make decisions, to be able to lead because they have to come to you, because they've been trained to come to you when you do this.
They are not growing, they are not growing in their decision making processes.
They are not leading people better. They are not. They're just continuing to do what they're doing and get you to do the heavy lifting. We've got to stop it.
Because by not stopping it, the business, hear me on this, stays centered on you even when you don't want it to. Folks, I'm telling you, this is not a staffing problem. This is a pattern problem. You're not the problem.
You're not being a bad leader. You're not being somebody who doesn't care. You're not being somebody who doesn't know what they're doing.
You're just not recognizing the pattern that's affecting everything in a negative way. Here's the good news. All you have to do is change the pattern. The pattern can absolutely change.
So let's take a look at this from the business aspect. I'm going to walk through a scenario that is a compilation of many experiences that I've had.
The Tuesday Scenario (00:08:41)
So I'm going to just put it into one situation. Say I had this leader come to me, very successful business owner, has great revenue, solid team, sharp people, smart people, not folks that are incapable, but great people doing great jobs.
However, the line that I get out of so many folks is I built this leadership team. You know, Chris, you say to keep, you know, it's so important to build a leadership team.
I built this leadership team so that it wouldn't depend on me anymore. But every decision keeps coming back to me. Fantastic. As I've done with so many folks, I'll ask the question, well, let's walk through your a typical Tuesday for you.
When we do this, it is amazing how many different things come back. As in this leader comes to me on, you know what this problem by this time of the morning and it's something that they should and can handle themselves, but I end up having to help them.
And then I've got these messages coming in from my sales manager, all these different how do I solve this? Or what should we do about this? Or a customer asked about this?
And so I solve all of those things and then I get my marketing director who wants approval on something that they've literally been doing for a couple of years. But I keep having to give approval. And by 2 o', clock, nothing on this business owner's list is done.
Nothing. Well, if you look at this from the outside, you might go, man, you've got the wrong people. However, when I stop and diagnose the business owner, hey, let's not look at the team yet.
I hear what you're saying, but let's kind of take a look at what you are doing. Why are you solving every one of those pieces? And as we look at what the leader is doing, what we discover is there is this guilt of if I don't, then what's going to happen?
If I don't respond, then they're not going to get great answers, they're not going to get great direction. They're going to feel like I'm not available, that I'm not somebody that is leading them and taking care of them.
This is where I strongly disagree. What you have to know is that you are creating in each one of those leaders on that leadership team, who is who they're all, they're smart, they're fantastic.
But what you're creating is the need to get to you and have you solve things. And the only option that so many leaders think of is, well, what do I do? Just tell them No.
Nope, that's not what you do at all. Instead, and this is where I want you to really focus on changing the way you approach, leading your leaders or even leading your team.
The Fix — Coach the Thinking (00:11:28)
Instead of responding with the answer, respond with, what would you do here?
I hear the situation, I hear the problem. I understand where you're coming from. I see this thing that you've brought up. Let me ask you, what are you thinking should happen here?
What direction are you leaning in? Just give me an idea. Right. The sooner you ask that, what you will find is, most likely they have an answer. This is your leadership team. Most likely they have an answer.
They have an idea of what direction they should go in, but they've felt like they can't answer that.
What you also may find out is they may feel like they don't have an answer because they haven't put any time to it because you've been solving everything for them.
So here they are now waiting for you to answer, and they don't have an answer. So it could be either way.
If they've got an idea, great. Continue to ask questions. If it's spot on the very first time, then what should your response be? That's fantastic. That's exactly what I would do. Go ahead.
The sooner you help them to see that they can think for themselves, they can judge for themselves, they can make decisions for themselves, and you align with it, the sooner they're going to keep doing it, especially if you praise them for doing so.
Great job. Way to think like that. That's awesome. I'm so glad that you already processed through this and came up with an idea. People repeat what they're praised for, so help them to realize they're doing a great job.
If they don't have a great answer, then continue to gain perspective. What do you think you can do? What are some ideas that you have?
If they get to the place, and you've heard me talk about this before, if they get to the place where they're like, I have no earthly idea, great, go take 20 minutes, think about it, and come back to me with two or three ideas.
Help them to make the right decisions on their own. So when they come back in 20 minutes, at least they've been practicing making decisions for themselves.
At least they've been practicing thinking through what their options are. Even again, if they're not great options, ask more questions. Well, if we went with that, how do you think that would affect this over here? Well, have you thought about this piece here?
Just continue to ask questions to get them to think the more you do this, the less they will return to you. Yes. I'm telling you, the sooner they realize they can think on their own.
And I can go back to, you know, I've led multiple leadership teams and I can go back to my early days of saying, okay, here's the level of decision making I want you to come to me with.
Setting Decision-Making Levels (00:14:22)
So anything below this. Solve the problem, fix it, do it on your own. You got this. I've worked with you for, you know, X period of time. I've seen you make decisions.
You've done a great job on making these decisions. So up to this point, make your decisions. I'm gonna back you. As long as it's not a fatal failure, you're good this level and above.
I want you to come to me with the answers that you have, the decision that you want to make, and just run it by me.
Don't ask me what I want to do, tell me what you think we should do, and then if it's right, great, move on. Or I might massage it a little bit by asking you some more questions.
But either way, my goal is to help you make the best decisions in this process. When you do this, you will find that your team will stop coming to you for the stuff that they don't need to come to you for.
They will just start solving issue after issue after issue, client problem after client problem. They will be so on it because you trusted them. You treated them with dignity.
They're not going to come to you with these blank stares anymore. They're not going to sit there and wait for you to solve everything. They will solve the problem.
Now, as we're talking about this, I'm betting that you're thinking through how this is happening in your own team or in your own business right now.
I want you to think about your own version of that Tuesday that I just talked about. What does your day look like? Not in leading people to success, because that's not leading people to success when you solve every problem for them. Right?
But how many times are you interrupted? How many times do people come to you for decision making, for ideas, for whatever that they should not be doing, that they are smart enough for, that they can solve the problem on their own.
How many times does that happen in your regular Monday, Tuesday, any day of the week? And how much time is that keeping you from focusing on what you need to be getting done, solving, strategizing, whatever?
This is where you start to truly understand how much you are being underutilized and how much your team is being underutilized.
When we get this fixed, you get to focus on way more important stuff and you get to grow your team into being a solid leadership team.
Once again. Your team is not the problem. The pattern is.
Your Challenge This Week (00:17:12)
So here's the challenge that I have for you, and I want you to specifically focus on this this week. Pay attention to where your team hesitates.
Not just that they hesitate, but where are they hesitating. Notice some of the same questions that keep coming back to you over and over again. When you get it, write it down.
Write down the questions. Write down where they hesitate. Keep a notepad. I don't care. Keep your computer open with, you know, I don't know, notes or something open.
But write these things down. Every time somebody comes back to you with the same types of questions, not the same exact question question, but the same types of questions, write it down.
If they come back with the same exact question, definitely red flag that puppy.
Notice when somebody says, hey, I just wanted to check with you, or I just wanted, you know, for you to take a look at this before I do something and ask yourself, is that something that they were capable of solving on their own?
The pattern is showing you exactly where you need to focus, where you need to help them to solve, help them to fix. So the next time somebody brings you a question, literally pause before you answer.
Do not just answer, Pause, process. Think to yourself. Ask yourself what's about to happen right now. Normally, I would just answer this. Why are they asking that question?
Do I think they're smart enough to handle this? I. Are they experienced enough to already know the answer? Pause and process through that and then ask a simple question.
Hey, what direction were you already leaning in on this? How do you think this should get solved?
What would you do if I wasn't here right now? Anything that gets them to think for themselves and then see what comes back. This is your challenge for the week.
The truth is, most of the time they already have an instinct and they just haven't had to trust in it yet. Help them to trust in their own instinct. So what are we talking about here? You're not trying to stop being available.
You're learning to be available differently. What I want you to do is coach the thinking instead of carry the answer. That's where everything starts to change, folks. If you would like more of this real time leadership content, follow us on Instagram @chrislocurto.
That's @chrislocurto. And subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next in this series.
Well, folks, that's all the time that we have for today. I hope this has helped you immensely.
As always, take this information. Change your leadership, change your business, change your life. And join us on the next episode.
