There are some things that hold us back from our leadership potential and can keep us from being successful.
As we sat down to record this final episode, we realized the very 7 enemies in this episode series…were the enemies Heather and I discussed overcoming on her walk and talk. They are the what has catapulted her leadership growth.
If you want to see PHENOMENAL growth in your leadership, overcome these 7 enemies.
PART 1 – CLICK HERE (the #1, #2, and #3 enemies of your leadership success)
PART 2 – CLICK HERE (the #4 and #5 enemies of your leadership success)
In this episode, we’re hitting the final 2 enemies of leadership success:
6. Victim Mentality. This is a tough one. This is a painful enemy to your leadership success. This shows up in the office often.
7. Distractions. Also known as, “death by a thousand slashes.” Distractions can be team member interruptions…not closing out your day…focusing your time and energy in the wrong places…having a cluttered desk…
What you can do to overcome the final two enemies here:
7 Enemies of Your Leadership Success – part 1
Transcript:
Chris LoCurto: 00:00 Part of the seven enemies of your leadership success. That is coming up next.
Chris LoCurto: 00:15 Welcome to the Chris Locurto show where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are.
Chris LoCurto: 00:28 Welcome to the show folks and welcome back for three weeks in a row… Heather Mckiel is joining us on the show again because we started an episode, so listen, I’m going to miss me when I’m going to miss you when you’re gone. You’re not leaving, but it’s so funny that three weeks ago I stepped in to do an episode called the seven enemies of your leadership success and right before that we actually pushed it a little bit because you and I had a went and had a coffee with Chris. Walked around the building, our vitamin D walk where we grabbed our cups of dillanos coffee that we love so much here and walked around the building. We keep telling people that, by the way, you can get a discount. Go to dillanos.com
Chris LoCurto: 01:22 Use CLoTribe,all one word and you get 50 percent off. So go do that. So we’re walking around with our coffee and talking because we’ve brought on more people on your team. We’ve just had a bunch of stuff happen in the last month, month and a half was the big event, the next level leadership live event, which you were the one who makes it so successful- you and your team. We’ve had new hires, we’re hiring more people, we’ve got so many things going on and at the same time we’re trying to get stuff off of your plate so we can move you into even bigger things. It’s more strengths, more gifts and talents that you have that we’re taking some of the task off of you that you shouldn’t be doing anyways because you have a growing team that can take care of these things.
Heather McKiel: 02:13 That way we get to utilize your gifts and talents even more. So we’re having this discussion on leading your team to success and some areas that she needed to focus on. Then we come in here to cut this. We’re sitting there and you’re like, hey, this is literally the conversation that we just had walking around the building. So we have been going through these seven different areas with the incredibly vulnerable heather mckeil, where you have been show greatly vulnerable with people in, you know, talking through this areas of things that you’ve struggled with and how you’re fixing those things.
Chris LoCurto: 03:09 And you know, the things that we teach are from my failures and you know, all the people who failed and so much God stuff. So one conversation we thought we were going to have has turned into three episodes. That’s crazy. Well done, Heather Mckeil. Apparently you got a lot to say. So, we’re starting back in today with the last two, the last two enemies of your leadership success. And so starting with number six, and this is a tough one, victim mentality. I would say sub five percent of people see this coming and when they see it in themselves, they’re pissed. They don’t like to see this. But very few people actually can recognize that they’re being victims. How has victim mentality held back your leadership success?
Heather McKiel: 04:14 Yeah, I think you’re spot on by saying we don’t recognize it because for years I did not recognize that. What I was saying, my word vomit it was bad. Um, I didn’t get that. That was me being a victim. I thought that was me sharing my feelings. Like what’s happened to me that I was entitled to feel this way because somebody offended me. No, I’m not entitled to feel any way, you know, and so it’s been good.
Chris LoCurto: 04:50 Not that anybody can make can make do anything, only highly suggest that you feel a way, but it’s you receiving it that makes you the victim.
Heather McKiel: 05:00 Yeah. I have to choose. And I didn’t get that. I didn’t get that even going through my next level life. I still struggled through that afterwards because it was so ingrained in me.
Chris LoCurto: 05:15 I would say in early days of your leadership, there were times, and again, I think a big piece of this also comes down to your finding worth in me, which I’m constantly pushing my team members to not do. Do Your work as unto the Lord. Don’t put me on a pedestal. The difference is that I am the leader. There’s a massive responsibility that comes with leadership. So putting a leader on a pedestal is ridiculous. Any leader allowing themselves to be on a pedestal, ridiculous. It’s a waste of time. It’s going to affect you negatively. So I think in the early days of your leadership, one of the things that I still saw was that need for my approval, that “I don’t want to look stupid in the eyes of Chris.” So if I called you on something, how did you respond?
Heather McKiel: 06:23 One of the big things that would happen was, I would, I would push that responsibility off to that team member. It was their fault. Anybody but myself, I couldn’t, I would not take responsibility, which sucks to say on the air, but
Chris LoCurto: 06:23 it really was where I was at because I wasn’t at a place to go…You chose not to teach them properly. You chose not to spend the time to ask questions. You chose not to get in there. When I gave them the task, I told them what to do. It’s not my fault that they don’t know how to do it, you know. That’s how I led. I mean, that’s what it was.
Chris LoCurto: 07:22 Well, and it’s what you’ve been taught. In other places that you’ve been, that would have worked so bringing that into your leadership with me is not surprising. And let me say this, every single person listening to this, you’ve been here. If you’re in leadership, you’ve been a victim, you have thrown other people under the bus. In my early days of leadership, I wanted it to be somebody else’s fault. The problem is it was just staring me in the face that it was mine, right? I wanted to blame other people. Now again, I also was a people pleaser, so I took a lot of the responsibility and the blame myself, but it didn’t make it any different. If they would just listen better. Well, if they would just understand, well…all of its victim mentality
Heather McKiel: 08:25 It’s not just at work like it, invades your whole life. When, when you operate that way, everything is an issue. Oh my gosh, that parking spot. I mean, you listened to the self talk throughout the day. It’s like, how many things am I being a little victim about? And you taught me something that sticks with me and I use it now because it helps me out of that victim mode is if I find myself doing the whole poor me. I say, Heather, “shut up. Listen to yourself” you know. And it’s like, oh wait, I’m being a victim again.
Chris LoCurto: 09:14 Yeah. It’s something that I have had to use in my life for negative self talk. So let me be very clear on this because some people think, oh, just stop there. No, no, no, no. That “shut up” is just to shock your brain. When your brain is going negative, negative, negative, negative, negative, negative, negative, “shut up.”
Heather McKiel: 09:32 Yep. From there, then I can go, what’s the truth? What really happened, what your response? So before if conflict happened, I would spend my time focused on what the other person did wrong, right? And, and playing the victim. Now I can go, what was my responsibility? What role did I play in this conflict? And learn and grow instead of being that victim, instead of staying in that place of feel sore, nothing changes.
Chris LoCurto: 10:12 I cannot tell you. I am so loving doing these two episodes with you because I am so crazy proud of you. I had no clue when we’re like, hey, let’s just jump on and do this and talk about what we just talked about, that you would get this vulnerable and I’m so proud of you because it helps. When people hear me talk about my failures. It’s amazing. I watched business leaders, business owners, what I’m going, hey, I screwed this up. I used to do this. This is a problem. I still struggle here. I still have to do this. It helps them to say, oh, so you met. You screw up with that too? Oh, okay. I don’t feel so bad now. I can work on me.
Chris LoCurto: 11:35 Now, a number seven of the enemies of leadership success is distractions. Um, every single person deals with distractions and they can be all kinds of things.
Chris LoCurto: 11:52 It can be the team member interruptions, could be death by a thousand slashes. I don’t remember whoever came up with that, but you know, somebody will probably tell us, but the constant where you have team members that come to you with 20 questions a day or 40 questions or just constantly interrupting you. It could be not closing out your day. This is one of the big pieces of killing the leadership crazy cycle where we teach on how to close out your day so that it doesn’t become a constant distraction throughout your whole night. The time with your family, you don’t know what you’re doing when you walk in the door and it takes time trying to figure out. And then you go in 17 different directions.
Chris LoCurto: 11:52 It could be focusing your time and energy in the wrong places – this is a big thing for a lot of leaders. I don’t care if you’re leader, business owner, or team member, wherever there’s conflict, we tend to not focus on. Then stuff gets put on the back burner. “Oh, I have to get to those emails” comes to the front burner. When I write like, one of the toughest things for me is I’m not one of those natural people who sits down and I start writing and everything is gold. It is a process. So I usually, I can’t write here in the office. I usually go home because I can’t be around people.
Chris LoCurto: 13:48 I may go somewhere very nice. But the point is as I go, so even if I’m going somewhere nice, it’s going someplace distraction free. Right. You know, where I will go to some place that’s an off season so people aren’t there, so I’m there and I get to be distraction free and do the thing I need to do, but there are times, you know, working on the lessons for the last event that I could be at home trying to write and going, you know, the laundry needs to get done. Things that I do not adore to do in my life. There’s things that I will all of a sudden go, I need to go do this because I’m stuck and it’s the conflict of “push through…”
Chris LoCurto: 14:41 Don’t be a Dork. Focus on getting this thing done. It’s time consuming. I got to get the momentum going. If I can get my Mojo, then I can just run on it. Right? And I also have those periods of creativity and periods that are not creativity. So I find myself filling my time with distractions. I’ve got to answer all of these emails, none of those emails are important. I’ve got to go do this thing that’s not important. So distractions can destroy your leadership because it’s not focused on what is important and that would be leading people. How has that affected you?
Heather McKiel: 15:41 Back in January when I went away to set my goals, I had all these goals that I wanted to do. Well, one of the big pieces that I realized is that I can get so caught up in all these things that I want to do and cool things that need to be done, that I go in 20 million different directions and never reach my goal because everything around me doesn’t lead me to that goal. So bring that back to here: I really took a hard look on this… email is a big distraction for me here because I’ll be in task. Those nice little reminders that come up on the right hand signed, I think fire somebody needs something from me. Somebody needs me,
Chris LoCurto: 16:26 the little notification that says somebody has emailed you,
Heather McKiel: 16:32 and I stop and I go and I get distracted because I may be in accounting or in the numbers and I’m pulled out of it. So I do this thing over here and then I go back to the numbers and it takes me 20, 30 minutes to get back in to the routine of things, you know. So the email notifications was a big piece for me to go close your email out when you’re focused on, on these things, go back to your email, you know, check your email first thing in the morning, check it before you go to lunch. You know, we put in the process that works. It’s easy to slip in and out of it when you get out of that habit… but turn off the notifications on your phone. I cannot tell you how many times we’ve been in meetings where we may be out for lunch meetings and we have our phones on us and they’re going off and it’s lighting up and it’s completely distract me from the conversation from what’s going on and I miss important pieces that I need to know.
Chris LoCurto: 17:40 My phone is always facedown. It’s always facedown because I don’t look at my phone as the thing that I’m supposed to do for everybody else. My phone is for my convenience and so for me, anytime it lights up and you’ve seen me do this and in staff meeting with people, if they put their phone down and it lights up, I will ask them to flip it over because I can be talking about something, get distracted and go to their phone because something lit up. I don’t care what’s on their phone. I don’t want to see what their stuff is, but it’s the distraction. We’ve been trained that at that phone lights up. There’s an urgency and we have to look to it, and so that’s one of the things that I will tell people in staff meeting, hey, if you guys are going to put your phones out on the tables, do me a favor, flip it over, just so we’re not seeing that distraction because it, it literally does take away and you’re right in meetings. We did a great book, years ago, nine years ago, 10 years ago. Were you working for me when we did time traps by Todd Duncan?
Heather McKiel: 19:00 Turn the notifications off. The other thing that I did that helped what as far as the email goes, was unsubscribing
Chris LoCurto: 19:00 Oh my goodness. I did not realize how much stuff, hundreds of emails in my inbox. But the other cool thing is there’s a program out there called unroll or something where if it’s not something that you want to unsubscribe, it rolls it up into one daily email, you can take a look at it and it has all those subscription emails in there so that you’re not bombarded with emails all day long. That was a huge help.
Heather McKiel: 20:21 Turning off the notifications was a big thing for me, not just at work but at home to uh, you talked a little bit about circadian rhythm. So I have learned that there are certain times in the day that I am just not as productive period. It just, that’s where my body is specific type of way. So let me, yeah, let me kind of explain for me. So am super, super creative from about 10:00 AM to three PM, super creative and my brain is on fire during those times. So that’s when I schedule things that I need that brain power. If I’m going to be in the accounting, I’m going to do it between those timeframes because my brain is the most active. So at 8:00 in the morning, what am I doing? I’m going through my emails, I’m preparing for the day, I’m checking in with the team, making sure that they have everything that they need. Getting those pieces out of the way so that at 10:00 AM I can hit the hard stuff, the good stuff
Chris LoCurto: 21:38 This may sound silly to people, oh gosh, I cannot believe that you don’t have the brain power. And it’s not that you don’t have brain power, it’s that you’re more creative in those moments and you do have more. Your brain does kick into a different gear. This is all kinds of people. Musicians, their circadian rhythms tend to lean towards nighttime. That can be incredibly creative towards nighttime. It’s a different part of the brain, different time, all kinds of things that are set up and it has to do with your environment. There’s all kinds of things that cause your circadian rhythm to be the way that it is, but it you will notice the difference doesn’t mean that you stop thinking you don’t. Your brain doesn’t start thinking until 10:00. It means that your, your brain kicks into a different gear at that point.
Chris LoCurto: 22:25 Right? For me, I have a marked a difference on my creativity at about 4:30 to tell the whole team, you guys all know this, you guys schedule things around, hey, don’t come to me with, we have to create this whole thing at 4:30 because Chris has been creative all stinking day long. His brain needs to rest. You know, it’s, it’s, it kind of shifts, I notice a big difference. It doesn’t mean that I can’t still give great answers. I’m still able to use my intelligence. None of that changes. I’m just not as creative at that time and so that’s a big key is that that can also be another distraction in your life as if you don’t realize when you are most creative to get things knocked out.
Heather McKiel: 23:13 Yeah. And here’s the cool thing is if you figure that out, if you figure that piece out, you are so much more effective, productive and productive throughout your day. You know, at 3:00 PM when I hit that low, if I just get up and I take a lap or outside, or if I took a lap, take a lap, take a lap, girl, get some vitamin D, um, it just, it triggers me to, you know, triggers me to keep going. But then I have this low time until about 8:00 at night and then between eight and 10 I’m on my brain’s on fire. So it’s a
Chris LoCurto: 23:45 great time for me to dig into podcast, to do readings, to dig in the word, um, you know, so it helps me to stay efficient if I understand those. And, and I’m not distracted, um, throughout the day. Absolutely. I’ve discovered I do my reading in the morning for knowledge, I do my reading at night to go to bed because it helps me put you to sleep, but it’s amazing how long it takes me to read a page at nighttime compared to a page in the morning because my focus is in a different place and it just, it just depends. Sometimes it kicks into gear and it works and some, but most of the time it does a really good job of just bring coming my brain down. So folks, there you go. Thank you so much for coming in. This has been fun. This has been a blast.
Chris LoCurto: 24:31 It’s been great having you on and talking through all of this fun stuff. And thank you again for being so vulnerable and being able to talk through the things that you’ve learned in that you’re growing through and in how much you changing as a leader. It’s been powerful to watch. It’s great to know that, you know, like I say, sitting here listening to stuff you teach actually worked, that the people that are close to me actually do the things that I teach. We know that it works, we watch it, we see it, but it’s great to watch it in action. So much of this stuff that we send out over a show, we don’t get to see, you know, once in a great while we will hear somebody say, oh my gosh, this has changed my life. And, and so we love to hear that stuff, but it’s always fun to watch.
Chris LoCurto: 25:15 I already know that you’ve grown, I’ve watched you grow for years, you know, I’ve seen you become the leader that you are and they’re so much more you have available in you, which is fantastic and it’s fun to watch. But it is great to sit here and listen to, you know, the way the responses and the things that you say, it’s like a mini you, I don’t know, but definitely a much better version. Better looking version of me, that’s for sure. I don’t know if you’re a small version of me, so folks, there you have it. The seven enemies of your leadership success. I’m focusing on these things, working through discovering, taking responsibility, and realizing that you deal with task saturation, not delegating properly, caring more about yourself than your team. Poor communication, taxing the collective intelligence victim mentality and distractions. These are all things that are affecting your leadership success, so consider changing those today.
Chris LoCurto: 26:10 What can you do? Pick out the things that you can focus on right now and start making some changes. Are you going to get to all seven today? Probably not. So pick them one at a time. How do I adjust this? How do I fix this? We’ve given you tools in these last two episodes of what you can do, so make sure that you’re doing that, and as always, we hope that this has helped you out and you have enjoyed this. So take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life, and join us on the next episode.