This can be one of our biggest leadership blindspots.
We often think our greatest leadership opportunities. Once we find quality feedback from healthy people, it creates visibility in seeing the opportunities in our life.
Listen to this episode to learn how to create opportunities through receiving quality feedback.
Discover how many leaders have successfully developed this ability for themselves and their teams 
Continue reading for full transcript
Are you missing out on some of the greatest leadership opportunities? More on that 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 phenomenal day wherever you are. It is hot, still, still where we are. It’s, you know, it’s late in the year and still hot, which is amazing. Folks, I am really excited about our show today because of the subject that we’re talking about today, and it’s a tough one, it’s a tough one. I’m going to have like 73 caveats in this show alone, talking about how to follow this piece of advice that I have for you. But if you get this, this is going to be big for you as a leader. Uh, it’s gonna open, huge doors. They’re a leader, a team member, a stay-at-home mom or dad, doesn’t matter. The piece that I’m talking about today is big for you as an individual. Doesn’t matter what it is. Now to kind of discuss that or kind of share that.
I’m gonna tee that up with something that was big for me. I just discovered I didn’t even know this, but uh, I’m celebrating 10 years, 10 years of racing formula cars. I didn’t even recognize that had been 10 years, but it takes me back to when I started and when I was getting my license and one of the most powerful things, I spent some really heavy, intense days training to get my license and had all these, these coaches teaching me, um, you know, this school that I was going through to teach me and get me to this place where I can get my license. And all of that was crazy powerful. But one of the most powerful, probably the most powerful thing is they put a professional out there on the track and that professional kicked my butt obviously. Right. But after I pulled into the pits, I spent about 20 minutes, 20 minutes gaining as much.
Here comes, are you ready for it? Feedback as I possibly could from that pro. I mean, I asked question after question after question after question after question. And that’s just me. I’ve been that way pretty much my whole life gaining a higher-quality perspective is something that is crazy important to me. It’s really huge in what we do. Our business, a big part of our business, a lot of the stuff that we, uh, teach, uh, the events that we do, the programs that we do, the services that we do are built on this gaining high-quality perspective, gaining high-quality feedback as well, right? So sometimes you gain perspective in a multitude of ways. And one of those tools that we’re going to talk about today is feedback. The great thing is when you get good quality feedback, I mean, you’re going to hear me. Like I say, there are going to be a lot of caveats when you get quality feedback, a great thing happens.
It opens up visibility, it helps you to see things, and visibility creates opportunity. So we’re going to be talking about that today. So if you get a bad taste in your mouth when you hear the word feedback, then guess what? That’s a great place to start because that may mean a couple of things. It may mean that you struggle with feedback. Uh, it may mean that you have got unhealthy people giving you feedback. You know, there’s a bunch of things that it could be, but the most important thing to recognize is that if you’re not getting quality feedback, how do you know what’s right? How do you know it’s great? How do you know what you’re doing well? How do you know what you need to change? So the first caveat in this thing is sometimes feedback does come from unhealthy and controlling people. And that is not what we’re looking for here today.
Throughout this whole show. What I’m talking about is getting with healthy people, getting with experienced people, getting with people who want to set you up for success, and getting with people who want to help you to grow. So big caveat as we walked through all of this stuff. So one, when we’re talking about feedback, we’re talking about it coming from healthy people who have a good perspective. Now with that said, we can still struggle with feedback. You know what happens when the facts or I say facts again, are Subjective from the person giving it to you. What happens when the feedback is challenging? What happens when it’s disappointing? What happens when it points to failure? What happens when it points out failure? Right? So say it with me. Feedback is our friend. Healthy quality feedback is our friend. To get as much visibility as you possibly can to see as much opportunity as you possibly can.
You need to go after feedback. You need to seek other perspectives. You need to see if there’s something that you’re missing. So if you’re used to receiving feedback as negative, then it’s probably not going to help you at all. If you feel like if you, if a struggle you have in receiving feedback is that you feel like it means that you’re a terrible leader or a terrible person, then we’ve got to solve that. We’ve got to work on that piece right there, right? So as we talk about all the time, we don’t make any victims or any monsters in this process. Instead, our goal is to gain a quality perspective. So whether you receive it or not, whether you seek it or not, believe it or not, feedback already exists. And as leaders, we either choose, uh, how we’re going to see it as amazing opportunities or something to be avoided.
Something that we push under the rug and we don’t want to deal with it. I can tell you this, bad leaders are gonna avoid feedback. Great leaders are going to pursue it. So it doesn’t mean that I avoid getting any feedback from anybody. I know that there are people that are going to come at me with information, come at me with feedback and try and control or set my reality. It happens. I mean, look what I do for a living, right? So there are many times that people want to set my reality with information that’s not good. It’s not quality. How do I know? Because I can turn to healthy people that I have around me and go, Hey, what do you think about that? It is very easy to see, right? So key number one, surround yourself with healthy people. So if somebody is trying to set your reality in a negative way, then you’re always going to avoid it.
However, if it’s healthy folks and you’re avoiding the feedback, then you’ve got to look at yourself. You’ve got to start taking a look at the person in the mirror. Why am I struggling with quality feedback? Why am I struggling with somebody who’s trying to help me be better? Who’s trying to speak into my life, who’s trying to guide and direct me in a better direction? Why am I struggling with that? And that is a great place for you to really take a hard look at how much is not receiving feedback holding you back. How much is it keeping you from seeing greater opportunities?
So this is one of the things we talk about in Next Level Life where the amount of energy that goes into avoiding something like this. So we talk about it with controlling people or people who are fighting so hard for their worth.
When you think about the amount of energy that goes into battling, not getting input from other people, avoiding it, keeping yourself in the same spot, dealing with the same struggles over and over and over again because you haven’t fixed the struggles or you haven’t got good information to solve those struggles. It’s an amazing amount. It’s a lot of energy. But if you turn this around and understand that you can find people who are going to speak well into your life and you seek it as great leaders do, then yes, it may hurt. Yes, it may be tough. Yes, it may be difficult, but if it’s good quality, healthy perspective, good quality, and healthy feedback, then a great thing happens. If you receive it and are able to move out on it, then you can start gaining bigger visibility. So with all of that set, here’s what I want you to know.
I have been in the same boat. There is no person on the planet who just absolutely getting nothing but feedback about things that they can fix and change and you know, something they’re struggling with. I totally get that. I completely understand. I’m in the boat with you. Right? I’m discussing this because it is something that we see all the time where people are struggling with getting quality feedback and it’s holding them back. I’ve been there. I know what it’s like it’s still something in my life that I have to make sure that I’m not struggling with. And for the guy who was constantly looking for more information, sometimes it comes my way and I don’t want it, but there’s a rule that I absolutely live by. If I can get to a higher-quality perspective, I can make better decisions. So, folks, that’s what I want you to understand.
The higher quality perspective you get the greater decisions you can make. I’m not saying that you’re going to do it, I’m saying it gives you the opportunity to make better decisions in your life, to make healthier decisions for you leaders to make better business decisions, leading decisions, team decisions, whatever it is. Right? So I understand what it’s like. I get it. It’s tough. However, suppose you’re able to receive it and you’re able to be healthy about it and you’re able to grow from it. In that case, it’s going to give you that credit or visibility in that greater visibility is going to lead to greater opportunities. Now, before we get into capitalizing on this great opportunity that is feedback I want to tell you about something exciting that is coming this spring. I’ve never seen a leader that’s had everything that they wanted. Out of thousands of leaders that I’ve coached most are probably a lot like you.
You wish you saw greater productivity and less drama from your team, that you didn’t spend your energy putting out fires, that you had more time to invest in your family, and the things that you enjoy and you felt more equipped to lead your team to success. The only thing that’s holding leaders back from the results they desire is having the right tools and you can get those tools at the Next Level Leadership Live Event. So if you’re young, old, new, experienced, struggling, or really successful, this event is for anyone who is ready to learn from 25 years of best practices that get proven results. It’s not about short-term fixes. In three days, I’m going to teach you how to have sustained revenue growth to generate greater productivity from your team and get immediate momentum toward the results that you want. It’s going to be detailed, practical, and loaded with how-to’s. From the lessons we’re teaching,
Our clients have seen an average of 46% increase in gross profit in one year’s time. That’s one year’s time. These clients run normal everyday businesses and your business can have the same level of success. So if you’re ready to see those results, go to chrislocurto.com/events and get your tail to this event and invest in your leadership and your business. That’s chrislocurto.com/events. I can’t wait to see you there. So here’s what I want to know. Speaking on getting feedback from people. And again, caveat again, talking about those healthy people who want to see you succeed, all that kind of fun stuff. Do you have consistent ways or processes of seeking that feedback? So some ways that you can do this. Now we always suggest that you have one on one meetings with their team. Now I’m speaking to the leaders on this, but folks that you know apply as you can.
If you’re not a leader, that’s fine. Or if you’re a team member, are you getting it from your leadership right? Or if your spouse or you’re getting it from your spouse, all that stuff. So we highly suggest that as a leader you are having one on ones with your team members. Now if you are running a team of 75 there’s a really good chance you’re not going to do that on a consistent basis. If you are running 75 people, that’s a whole nother show right there. So take a look at the kinds of meetings that you have. Do you have meetings with your team members? Do you have meetings with your team leaders? Do you have meetings with leaders? What are those opportunities that you can seek good quality feedback about? You set that up as something that you do on a consistent basis, right?
It doesn’t have to be every single meeting. You know, people are now anticipating. You’re going to be saying, Hey, what’s wrong with me? You know, look for those opportunities. When you can get that feedback. Take a look at the annual surveys, guys. You need to survey your peeps. Ask the kind of questions that are going to give you feedback in the areas that you’re seeking, right? Areas where you can have more visibility, more opportunity. Look for those opportunities. I can tell you what we do after every single of event are public events, not our next-level lives. I’m not our strap plans, but our pub, every public event that we do, whether it’s Next Level Leadership Live Event or the Aligned Event that we just had recently or our quarterly retreats, we have a meeting where we discuss two things. What went well? We want to make sure that we’re patting people on the back.
Hey guys, let’s celebrate that. We just did a great event. This all went well. So we will talk about what went well and then we will talk about what went wrong, what do we need to fix? And in that meeting, it is a tough meeting. There are very, I’m telling everybody on my team who’s a part of that process. Write down notes, take notes, and put down the things that we need to change. Put down the things that didn’t work. Put down the things that we need to fix, you know, write these things down so that we can discuss it. Why? Because I’m always wanting to grow. I’m always wanting to make things better. So I can tell you it’s a difficult conversation to have. I started that meeting, jeez, probably 17 years, somewhere around there. Uh, started that with my team and I can tell you it took about four meetings for them to speak up, right?
Because what’s the first thing everybody wants to do? Throw somebody under the bus. And so the very moment it first it finally did happen that somebody threw somebody on the bus, I pushed back quickly and I said, Hey, we don’t do that here. We’re in. Our goal is not to play the blame game. Our goal is to look at what went wrong and what can we fix about four meetings into it. Uh, one of my guys, Lance Osborne, shout out to Lance, uh, said, well, I’ll tell you what I did wrong. I’ll tell you something I screwed up on. I didn’t do this thing over here and I know that it affected you over there. And he’s talking to another one of our coordinators, Heather is like, I know, I know this affected you. So I’ve done this and I’ve fixed this in my checklist and so I want to make sure that doesn’t happen again.
Boom. All of a sudden we’re having really good feedback and it became powerful. That became one of the best meetings I’ve had. I mean 17 years I think. No, I’ve been doing that with events and it is powerful when the team gets in and says this is what went wrong. Now sometimes the information is not a hundred percent correct. You know, sometimes they need to gain some more perspective on it. But for the most part, it’s powerful. So you know, take a look at those opportunities. An example would be if you’ve got a sales pitch, you know, sometimes with us before we go live, we’ll send it out to, the business owners that we work with so we can receive some feedback. We want to find out what you guys think about this. What are you seeing here? What are you experiencing? Does this work for you?
So look for those consistent processes that you can seek feedback on. Another way you can do this is peer-to-peer. Now you should be working with other peers. So like if you’re in sales, you should be working with marketing. You know, you can figure this out. It’s not very difficult. You should be working with peers to help you get out of your silos, to help you get out of the view that you have. Now, If you don’t have, once again, I’ll point back to the caveat fence. You know, not somebody who’s going to be healthier. Somebody who’s Uber selfish and just, you know, I was going to give you bad information so it helps them don’t talk to them, you know? Right. Or don’t at least come to them for that type of feedback. But a lot of you do have good quality peers that you can focus with.
So what is it sales team members see inside of marketing could be stronger to help their area. What does marketing see inside of sales that can help their area? And the right admin working with sales. I know they always get along. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. You know, these should be some combinations. You know, peer-to-peer working with somebody to say, Hey, here’s what I’m doing. What do you see? Oh my gosh. If a salesperson actually asked that to an admin person who was helping them, it would be amazing, right? They’d probably have a heart attack right then and there. I mean it would just be shocking, but it’s also the same way as the other way around, right? If an admin actually asked that of a salesperson, what would happen? We could actually have quality feedback, a quality perspective. We could discover, Hey, you know, when you do this thing here, eating a solution together, look out here.
So is it possible that we can work on getting a solution together, look out now peer-to-peer could possibly solve stuff like that. So look at these opportunities. Also what you say and how you say it is one of the most important parts of receiving quality feedback. If you’re trying to gain perspective and the words you’re using are controlling. If they’re leading, listen, leading questions. People do this all the time. Uh, we see this in strap plan all the time where somebody will, is struggling with a specific topic, and instead of just asking for quality feedback, we have, we have a saying here that came out of Strat Plan years ago and it is, “ask a freaking question”. So a lot of times people will not ask a good question. They want to ask a quality question. They don’t want to get that feedback. And when they finally do ask a question, it’s usually leading something along the lines of don’t you agree that that’s not going to work out because of this, this, and this?
And it becomes this leading question guys. You’re not going to get quality feedback from that. You’re going to get the answer that you want, right? So instead of doing that, be very cautious of how you say things. Uh, be cautious of what you say. Because if you ask it in a way that appears that you really don’t want anybody’s input, guess what? You’re not really going to get anybody’s input. So be very cognizant of that. Now, another great idea is for you to have questions ready. Things like, what do you see that we could make better? Or what frustrations do you have right now? Or what would you have done differently? These are all good questions to ask, that is not leading. It is asking for a great perspective. What do you see about this thing? How would you have changed it? You might even ask questions like, did it make sense to you?
Do you understand it? Are there any questions you have about it? Would you like some perspective as to why I did what I did or why this ran the way that it ran? Whatever that is. Make sure that you have good questions already ready so that when you ask for good-quality feedback, you know what to expect. Now getting feedback can be one of the most difficult things that we do as leaders. So what you say is important, but when and how you say it is even more important. That’s why we’re going to be doing a follow-up episode to this. So to get to great quality feedback, you have to lead the process and we don’t have time to tackle that process in this episode. So next week we’re going to release an episode on how to receive feedback as a leader. Now, if you realize right now that you’ve never been given feedback or been put in a position where you’ve received difficult criticism from a team member, or maybe you have, but it wasn’t a productive, positive experience, don’t just start asking these questions tomorrow. How you do it is as important as doing it. So don’t miss next week’s episode. Well folks, hopefully this has helped you today. Thank you for joining me. I hope it has served you well. I encourage you to subscribe, rate, and share this podcast to help more people join our community and as always, take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life, and make sure you join us on the next episode.
