Throwback Episode 603 | How to Handle Team Members You View as “I Can’t Do This Without Them”

Today we're talking about how businesses should build systems that aren't reliant on any single person to thrive. Stay tuned because 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 going to explore this common mindset that many business leaders face, which is feeling that their business can't run without certain team members, these key people, and hopefully all businesses have some solid key people in them.

But in these, they may be top salespeople, they may be project managers, they may be leaders who unfortunately seem irreplaceable.

Now, while these individuals undoubtedly bring value, we're going to talk about how this mindset is limiting and how to shift it.

Now, as I say that, please understand I absolutely have phenomenal individuals in my business, very strong people. People I would not want to do this work, this mission, this ministry without.

However, nothing is dependent on any single team member. And the reason why is because what happens if something changes? What happens if something happens? Right?

So unfortunately, a lot of businesses have this mindset and we're going to talk about that, we're going to dig into that I can't do this without them kind of mindset.

Now, there's a difference between I can't do this without them and I don't want to do this without them.

I'm in the I don't want to do this without them category. A lot of folks are in that I can't do it without them category.

"I Can't Do This Without Them" Mindset (00:02:05)

So let's get into this. I can't do it without them mindset.

Now, I will say that I have some very strong team members on my team. I love them. They're their friends, their family. I wouldn't want to do this business without them, period.

That's just how I think about them. We're that close. We love doing this, this kind of work, this kind of ministry together, this mission together.

And I would not want to do it without them. However, nothing in the business hinges on any one single person on my team. And there's great reasons for that, right?

So again, there is a world of difference between I don't want to do this without them and I can't do this without them.

A smart business leader understands that they always have to be prepared for anything to happen, anything to change, right? And if your business is hung up on one person being there, then what happens if they decide to move.

What happens if God calls them somewhere else? What if, God forbid, something bad happens to that person, then obviously it's going to affect however much of your business is tied to that person.

So this limits an incredible amount inside of your business, inside of your team, inside of your leadership. It creates fear, it creates stress. There. There tends to be this sense of desperation when it comes to things being negative with that person.

Maybe we're not communicating well, or maybe we're having some struggles with that person, and then all of a sudden we're feeling stressed out because, oh, no, what if.

And that's another reason why you should never be emotionally handcuffed to any team member on your team.

The Fragility of a Business Built on Key People (00:04:02)

Your business should not be handcuffed to any team member on your team.

So whenever you have this kind of mindset of I can't live without this person, or I can't do this business without this person, then. Or people, key people, then it creates a kind of vulnerability inside of the business.

You know, I already mentioned, you know, if they leave, if they get sick, if something bad happens, if they move or whatever, we kind of understand that.

But what if they have a lot of knowledge on the business? Perhaps they are the ones that are kind of holding on to all the knowledge in a certain area. So we see this in two different ways as we go through this whole process.

I want you to think about this in two different ways. One, this is a great person, but everything hinges on them. Or this is a person I'm having problems with, and everything hinges on them. All right? So it could be both ways.

Interestingly enough, if it's a great person, but they're the ones with all the institutional knowledge on something or a certain area of the business or how they do, you know, this one specific role, then what happens is if there's no redundancies, if there's no documentation, then when.

If something happens to them, we don't have the ability for somebody just to step into that role and take over and run with it, right? So if somebody leaves all of a sudden, we're scrambling to try and figure out this role.

We're scrambling to try and figure out, you know, who are the clients that they're talking to or what are the processes of doing this area of the business that they do on a consistent basis.

A lot of times you'll see this with like an office manager or something. They have so much that they hold onto. Now, this is usually in the opposite side.

Not somebody that we want to keep, but somebody we're discovering is Toxic. And they just happen to have a lot of knowledge on the business.

Every single time I've helped a business get rid of a person who's super toxic, but they're also appearing to be a key person. They have a lot of institutional knowledge.

What we discover afterwards is actually didn't have that much. They really weren't working hard, they were just protecting themselves in the process. And there tends to be a lot of junk that goes with it on top of that.

So things to think about, those are vulnerabilities. Another vulnerability would be bottlenecks and operations. Right. So what happens if this person is the person that everybody has to go to for information?

Right. It's going to slow down your decision making processes when you rely on one person to make decisions. And by the way, that could be you, a team leader or owner, that could be you.

Then there's going to be delays. It's going to cause team members to be overwhelmed. It's going to cause us to not get to clients fast enough or take care of vendors fast enough. Right.

So it's going to limit by that bottleneck happening, it's also going to limit our scalability. We're going to be so reliant on one person or a few people that it's going to prevent the business from growing.

It's going to prevent progress. That's unacceptable. We can't do that. Another thing is that if we rely so heavily on a person or a few people, then chances are we're going to be overloading those individuals.

We're going to be putting way too much responsibility on certain team members, which is going to create stress, it's going to create fatigue, it's going to create, eventually it could create burnout. Right?

And with burnout and stress and fatigue, what do we tend to experience? Turnover. Because at some point they may leave.

And if they have been a key person and they have been somebody who has been so responsible with all the stuff that you've dumped on them, then chances are the business is going to be left in a bad position.

So let's not overload people. Let's, let's not make people so valuable because we've dumped so much stuff on them, they should be valuable because what they're able to produce, right?

What they're, how they're able to treat people, how they're able to be a team member. But if they are so overloaded that there's a really good chance that they might already have one foot out the door, you got a problem here.

Because they probably will leave, and then that's going to leave you in a really bad situation. Another thing is, is that it absolutely creates silos. Folks, silos have to go.

You cannot have silos in your business. It is not good when you do that. When you have silos, then you restrict all of the knowledge, all of the information from flowing throughout the team. Right?

What happens is, is that people stop helping other people. They stop leaning in other people's direction. They stop caring about what other teams are going through or what other people are going through.

They focus on their silo and doing the best that they can in their silo. This is horrible, especially at the leadership level, because whenever you have leaders in silos, again, you should not have any silos.

But when you have leaders in silos, then they don't care about what's going on in the rest of the company. And here's my deal. If you're going to sit at the leadership table, I need you to care because this is an us thing, not a you thing and a them thing. Right?

We should be moving in a fantastic laser direction towards the same destination. But if people are in silos, then it's what we call the shotgun approach. They're going in their own direction.

Don't care about anybody else, not working on anything else with anybody, not trying to get communication solutions, whatever point out problems, it just doesn't happen.

They will come to leadership team meetings and sit at a table and give their few minutes worth of discussing things and then they will just zone out. So we can't have that.

It affects information, it affects resources. You know, when you have people in silos, that means that you're spending a lot of money on resources for them to stay in that silo instead of having teams collaborate. So it's going to create gaps.

You know, if you're trying to, let's say we're trying to get communication up inside of the culture, inside of the business, there's going to be huge gaps in communication because people are only going to care about the communication in their own silo. Right?

They're not going to care about it going across teams. So another area of how it's going to affect the business when we have people that we can't run the business without.

Another thing is when you are so dependent on one person, one perspective, or a few individuals, then it's also going to limit the creativity that comes from the rest of the team.

It's going to. It's going to limit the input that the rest of the team would Speak into. In fact, what you're probably doing is shutting down the rest of the team with their creativity, their input, their perspective, their career.

Because what they see is, well, this person or these three people over here, the only people that seem to matter. So I'm just going to keep my head down, do the minimum amount I need to to get a paycheck and you know, go home.

At the end of the day, that is a terrible way to run your business. That's a terrible way to limit your team. You should be taxing the collective intelligence.

You should be treating people with dignity. You should be getting them to speak into onto about things as much as possible. Right? Because our goal is to have the whole team lift the company and move the company forward.

When you do that, you have a lack of team development. Right. Other team members are going to be again, if I see somebody else is in a silo, I'm going to put myself in a silo.

I'm not going to be looking for opportunities of growth. I see that ownership isn't focused on me growing, they're focused on these key people.

So you limit growth, you limit buy in, you limit people taking ownership of their roles. Again, a lot of times what happens is that people just do the bare minimum to get a paycheck. Also when you do this, you really put your reputation at risk.

So quite often clients, if they see that there is one person that they can go to for answers for solutions instead of following a good, well built system of project managers or whatever, whatever you have, salespeople, estimators, whatever you have in your business, customer service people, usually you have a, or you should have, I should say, a quality path for clients to get served, to get information.

If we have a person who is the person, the frontline person for all of these clients, then guess who they're going to contact.

That one person. You know, a lot of you owners have probably experienced this in the past when you started the business and you had so many clients that were contacting you and you're like, I can't do it.

I have to start handing these people off because I have so many other things I have to do. And they just keep contacting you, right?

Well, what happens when you have a specific salesperson that everybody has to contact instead of going through somebody else on the team?

Well, a couple things here that puts your reputation at risk. That person is going to be overwhelmed. There's going to be a time that person cannot handle everybody.

They're not going to be able to. Right. So what Happens when they start dropping balls when they're dealing with clients. What happens when clients can't get a hold of them?

What happens when clients start to get frustrated and angry and all of a sudden realize that your business is way too dependent on that one person?

Well, you're probably going to start to lose clients. And the whole time they could have been getting served by another team member somewhere. But we kept this key person in such a prominent place.

So if that happens, then chances are you're going to start to find if people are unavailable or a key person is unavailable, that clients aren't getting served. Well, there's no customer service. Maybe they're not getting the deliveries that they need.

All of this can damage your reputation. So a question for you is, how much do you feel like your business would collapse or be considerably damaged if a single person left or a few people left?

If the answer is, yeah, I do believe that that would, you know, it's possible that my business would collapse or be severely damaged, then that's giving you a really big sign you have too much that's dependent on one, two or three people, right, that you need to do something about this because it's going to affect you in the long run and it's probably put a lot of stress on you up until this point.

So what if it's not dependent on somebody who's great? I can't run this business without somebody who's great. But instead I maybe am dependent on a person because I have not set up things to be redundant.

I haven't set up things to get information from this person, documented the knowledge, all that kind of fun stuff.

Red flags of Control Freaks and Manipulators (00:15:43)

There are some red flags that you need to be aware of because those people are usually going to be some level of control freak.

They're going to be some level of manipulator. So there's some red flags you have to see that is causing them to be somebody that the business can't run without.

Or in their words, this business can't run without me. You know, you can't do this business without me. So there's some red flags you need to be looking for. First thing is a lack of delegation. Why?

Because people who are control freaks, who are manipulators absolutely refuse to take things off of their plate and give it to somebody else.

Now, there's all kinds of excuses, oh, they can't do it right? They're not going to do it as good as I can. Yada, yada, yada. I will tell you this after having done this for decades.

The reason that I see being most common when it's a toxic person is they don't want to take things off their plate because they're afraid that they're going to get exposed.

And if they hold things on their plate and they don't delegate, then they look super valuable again. This company can't do this without me. And you know, they feel like they're ensuring a long term role for them.

If you see that red flag, you've got to jump in right away. Another piece would be withholding knowledge, withholding information. You know, they keep crucial knowledge to the business or to how customers work or customer contacts or whatever.

They keep that to themselves. They make it incredibly difficult for anybody on the team, including the leaders, to actually get this information or step into their role and take over. Right.

You've probably noticed that the lack of information share or the lack of documented information when this person goes on vacation or they're out sick, that it's a pain in the butt trying to get to certain pieces of information and then you don't get it until they come back in.

Right. If they're out sick for a few days, you're not able to get this information until they come back in the door.

And again, they appear as though they are so important to the business. That is unacceptable. Right? The business, this process can't run without me.

These clients can't be served without me. Whatever it is, you got to see that. You've got to see that red flag. Another red flag would be overemphasizing their contributions.

Now it is common whenever you have somebody that's in this role, that's in this place of manipulating, thinking that the business can't run without them, that they will frequently remind leaders, team members, anybody who will listen of their past achievements.

Right? Or even the current workload responsibilities that they have on their plate. And many times they, they exaggerate their importance.

When you hear somebody who is constantly giving their resume, constantly saying all the things that they've done in the past, you know, well, when I was at this business I did this, or when I was at this business I did this, or I did this thing for so long and I, I, I, I, I.

Whenever you hear that and, and the best ones won't use the, the word I, they'll, they'll tailor it really well so it doesn't sound like they're bragging on themselves, but all they're doing is bragging on themselves.

Whenever you see somebody overemphasizing their contributions, you should pay close attention.

This very well may be somebody is hoarding information or setting themselves up to look so amazing so that you don't let them go, so that they don't get found out.

They don't want to be found out to be a fraud. So they keep making themselves sound amazing. It's. It's pride, right?

It's blowing themselves up to try and convince everybody that they're absolutely needed and it's absolutely crucial to have them on the team.

Another red flag is when you see the discouraging of cross training. Whenever you see somebody saying, oh, no, we don't need to cross train on that. No, no.

Or somebody can't do it as well. Whenever you, you see that resistance. No, no, I got this. Or why would you have somebody else do that? You know, that person's not going to do it as well.

That person's too busy, whatever it is, whenever they make it difficult for others to take over their responsibility, this again is another red flag. You need to jump in, start to put things in place, and we'll talk about that.

But you need to put things in place to get those things off of this person's plate or just at a bare minimum, get a redundancy in place. Right?

Another piece you may see in this discouraging is if somebody believes they have all the answers, they have all the leadership answers, they have all the business answers, then they're gonna discourage any outside input. I see this all the time, unfortunately.

I see people discouraging solutions coming from the outside because what that will do is expose that this person doesn't really have all the answers or their systems or processes really don't work as well.

Another crazy red flag is when somebody is either starting fires or, you know, loudly putting out fires. You know, look at me, look at how amazing I saved the day. That is something. Goodness. I don't need heroes like that.

I don't need. I need people who prevent fires. I sure as heck don't need people who start fires. So again, another red flag that you need to be incredibly aware of if you see a lot of fires happening.

Now with that, a lot of businesses have a lot of fires because they are missing a lot of, you know, good structure to the business. We discover that a lot in strap plan.

Now we find that there's a lot of firefighters inside of businesses. What I'm talking about, not. That's not what I'm talking about. We can fix that. We can help with that.

What I'm talking about is the person who's literally creating problems, who's creating issues so that they can come along and put out the fire. I had somebody one time I was interviewing, gosh, this must have been close to 20 years ago.

I was interviewing somebody to be an event coordinator to put on these huge, you know, multi thousand person events. And she said, I was asking her, you know, what are some of her strengths?

And she's like, oh, I'm phenomenal at putting out fire's day of. I mean, I am great at putting out fires day of. And I was like, okay, well, that's all I needed to hear today.

Thank you so much for coming in. She's like, what? The interview's over? And I'm like, yeah. She said, can I ask you why? And I said, well, yeah.

I don't need somebody who's great at putting out fire stay of. I need somebody who prevents them. I don't want fires day of.

I don't want somebody who's super happy that they're great at putting out fire's day of. I need somebody who makes sure that nobody knows they exist. Right?

So if you see somebody who's like that hero, then this is another big red flag.

 Importance of Viewing Your Business as a System (00:23:06)

So what is something that can help you to avoid these situations? Well, instead of now, I'm huge on the people side of business.

Obviously, if we don't have people, you know, business can't run without people. So, you know, a lot of the stuff we teach is so people centric, right? But we also teach a lot of the systems and processes as well.

So what I'd love for you to do is to start looking at your business through the lens of your business being a system. What is the system? Right. What is the operating system that your business has?

What does leadership look like? Sales, marketing, finances. Instead of just looking at it as the people doing the roles, look at how that system operates. Is everything well documented? How does things go from one area to another? Right.

All of that system is something that will help you to realize that when you do back out and you look at the people that unfortunately somebody might be holding on to a lot.

Somebody might be hiding some things. Somebody might be overvalued in a role. Somebody might be wedged into a spot that if they do come out, all of a sudden it feels like again that the business is collapsing.

So look at your business as a system. What are the systems inside of your business? How does it operate? How do things transition? Are they seamless?

And then pull some of these key people out of those roles, right? You're viewing your business as a system, pull a key person out of the role.

What happens to the system? How is it truly affected? Don't just assume. Ask the question, how is it truly affected?

If you see that it is affected greatly, then here's a spot that we have to start working on to fix.

Actionable Steps for Leaders (00:25:04)

So what can you do? Super simple. I say it's super simple.

First step is make sure that all processes are documented. Doesn't matter who it is, it doesn't matter if you think that, you know, this person isn't holding things up. Is. Is the processes that they're working on, are they documented?

Are they. If they are not, make sure that they get documented. Especially if it's a key person, right, that you feel like it could affect the business if they leave.

Get their processes documented, get the knowledge base documented. If there are certain things that they know about the business that nobody else seems to know, maybe they've been there for many, many years.

Like I say, a lot of times what we see is an office manager that's been there for 15 years has information that nobody else has.

What do you do about that? Get that information out, get it documented. Another thing you need to do is observe their patterns when it comes to delegating, right?

Do they struggle in getting things off of their plate, getting it onto other people? Are they hoarding tasks? Are they overloaded with work, you know, or do they just make it look like they're overloaded with work?

Either way, if there's a problem getting stuff off their plate and delegating to others, this is going to be an issue.

Make sure that you start setting up redundancies.

Make sure that people know how to step into their place and do their job, whatever it is, even if it's just aspects of that job, you can always evaluate that person's role and ask yourself the question, how many things in here do I think are, you know, vital to the company?

That if they left, it would really affect the company badly, put redundancies in, or those things are. Also listen for narratives, right?

If they're frequently stressed out, if they're consistently talking about how unique they are, how important they are to the business, then, you know, make sure that you're doing things to standardize their role, to make sure that the again, the knowledge is documented, the things that they're doing are getting handed off their plates.

But listen for those narratives. That's going to help you to go, something is wrong. I need to do something. It's a red flag. What do I need to jump in here and fix.

Another thing to look out for is compare their contributions. Objectively evaluate their work, you know, based on measurable outcomes rather than just narratives. Right.

Are their results truly irreplaceable? Or is this perception driven by something that they're communicating? Right. Or is it driven by their behavior?

If you can objectively look at what they're doing and compare that, then what you may discover is the narrative is driving the value, not the actual work.

Obviously, the work has value, but they may be making themselves look a heck of a lot better than they are.

Avoid the Panic of Losing Top Performers (00:28:05)

So what can you do to avoid the panic of losing top performers?

Cross train, cross train, cross train. I know I've already said it, but make sure that you make it a standard practice for every single key role to have at least one backup trained. You need at least one in case something happens.

The moment you do that, you will be shedding light on that role, and this perceived value may just dwindle. It may drop considerably. Right?

Make sure that your standardizing processes mandate that all essential tasks be documented. Make sure the systems like CRMs are used for, you know, transparency instead of hoarding contacts and information.

You know, if a person resists, then it's probably a sign of manipulation. So absolutely push forward and get it done. Address the resistance directly. Do not allow that to happen.

Make sure that you're boldly addressing somebody resisting change because, again, they may be hiding something that you need to get to as soon as possible.

Make sure that you're setting clear expectations for transparency. Clear expectations. Let team members know that the company values transparency. This is a good thing. We should be clear on being able to see how other areas work, what they're doing.

We should be sharing knowledge. We should be collaborating. You know, make sure that everybody knows that no role is so unique that only one person can fill it.

It's okay to say those things out loud because as you do, again, it shines a light on somebody who's trying to make it where the company can't do it without them. Another thing is limit your praises based on exclusivity of a person or a few people.

Make sure that you're highlighting team wins, collective wins. You know, make it clear that this is a business that has a system, and it's a system of people working together. It's not dependent on individuals. Right?

It needs everybody. If everybody is not involved, we don't make this happen. We don't get things done. We don't serve clients, we don't make money. We don't put food on the table.

Lastly, make sure that you're having absolutely direct, bold, clear, maybe even potentially brutal conversations.

If you suspect manipulation, have an open conversation with a team member. Make sure that you're addressing your concerns.

Explain the need of why things must be documented, why there has to be processes, team wide responsibilities, delegation, and then listen to their perspective. Listen to how they respond.

You may discover that this was a misunderstanding. They may respond absolutely. Let's get it in place. Let's do it. I'll help out, yada yada, yada.

Chances are, if you've already got this feeling that maybe this is somebody who is making themselves more important than they are, then you will probably get a lot of pushback. You will probably get a lot of resistance.

Additional Resources

Additional things we want you to listen to Episode 330 How to Lead an Uncoachable Team Member.

This is where we go through a five step framework to lead team members to clarity and ownership. And we're also role playing in this, the conversation.

So you're actually going to hear how to lead that in real time. This will help you to have these types of conversations that you need to with somebody who's struggling, right?

Somebody who's holding on to stuff, somebody who's maybe made themselves a key player. And once again, please do not hear me say there's anything wrong with having key team members.

I have key team members, but the business isn't dependent on any one key team member.

If we lose somebody, we would hate it immensely. But we would rock on. We would fill that role, and we would do what we need to do, and we would rock on.

Conclusion

So the more robust your system is, the more documented your processes are, the more delegated your tasks are to the right people at the right times, properly, the more you're going to empower your team members. And they will see that they're all needed.

Everybody is needed. Everybody has a critical role. Everybody needs to step up, take ownership, take responsibility. Everybody can be a great performer inside of your business. Right?

The business should never be built on a mindset of fear. It should never be built on a mindset of dependency. If you shift this belief, then you can create a incredibly stronger and more resilient business. Well, folks, that's all the time that we have for today.

Hopefully, this has helped you immensely. As always, we want you to take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life, and join us on the next episode.