533 | What We Tell Business Owners & Leaders

Chris LoCurto 0:00
What we tell people in top leadership positions, whether CEOs, business owners, or leaders, here's what you need to know. That's what's 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're going to have, some fun talking about what the top advice is that we give and counsel or we find ourselves giving to those who are in top leadership positions. Now, as we say something like a top leadership position, what are we talking about CEOs, business owners, executives, leadership teams, and people with great responsibility, right, but here's the thing. When we say top leadership positions, if you're leading anybody, you're in a top leadership position, it's funny how the world looks at the top leadership positions as being those in big businesses or making lots of money. The truth is the responsibility of leading is the responsibility of leading. So when you look at those that are in higher positions, we're going to talk about some of the things that we coach them on are some of the top things that we coach the top leaders on. After decades of coaching and training leaders, I can tell you that most people's issues are common. We don't actually have folks having like, random issues that nobody else is experiencing instead, you know, and by the way, a lot of folks want to think that they do the things that they're experiencing is not the same thing that everybody else is experiencing. But I will tell you the truth. Most people experience the same issues. I don't care if you're working for a mom-and-pop, I don't care if you have 10 people on your team don't care if you've got a $100 million or $200 million business. The folks that are leading these tend to have the same common problems.

And while they do believe often that theirs is unique, as we have helped people to see many times as they join our Next Level Mastermind program, as we get new folks coming in, they always think that everybody else in the room has it together. And they're the only ones who are screwed up. And what we help them to see is everybody coming in has thought the same exact thing. We're all experiencing a lot of the same stuff. Some are ahead of others, you know, some people are in the same spot. Some are looking to catch up. The truth is people are people. And people in leadership positions tend to struggle with the same or very similar issues. So today, we're gonna dig into some of our top advice over the years. Now, if you're new to us, then these things might be new to you and even surprise you. If you've followed the show for a while, then you've probably heard some of the things before and it's gonna make a lot more sense. As I talk through this. Whatever your situation, I encourage you to open your mind a bit. Try to self-assess where you are with each one of these situations. Even if you've heard me say this before, I want you to ask yourself, Where am I right now? All right. So what adjustments do I need to make? Where am I? How can I use this in my leadership? And then how can I lead others? So let's get started. The first thing, probably the most important thing, and it's probably the number one thing that we tell business leaders is to feel like you need a drumroll here. Your worth is not how profitable your business is. leaders tend to equate business success with their worth as a person and I gotta tell you, nothing could be further from the truth. Now remember, your business is what you do, not who you are.

Now, this is especially true for CEOs owners, and presidents of businesses, both large and small, doesn't matter. Your worth does not come from your profit. It does not come from your margin. That is one aspect of who you are. You're also a father or a mother, possibly a brother or a sister, a son or a daughter, or a friend. Hopefully, a lot of you are followers of Yeshua. There are so many aspects to you. But what we tend to tell ourselves when we get into a higher leadership position is that our worth is based on what's produced. Now, I will tell you, it is very possible and for some of you highly likely that your worth to the company is the bottom line, your worth to the company is what you produce. And that's not uncommon. And that's very understandable. Many of you work for a, you know, a company that is all about making a profit. So you coming on board and being a part are leading people to success, your worth to that company, is what you produce. Again, that's not something that's hard to understand. That's not something that's crazy, that's not something that, you know, is, you know, unfair for them to expect of you, that's what they're paying you for. So I want to make sure that we don't get this confused, you are worth to a company very well, maybe your productivity and I'm not surprised. I can tell you, all of my team, their worth to me is not their productivity. But it's a close second, I can tell you that, right? Because one, our focus here is our number one focus has got our number one motivating factor is God. I tell people all the time, I'm not going to run a business, that's not profitable. But profit is not our number one motivating factor, God is worshiping God with what we do using what we do to worship him.

Number two is helping people to change their lives. Three is profit. Now, it's gotta be up there enough that we are running a profitable business. But in most of the companies that I coach and lead and guide and teach a lot of them, the profit is up there and the number one or number two position, right? Some of them it's like we are, you know, where God and changing lives is, is wanting to, but for most companies, profit is the end of the day, that's what they're looking for. But as a human being, as a person, as a Christ follower, your worth is not in that number. It never will be. It never should be. For me, as a believer, my worth isn't what God says it is. My worth isn't what he has shown me and how he has accepted me and pursued my heart and he has set my life up and ordained my steps and protected me when I needed protection and allowed me to face complications and difficulty and pain when I needed it and continues to do so. My worth is in the fact that I am somebody who has the same inheritances. Everybody, he's promised, I get the same inheritance. I get to rule and reign with Him. In the millennial reign. I get to experience his love on a daily basis, I get to experience his care, his protection, his blessings. And as a loving father, when I'm stupid and screwed up, I get to experience His correction. Only a fool. Only a fool does not want the correction of God. So my worth is not in how much money my company produces. And never will be. My worth isn't in my title as a business owner, and it never will be. My worth first and foremost, first and foremost comes from how God the Almighty sees me. And what he says my worth is that my worth comes from the most important human being on the planet to me, and that is my wife.

After that, my kids and then after that my work. Where do I get this from Ephesians four, five, and six, go look it up. Take it in, soak it in. Your worth should be minimal from humans, it should be mostly from God. Number one thing that we tell leaders that's, that's going to be more powerful to you no matter what your situation is, than anything else on the business. Why? Because so many folks find their identity and what they do. So, most importantly, have a great grasp on what your worth is and where it comes from. And it will change the way you look at how you lead your team lead your business. There will be considerably less desperation when your worth is not tied to that bottom number as a person that is as a human being. All right. The second thing that we tell them, business leaders, all the time is you have got to kill the leadership Crazy Cycle, you have got to get out of the leadership Crazy Cycle this thing that we talked about all the time, this leadership Crazy Cycle is this focus, where you are so busy and stuck in tasks and doing 10,000 things and your identity tells you that your worth is in getting all those things done. And unfortunately, you get to the end of the day, you can't even tell somebody what you did today, you just know you've been running ended enough. And we're not delegating successfully, we're not setting other people up for success, we're not leading people well, and the amount of bleeding that's actually happening is very minimal. At best. That is not a large percentage of setting other people up for success.

So this is something that we tell people all the time, you have got to kill the leadership Crazy Cycle, you've got to get out of it. You've got to delegate, and you've got to understand what your purpose should be as a leader, it is your job to make your team successful, not the other way around. And if you're focused on doing all the tasks that you believe you need to get done, and by the way, as I say that I want you to recognize that most people are trained by a leader who they've had in their life, that their worth is in getting a bunch of tasks done. I'm going to tell you, it's not that that is a leader who has not understood that they have a greater value, that they have a greater purpose, there is something more important than getting tasks done. What is that thing, helping other people get to success? If you can lead people to success, then by default, listen to me, you will become successful. lead others help them get to success help them to discover, Well, Chris, I don't even know how some of my people do their jobs, you don't need to, you need to understand how to lead them to success in their roles. You don't have to know how to do their roles. You've got to find out what they need, what their training is, what they're lacking, as far as software, what they're lacking, as far as tools, what resources go into this process, what struggles they're experiencing with other team members, with other leaders, help them to cast a greater vision to understand what we're we're trying to accomplish in their role. There's so much that you can do to help a team member or team members become successful. But what happens is, most leaders are not taught that. That's why we have not just one lesson but two lessons on this killing the leadership Crazy Cycle and what to do after you've killed the leadership Crazy Cycle. Right? Why? Because it is so vitally important to understand that the longer you stay bogged down in a task, the longer you stay stuck in this leadership Crazy Cycle, and you will die a slow painful death. It'll be yours. There are so many times we have leaders that have been stuck in a leadership Crazy Cycle for a decade or two. And it's all they know. And they're so tired of doing the same thing over and over again. So you need to understand the delegate. And to delegate it is not the way you think it is. That's what we call to, to properly delegating, how to do it the correct way. You've got to understand what are the things that you need to delegate, we have a process called love-hate delegate, where we help people to understand these are things that I love doing. And these are things I hate doing. And the things that I love doing that I shouldn't be doing need to move on over to the hate and the things in the hate column that I shouldn't be doing.

But I don't love but nobody else can do it. But me mister, come back over the love. And then I need to delegate the hate in proper order. Now again, it's a much longer process than just that. That's simplified. But hopefully, you're getting the idea. You will never make a great leader if what you do is the tasks that other people should be doing. And you should be helping them to do those tasks successfully. As long as you stay stuck in a leadership Crazy Cycle, as long as you stay stuck thinking, man I don't even know what I did today. But I know it was a lot as long as you realize that you're not spending that much time leading people and there is possibly a big fear inside of you that you don't know how to lead them. Okay, great. Well then let's teach you how to lead them. That is usually the second biggest fear of why people don't kill the leadership crazy. cycle one and the first one is their identity. So many leaders believe that if they kill the leadership Crazy Cycle and delegate a bunch of stuff off of their plate that they won't be needed. Folks, hear me, that is one of the craziest lies you can tell yourself. As an entrepreneur, as a business owner who owns multiple businesses, and has been doing this for decades, my leaders are more valuable to me when they get tasks off of their plate that they should not be doing, and help somebody else do it successfully. And then I get to lead them into greater leadership opportunities, I get to help them at much higher levels, how to work through strategy better, how to discover problems and solve problems at a higher level, there are so many things that I get to help them do if they're not bogged down in tasks. So if you think that your identity is in the tasks that you do every day, guess what, you will not give them up.

If you find worth in doing 10,000 things in a day and being stuck in the leadership Crazy Cycle, then you're not going to give up something that's giving you worth or what you believe is worth. So the sooner you can understand, it is time to kill the leadership Crazy Cycle, it's time to delegate and make people successful. The sooner you understand that, the sooner you will discover you have a greater value to your company. Alright, the third thing we tell business leaders is this. You have to learn, you have to learn you have to learn to lean in the direction of the personality styles that you're communicating with. Oh, Chris, I hear you talking about that communication all the time. I hear you talk about the desk I hear you talk about you know, leaning in people's direction, I hear you, I hear you, I hear you. There's a reason. The number one, number one issue we discover in every single business that we work with, is a lack of high levels of quality communication. No ifs, and, or buts about it. Number two is the lack of accountability. Number three is usually bad culture, culture not being what they want it to be. But the number one issue by far. And if it doesn't, you know, it's not difficult to understand, two and three, fall after communication issues, right? Because accountability is a big part of accountability is communication. Culture is communication, right? actions and attitudes. leaders tend to speak as if everyone around them should automatically understand the words that they are saying. Good luck with that. Have fun with that. But one thing you need to understand is you've got to learn to lean in the direction or the language of the people around you. Now, I am not telling you to change your personality style, to be their personality style. That is not what I'm saying at all. If you're a high s and you're leading a high D, you don't need to become a high D, you need to learn how to communicate to a high D you need to learn how they act, react, give information, and receive information. If you can do that, if you can spend time setting them up for success with communication, then guess what they can go be successful with the thing that you're communicating.

If you cannot, and you expect everybody to lean in your direction, which by the way they should, if you've done a good job, getting everybody to take their profile. Listen, if you've not taken your DISC profile, DISC, and values, I'm going to suggest both and you've not had your team go through it and you've not had them watch our video on this you are missing out on phenomenal growth. So many companies talk about how they thought they had great communication after they trained with our disc video, and our personality styles video, and they realized their communication beforehand was chaos. If you've not done it, Chrislocurto.com/store. Go get it. Get it done. Get it done so that you can start leaning in the direction of understanding. Well, Chris, tell me a great book out there that teaches me all about DISC I would love to. Here's the thing that I tell people. We've got a great video that will teach you enough about personality styles. You start there. And then what you do is you work with a person because their profile is specific to them. You work with an individual and then you go back and you read their profile and you do this seven times. Work with them. Go back, read the profile, and just ask yourself some questions. Why did they do that? Oh, now it makes sense why they did that, why they said that how they received that this way. Because the profile is going to be specific to that person, everybody has different percentages of D, i, s, and C, and everybody has a percentage of all, whatever it is. So the most profound thing you can do is learn a person.

The more you do that, as you see people who are even remotely close to the same makeup, or have you know, similar percentages of di src, you'll start to see commonalities. And it'll help you to lean in their direction, you'll see the things that they struggle with, you'll see the things that they you know, fight in a wet paper bag over, you'll see if that may be that may be an old common for a lot of people out there, the old days, they weigh the paper bags, I think they still do it this way. But if you got the paper bags, what you couldn't tell them, because the glue and everything, it made it really difficult to tear. So sometimes people fight as if they're in a wet paper bag, and they can't possibly get out, they don't settle down, you can learn those things about somebody, you can learn the person who's going to deflect like crazy, and the person who's gonna throw people under the bus and the person who's gonna feel attacked, and the person who's not going to make decisions and all of these things. If you know the personality style, then as a leader, if you're going to make them successful, you lean in that direction with the thing you need to communicate. And sometimes the thing you need to communicate is a consequence. Obviously, the assumption is everything we're talking about is teaching, guiding, coaching, directing, and leading, but sometimes you need to lead them in how they're making bad decisions.

Sometimes you need to lean in their direction and help them to understand to take responsibility for something. So if you will lean in their direction, when you're communicating, you will be setting them up for success 1000 times more than if you just speak in your own personality style. So listen to me leaders, you can't afford to keep failing in any of these areas, one or all you've got to get unstuck. So if you need help, we're here to help you, we want to help go to Crislocurto.com. And take a look at the button that says what we do. There are so many ways that you can get involved and learn how to implement these things and make your business successful. We don't sell people magic pills on how you're going to go make tons of money, we help them to see the things that are holding them back, the money appears. It's literally that simple. If you can solve the things that are holding you back, the money will show up. Don't worry about that. So whether it's executive coaching a mastermind group or leadership training, get the information from us that you need, so that we can help you don't stay stuck in the Ruts of, you know, acquitting your worth to success or never getting free from the leadership Crazy Cycle or not being able to communicate well, in your leadership to your team. Maybe you need to learn their personality styles first. So again, that's a great place to start, go get the personality styles done. Here's the deal. Most of the people that we work with are small businesses. Most of them are small businesses. We have medium-sized businesses we work with, we have large businesses that we work with. But by far, the businesses that we work with most are small. Some of them have a couple of team members. Some of them have 10, 20, or 30. Some of them have 60. The key is it doesn't matter what size you are the stuff we're teaching is not industry specific.

It's specific to your leadership. And the more you get help on this, the more you get coaching and guidance and direction, the better you're going to lead your business. So if you want to help Chrislocurto.com Click on what we do, click on the store, and get information to help you in your leadership. Well, folks, that's all the time that we have for today. I truly hope this information was helpful to you. We want you to help other folks to know this. Like and Subscribe. Share this with somebody so that we can help more folks. As always, take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life. And join us on the next episode.