The Finance Leader Podcast

Bonus Episode 39: Our Habits Contribute to Our Success

June 28, 2022 Stephen McLain
The Finance Leader Podcast
Bonus Episode 39: Our Habits Contribute to Our Success
Show Notes Transcript

A habit is a routine behavior that determines our productivity level and our work ethic. Our habits are closely aligned with our mindset and how we approach challenges. Do we embrace wanting to achieve excellence or do you become complacent? Our success is a combination of mindset and habits, plus leadership. I hope that you practice great leadership as the most important habit of all.

Episode outline:

  1. Your habits determine your daily success,
  2. What successful people do to build and reinforce good habits, and 
  3. The most important habit is practicing great leadership.



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Stephen McLain:

Hi, this is Steven McLean of the finance leader podcast. This is bonus episode number 39. We are in the middle of a podcast break right now as I prepare season 11 and refresh finance leader Academy. If you did not already know I offer a course and coaching to help you achieve your long term goals. If you are interested, you can preview the course at finance leader academy.com Select sharp and then the advanced your finance and accounting career course. The link is in the show notes with this episode. Or you can go to Finance leader academy.com This week I am sharing episode 75 How our habits contribute to our success. Our habits are closely aligned with our mindset and how we approach challenges. It takes time, focus and commitment to develop new successful habits. Season 11 will debut on July 26. I will be talking about financial planning and analysis and episode 91 followed by an episode about data season 11 will be huge and I can't wait to share. Please enjoy this encore replay of episode 75 How our habits contribute to our success. Please enjoy. Thank you. This week let's talk about habits. My habit is a routine behavior that determines our productivity level and our work ethic. Our habits are closely aligned with our mindset and how we approach challenges. Do we embrace wanting to achieve excellence? Or do you become complacent? Our success is a combination of mindset and habits plus leadership. I hope that you will practice great leadership as the most important habit of all, please enjoy the episode. Welcome to the finance leader podcast where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host Stephen McLean. This is the podcast for developing leaders in finance and accounting. Please consider following me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. My usernames and the links are in this episode's show notes. And also, please join the Facebook group that I have for this podcast community. Thank you. This is episode number 75. And I will be talking about how your daily habits contribute to your long term success. And I will highlight the following topics number one, your habits determine your daily success. Number two, what successful people do to build and reinforce good habits. And three, the most important habit is practicing great leadership, General Colin Powell said, if you're going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception. It is a prevailing attitude. This week, I am talking about habits which I have talked about a few times before. But it's important along with mindset and leadership. This forms our success triad, mindset, habits and leadership, which then build our confidence and that leads to our success. Success is subjective and is very personal. We each decide what success means it really comes down to our goals. If you accomplish your goals, you're successful. This is where you find satisfaction. If you achieve the goals you set out to accomplish, then you are successful end of story. Going further if you set lower goals than what the potential you have, you may find yourself unsatisfied with your life, which could develop into unhappiness. unfulfilled potential is very real. And if we reflect on what we could have accomplished, and then we didn't get there, we could have regret later in our lives. And I don't want you to live with regret. I don't want you to have unfulfilled potential. Continue to push yourself so you don't come to the end of your life and have regret. I have talked about habits a few times since starting this podcast and episode 23. Five great habits to improve your day I highlighted morning and evening routines. ways you can reduce stress and to improve communication. Please go back and listen to that episode. If you haven't already. I believe that episode will help. Our habits do help determine our success. I do believe the well organized leader who manages their time and tasks very well has a better chance of succeeding in the long run. Do you make lists and maintain a calendar? Do you practice good time management? Are you on time to meetings? Can you communicate clearly? Do you take action without being told? Do you block time every day to think and plan these and many more habits help you manage requirements and your life overall? Now what's The difference between successful people and those who come up short, I would get many different answers. If I was in a room with all of you. This is a subjective question I know. Often it comes down to commitment to accomplishing your goal. It's a commitment to writing out your goals, developing a plan, and then actually taking action. It can be small actions, but moving forward is key. Taking action is one of those key habits I want you to develop over time, make a commitment to setting in motion your individual development plan, on the way to your long term goal. Let's commit to that today. Successful people also find time to relax and reflect. They also prioritize their health, and have a daily self care routine. Don't neglect your health, don't neglect your well being. To overcome adversity, you must be practicing good stress reducing methods, and this should become a daily habit. Please think about this. Leadership is the greatest habit to practice of all of them. We don't often consider practicing great leadership as a daily habit, like our morning or evening routines, or how to take good notes during a meeting. I know and believe that leadership is the key to growing a solid team. And it's leadership that helps you as you move along in your career. It's great leadership that helps an organization through a crisis. How are you setting up your team for success? Are you distance with high expectations? Or do you actively set the conditions for success? Do you eliminate obstacles for your team so they can get their tasks done with less hassle? Do you show appreciation for your team members who are getting the tough work done every day. Successful leaders spend time developing their team, they listen, and they are self aware about how they treat people and they are self aware of their actions and can realistically and accurately assess themselves. They also act with integrity, and show respect and dignity for everyone that you interact with. We need to look at leadership being a great habit to build into our daily activities. Just like what you do to prepare for the next day, and how we begin our morning. A habit is an ideal behavior that can lead us to success or failure. We are often judged by our habits and the ability to lead is one trait or habit that we must continually develop and sharpen. Then let's talk about how habits can help shape and determine our success. Number one, your habits determine your daily success. Are you driven to accomplish your long term goal? If you practice solid good habits, you will have a better chance of accomplishing your goals. I believe that everyone knows the one person who does not have good habits, that one person is late and the one who doesn't write out notes from the meetings you attend together. And then they asked you later about what happened because they missed the deadline. Our habits do help us accomplish our goals and finish our daily tasks on time and to a high level of excellence. Solid habits contribute to high performance which can translate to confidence and to success in the long term. The finance and accounting fields are demanding, we are managing many tasks and Analysis Plus we have to conduct monthly closed every month. A well organized monthly closed process must be adhered to. So you have a great product. The accounts are closed properly, we have accurate financial statements. And we have an analysis product that helps decision makers, I believe in developing good daily habits that contribute positively to our success. Number two, what successful people do to build and reinforce good habits. What are the common Habits of Successful people, they set goals, they show appreciation for others, they are not complacent. They take action. They wake early, they are readers and many more. What does it take to reinforce successful habits. A good habit means that what you are doing contributes positively to your life and career. It takes commitment to improving and accomplishing their goals. They find an inner drive and they focus on that long term goal. Make a commitment to change and make small changes at first until your new habit takes hold. Commit daily to making a positive change. If you want to be successful, you have to do that self assessment. You have to figure out if those habits you're doing every day, are they contributing to your long term success. And you have to come to a decision. You have to self assess. You have to figure out that if you're making it or not. If you're being successful, or you're accomplishing your goals or you're accomplishing or tasks, and you've got to make that decision. You're gonna make that commitment every day. Get up in the morning and you're going to take action. You're going to plan your day. You're going to write out your tasks you're going to prioritize, make that commitment. That's what it means to build and reinforce good habits is what you're doing contributing to being a successful leader to being a successful person and the role that you are working in right now. Make that commitment make that change, continually reinforce what good habits are going to contribute to your daily success. Number three, the most important habit is practicing great leadership. Great leadership should be something we strive for every day. Great leadership is how we can influence positive outcomes. Leadership is key to our success. A leader charts a pathway for the team and organization, a non leader only finished his tasks without regard to how those tasks affect the strategy or the vision, they are only getting things done. A leader assesses how that task can positively affect a better decision, or to find an insight that develops into a better idea. I want us to regard leadership is a daily habit that we practice and improve daily. It's something to strive to improve and exercise with our team every day. We need to self assess if we are doing it right. Make leadership be a habit we work on and practice in every interaction that we have. Now let's talk about leadership and the topic of returning to the office. I read recently that recruiters are specifically targeting employees. After businesses have announced they're returning to the office. They're going after those employees who do not want to return to the office and who wants to remain working from home full time. This has become a very hot topic. There are companies who will not utilize a traditional office any longer, they will remain working from home or another remote location. They want to go after those top tier employees who prefer to stay working at home. The flexibility and the stress of not driving through rush hour traffic are huge considerations. This will take leadership to adopt the best path forward when weighing the options of returning to the office. Now for action today. Our habits can make the difference between being successful or not. Do you practice good habits? Or could they be improved? Everyone can use some improvement regarding habits. Sometimes we slip and being organized or taking care of our health work sometimes becomes overwhelming. And we neglect our self care routine. Or when we are leading a team we don't show appreciation for a team members who are getting it done every day to a high standard. Sometimes during periods of high stress. We don't treat people with respect or dignity. So we all need to evaluate our habits and make changes. Sometimes you need to step away for a moment to reflect also use your daily journal to assess yourself and determine what changes you need to make. Here are a few key questions. What are your daily morning and evening routines? Do you effectively use these times to prepare for what is coming next? Do you have a daily self care routine? Are you using proper time management regarding your schedule and workload? Where can you improve your leadership techniques? are you approaching adversity or a challenge by trying to solve the problem? Or are you blaming others? Are you realistically assessing your own behavior and attitude every day? These are just a few key questions to start looking at how your habits can contribute better to your success every day. Today I talked about how habits can contribute to your success and highlighted the following points. Number one, your habits determine your daily success. Number two, what successful people do to build and reinforce good habits. And three, the most important habit is practicing great leadership. Be thinking of the success triad, mindset habits and leadership. Get those three solid, you may be able to achieve greater results, which can lead to success. And by success, I mean the accomplishment of your long term goal. Our mindset sets us up to grow and to be committed to excellence. Our habits contribute to the daily activities that help us achieve a higher level of performance. And by practicing great leadership we can influence positive outcomes. It's mindset habits and leadership that commit us to achieving and overcoming the workload that we face every day. It's calm and focused leadership that build a team ready to achieve anything. If you only pick up on one idea today ensure that leadership becomes a daily habit to grow and nurture. Our teams deserve a great leader. Next week, I will be sharing about what an effective individual development plan looks like. I hope you enjoyed the finance leader podcast dedicated to helping you grow your leadership skills to change your mindset. To clarify your goals and suit you advance your career. You can find this episode or wherever you listen to podcasts. Until next time, you can check out more resources at financier academy.com and sign up for my weekly updates. For the darkness an episode of the show and now go lead your team and I'll see you next time thank you