Bonus Episode 49: Know Your Self-Worth

To prepare for 2023, I want you to work on your confidence, to take more risk, and to understand your self-worth even more. What do you bring to the table? What makes you unique in our profession? What value do you bring to the organization? 

Believe that you are important to your team and to your organization. Believe that you can make a difference. Believe that you can be a leader.   

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Consider joining The Finance Leader Podcast Community Facebook Group, where we can talk leadership and the other topics I present here on the podcast. https://www.facebook.com/groups/financeleaderpodcast  This is a good time to jump in and start sharing ideas and thoughts about leadership so we can help each other.

For more resources, please visit stephenmclain.com. On the website, you can download the Leadership Growth Blueprint for Finance and Accounting Managers. You can use this guide to develop your leadership by focusing on communication, and growing and empowering your team.

You can now purchase a course to help you advance your career from financeleaderacademy.com. It's called Advance Your Finance and Accounting Career: Developing a Promotion Strategy that Sets You Apart.

Transcript

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Stephen McLain: 0:00

Hi, this is Steven McLain of the finance leader podcast. This is bonus episode number 49. Last week, I finished up season 12 of the podcast with Episode 100, the impacts of finance and accounting leadership, I highlighted how we can have a positive impact to our leadership. We are not only responsible for our technical duties, but also to help senior leaders and other leaders around the company. To help achieve organizational and departmental goals. We should be an advisor who provides key insights. We don't just send off an email with numbers but we actively participate in strategy execution. If you missed that episode, please go back and listen, you won't be disappointed. We are nearing the end of 2022. So two important things come to mind. Number one, let's wrap up the year strong and evaluate what we accomplished. And what we were not able to get done so we can properly plan out 2023 start to put some thought into your goals and in your mindset. Let's get 2023 Right. The second is to not forget to enjoy this time with your family or just time to reflect and think enjoy this time of year if you'd like to celebrate take a break if you can. I know we have end of month and maybe end of year close to consider. But enjoy and relax with friends and family to go to a holiday party and enjoy and let's not start anything new for the remaining part of 2022 You earned the break. To make 2023 even more great, I want you to work on your confidence to take more risk and to understand yourself worth even more. What do you bring to the table? What makes you unique in our profession? What value do you bring to the organization believe that you are important to your team and to your organization. Believe that you can make a difference believe that you can be a leader. This week I'm sharing an encore episode from season 10 which is episode 87. Let's talk about your self worth. The outline for this episode is number one, build a healthy approach and how we see ourselves. Number two know your self worth. Number three, practice great self care and for taking risks is key to growth and opportunity. Please enjoy this encore replay. Thank you your long term success and how you feel about yourself are directly affected by your self worth in your confidence level. What you believe in yourself affects your ability to take risk, and feel confident about what roles and challenges may be next for you. Your mindset is powerful and this requires a daily exercise of self care to strengthen yourself against the adversity you will face and to give you confidence to go after your long term goal. 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 the episodes show notes. And also please join the Facebook group I have for this podcast community. Thank you. This is episode number 87. And I'll be talking about confidence in your self worth. And I will highlight the following topics. Number one, build a healthy approach in how we see ourselves. Number two know your self worth. Number three practice great self care and for taking risk is key to growth and opportunity. Michelle Obama said your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude. Now, this is the seventh episode of season 10. And we have talked about a lot of different topics this season, such as leadership, which is my favorite topic, key business social skills. I also discussed if you should earn a graduate degree. In episode 85. I talked about inspiring your team to win. And last week the episode was about working on a project team can improve your skills, grow your network and enhance your career experience. If you missed any of those episodes, please go back and listen. You won't be disappointed. This week I am going to address a mindset topic again because it is always important to get our mindset right. How you see yourself affects your confidence level, which affects your ability to take risk. Taking risk affects your long term success, you must step out of your comfort zone to grow. When you grow, you get more opportunities, and you increase your chance to advance your career. Our self worth is often defined about our internal sense of feeling valued, and how that translate to being accepted by others. It's a powerful feeling convincing ourselves or not, whether we deserve the rewards that we receive, like put rays are promotions or other accolades for doing a great job. Do you believe in your abilities and skills? When you do a good job? Do you believe your boss for telling you great things about your performance? Do you fear exploring outside your comfort zone and your daily task routine? To go beyond your daily task grind? You have to leave your comfort zone. Why do you fear going beyond your comfort zone? You have a long term goal that is beyond what you are doing today. Do you believe in yourself? That seems like it could be an easy question to answer but not for everyone. It's complicated for many people. We all face different challenges and react and face those challenges in our way. How we deal with stress or someone who doesn't treat us right affects how we move forward or not. To accomplish some of our goals you have a resilient mindset is required. You have to learn to feel confident about yourself, even when others are not treating you right. People have different goals at work and different reasons for working in their career. Some people are content with getting to a role they feel comfortable with and are okay with staying there. Their earnings may be where they want it to be, they avoid stress. They may have the supervisor whom they feel comfortable with. There are many reasons to stay where they're at. There are many reasons and different ways people feel motivated and different reasons for why people work at all. A person's self worth also determines their motivation for the choices they make. They may decide to avoid stress or adversity or competition, so they feel comfortable or they may feel scared to try for a different role. How well do you handle adversity, competitions, stress, or anyone challenging your work performance? As a finance and accounting professional, your work will be challenged. You will be asked to defend your analysis, your projections, your labeling of expenses, your journal entries and many other ways. You will be asked to defend your monthly close analysis, you will be asked for your assumptions or to explain your methodology. Can you handle the pressure? Can you explain without becoming flustered? Do you fear being asked these types of questions? Try daily mental health exercises affirming and growing the belief in yourself? Try daily mental health exercises affirming and growing the belief in yourself? What internal voice are you listening to? Does that voice tell you that you are nothing? What voice from the past tells you that you can't achieve your long term goal? I want you to boost your self confidence know what drives you? Is there a song or a story or a historical figure to emulate? Some people use a powerful song the hype themselves. What I do is visualize my future and never forget about where I want to go and what I want to accomplish. People want to follow those who they feel are confident that they know what they're doing. The confidence we have in ourselves as leaders convinces others to follow us. A leader needs a healthy balance of confidence. So we can also instill a healthy level of trustworthiness that our team will believe that everything will be okay and that we will be able to overcome any challenges that come at us as a team. The flipside of a low self worth is overconfidence and narcissism, which we also want to avoid. I want you to have a healthy balance of believing yourself. But also being humble enough to know that you can't get the work done all alone. Self awareness is key to being a great leader. Because I also wish for you to realize and practice that you alone are not the reason why your team is successful, or even the reason why you achieved it. Your team produces work every day. And it is important to know that is the totality of their work and yours that helps you be successful. It's a great reminder for us all that we don't operate in a vacuum. We are not alone. We are a team. Now let's talk about developing confidence and knowing your self worth, number one, build a healthy approach and how we see ourselves. How can you reframe how you view yourself so you can begin to thrive in all areas of your life. I believe this can happen for you. If you begin to build confidence in really who you are, and know you positively impact others in your organization. You are doing more than you think you are. For most of you. I believe that to be true. You are just not giving yourself all the credit for what you are doing and who you are influencing in a positive way. You are definitely doing more than you believe you are. Let's take an inventory. I want you to list out your achievements and what you're good at. Don't hold back. And don't underestimate what your achievements have been. Ask your friend to help you if you find you're not giving yourself enough credit. Who have you helped in the past? Was it teammate or a direct report? What major impacts have you had in your career? What awards have you been nominated for and one, being nominated is just as important as winning. Now as you go through the list, you will realize that you have done more than you thought. Be proud of those accomplishments. Reframe your view that your value is low, it's not, it's actually rather high number to know yourself worth. After looking over your accomplishments and your skills. What is the potential for your career? What do you bring to the table? How do you add value to your work and everything else that you have in your life, examine how you positively impact others and everything you are involved with. Don't fear asking and going after what you deserve. Don't underestimate the value you bring in the positive differences you make in your job, and what you can do in a bigger and more responsible role. When negotiating your next role or even in your current role, have no regrets for what you want and what you deserve. You will be asked to perform tasks often beyond your role, or what you expected. So you should also have no fear ensuring you get what you deserve regarding opportunities, perks, and compensation. Go after what you need, so you accomplish your long term goals and don't hold back no and believe in your own self worth. Number three practice great self care. I talked about self care routines and wellness in episodes 42 and 23. So please listen to those when you get a chance. We all need a great daily self care routine that addresses our needs, which includes exercise or diet, sleeping, mind exercises, drinking water, and great habits and many other considerations. The benefits to a daily healthy self care routine is countless. Our self care routine helps us to prepare for our day, for adversity, for stress for challenges, and to help bring a balance to our life, a healthy balance. Please research what works for you and consult your doctor to advise on a best self care plan for you. So you can bring a healthy balance to your life, which can also help you achieve your goals. Number four, taking risk is key to growth and opportunity. accomplishing your long term goals is directly related to the level of risk you are willing to take. Success is usually the product of our mindset, our work ethic, our credentials, our network, our inner circle, the level of mentoring, we received our experience. If we have written goals plus a little luck, the luck factor is described as the right role being available at the right time. And we have a great supervisor, and anything else we really can't control. To go beyond your comfort zone, you must take some risk, you must take on tough tasks, and go for roles that push you to your limits of skills and abilities. And this will translate into greater skills and abilities. I have had to learn to take more risk in my life and career. If I wanted to achieve something bigger and something in line with what I wanted, I had to learn to believe in myself even when others did not and to move forward with no regrets. You have to shut down about yourself and not listen to people who may have access to you who don't believe in what you're trying to do. Shut out those negative voices shut out the doubt. Shut out anything that tries to convince you you're less than worthy for what you have and what you are trying to achieve. Embrace taking risk, embrace believing in yourself. Shed that fear that is holding you back. Now for action today. How do you feel about yourself? How do you see yourself? How well do you receive praise for a job well done? How willing are you to take on more risk so you achieve your goals? These can be tough questions to ask yourself. Did you list out your achievements a few minutes ago? If no, I want you to do so now. Let's stop everything you have accomplished. No matter how small and list out names, whom you may have helped and are positively influenced in your life and career. You will be amazed by what you have truly accomplished. You can be proud of those accomplishments. Don't forget to grab my free guide for you called the leadership growth blueprint for finance and accounting managers. Are you a finance or accounting professional who is also leading people, but have questions about how to lead more effectively. I know you're expected to be the technical expert in our field. Learning leadership can set you apart from your peers, which can then lead you to more opportunities. In the free guide I talk about three leadership areas communication, team development and empowerment. Plus a few recommendations around challenges with the financial systems you are using to complete your work. The link to this free guide is in the post or the bio. You can also go to Finance leader academy.com Today download it. Please use the guide to help you with a few leadership wins today. Thank you. Today I talked about confidence and your self worth and I highlighted the following points. Number one, build a healthy approach and how we see ourselves. Number two know your self worth. Number three, practice great self care and for taking risk is key to growth and opportunity. I want to challenge you to view yourself differently, to practice good self care, and to believe it when someone gives you great feedback about a job you did. I want you to believe in and have a healthy viewpoint of yourself. I know you are doing more and doing it better than you give yourself credit. I have talked about these issues before, it's important to be reminded how our mindset and our confidence affects our goal achievement. They affect our ability to take risks and to go beyond our comfort zone. When we take more risk, we may see more growth and we will see our goals getting close to being accomplished. If you change your mindset, you will change your outcome. Next week I will be talking about getting promoted from individual contributor to manager this will be a great episode I talk about career advancement on most episodes, and this will give me an opportunity to address a few things you can do right now. If you are looking at that first chance to be a manager. It's an important topic. I can't wait to share. I hope you enjoyed the finance leader podcast I'm dedicated to helping you grow your leadership skills, to change your mindset and to clarify your goals so you advance your career. You can find this episode wherever you listen to podcasts. If this episode helped you today, please share it with others and please leave a quick review so that others may find the podcast. Until next time, you could check out more resources at finance leader academy.com and sign up for my weekly updates so you don't miss an episode of the show. And now go lead your team and I'll see you next time. Thank you