What if you, as a finance professional, had the power to shape the future of your organization and influence more positive outcomes? Imagine being the driving force that transforms your team into better versions of themselves! We're going to explore these possibilities in today's episode. With our unique perspective in assessing and measuring key data, we discuss how our daily tasks are not just about crunching numbers but are pivotal in making strategic decisions. Our role is to inspire and guide our team to appreciate how their work is making a real impact on the organization's success.
Episode outline:
Please connect with me on:
1. Instagram: stephen.mclain
2. Twitter: smclainiii
3. Facebook: stephenmclainconsultant
4. LinkedIn: stephenjmclainiii
For more resources, please visit Finance Leader Academy: financeleaderacademy.com.
What if you, as a finance professional, had the power to shape the future of your organization and influence more positive outcomes? Imagine being the driving force that transforms your team into better versions of themselves! We're going to explore these possibilities in today's episode. With our unique perspective in assessing and measuring key data, we discuss how our daily tasks are not just about crunching numbers but are pivotal in making strategic decisions. Our role is to inspire and guide our team to appreciate how their work is making a real impact on the organization's success.
Episode outline:
Please connect with me on:
1. Instagram: stephen.mclain
2. Twitter: smclainiii
3. Facebook: stephenmclainconsultant
4. LinkedIn: stephenjmclainiii
For more resources, please visit Finance Leader Academy: financeleaderacademy.com.
I talk often about how finance and accounting professionals can have a positive impact on their organizations. This week, I want to encourage you to communicate how your team members, through their daily tasks, can help shape better decisions and influence more positive outcomes. It will be part of their journey in becoming more effective finance leaders in the future. I expect you, as leaders, to grow the next set of leaders we must become finance leaders and to help shape better decisions, so please share with your team what they do every day matters. Please enjoy the episode. Welcome to the Finance Leader Podcast, where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host, Stephen McLain. 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. This is episode number 112, and I will be talking about showing your team members the impact they have on the organization, and I will highlight the following topics Number 1. How Finance and Accounting Professionals Impact the Organization. Number 2. Show your team members how they make a difference. And 3. A true finance leader will transform the people around them into a better version of themselves. Legend and great leader Jackie Robinson said a life is not important except in the impact it has in other lives.
Stephen McLain:Welcome to another episode of the podcast. I hope your week is going well as always. I am curious about what victories and wins have come to you recently, so please share by emailing me at comment at stevenmclaincom, or you can connect with me on social media and send a DM or, better yet, join my weekly email list. I want to hear all the great things you are doing as finance and accounting professionals and I want to hear the challenges too. What is giving you trouble and what do you need more help with? I want to hear it all. This week I am talking about sharing with your team the impact they have in their daily tasks and duties. Some of your team members are only going through the motions every day and they have no idea what their work means to the stakeholders or the organization. But what if they did know their impact? Would that change anything? I have talked about impact many times.
Stephen McLain:In episode 100, I talked about the impact of finance and accounting leadership. I believe that we all have the potential to be leaders in these fields. If you take numbers and turn them into vital analysis and then you talk over that analysis or share that in some way with a department lead or a senior leader, and that leader makes a better decision, then you are a finance leader. That is what we want to strive to do. Grow to be positively impactful finance leaders and I know you who are listening to this podcast right now. You can do it, you are doing it already every day, and everything you are doing A true finance leader goes the extra mile to help make others better.
Stephen McLain:We set up our team for success and we ensure they get the training and development opportunities to excel in their career. Finance leaders build teams and they build organizations. Every one of our team members can make a positive difference and have an incredible impact on how the organization does its daily operations. This is both as an individual and as part of a team. They might not know what they do makes a difference, so let's show them, and it may, in fact, inspire many to do even better in their tasks.
Stephen McLain:An organization survives and grows because of leaders who understand and develop a feasible strategy. Strategy is always about the choices you make with the resources you have and how you serve your market best. It's not necessarily about a product or a service, but how you communicate best, how that product and service can make a difference with your customer. It's about the offer you make and how you help your customer overcome their biggest problem or challenge. When you think about strategy, think about critical choices that must be made. As finance leaders, we can help make better choices. You and your team contribute to that solution in a variety of ways. For example, you can help a decision maker to find efficiencies so that the organization's limited resources are used in the best way possible. Often, a senior leader doesn't know where resources are misaligned or wasted because they don't have a system set up to evaluate it. You and your team can help with this. You can help impact the senior leader's ability to make a better decision. This is the major impact I believe you are having, and you can help your team know how important they are in this process. I love being a finance leader, which is when technical expertise combines with a desire and passion to lead others and the organization to something better.
Stephen McLain:Finance leaders dedicate themselves to strengthening their technical knowledge, their business acumen, communication skills and leadership ability, so they use key data to help senior leaders make better decisions. Finance leaders bridge gaps in communication and bridge gaps between teams when they become styled. We help to focus the organization on what really is important. A manager becomes a leader when they know and embrace what they can do beyond the daily task list that they have to accomplish. Leadership is about accomplishing the impossible. Especially when your team does not believe in the impossible, where they are stuck by even the simplest obstacles, we get to instill belief again and to remove hard to go around obstacles. We inspire and we show that we believe in our team. We help overcome the impossible. Now let's talk about showing your team members the impact they have in their organizations.
Stephen McLain:Number one how finance and accounting professionals impact the organization. The greatest way we get to impact an organization is through our leadership. We get to lead with the numbers. We can measure just about anything, but what do those numbers really mean and how can they be best used to assess and make better decisions? Through our leadership, we can help shape and focus how senior leaders look at the results and then associate those numbers with actions, the right actions. A key phrase to adopt to help senior leaders understand better, and that phrase is let's help them see it. This phrase can inspire us to improve our own communication skills and influencing ability. Let's help them see. It allows us to partner with them to show how the numbers, the results, affect their KPIs and goal accomplishment. We also get to bridge gaps in communication. Without even trying, teams can become siloed and separate, often acting independently without coordination from other teams and departments. As finance and accounting professionals, we can bring teams and leaders of teams together because we often see how each team is affecting each other and how their separate efforts affect the overall outcome. We can bridge those gaps and help teams to work better together.
Stephen McLain:Number two show your team members how they make a difference. Our team members have a routine task list and reports that they accomplish every day, every week and every month. When we only think in routine, we may start to believe that what we do does not matter. We start to believe that what we do is being ignored because it has become so routine. We need to show our team that every task matters, that every analysis and report is used to make better decisions and assessments. What your team does in the form of reports, analysis, month-in-close and many other ways can help shape strategy, a decision, confirm or current decision, show progress toward a KPI, highlight our financial picture and many other key leader actions. What I really want you and your team to do is to develop the skills to tell a story and how their portfolio affects the company. A story helps to understand the situation beyond the numbers. A story gives context to the analysis. We are not just producing numbers or reports. Our numbers facilitate important discussions and decisions, and that is why we show up every day to make a huge difference in how the company grows, not just survives.
Stephen McLain:Number three a true finance leader will transform the people around them into a better version of themselves. Our role is not just about the numbers. It's about leading necessary change and making the company better. It's about investing in our people and letting people move on who are not a fit. We need leaders who put others first, not just themselves. We need selfless leaders who bring the team along with them as they grow. I don't appreciate selfish leadership, because it is not leadership, it's selfishness. Leaders make others around them better. Leaders take radical accountability to transform their organization into one that excels at their key competencies. A leader's primary role is to make the people around them better, which will make the organization better. Learn to hire great in the first place and and to terminate employment when it no longer makes sense for those team members to continue. I want you to take accountability for growing your team members and accountability for shaping your team into one that is productive and gets better always. I encourage you to talk about how big of an impact your team has on the overall success of the organization.
Stephen McLain:Now for action today. Have you recently shared with your team how they make an impact? Many may not even realize what they do helps to shape key decisions or how the company even operates. For example, when your accounts receivable coordinator works to improve the receivables rate and to eliminate late accounts, that improves the cash flow and improves the company's ability to pay its bills on time and what option it has for future investments. They have a huge positive impact. Please share this across the team. Also, please check out financeleaderacademycom when you get a chance. We want to help you with your goal planning and career advancement. You can find all the previous episodes of the Finance Leader podcast and a free guide on finance leadership. Please sign up for the weekly emails so I can share a short suggestion each week. I promise that my emails are short and can be easily understood quickly. Today I talked about how we, as leaders can show our team members the impact we have in our organizations, and I highlighted the following points Number one, how finance and accounting professionals impact the organization. Number two show your team members how they make a difference. And three, a true finance leader will transform the people around them into a better version of themselves. One last thought I want to share before ending this episode today.
Stephen McLain:I want to briefly talk about focus. Do you have trouble with focus? Do you feel overwhelmed or not knowing where to direct your effort or energy? I deal with this often also. I believe focus begins with one big goal and your vision. What is your one big goal? Next is to break up that goal into smaller pieces. After that, relook at your priorities and your tasks. Are you doing the right tasks and are you spending your time in the right areas? I want you to also look at what you can take on from your supervisor's task list and, in turn, what tasks that you have that you can delegate to your team. This is about focusing on the right big goal and realigning tasks and priorities to include eliminating tasks and meetings and other requirements that take you away from your big goal. Focus More on this later.
Stephen McLain:I hope you enjoyed the Finance Leader podcast. I am 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 the podcast. If this episode helps you today, please share and leave a quick review so that others may find the podcast. Until next time you can check out more resources at financeleaderacademycom and sign up for my weekly updates so you don't miss an episode of the podcast. And now go lead your team and I'll see you next time. Thank you.