Impacts of Leadership

Welcome to the Finance Leader Podcast, where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host, Stephen McLean. First, I want to begin with a big thank you to everyone who has been supporting me as I have launched this podcast over the last several weeks. I really appreciate all the support. There's been a lot of great feedback and a lot of positive support from the community. And I really appreciate it. I appreciate all the comments back and all of the feedback so that I can make this podcast even better and also make this podcast something that we can continue to use as we grow as leaders in finance and accounting. Additionally, in this episode, we're going to talk about the joys of leadership. And that is why I love to lead and why you should too. We're going to talk about the great impact that you can have on the entire organization as a finance and accounting professional. I believe that positive leadership can have a powerful impact on your organization and that I believe that you should embrace that opportunity in leading so that you can have that positive impact on your team and on your organization. Now let's get into the show. We definitely need to remind ourselves of why we love to lead, why we chose to be a leader in our organization, why we chose to either go for that promotion or accept a promotion into a manager role or into a role that's even higher than that, into a VP role or controller or whatever your role is. We have to continually remind ourselves why leading can make a difference, why we want to get into this in the first place. Is it just to advance our career and just kind of climb the ladder? Is it because we wanted to make more money? Is it because we just wanted to have the prestige of the position? Is it because it's just something that we just do? You know, we start out as an individual contributor on a team and then after a few years of experience and then comes an opportunity to apply and to get that role as manager on a team, that kind of comes naturally. And, you know, you kind of want to advance. You kind of want to take charge of a team and and kind of see your career as you go. That's kind of what we do in this profession and what we do in any profession. You know, we start out, graduate from college, get a job, gain some experience. You know, we get a little bit of experience here and there. We gain in our knowledge and then suddenly an opportunity arises. We get to go into a manager position. But why do we really want to do it? Why do we really want to do that? I know what great things about being a leader is, and I've said this in many episodes, is that we get to make a positive impact. We get to create change in our organization. We get to create change on the team that we're on. That's why I like to lead. Now, that's everything else that I've said before. You know, it's our normal timeline. You know, we graduate from college. We get that first job. We get some experience. We gain. And we kind of want to advance. Most people want to advance. I mean, most people want to go to that next step and that next step. And sometimes we go to that next step and we plateau for a while and we kind of gain some experience, gain some knowledge, grow our relationships, figure out what we want to do. We establish goals, we change our goals, but we continue to want to advance in our career. I want to ask you a question. Why is leadership important to the organization? Leaders give direction, they provide purpose, they allocate resources, they set the strategy, and they hold people accountable. Leaders keep the team and the organization moving forward. Without good leadership, an organization will be like Without good leadership, the team would be lost. Good leaders set the direction. They set the purpose. They set the goals. They hold people accountable. We are going to go in this direction. We're going to do it. We're going to prioritize these tasks. We're going to set this strategy. And we're going to keep moving forward. We're going to keep evaluating. We're going to keep seeing where we are. We're going to get people motivated around our purpose. We're going to communicate that purpose. We're going to talk about that purpose in everything we do. every meeting we have. Every time we have any kind of discussion around coffee or whatever meeting we have, we're going to talk about how great it is to be in our organization, what the overall mission of the organization is, what's the overall mission of our team, and we're going to link that team's mission to the organization's mission. We're going to provide that purpose. Why do those people come in every day? Is it just to do tasks? No, it isn't. It's to achieve that common purpose, that shared purpose throughout the organization. That's what you get to do as a leader. You get to motivate people around something that's important. And that purpose, that organization purpose gets to do that. You get to communicate that. You get to communicate how important it is. Everything that we do, every task that we have, every meeting that we have, it has to fit that shared purpose. It has to fit the strategy. It has to fit the goals of the organization. And that's the impact that you get to have when you've chosen to accept that promotion and to that manager role. When you've continued to grow in your career and you decide to go to the next level and the next level and the next level, you can continue to have that impact. That's what's the importance of what leadership brings to an organization. Some of the reasons why I love to lead is you get to set that solid example of hard work, of dedication, and integrity for others to follow. Another reason, which I love the most and I've talked about in another episode is you get to grow people. You get to provide opportunities for others to excel. You get to see them grow every day. You get to see them push themselves maybe a little bit harder to do a task a little bit better. You get to see them improve themselves in some of those soft skills like communication or time management or public speaking. You also get to empower others to make decisions and take the initiative and And with that, one of the great things about leadership is that you get to take a little bit of risk to grow others. And that sometimes doesn't come natural to others. And that's how micromanagement grows. You'll see that the ones that tend to micromanage are the ones who don't know how to take a risk or aren't willing to take a risk. Again, it goes back to why I love to lead. I love to grow people. I love to see how someone takes on a special project or a task. They get to tackle it. They get to figure out what to do. They get to research and they get to come back and ask for guidance and kind of do... periodic reviews and we do checks and we see where the progress is going. And in every task and in every opportunity and every project that should provide an opportunity for growth. And I just love seeing that. I love seeing people go from, you know, maybe an average skill or an average way to accomplish something and watch them grow as they tackle a tough project. And as they tackle a tough task and you see their confidence build and you see them mindset change and with that you go along with that in that journey of growth with them and you get to provide some some corrective guidance here and there that's why I love to show up every day when I was leading teams when I was in the army I just love doing that that's one of the greatest things that I just love to do is that to see people excel and something you've given to them see them accomplish something very well another reason why I love to lead is is that you get to make a positive impact on the organization as a whole. You get to bring about ideas. You get to bring about things that need to change for the better. And when you're in that position, that should be one of the most important things you get to do for the organization, for the impact of the organization. Not only growing people, but also seeing where things need to change for the better. And you need to have courage to stand up and say the things that need to be done. Whatever it is, it could be a systems issue. It could be a hiring issue. It could be a process issue. It could be a way of trying to grow a line of business. It could be in the culture that we have in the organization. Is our culture slipping? Is our culture starting to slip away from our strategy and our shared purpose from what we have talked about in the past? We get to stand up. We get to make those things. We get to share reasons why the organization isn't performing the way it is, or maybe the organization needs to do a shift. Maybe it needs to make a change and do something a little better, a little different. But when you're in that role, whatever role it is, that's what you get to do. You get to make that change. You get to make that observation. You get to communicate ideas to make it better for the entire organization. We get to, of course, create the shared purpose. for our mission that we believe in and that we're passionate about. We get to get people excited about what we do every day. Now, I've talked about this to a lot of people. How you show up every day to the office affects your team. How you show up to do your duties every day affects the organization. Are you showing up with a positive attitude? Are you showing up ready to tackle those tasks every day? Because people are looking towards you. People are looking towards you for courage for strength. People are going to emulate your behavior. People are going to emulate your attitude. If you come in positive, you have a greater chance of bringing that positivity to the entire team and to the entire organization as a whole. That's what you get to bring every day. You come in, you're on fire, you're excited about doing the tasks for the day, of accomplishing whatever that needs to get done. You get to inspire people. No matter what it is, no matter what the task is, no matter how routine or boring the task is, if you come in with that positive attitude on fire, ready to get it done, it is going to spread throughout your team, throughout your department. You get to have that impact. If you don't realize it already, you have that impact. People are going to copy you. Your team is going to copy your behavior and your feelings and how you see things. If you have a negative attitude towards the organization's mission, your team is going to have that same attitude. I do believe that positive leadership can affect our profession, can affect our organization. I believe that we can be that beacon of hope in the midst of tight deadlines and rigid requirements, and it starts with our attitude. We can provide stability during a crisis or difficult situation, and especially during monthly close. We can provide that strength and that person who can take a reasonable approach to whatever's going wrong. Let's say you've missed a deadline, especially in monthly close. you've missed something something's not coming up right something's not matching reports aren't matching reports aren't coming through the way they do you can provide that stability you can provide that guidance in order to overcome whatever problem that you're having you get to provide hey this is what we're going to do and we're going to do it from a position of strength and we're going to do it from a position of it's going to be okay we can calm down we can get through this we're going to meet our deadlines we're going to finish up when we're we're supposed to and we can get people relaxed a little bit more. But if we're not relaxed, then our team's not going to be relaxed. We get to offer solutions even when the numbers don't make sense. We can provide some kind of context and some kind of narrative around where the business is headed. If we have a line of business and the numbers, there's such a huge variance in what we projected versus what are actuals, we can start to create some kind of context context and narrative around that and figure out what's going on. And we get to do that in a calm sense when everybody else is nervous. Those of us in this profession of finance and accounting, we should be the ones that create the calm when the numbers don't make sense. We can continue to influence positive outcomes on every team and every department throughout the organization because everyone talks to us. Everyone talks to the finance and accounting folks because, of course, because we have the avenues to the funds, to the resources in our organization. We get to offer guidance and coaching. We get to have a lot of influence on the budget process. For every organization, it always comes back to money and resources. And that is why even though our workload often is so heavy and the office always continues to be a dumpster fire all the time, we get to be there that calm in the storm. We get to be that person who approaches something with a little bit more rationale and don't let other people's lack of calmness or aggression or uneasiness about the numbers affects you because then it affects your team. You need to create that barrier between you and the team when things aren't going right. And I love how when we take that approach that we can provide that positive leadership in an organization, we get to offer, continue to offer coaching to other leaders so that we can continue to meet the goals of the organization whether it be a budget goal or a revenue projection goal or whatever it is whatever it is in the numbers we can offer great coaching we can offer some way that they can achieve their goals in the department over the quarter and over the year and even into the next three to five years i want you to think about When problems come your way or when issues come your way, how do you turn those difficult situations or those things that you're being asked to, instead of just saying a no, and I can understand why we would say no at some things that come at us, how do we turn that no into a great yes, which becomes an awesome opportunity? And of course, what we need to do is prioritize those no's that we would say initially. prioritize those into some great opportunity. So when you're trying to get through your workload and things are coming up at you, you can evaluate and prioritize things a little bit better that have the greatest impact on the organization. Something that I want to share with you that I like to do in every organization that I've ever been in and every leadership role that I've ever been in or whatever role that I'm serving in is that I like to connect with others. In today's environment, you know people like to have their boundaries they've established you know high walls and it's more difficult to connect especially at the face-to-face level people definitely like to communicate via technology but I always love to do that face-to-face connection share a story figure out what people's goals are figure out where they're going what they like and I just always continue to like to make that that human connection sharing a story sharing where I came from and I want to hear where you came from and I and I have realized that it's more difficult nowadays that people don't like to make that connection and there there's a little bit of a bit of a fear of sharing I get that I understand that but I just think continually that when you're serving and role as a leader making that human face-to-face connection is vital it's so important it's it's essential to building trust it's essential to trying to achieve any kind of excellence or achieving any kind of goals in the organization. So for an easy win today, I want you to start to remind yourself of why you are leading others. I want you to go back to some of the things I said earlier in this episode. Are you doing it? Are you leading because it's just kind of the normal way in your career? You're just moving along and you're just hitting milestones and you're just trying to get to the next position. Is it money? Is it you're just trying to continue to gain experience to get to wherever you're going? or are you leading so you can create impact or so you can help others and it's completely okay if you want to have obviously have a combination of that there's always a little bit of hey I need to gain some experience I want to move up in my career I want to eventually get to be CFO or CEO of an organization one day and I've got to hit all these milestones but we need to continue to remind ourselves that we're leading people people with issues people who are also trying to gain experience and trying to get better every day and they're trying to achieve their goals. And I just think we need to back off a lot on the more self-centered goals and to start thinking about others and to start to make sure you have a huge impact of what you do every day to see that others be able to achieve their goals too. So in this episode, we talked about why I like to lead and trying to remind you of why you like to lead. And I think it's just important. We need to continually to assess where we're going in our career and why it's important that we are serving in this leadership role. I love to lead and I hope you do too. You can find this episode and past episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and many other places. You can download the show notes at stephenmcclain.com. Next episode, we're going to talk about something that I write a lot about, that I post a lot on social media, and that is about complacency. We need to continue to overcome complacency. We need to avoid the status quo. We need to get better every day. And I'm going to share with you On the episode after that, I want to share with you a couple of techniques that you can do to improve your daily management of your workload and your weekly management of your workload. A couple of techniques, a couple of things you make sure you add in on how to manage your tasks and manage your team. I hope you enjoyed the show. Please join our community on Facebook, the Finance Leader Podcast Facebook group. This will be our community to grow within the finance and accounting profession. Until next time, you can check out more resources at stephenmcclain.com and sign up for my updates so you don't miss an episode of the show. And now, go lead your team and see you next time. Thank you.