July 7, 2025
The Bridge Builder: Leadership as Your First Priority
Send us a text Bonus episode #92: Leadership is the bridge between resources and results, between data and decisions. While many finance professionals focus intensely on technical skills, the truly exceptional ones recognize that leadership development must come first. This episode makes a compelling case for prioritizing leadership skills as the foundation upon which all other finance competencies build. Through an examination of both effective and ineffective leadership examples, we explor...
Bonus episode #92: Leadership is the bridge between resources and results, between data and decisions. While many finance professionals focus intensely on technical skills, the truly exceptional ones recognize that leadership development must come first. This episode makes a compelling case for prioritizing leadership skills as the foundation upon which all other finance competencies build.
Through an examination of both effective and ineffective leadership examples, we explore why leadership becomes the most important skill for finance professionals to develop. Great leadership isn't about quick wins or personal validation—it's about creating sustainable excellence by investing in your team's growth. When you develop leadership skills, you gain the ability to solve complex problems, bridge communication gaps between departments, and turn data into strategic action.
The episode outlines practical approaches to becoming a better leader: adopting a growth mindset, conducting meaningful one-on-ones, providing honest feedback, and building genuine relationships with team members. These skills allow finance professionals to move beyond being technical experts and become strategic partners who help shape the organization's future.
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.
Chapters
00:00 - Summer Intro and Episode Preview
02:10 - Why Develop Leadership First
05:33 - Aaron Rodgers Leadership Analysis
08:34 - Creating Positive Change Through Leadership
10:21 - How To Become a Great Leader
13:37 - Four Fundamental Finance Leader Responsibilities
14:05 - Call to Action and Episode Summary
Transcript
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Hi. This is Stephen McLain of the finance leader podcast. This is bonus episode number 92 now I live in the American South, and it has been so hot this summer already.
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I always wish we could skip over summer and go from Spring straight to fall, but many of you love summer. You love the sun and weather, and it's vacation and summer holiday time, so it's a time to relax and recharge, and you all deserve that. But I want cooler weather and American football, but I will have to wait just a little more time. I want to share with you this week a replay of episode number 124, leadership is the most important skill to develop, empower your team for innovation and success.
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Becoming a great leader matures you to be fearless in the face of a crisis and the never ending pressure of task requirements and dealing with the demands of senior leaders. Can you rise to the occasion when everything around you is falling apart? The last week, I asked you to look at finance, leader academy.com, to check out what's new. Have you looked yet? What did you find there anything there that can help you with your career and skills development? Like always, I am sharing a link to finance leader Academy in the show notes. Go check it out. In about two weeks, I will start a special series for the summer about audit risk and independence and how the CFO plays an important role in ensuring that an independent analysis is done for the company to verify the right internal controls are in place to safeguard company assets, to calculate risk as it relates to company strategy and much more.
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The first episode will be released on July 22 I can't wait to share please enjoy this encore episode and have a great rest of your week. Thank you.
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This week, I am talking about why learning leadership should be your first priority over all other skills, development, becoming a great leader matures you to be fearless in the face of a crisis in the never ending pressure of task requirements and dealing with the demands of senior leaders. Can you rise to the occasion when everything around you is falling apart? Can you develop a team ready for more responsibility while resisting the urge to do everything yourself? 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.
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Please consider following me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. My usernames and the links are in this episode's show notes. Thank you. This is episode number 124, and I will be talking about how leadership becomes the most important skill to develop. And I will highlight the following topics. Number one, we need to develop leadership skills before anything else. Number two, leadership is how you create positive change. And three, how you can become a great leader.
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Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter said, a leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be. Becoming a great leader is a lifelong learning process. Learning never ends, and great, effective leadership is a calling, so you can bring positive change to the team and organization as a whole, leadership can be tough.
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It is often hard because you are working with people. We as leaders, are always the bridge between the resources we have and the tasks that must be completed. Can we complete our work, which also means our team's requirements to a high level of excellence, while also navigating what our people need from us. It begins with a mindset that we will serve our teams and our people so they become better when we raise others up first, we become better by default. We don't need to be selfish. We must become servant leaders. We don't need to be fearful of our more senior leaders or our bosses, we need to be fearless in our approach to building great teams. I want you to have courage to take more risks while you give your team members more responsibility. To get them in front of senior leaders presenting their numbers. You don't need to do the work for them. What you can do is to be their coach while they prepare. Now, why is finance leadership so important?
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We talk about the fundamentals of finance, but how do we create a team who can see things differently, who know how to create value, who can tell a story from the data they are looking at, and who can advise beyond the obvious answers? I don't. Obvious answers. I want to develop leaders who can lead to not so obvious answers, so we can outlast our competition, so we can develop better customer experiences, which leads to increased revenues, which then flows down the profit and loss statements to increased net profit. I have seen some amazing Excel users who create compelling spreadsheets, but who get so obsessed in their formatting and other styling issues, but they miss out on the more edgy insights that can lead to better decision making. We can get so focused and proud of being experts in Excel that we forget about the analysis that we are doing, and we don't get beyond the simple analysis, because we are pulling the same data every time to get to more useful insights, we need to ask questions and then even better questions, and then we need to determine all the variables that affect the metrics or products that we are analyzing so we know what data we really need to Create a better picture for those who are making recommendations and decisions.
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Many finance influences focus so much on the technical side of working in finance and accounting that they miss out on how to mold together a team who can work together to solve a complex problem. How can we better help senior leaders do their jobs? And that takes a special type of leadership. It is often said that sports competitions are won in the margins, which means you have to win in the toughest of situations, and then to employ your resources in new and innovative ways. To overcome your competition, you have to be a unique problem solver and look at obstacles differently. What will you let stop you from achieving a high level of excellence or in completing a tough goal? Now, let's talk a little bit more on sports for a few more minutes. Sports can be an awesome leadership lab. Now, Aaron Rodgers is a National Football League quarterback. For those who don't know, the quarterback is expected to be the leader on the team. I have nothing but great respect for Aaron Rodgers football skills on the field, but let's analyze his leadership skills. Is he the type of leader you want leading your team now this summer, his team, the New York Jets, like most, if not all, teams, held a mini camp to start to get ready for training camp. This was a mandatory team event. Now, Aaron Rodgers chose to take a vacation instead of participating with his team and participating with his wide receivers and offensive linesmen to get the plays right, to set the right example and to establish good communication, he often skips team activities throughout the off season, though most are really optional.
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Off season activities are extremely helpful in building trust and confidence with your teammates. Now, Aaron Rodgers believes his talent alone will win games. Maybe he's that good, maybe isn't. He has won the Super Bowl once in his career, one time, but many quarterbacks have led their teams to one Super Bowl victory. What differentiates a highly talented leader from a great one who delivers excellence every time?
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Now, excellence in the National Football League means winning championships. If Aaron Rodgers was truly great as he thinks he is wouldn't he have won multiple Super Bowls. Do you want Aaron Rodgers on your team? Is he the type of leader we want to copy?
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I'll let you decide. Now, let's talk about why leadership becomes the most important skill to develop. Number one, we need to develop leadership skills before anything else. I believe that leadership development rules over all other skills.
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Leadership is how you bridge gaps in communication. It is how you solve complex problems.
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Leadership helps you solve conflict, which is inevitable when you are dealing with people and the demands of a large organization. Leadership is essential at all role levels, including for the individual contributors, because their portfolios require them to interact with senior leaders to do their jobs right? You can't just download data. You have to talk to people from all around the organization to really know what is happening. Number two, leadership is how you create positive change. We often see selfish leaders, and this can be so disappointing, we develop leaders so they can be positive influence instead of a selfish or distracting one. It is through leadership that the difficult work gets done, the tough decisions are made, and how you relate to the people on your team. A narcissist can often achieve higher results.
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But at what cost? Selfish leaders don't invest in the team for the long term, but great leaders do. A great leader will sacrifice a quick result today for long term, steady growth results later. That quick result probably did not help any one individual get better today. So we have the same team, but a little bit more stressed and stressed. Best in a bad way.
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Great leadership is where you change the organization for the better. You develop others who may make a mistake today, but will learn from that mistake and become even better tomorrow. I want us to lead with confidence, never afraid, to solve tough problems and to give positive direction to our team members.
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Number three, how you can become a great leader. There are so many areas that I can talk about here. I want to remind you that if you get results but leave a trail of destruction, you are not a great leader. If you seek validation from others or aim to people please, you are not a great leader. Often you have to make an unpopular decision or even speak up against an action or a decision that may be detrimental. This is where great leadership comes from, and always work to bring others along with you as you become better. So your team members should also become better. I want you to reflect back on a great leader you had in the past. What comes to mind when you remember them? You may need to remember a few so you can create a composite of a great leader. Ensure you adopt a growth mindset. A growth mindset means we are continually developing, learning and applying what we are learning.
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Focus on the development of others as much as you can coach, teach and mentor your team.
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Always use relevant tools to help you communicate and lead your team effectively prioritize tasks. Conduct a meaningful weekly team meeting. Conduct routine one on one meetings with every team member to give back realistic feedback and use back briefs to ensure your team understands tasks and requirements. Train and trust your team. Give them opportunities to excel. Some people choose to not get close to their team because they believe it may make it more difficult to make decisions about them. I disagree. You can become very relatable if you are honest with each person in their performance development meetings, especially the weekly one on ones. Don't fear getting close to team members, but give very truthful performance and future potential feedback. We need to bridge gaps in communications. I have mentioned this many times, teams and departments operate in silos all the time. As a finance professional, you will see this and you can bridge a lack of communication between teams, and it will be gold to the organization. You will find amazing results when you put two team leaders together who need to talk, who are not talking previously. Now do leadership different address areas for improvement, and then put into action how to improve those issues. We must achieve results, but do so with growth, make your team better and the organization better through every task and requirement you complete, think and act strategically in your decisions and in your actions.
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Now, finally, in everything you do work to set a fine example of hard work ethics and servant leadership to your team be the leader you always want it now, in episode two of this podcast, which I recorded a long time ago, I talked about four fundamental responsibilities of every finance leader. I recorded that episode more than four years ago, but they are still valid now. They are. The first one is influence. The next is develop others and then achieve results, and then finally, see the future before anything start with that list for developing your action plan to become a better leader, these four primary responsibilities I just said, are required of every finance leader. Now for action today. Where can you improve as a leader. Are you for quick results, or are you focused on building a team capable of delivering high quality results for the long term, great leadership requires great investment. How are you becoming better as a leader every day?
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Always prioritize leadership development, because it has organizational impacts more than you realize when you get it right, develop your leadership skills beginning today. Did you know that at finance leader Academy, we offer a course on conflict management, we have a guest instructor, Mark McMillion, of McMillion leadership associates, who will take you through the process of handling a hostile encounter in a variety of scenarios, from dealing with angry customers or your own team as they manage tough work issues. You can learn more at finance leader academy.com now today, I talked about why leadership becomes the most important skill to develop, and I highlighted the following points. Number one, we need to develop leadership skills before anything else. Number two, leadership is how you create positive change. Number three, how you can become a great leader. As you grow in your role, you must shift how you spend your development time as an individual contributor. You definitely need to grow your analysis skills. But leadership is just as essential. We should not open. Look how leadership can shape your ability to help others see things differently, especially when it comes to senior leaders, they can become compartmentalized in their area that they oversee. A senior leader must be looking at the entire company and so all of the business functions and departments work together as a whole to achieve the strategic objectives as finance leaders, we must grasp this concept early. As leaders, we must also see the company as a whole, instead of individual departments or functions. How does each department or function affect the others? We can bridge gaps wherever they may occur.
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One final reminder, the great leaders do great things consistently. I hope you enjoyed the finance leader podcast. I am focused on helping this community become more confident finance leaders ready to transform their teams and organizations. You can find this episode wherever you listen to podcasts. If this episode helps you today, please share with a colleague until next time, you can 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 podcast, and now go lead your team and I'll see you next time.
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Thank you. You.
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