Continual Professional Development – Leadership and Engagement
Leadership for new accountants As part of our series of posts about our CPD courses for newly qualified accountants, this week we’re focussing on how to engage and lead a […]
Leadership for new accountants
As part of our series of posts about our CPD courses for newly qualified accountants, this week we’re focussing on how to engage and lead a team, while completing your own job. For many NQs taking that step up into official management responsibility the thought of leading a team or managing staff can be one of the most daunting and challenging aspects. Up until this point you’ve probably been very focussed on yourself, whereas now there may be several other people you need to keep engaged. How prepared are you to handle this challenge?
Communication
Engaging a team begins with communication (the topic we covered last week), and researchers all agree that regular communication is the best way to keep individuals on your team engaged. This can take any form from phone calls, to meetings, emails, or more informal lunches or coffee breaks. The trick can often be working out what type of communication each of your team responds best to, and when to use different methods to get the best out of them.
Leadership and motivation
Great managers are able to motivate employees and build genuine relationships with them, but accountants, especially those new to team-working, can be uncomfortable with this “soft” aspect of management. The best managers understand that each person they manage is different, and getting to know team members as people allows them to accommodate individual strengths and weaknesses while managing toward high performance.
Making clear your expectations is perhaps the most basic of employee needs and is vital to performance. Great managers don’t just tell employees what’s expected of them and leave it at that; instead, they frequently talk with employees about their responsibilities and progress. They don’t save those critical conversations for once-a-year performance reviews.
Similarly, nurturing a culture that focuses on employees’ strengths is a far more effective approach than a fixation on weaknesses. A strengths-based culture is one in which employees learn their roles more quickly, produce more and significantly better work, stay with their company longer, and are more engaged. That includes you in your own role – you get to focus on what you do best, with a team to support you in everything else.
Learn more about how to lead, engage and succeed in your own role
Talk is great, but sometimes you need to get stuck in and learn it properly. Thankfully, we’ve just thing with our one day course on the topic, which forms part of our Supervisory CPD programme for newly qualified accountants.
This particular module will help you look at and understand your role in relation to your manager, your peers and your team; how to influence others (directly and indirectly); how to engage individuals and teams; how to develop others and improve performance; how to become more self-aware at work; and how to manage your time to balance team tasks and your own.
Find out more about this particular module here, or read more about our full Supervisory CPD programme for new accountants here.
