May 3, 2023 • 14 mins
What drives you to achieve excellence? To achieve your BEST every day? Learning is a big part of our journey in achieving excellence, so what helps you to stay motivated to learn and grow? I believe we must stay curious and be curious to continue to develop and improve each day. Our learning approach helps to expand our capacity AND our potential. Stay and be curious in our profession so you learn new skills and new ways to lead your team and organization to more positive outcomes. Train yourself to be curious, which can lead to more opportunities to advance.
Episode outline:
- Our curiosity leads to the development of new skills and abilities,
- How to train yourself to be more curious, and
- Continually expand your potential for finance leadership.
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.
- On the website, you can download the Become a Finance Leader Guide. You can use this guide to build your Finance Leadership skills so you can help senior leaders develop and execute the strategy.
- I also offer a course, Advance Your Finance and Accounting Career: Developing a Promotion Strategy that Sets You Apart.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:04):
What drives you to achieve excellence to achieve
your best every day, learning isa big part of our journey and
achieving excellence. So whathelps you to stay motivated to
learn and grow?
I believe we must stay curiousand be curious to continue to
develop and improve each day.
Our learning approach helps toexpand our capacity, and our
(00:27):
potential. Stay and be curiousin our profession. So you will
learn new skills and new ways tolead your team and organization
to more positive outcomes. Trainyourself to be curious, which
can lead to more opportunitiesto advance. Please enjoy the
episode. Welcome to the financeleader podcast where leadership
(00:48):
is bigger than the numbers. I amyour host, Stephen McLean. This
is the podcast for developingleaders in finance and
accounting. Please considerfollowing me on Twitter,
Facebook, Instagram, andLinkedIn. My usernames and the
links are in this episode's shownotes. Thank you. This is
episode number 106. And I'll betalking about staying curious.
(01:10):
So you continue to grow anddevelop in finance, accounting,
and business overall. And I willhighlight the following topics.
Number one, our curiosity leadsto development of new skills and
abilities. Number two, how totrain yourself to be more
curious. And three, continuallyexpand your potential for
(01:31):
finance leadership, Walt Disneysaid, we keep moving forward,
opening new doors and doing newthings because we're curious,
and curiosity keeps leading usdown new paths. The philosophy
of being curious is what makeslife and business interesting.
There's so much to learn infinance and accounting, and also
(01:53):
about our business acumen,especially for our own
organization and the industry asa whole. There's so much to
learn, which will make us betterat our jobs, and better finance
leaders. I love learning andstaying curious. I have that
desire to learn more in ourprofession, especially in data
(02:14):
analysis, projections andfinance decision making. I am
always wanting to make a betteranalysis model. So I can find a
unique insight. There are somany ways to look at your data.
I want to learn them all. And Ioften find myself doing that I
usually start by refining whatI'm trying to solve, then
(02:34):
extracting the right data set,ensuring it's validated data,
and then applying the rightalgorithm maybe through a pivot
table, or just a simple chart. Ifinish up the analysis by
presenting in a simple way. Sonot to distract my audience.
I'll cover more about this in alater episode. But my point is
that I love to learn about howto better analyze data and
(02:56):
present it in a way that helpsother leaders to achieve their
goals. I get fired up over that.
And I hope you do too. By theway, did you listen to episode
105, finance and accountingtrends for 2023. I discuss
hiring and technology trends forour field, we have to know what
(03:17):
is happening in our field. So weare prepared to make decisions
about what roles we may want topursue and what skills we need
to develop. Please go back andlisten to that episode. If you
missed it, you won't regret it.
Now, do you like learning? Wouldyou call yourself a curious
person? Do new ideas intrigueyou? So you want to know more? I
definitely do. Learning gets memotivated every day. And there
(03:41):
is research that suggestsstaying curious improves our
brain function. The finance andaccounting fields are richly
packed with new ideas andconcepts all the time. How we do
our jobs and finance andaccounting will change. So our
curiosity should never end.
Right now the hot topic to learnabout are the new artificial
(04:04):
intelligence tools that seem tobe coming out every day. We all
have to commit to learning andapplying these new tools before
our competition does. Can weagree that the daily grind can
sometimes be boring, we oftenhave the same tasks, the same
reports and analysis. We need toget done on a routine basis, an
(04:25):
everyday basis. And this can beboring, safe to safe. So don't
let the routine pneus of ourresponsibilities destroy our
curiosity and our ability togrow, look for ways to improve,
to grow to change how we supportthe business. Now this can be
done we can all do this. stayingcurious begins with asking
(04:47):
questions. For example, how canwe do this better? How can we
perform a more accurateprojection? How can we improve
monthly clothes and make itfaster while still being
accurate and proper?
How can we support seniorleaders execute the strategy?
There are all sorts of questionsto ask about completing simple
(05:08):
tasks faster, to more strategicissues, you have to start asking
them and then learning andfiguring out how to answer them,
then you will be executing yourjob even better and pushing your
organization to a higher level.
When we begin to be curious, westart to have more opportunities
to excel and to grow in ourrole. We grow our value, and
(05:28):
then we grow our career. Ourcareer potential can often be
determined by our desire tolearn, and then to apply what we
have learned in our craft. So weget new opportunities. And I
need to ask this, how are wedoing with goal achievement this
year, we are in the secondquarter, so I expect some
progress. And I also expect thatyou have completed a few CPS
(05:51):
again, don't wait until December1 to start working on CPE
completion. There are many oneCPE opportunities out there to
accomplish when you can findyourself caught up on work
tasks. So let's get it done.
Now. one skill that I'mrecommending that you be curious
about is relationship building.
Right now you might be analyzingdata or handling a set of
(06:14):
accounts or leading a team thatsupports a line or several lines
of business. But how can youhelp your stakeholders even
more? How can you grow thebusiness to some this might
sound like you have to do alittle extra work and you're
right. But those people are notlistening to this podcast, the
finance leader podcast you areand you know and desire to go
(06:35):
the extra mile to become thebest finance leader you can be,
you are willing to rise abovethe task grind to become better.
So add relationship building toyour list of skills to grow. Now
let's talk about stayingcurious. So you continue to grow
and develop in finance,accounting, and the business
overall. Number one, ourcuriosity leads the development
(06:57):
of new skills and abilities. Thecurious personality will learn
continuously. And when you applythat learning to our work and to
our life. We then get to moveforward in many amazing ways.
Our desire to learn expands ourceiling and our career growth.
The one who invest in themselvesto learn new skills will find
(07:18):
more opportunities available.
Ask questions many questions andchallenge the status quo. Ask
and suggest ways to do yourtasks even better. Volunteer to
perform a task that willchallenge your abilities. So you
have to be curious and learncontinue to ask more questions.
(07:39):
Continue to find more ways toimprove the work that you are
doing today. Number two, how totrain yourself to be more
curious. To begin being curiousrequires us to ask questions and
to wonder why and to wonder howthings can be done different and
better. Do you feel like that?
If you don't have a naturalsense of curiosity asked a
question about your duties orabout the business. Be willing
(08:02):
to even ask dumb questions, I doit often it doesn't matter. Find
time to learn. Invest inyourself everyday commit the
time and effort each day tolearn something new. Make it a
daily habit. feeding your mindand spirit when new knowledge
will give you additionalbenefits also read widely.
Choose reading selections beyondyour normal go to topics.
(08:26):
Challenge yourself to expandyour topic range. So your broad
knowledge grows, be a greatlistener absorb what people are
saying when you become an activelistener, you will pick up on
special insights that willpositively change your
perspective. Listening ispowerful. Listening with
patients will change youforever. Your own very personal
(08:48):
stance on topics and issues mayvery well change once you become
an active listener. Also bedeliberate in expanding your
expertise. We have to make adaily choice to become better
and grow you will be challengedwith the daily grind of tasks.
And they will try to stop youfrom learning. I have been
(09:08):
there. We've all been there. Butwe are finance leaders. So we
know we must commit and bedeliberate in our learning.
Also, I want you to keep ajournal capture your key
learning so you can go back tothem. Use your journal to apply
what you've learned to whatchallenges you may face. Also,
when we write things down, wehave a greater chance to retain
(09:29):
it. And also don't forget toupdate your individual
development plan. As you gainnew knowledge and grow your
skills. Update your progress inyour written plan. Number three
continually expand yourpotential for finance
leadership. Our capacity tolearn to adapt and to grow
expands our potential foradvancement. But we also need to
(09:51):
take action and be proactive indeveloping our potential for
greater responsibility. Beingand staying curious
He is helps us to be betterleaders, better communicators,
and better partners to helpachieve the organization's goals
and strategy. We have to get outof our comfort zone to be
curious. And by being curioushelps us to get out of the
(10:13):
everyday grind that we are askedto do. This helps us to grow our
potential and our career growth.
I want to encourage you to crosstrain between finance and
accounting. And that means totake roles in both fields. Now,
some people might be very scaredof that, and not willing to do
this they want to kind of stayon track their finance track, or
their accounting track. But I'masking you to take some
(10:35):
riskiness be willing to takeroles across finance and
accounting. This can positivelyfeed our curiosity and grow our
broad knowledge and experienceand our value increase, more
opportunities will come to you.
If you're able to take that riskand learn and take on roles in
both finance and accounting. Ourcuriosity leads us to growth and
(10:59):
then potentially more careeradvancement. But a lack of
curiosity leads to regression,boredom and routine without
reward. We want to avoid this.
Some people love routine, it'ssafe, but it brings you nowhere
it put to your same paycheckevery week. What are you hungry
to achieve in your career? Howcan you get there? What do you
need to learn to move to thenext level? Or to the next step
(11:22):
in your career towards your longterm goal? For action today?
Let's get curious about ourfields. What finance, accounting
or business topics? Are youinterested in? To learn more
about? What new skills can helpyou advance your career? What
are you lacking to move forward?
And what can you help improvewithin your own work portfolio?
(11:45):
These are a few areas that candrive you to learn more, that
self analysis will help drive toask the right questions to get
started. No. So let's be curiousevery day. Also, I wanted to let
you know that I have a brand newguide to help you become a
better leader in finance andaccounting is called become a
finance leader. You can downloadit for free, there is a link in
(12:07):
the show notes. Or you can go toFinance leader academy.com to
download it for free. Thank you.
Today I talked about stayingcurious so you can continue to
grow and develop in finance,accounting and business overall
and I highlighted the followingpoints. Number one, our
curiosity leads the developmentof new skills and abilities.
Number two, how to trainyourself to be more curious. And
(12:29):
three continually expand yourpotential for finance
leadership. I want to highlightone more time the key issue
before I close this episode outyou will increase your value and
potential. By being curious. Ourquest for knowledge will lead to
improve skills and people willnotice they will notice your
(12:50):
drive to become better, theywill notice that your work
performance has improved andyour overall leadership and
influence abilities haveprogressed. So be curious and
ask many questions. This willlead you to gain more and more
knowledge and improve yourmarketable skills. It will even
lead you to build betterrelationships throughout the
(13:10):
organization. Your learningshould not just be limited to
the accounting and finance teamsbut also the other business
functions, learn and then learnsome more and then apply it in
advance go get it I'm proud ofyou finance leaders. Next
episode I will be talking aboutteam engagement tools. I
introduced this a few weeks ago.
(13:31):
But I wanted to expand on what Ipresented to help our finance
and accounting leaders out thereI can't wait to share. I hope
you enjoyed the finance leaderpodcast I am dedicated to
helping you grow your leadershipskills to change your mindset to
clarify your goals so to advanceyour career. You can find this
episode wherever you listen topodcasts. Give this episode
(13:52):
helped you today. Please shareit leave a quick review so that
others find the podcast. Untilnext time, you can check out
more resources at finance leaderacademy.com and sign up for my
weekly updates. Don't miss anepisode of the podcast and now
will lead your team and I'll seeyou next time. Thank you
What drives you to achieve excellence to achieve
your best every day, learning isa big part of our journey and
achieving excellence. So whathelps you to stay motivated to
learn and grow?
I believe we must stay curiousand be curious to continue to
develop and improve each day.
Our learning approach helps toexpand our capacity, and our
(00:27):
potential. Stay and be curiousin our profession. So you will
learn new skills and new ways tolead your team and organization
to more positive outcomes. Trainyourself to be curious, which
can lead to more opportunitiesto advance. Please enjoy the
episode. Welcome to the financeleader podcast where leadership
(00:48):
is bigger than the numbers. I amyour host, Stephen McLean. This
is the podcast for developingleaders in finance and
accounting. Please considerfollowing me on Twitter,
Facebook, Instagram, andLinkedIn. My usernames and the
links are in this episode's shownotes. Thank you. This is
episode number 106. And I'll betalking about staying curious.
(01:10):
So you continue to grow anddevelop in finance, accounting,
and business overall. And I willhighlight the following topics.
Number one, our curiosity leadsto development of new skills and
abilities. Number two, how totrain yourself to be more
curious. And three, continuallyexpand your potential for
(01:31):
finance leadership, Walt Disneysaid, we keep moving forward,
opening new doors and doing newthings because we're curious,
and curiosity keeps leading usdown new paths. The philosophy
of being curious is what makeslife and business interesting.
There's so much to learn infinance and accounting, and also
(01:53):
about our business acumen,especially for our own
organization and the industry asa whole. There's so much to
learn, which will make us betterat our jobs, and better finance
leaders. I love learning andstaying curious. I have that
desire to learn more in ourprofession, especially in data
(02:14):
analysis, projections andfinance decision making. I am
always wanting to make a betteranalysis model. So I can find a
unique insight. There are somany ways to look at your data.
I want to learn them all. And Ioften find myself doing that I
usually start by refining whatI'm trying to solve, then
(02:34):
extracting the right data set,ensuring it's validated data,
and then applying the rightalgorithm maybe through a pivot
table, or just a simple chart. Ifinish up the analysis by
presenting in a simple way. Sonot to distract my audience.
I'll cover more about this in alater episode. But my point is
that I love to learn about howto better analyze data and
(02:56):
present it in a way that helpsother leaders to achieve their
goals. I get fired up over that.
And I hope you do too. By theway, did you listen to episode
105, finance and accountingtrends for 2023. I discuss
hiring and technology trends forour field, we have to know what
(03:17):
is happening in our field. So weare prepared to make decisions
about what roles we may want topursue and what skills we need
to develop. Please go back andlisten to that episode. If you
missed it, you won't regret it.
Now, do you like learning? Wouldyou call yourself a curious
person? Do new ideas intrigueyou? So you want to know more? I
definitely do. Learning gets memotivated every day. And there
(03:41):
is research that suggestsstaying curious improves our
brain function. The finance andaccounting fields are richly
packed with new ideas andconcepts all the time. How we do
our jobs and finance andaccounting will change. So our
curiosity should never end.
Right now the hot topic to learnabout are the new artificial
(04:04):
intelligence tools that seem tobe coming out every day. We all
have to commit to learning andapplying these new tools before
our competition does. Can weagree that the daily grind can
sometimes be boring, we oftenhave the same tasks, the same
reports and analysis. We need toget done on a routine basis, an
(04:25):
everyday basis. And this can beboring, safe to safe. So don't
let the routine pneus of ourresponsibilities destroy our
curiosity and our ability togrow, look for ways to improve,
to grow to change how we supportthe business. Now this can be
done we can all do this. stayingcurious begins with asking
(04:47):
questions. For example, how canwe do this better? How can we
perform a more accurateprojection? How can we improve
monthly clothes and make itfaster while still being
accurate and proper?
How can we support seniorleaders execute the strategy?
There are all sorts of questionsto ask about completing simple
(05:08):
tasks faster, to more strategicissues, you have to start asking
them and then learning andfiguring out how to answer them,
then you will be executing yourjob even better and pushing your
organization to a higher level.
When we begin to be curious, westart to have more opportunities
to excel and to grow in ourrole. We grow our value, and
(05:28):
then we grow our career. Ourcareer potential can often be
determined by our desire tolearn, and then to apply what we
have learned in our craft. So weget new opportunities. And I
need to ask this, how are wedoing with goal achievement this
year, we are in the secondquarter, so I expect some
progress. And I also expect thatyou have completed a few CPS
(05:51):
again, don't wait until December1 to start working on CPE
completion. There are many oneCPE opportunities out there to
accomplish when you can findyourself caught up on work
tasks. So let's get it done.
Now. one skill that I'mrecommending that you be curious
about is relationship building.
Right now you might be analyzingdata or handling a set of
(06:14):
accounts or leading a team thatsupports a line or several lines
of business. But how can youhelp your stakeholders even
more? How can you grow thebusiness to some this might
sound like you have to do alittle extra work and you're
right. But those people are notlistening to this podcast, the
finance leader podcast you areand you know and desire to go
(06:35):
the extra mile to become thebest finance leader you can be,
you are willing to rise abovethe task grind to become better.
So add relationship building toyour list of skills to grow. Now
let's talk about stayingcurious. So you continue to grow
and develop in finance,accounting, and the business
overall. Number one, ourcuriosity leads the development
(06:57):
of new skills and abilities. Thecurious personality will learn
continuously. And when you applythat learning to our work and to
our life. We then get to moveforward in many amazing ways.
Our desire to learn expands ourceiling and our career growth.
The one who invest in themselvesto learn new skills will find
(07:18):
more opportunities available.
Ask questions many questions andchallenge the status quo. Ask
and suggest ways to do yourtasks even better. Volunteer to
perform a task that willchallenge your abilities. So you
have to be curious and learncontinue to ask more questions.
(07:39):
Continue to find more ways toimprove the work that you are
doing today. Number two, how totrain yourself to be more
curious. To begin being curiousrequires us to ask questions and
to wonder why and to wonder howthings can be done different and
better. Do you feel like that?
If you don't have a naturalsense of curiosity asked a
question about your duties orabout the business. Be willing
(08:02):
to even ask dumb questions, I doit often it doesn't matter. Find
time to learn. Invest inyourself everyday commit the
time and effort each day tolearn something new. Make it a
daily habit. feeding your mindand spirit when new knowledge
will give you additionalbenefits also read widely.
Choose reading selections beyondyour normal go to topics.
(08:26):
Challenge yourself to expandyour topic range. So your broad
knowledge grows, be a greatlistener absorb what people are
saying when you become an activelistener, you will pick up on
special insights that willpositively change your
perspective. Listening ispowerful. Listening with
patients will change youforever. Your own very personal
(08:48):
stance on topics and issues mayvery well change once you become
an active listener. Also bedeliberate in expanding your
expertise. We have to make adaily choice to become better
and grow you will be challengedwith the daily grind of tasks.
And they will try to stop youfrom learning. I have been
(09:08):
there. We've all been there. Butwe are finance leaders. So we
know we must commit and bedeliberate in our learning.
Also, I want you to keep ajournal capture your key
learning so you can go back tothem. Use your journal to apply
what you've learned to whatchallenges you may face. Also,
when we write things down, wehave a greater chance to retain
(09:29):
it. And also don't forget toupdate your individual
development plan. As you gainnew knowledge and grow your
skills. Update your progress inyour written plan. Number three
continually expand yourpotential for finance
leadership. Our capacity tolearn to adapt and to grow
expands our potential foradvancement. But we also need to
(09:51):
take action and be proactive indeveloping our potential for
greater responsibility. Beingand staying curious
He is helps us to be betterleaders, better communicators,
and better partners to helpachieve the organization's goals
and strategy. We have to get outof our comfort zone to be
curious. And by being curioushelps us to get out of the
(10:13):
everyday grind that we are askedto do. This helps us to grow our
potential and our career growth.
I want to encourage you to crosstrain between finance and
accounting. And that means totake roles in both fields. Now,
some people might be very scaredof that, and not willing to do
this they want to kind of stayon track their finance track, or
their accounting track. But I'masking you to take some
(10:35):
riskiness be willing to takeroles across finance and
accounting. This can positivelyfeed our curiosity and grow our
broad knowledge and experienceand our value increase, more
opportunities will come to you.
If you're able to take that riskand learn and take on roles in
both finance and accounting. Ourcuriosity leads us to growth and
(10:59):
then potentially more careeradvancement. But a lack of
curiosity leads to regression,boredom and routine without
reward. We want to avoid this.
Some people love routine, it'ssafe, but it brings you nowhere
it put to your same paycheckevery week. What are you hungry
to achieve in your career? Howcan you get there? What do you
need to learn to move to thenext level? Or to the next step
(11:22):
in your career towards your longterm goal? For action today?
Let's get curious about ourfields. What finance, accounting
or business topics? Are youinterested in? To learn more
about? What new skills can helpyou advance your career? What
are you lacking to move forward?
And what can you help improvewithin your own work portfolio?
(11:45):
These are a few areas that candrive you to learn more, that
self analysis will help drive toask the right questions to get
started. No. So let's be curiousevery day. Also, I wanted to let
you know that I have a brand newguide to help you become a
better leader in finance andaccounting is called become a
finance leader. You can downloadit for free, there is a link in
(12:07):
the show notes. Or you can go toFinance leader academy.com to
download it for free. Thank you.
Today I talked about stayingcurious so you can continue to
grow and develop in finance,accounting and business overall
and I highlighted the followingpoints. Number one, our
curiosity leads the developmentof new skills and abilities.
Number two, how to trainyourself to be more curious. And
(12:29):
three continually expand yourpotential for finance
leadership. I want to highlightone more time the key issue
before I close this episode outyou will increase your value and
potential. By being curious. Ourquest for knowledge will lead to
improve skills and people willnotice they will notice your
(12:50):
drive to become better, theywill notice that your work
performance has improved andyour overall leadership and
influence abilities haveprogressed. So be curious and
ask many questions. This willlead you to gain more and more
knowledge and improve yourmarketable skills. It will even
lead you to build betterrelationships throughout the
(13:10):
organization. Your learningshould not just be limited to
the accounting and finance teamsbut also the other business
functions, learn and then learnsome more and then apply it in
advance go get it I'm proud ofyou finance leaders. Next
episode I will be talking aboutteam engagement tools. I
introduced this a few weeks ago.
(13:31):
But I wanted to expand on what Ipresented to help our finance
and accounting leaders out thereI can't wait to share. I hope
you enjoyed the finance leaderpodcast I am dedicated to
helping you grow your leadershipskills to change your mindset to
clarify your goals so to advanceyour career. You can find this
episode wherever you listen topodcasts. Give this episode
(13:52):
helped you today. Please shareit leave a quick review so that
others find the podcast. Untilnext time, you can check out
more resources at finance leaderacademy.com and sign up for my
weekly updates. Don't miss anepisode of the podcast and now
will lead your team and I'll seeyou next time. Thank you
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