Soft skills are critical attributes and abilities that can greatly improve your interaction with others. These skills sometime come naturally to a person and can greatly define one’s character. Lacking in these essential soft skills often sets you apart negatively and can hinder your ability to lead and influence others in a positive way.
As you transition from individual contributor to a manager of a team and higher, it will not take too long to realize that leading people has challenges. Leaders need to know how to positively interact with their team, other managers, and senior leaders.
“Soft skills get little respect, but they will make or break your career.”– Peggy Klaus, author on leadership and communication topics
Every day, soft skills may determine how we are perceived as a leader and how likely we will succeed. Technical skills are important, but I can teach someone needed technical skills more easily than the soft skills. Often, it is the soft skills that require an inner change to your mindset and confidence in order to improve. There are techniques and formal training, but you must be willing to break out of a comfort zone to really set yourself apart.
Essential Soft Skills Necessary for Success as an Accounting and Finance Professional:
Integrity
- The Finance and Accounting profession requires a high level of ethics and integrity.
- Your word is a bond of trust. Leaders must never lose their integrity for to do so you will lose the willingness of team members to want to work with you. Additionally, senior leaders will lose confidence in your ability for greater responsibility.
- Your actions must follow what you expect from others, especially your own personal behavior. Whatever you insist from your team, you must follow through with the same. Always explain any expected deviation from what you say, because you are being judged constantly.
Positive attitude
- We must surround ourselves with positive influences because who we allow in to our sphere of influence affects how we see ourselves.
- All paths to improvement begin with our mindset. Do we see ourselves in a positive way or do we only see the doom and gloom of a problem?
- A positive mindset gives us confidence and belief that we can get the job done right.
- If we display the right attitude toward tough projects or a tough situation, then our team members are more likely to adopt our same attitude. Your team becomes you in all terms: attitude and mindset.
Interpersonal skills and self-awareness
- You must become an expert at active listening. Your body language gives you away if you don’t listen with great intention. This was a skill I had to learn repeatedly. It’s important for your team to know you are listening and comprehending what is being said.
- You must be constantly aware that your words and actions affects others.Even when evaluating poor performance of a team member, you must treat them with dignity and respect. Leading people is difficult.People have emotions, and they have great needs sometimes. Leadership requires great patience and maturity.
- You must possess a realistic understanding of yourself including your strengths and weaknesses. Not everyone has the same values as you and they value and prioritize things differently.
Time Management
- We tend to have more tasks than time available so managing our time wisely will maximize completion.
- Being respectful of others means being respectful of their time.
- Are you able to manage your time per task or even delegate less critical tasks to others?
Delegation and Prioritization
- As leader, you can’t get everything done yourself.Wisely assign projects and tasks throughout the team. Provide a due date and the proper guidance to get the task done. Hold your team accountable to get it done.
- Tasks must be prioritized so that your team doesn’t get distracted by the least important tasks. Know what your team is working on and who may be asking without your knowledge. This aspect isn’t micromanagement; this is to ensure the focus of the team is in the right direction.
Flexibility and Adaptability
- Anyone can lead when there is plenty of time and everything is working well. A crisis will challenge your judgment, integrity and your ability to focus on a proper solution.
- Problems often require creativity and the ability to see through it without getting bogged down in the problem itself.
- Rigidness prevents us from seeing better solutions to problems and it denies the ability to discover better ideas. Team members will often not approach a rigid leader who refuses to listen to new ideas.
- Be more open to technology and techniques that may make your job easier.
- Being inflexible is often a sign of risk aversion. Adapt to a new way and take some risk to bring better results in the future.
Public Speaking and Communication skills
- Communicating clearly promotes better understanding.
- You must be able to defend a position in a public setting with a professional manner. We don’t just get to write emails and other written products. Oral communication is vital for influencing others.
- Be aware of your body language and your facial expressions. You send powerful messages with your reactions.
Strategic Outlook
- Our potential for advancement to senior leadership is linked to our ability to see the big picture. Do we continue to get overly concerned about small details or can we see where the organization should be in the next 3-5 years?
- Can you make difficult decisions for the good of the organization that may be unpopular?
- Are you able to see the 2nd, 3rd and 4th order effects of decisions?
- How risk averse are you?
As you transition to higher responsibility, the list of required soft skills will change. We must continually be prepared to assess our goals and what skills along with experience that will be required to achieve those goals.
What is your plan to develop and improve any soft skills you may be lacking?
Please comment or email me at comment@stephenmclain.com.
Copyright 2018 –Stephen McLain
