The term "leadership" covers a multitude of areas, and is arguably one of the most confused concepts experienced by accounting and finance professionals.
It seems that most individuals have a view on what makes a "good" leader. This is often based on what they have experienced throughout their own career, a wealth of literature, and even role models that are depicted through global media.
Our experiences can influence what we believe to be "good" leadership.
One of the common misconceptions about leadership is that it is limited to more senior individuals. Although this generally applies to management, usually based on role and/or title, everyone has the opportunity to display leadership, irrespective of hierarchical position in a team or organisation.
As accounting and financial professionals we are often responsible for leading a team, and this may cover a variety of roles or potential scenarios. Irrespective of the situation, the need for resilience in leadership becomes even more important – it incorporates how your behaviours and approach are recognised by members of your team.
The importance of change
A good example of an area where both leaders excel and resilience is paramount, relates to change. Organisational change is a key leadership responsibility that many of us have experienced in our role as a finance professional.
Although we all deal with change at our own unique pace, we follow a similar psychological pattern. This is important to recognise because each individual member of your team is unlikely to reach the end of the change journey at the same time. Furthermore, despite being a leader, you will also progress through the same psychological pattern as everyone else.
Acceptance and change
The amount of time required to achieve acceptance will vary based on the individual, but also the change itself. For example, if we discover that an important deadline has been brought forward by a day, the feelings of shock, denial, and anger are more likely to subside quickly. In fact, we may pass through these stages without even feeling or experiencing them.
Although we may entertain the stage of bargaining for a short period and may feel mildly "depressed" that the deadline has been changed, but are likely to reach the stage of acceptance relatively quickly. Compare this change with a more significant work-related event, such as redundancy, organisational / team structure changes, or even business closure. For many of us, the significance of these events is likely to increase the amount of time required to reach acceptance.
Driving change as a leader
Your team will be aware of how you deal with change.
As a leader, it is important to remember that how you deal with change is also being observed by members of your team. Furthermore, when driving a change initiative as a leader, we are often already in a state of acceptance and integration, enabling us to promote the benefits and rationale for completing the change journey.
But how does this differ when the change also impacts ourselves either equally or even more than our own team?
The Resilience Dichotomy
This might represent a business change that we are asked to achieve, or an external event, such as COVID. Instead of immediately accepting the change, we may also experience shock, denial and anger – just like others in our teams. When such events occur, we now have a Resilience Dichotomy – we need to help our teams through uncertainty, whilst using our resilience to manage our own psychological state.
As leaders, we face the conundrum of managing and accepting our emotions, while leading others that are struggling to come to terms with their own feelings. Showing others that you are vulnerable often takes courage and can feel uncomfortable to admit, particularly when you are in a leadership position. However, in reality demonstrating such frailty strengthens others’ perceptions of your integrity, in turn building trust and loyalty.
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