When we hear leadership most of us think of how we lead our own teams. How we are showing up to the people “below” us in the finance team.
Which is great but it is missing a key element of leadership. How are you leading “above” you in the organisation.
And how are you leading “across” your organisation.
These two audiences requires completely different leadership skills than those for your team.
And I would argue are way more important if you want to position your finance function as a value added contributor to the organisation.
Whereas the leadership required for your team will be focused on vision, direction, development, support, etc, leading the people above you in the organisation and those in other functions is something more nuanced.
The fundamental basics of leading “above” you in an organisation is to own what you are doing and “tell” them your decisions.
That will position you ready for the next level.
Nobody above you in an organisation wants a finance person coming to them telling them about all of the problems in the organisation
Unless its done with something else
Solutions.
If you continually whinge to others and highlight issues with no desire to contribute to solving them, then you lack leadership.
And the people above you will notice it and never put you into their role.
Good leaders manage up and across just as well as they manage down. And finance is no exception, in fact its probably more important as you get more senior.
The first step in this is to own the issues you are noticing and help solve them
Don’t just highlight that margins are off. Find some workable and actionable solutions to fixing this.
And then telling those above you “this is what we have found” followed by “this is what we intend to do about it”.
They may disagree, they may offer some tweaks, it doesn’t matter. What matters is you are not creating problems that they have to solve.
Do your bosses job for them and you will be in a wonderful position for when your bosses job becomes available.