Do You Care About Your Finance Career?

Do You Care About Your Finance Career?

I wonder how you view your career as a Finance professional.

(Seriously, I really do wonder! I’d love to hear your thoughts, whether they’re thought through with full strategic rigour or a bunch of random reflections and feelings!)

Are you someone who thinks about your career? Do you think ahead? Do you have a career goal, an aspiration or dream?

Do you care about progression and promotion? Or are you happy just doing whatever you’re doing?

Is your Finance career important to you? Or is your “career” just a bunch of consecutive jobs that seem to have a similar theme?

I’m expecting that, if you’re reading this, you are serious about your career in Finance. I’ve given this new newsletter the title of Finance Career Growth Tips in order to attract people who care about their careers in Finance! But it is worth thinking about what’s so important about it.

Why It’s Important to Care About Your Career

Caring about your career isn’t just about personal pride; it's about personal growth, long-term financial stability, and making a meaningful impact.

1. Personal Fulfilment and Growth

Your career is a significant part of your life, using a lot of your time and energy. It’s often been said that fulfilment in life and work comes from aligning what you do with your passions, values and interests. Being career-minded simply means actively and intentionally seeking opportunities to get that alignment, rather than leaving it to chance. When you’re doing work that resonates with you, it becomes more than just a job; it becomes a source of joy and inspiration.

Also, giving your career some attention involves continuous learning and development. And that not only enhances your professional capabilities, it also leads to personal growth. It helps you stay relevant in a rapidly changing job market, making you more adaptable and resilient in the face of new challenges.

2. Long-Term Financial Stability

A well-thought-out career path can significantly impact your financial stability and future security. By being interested in your career, you’re more likely to make strategic decisions that lead to promotions, salary increases, and better job opportunities. Having a proactive approach can ensure that you’re not just surviving but thriving, financially.

And financial stability isn’t just about greed and materialism. Owning a home, supporting a family, saving for retirement, these are all things that improve your quality of life and peace of mind. And that allows you to focus on other important areas of your life.

3. Making a Positive Impact

It’s also about recognizing the broader impact of your work. Finance people in particular can have a big impact. Improving profitability and business performance means something very tangible and immediate to small business owners. But in aggregate, even the impact in bigger businesses means higher investment returns, better pensions and savings, which benefits the economy as a whole.

But again, it’s not just about financial impact. By giving your career some focus, being the best you can be, you become a role model for those around you, inspiring others. Demonstrating passion and dedication in your work can motivate others to pursue their own career goals with enthusiasm and determination. And this ripple effect creates a more motivated, engaged, productive environment at work, which makes things more enjoyable for everyone.

Why Wouldn’t You Want To Progress?

But there are many people who simply are not career-motivated. They don’t want the senior jobs – ever – not now, not in the future! And I find myself asking, why not?

I have a friend, for example, who works as a support worker for children with mental health needs. Being really good at her job, she’s often spoken to about whether she wants more pay and more responsibility. She always turns it down, a) because she doesn’t want the stress of extra responsibility, and b) she believes it will pull her away from what she does best and enjoys most – helping children and young people.

But is it like that in Finance, where the requirement to have an accounting qualification necessarily involves some advancement in responsibilities?

Well, rather than launch into a lengthy examination of something that really comes down to personal preference, all I want to do is caution against two unhelpful ways of thinking.

Beware Your Assumptions

The first thing I want to say is that not wanting career progression because you don’t want the stress involved in more senior jobs is to make more than one assumption.

Obviously, you’re assuming that senior jobs are stressful.

But, beneath that assumption are two other assumptions:

1.     Stress is bad

2.     You can’t cope with stress

None of these assumptions are necessarily true all the time.

I’ve worked in roles at all different levels. And, yes, being a Finance Director was one of the most stressful. But I also got stressed as an audit junior when I got asked to attend a client’s stocktake on my own when I’d never done it before!

And my observation is that the stress level isn’t always proportional to the level of responsibility. I’ve done senior jobs with no stress, and junior jobs with a lot of stress!

So, that’s strike one for the first assumption – senior jobs are not necessarily stressful.

Secondly, though, stress isn’t actually always a bad thing. Just a little bit of thought will tell us that a reasonable level of stress is actually required to help us to get stronger and grow. Muscles don’t grow without being stretched almost to the point of tearing. Emotional muscles grow and strengthen through undergoing stress.

Finally, how can you assume that you can’t cope with stress? You don’t know that!

So, challenge your assumptions!

But, also, one of the most powerful things to realise is this – stress, fear, anxiety, are all down to you and not other people. They are your response, no-one else’s.

It might annoy you to hear me say that, but think about it. People and situations don’t (normally) consciously give you stress. People do things, situations arise – outside your control. Your response is stress – which is within your control. Could you choose a different response?

This is what I’ve discovered, from being laid off multiple times and having cancer four times. I can choose to get stressed out, or I can get to work on responding positively and productively.

When my Group Finance Director was shouting his head off at me down the phone when I was a young Divisional FD, and I was holding the phone at arm’s length so I wouldn’t get deafened, too often I chose to get stressed and anxious. I didn’t have to, nothing was forcing me to.

At some point I think I must have subconsciously thought to myself, “good grief, I’m stressing when I’m in work and stressing when I’m out of work... there’s always something I’m stressing over. Perhaps it’s time to react differently.”

Nowadays, I know that anxiety/stress is something I can choose in response to a variety of different circumstances, whatever level of job I do, and whether I’m working or not. So, I don’t avoid the more senior roles – because, if I’m going to get stressed anyway, why not get stressed in a job that pays well?! At least get some reward for it!!

Beware of Your Mindset and Beliefs

Other things that people say to justify not wanting career progression are things like...

“Oh I’m not really CFO material” OR

“I won’t be any good.”

And these could be seen as examples of either or both of two things: A limiting belief or a Fixed Mindset.

When we talk about limiting beliefs, what we mean is that we’re subconsciously believing something that we haven’t even acknowledged. And that belief is what’s holding us back.

So, think about, “I won’t be any good.”

That comes from a fear of failure. And that fear is based on the belief that bad things will happen if you make a mistake. But you can’t prove that. Normally it’s patently not true.

So, beware of your limiting beliefs.

A Fixed Mindset is a type of belief which says that your intelligence or capacity for something is fixed at birth. Once you reach your limit, that’s it, there’s no point trying to get any further.

So, “I’m not CFO material” is something that shows a belief that the person doesn’t have the capacity to be a CFO. They believe it is beyond them.

On the other hand, people with a Growth Mindset, see capacity as either limitless or unknowable, and they don’t see difficulty or setbacks as a sign of reaching some fixed level of capacity or intelligence. They simply see them as things to overcome that will help them to keep getting better.

Someone with a Growth Mindset would say, “I don’t know whether I can get to be a CFO, but I’ll keep pressing on towards that goal.”

The point – as famously highlighted in Carol Dweck’s book, “Mindset” – is that these two mindsets are, to an extent, self-fulfilling. If you believe your capacity is fixed, then you don’t push yourself past what you think is your limit, so you peak there. If you believe you can grow to ever greater levels of performance and intelligence, then you are more likely to actually achieve more.

So, beware of your mindset!

The Important Thing

And after all that, the important thing is to be clear what you want and why.


The Finance Career Growth Masterclass and Mastermind Group - COMING SOON!

I am currently working on pulling together a new free online mini-course: The Finance Career Growth Masterclass.

In it I’ll be taking you through the critical success factors for modern Finance careers, giving you principles for planning job moves and helping you to identify your development areas.

This will also include an exclusive online community – The Finance Career Growth Mastermind Group, with discussion forums, challenges and monthly live Q&A calls.

If that sounds like something you’ll be interested in – get on the list to be first through the doors when it’s launched in a few weeks:

CLICK HERE to find out more and add your name to the ‘wait list’

 

CFO Readiness Builder

If you are keen to progress quickly in your Finance career, you need to focus on the skills and capabilities that make the difference – the business acumen and behavioural skills that make you a business leader.

Our CFO Readiness Builder program is designed to help you to do that. CLICK HERE to find out more.

 

Subscribe to This Newsletter

You can subscribe to the Finance Career Growth Tips Newsletter by clicking the ‘+ Subscribe’ button at the top of this page. If you want to hear my thoughts each week, with ideas, tips and advice to help you grow, develop and progress in your career in Finance, consider subscribing. All it means is that LinkedIn will notify you when I publish a new edition.

 

About the Author – Andy Burrows

I’m Andy Burrows, and I’m Founder and CEO of Supercharged Finance, a provider of online learning and coaching, aimed at helping Finance professionals get better at helping the businesses they work for.

I qualified as a chartered accountant in the UK, and have worked for more than 25 years as a senior Finance professional in a variety of businesses of different sizes and sectors.

I’m now a popular writer in Finance and Accounting. In 2019 Anders Liu-Lindberg described me as one of the "Top voices on LinkedIn for Finance, accounting and FP&A". And in 2024 I was given official LinkedIn Top Voice status (see the little blue badge on my profile!)

If you’d like to hear even more from me, go to my profile and click the follow button!

Hiteshkumar Lathiya

Business Development | Financial Controller | Chartered Accountant having 12+ years of extensive experience.

6mo

Very informative

Stephen Hambling

CEO and Founder of Kybos, a dedicated UK based Jedox partner.

6mo

More sound advice from Andy Burrows

Fuad Al Nahhean

Streamlining Bookkeeping for $10M+ ARR | Certified Xero & QuickBooks Advisor | 150+ Happy Clients | COO, Nifty Bookkeepers LLC

6mo

Finance careers are crucial for personal growth. Reflecting on experiences helps combat bias. Excited to discuss the article with you all. #financecareer #growth Andy Burrows

To view or add a comment, sign in

Insights from the community

Others also viewed

Explore topics