When someone says to me that the numbers are the outputs, and that it's the team, the humans, that are the inputs, you can imagine I'm all ears. In this podcast discussion with Nicky Clough of Insight Training, you'll hear Nicky unpack and expand on those thoughts. Yes, accountants are focused on the numbers, quite rightly so, because that's their area of expertise, but perhaps we should also be focused on the humans in our firms, the people, and what we do to build their knowledge and skills. Nicky discusses the importance of building self-awareness as, when there's a higher degree of self-awareness, there's the willingness, the motivation, the ability, even, to build knowledge and skill. I hope you get something of real value from this discussion with Nicky Clough – I certainly did. Please scroll down this episode page for the contact information for Nicky and for the additional, downloadable resources mentioned in this podcast. |
The Solution:
People often think about the personal skills as something that should be natural.
After all, it's just about being a person, isn't it? You are just being a person, but you do need to be your authentic self.
And actually, you can do things deliberately. Just as you deliberately learn a technical skill, you can deliberately learn how to delegate, how to coach, how to give a positive impression and how to improve your communication skills – these are all things that you can work on, and just because you're doing them deliberately doesn't make them inauthentic.
SHOW NOTES
Connect with Nicky
Connect with Paul
Resources relating to this podcast:
During the podcast Nicky and Paul discuss motivation and who is responsible for the motivation of a person or the motivation of a team. They talk about carrot-and-stick motivation and intrinsic motivation and which is more effective.
They both agree that intrinsic motivation works best. Intrinsic motivation is defined as the motivation to engage in a behaviour because of the inherent satisfaction of the activity rather than the desire for a reward or specific outcome.
By appealing to the self-motivation of your people, you make your firm more appealing to existing and future employees, who will then want to help you and your firm succeed. They are intrinsically motivated to do a good job because they are involved and engaged in the work they do.
If you want to discover more about the importance to your firm of intrinsic motivation and the 3 motivators that work best, then click the button below to read the Business Breakthrough report 'Motivation Works'.
In their discussion of intrinsic motivation, Nicky and Paul refer to the book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, by Daniel H. Pink. Pink examines the three elements of motivation – autonomy, mastery and purpose – and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action in a unique book that will change how you think and transform how you run your firm. Click the button below to access the book.