Career coach Devya Athwal, ACMA, CGMA, discusses positive beliefs and steps that can help professional accountants become more confident in their roles.
Athwal, a speaker at UK & Ireland ENGAGE in October in London, also explains why transformation starts from within and how letting go of day-to-day fears can help professionals better accomplish their goals.
What you’ll learn from this episode:
- Why Athwal believes that transformation starts with looking inward.
- How accountants can overcome their own limiting beliefs.
- Practical ways to channel a growth mindset.
- Steps to building confidence in challenging environments.
- The link between collaboration, knowledge sharing, and career development.
Play the episode below or read the edited transcript:
— To comment on this episode or to suggest an idea for another episode, contact Steph Brown at
Stephanie.Brown@aicpa-cima.com.
Transcript
Steph Brown: Welcome to the FM podcast from UK & Ireland ENGAGE. I’m Steph Brown and I’m joined this afternoon by Devya Athwal. Devya is a career coach who helps finance and executive professionals transform their careers.
On this episode, we’ll be looking at the ways professional accountants can promote value in their roles, some beliefs that can improve job performance, and how accountants can become more recognised as value-drivers in their organisations.
Welcome, Devya. Thank you for coming on the podcast.
Devya Athwal: Thank you for having me.
Brown: Transformation is a key theme in the accounting and finance profession. For professional accountants that want to climb the ladder into more senior positions, how can they transform themselves and how their company perceives them?
Athwal: Excellent question. Thank you very much. Transformation, I believe, is very much internal to yourself. It’s very much for me that individuals look at their mindset and how they look at their limiting beliefs. Look at how they perceive certain things and say, “Actually, is there better ways of doing things?”
We’ve been made up — and this is my NLP, my neurolinguistic programming coaching coming out here — when individuals actually look at their own mindset; some of their values, their beliefs. They’ve all been brought in by the senses that we have got: our hearing, seeing, touching, just all the senses around. We take things in from our environment, we put them into our mind, and what happens there is that we have a set of beliefs that we hold onto.
Sometimes those beliefs may not be serving us going forward because they are in our subconscious mind. What we end up having to do is really consciously think, “Actually, is this serving us or not? Is this belief of mine working for me or not?” When we challenge our own mindset for the better, that’s when we do the transformation. That’s when we actually start changing those negative beliefs into positive, negative ways of doing things into positive [ways], any limiting beliefs into actually more empowering beliefs that actually, “Yes, I can do it.”
The transformation is, firstly, within and through our behaviour and our actions. We then put that into our businesses and the environments that we work in.
Brown: Thank you for that, Devya. Going on from that, in regards to beliefs, what beliefs do you believe are intrinsic to adopting a more driven and motivational mindset?
Athwal: There’s a number of beliefs that you can have. Those beliefs are that you’re worthy; that you are meant to be doing what you’re meant to be doing. Self-esteem is something that I talk a lot about when I’m talking to and coaching people, that you are meant to be in the room.
Sometimes I find that individuals have a lot of fear in them that they don’t want to move themselves forward. It’s how do you, what we call, dance with the fear so that individuals can move forward.
Going from a fixed mindset and moving yourself into a growth mindset rather than saying, “I can’t,” saying, “I don’t know it yet.” Actually finding that within yourself to find the challenge, not as a challenge, but actually as an opportunity to grow. That then gives you that motivation, the drive for you to move yourself forward.
Hopefully that’s answered your question.
Brown: That’s perfect. Thank you so much for expanding on that. To promote value throughout their organisations and become more proactive in their ambitions, what are some things that professional accountants can do in their current roles?
Athwal: I think value is a real big one. As accountants, I always say that you have to be of service to other people. Maybe businesses have got issues and problems. How can you be a solution provider? The value is very much around how you can add value to whoever your stakeholders are. Whether it is your team. Whether it’s your peers. Whether it’s the managers or your customers and suppliers.
How can you add value to them so that they are left with more of a solution, more of an opportunity to expand on, as opposed to still have a problem that needs resolving. When people actually reach out, if you are the individual, I’d say reach out, see how you can help rather than wait for someone to approach you. It’s being on the front foot of wanting to help and be of service and add value, as opposed to wait for an opportunity to land on your desk, or wait for someone to say, “Can you give me a hand on this?”
It’s just having that positive mindset that you’re there to want to learn and want to develop, and also want to help others to do the same and be of service to them.
Brown: Thank you, Devya. In your experience from talking with clients and others, what external obstacles or organisational obstacles exist in companies that face professional accountants having difficulties progressing within their career?
Athwal: I’ve just done a talk on this about elevating your career to the higher levels. Personally, I think mindset plays a big aspect in it. They say 80% is mindset, 20% is strategy. Also, the environment that you’re working in. If the environment is empowering, the environment allows you to grow, there’s team collaboration. That’s really important as well.
I think, also, individuals knowing themselves and what they’re good at and letting people know that they’re good at this. It’s not boasting. It’s actually just having confidence in your abilities and your strengths and being able to utilise those in the work environment. That also can help as well.
Reaching out for new opportunities. Seeing opportunities not as problems but as opportunities for you to grow. Reaching out to your network as well.
Brown: I suppose there is that idea that a lot of people that might be in accounting and finance might be a bit more introverted. That’s not necessarily true. But I suppose for everyone that may struggle with confidence in some ways in their careers or in their jobs in the day to day, what are some practical steps they can take to show that confidence and develop it more? Are there some small ways that they can do that in their jobs?
Athwal: Definitely. I think we’re all very unique and it’s just really homing in on what you know you’re good at, and confidently talking to people about that and taking those little steps. It may be that knocking on your boss’s door to say, “I’m really good analytically. Can I work on that project?” By proving that you can do that, that increases your confidence.
When I was just talking earlier on about dancing with the fear, everyone’s got fear inside of them. The fear of that next project. The fear of saying something and someone might say to you, you might be thinking, what are they thinking about me? That fear of comparison: you’ll compare yourself and think I’m not as good as them. By taking that step, one little step to move you towards the goal that you’re looking for, just taking that step consistently will allow you to be much more confident in your abilities.
I’ll give you an example of a lady who went to the boardroom for the first time, and she really felt that she was out of place. As she’s sitting in there, she’s listening to all these seasoned, very experienced executives and feeling completely out of place. But when it came to her talking about the figures, suddenly she became her own. She was telling the story behind the figures, bringing the figures to life, explaining the variances. It was as if she was a completely different individual because that was what her strength was. She knew the technical side, she understood it, and she was able to tell the story around it. But the very first time she went in, she was very scared. The second time, it was much easier for her.
Little steps to get to what your end goal is actually help you and build your confidence as well. But it starts with you, really.
Brown: I think that’s some great advice for anyone listening. Do you have any other advice, I suppose for accountants, how they can break out of that mould or that silo and actually begin to expand their influence across their companies?
Athwal: Definitely. I think collaboration is a big piece. We’re all employed by different companies. I think COVID proved to us that everyone contributes when everyone was sitting at home. I think the same applies in your workplace is [that] everyone can add value to help the business grow, perform, and individuals to grow and perform as well. Collaboration is a big piece for me.
Secondly is continuous learning. Wanting to learn, be inquisitive, understand how things work from your perspective. A finance individual who’s sitting in what I call the engine room, they are in a very good position to understand what’s happening around the business operationally, commercially, financially, with staff.
Finance is so important in that. Once you know that, you can then say, “Well, what does this mean?” What do the figures mean for your department? How can I add value to your department? Are there any KPIs or dashboards that I can do for you so that it gives you better information, so it can change people’s behaviour when they see certain figures? Scrap levels are really high, what do we need to do to try and mitigate that?
What you’re then doing is adding so much value because the individual then is having to go and say, “Scrap levels are really high. How can we reduce this?” Suddenly, the impact of your figures, the insights that you’ve got, are having a really good effect on the business because performance then increases. Profitability increases because you’re reducing your scrap figures. I would say that would probably be how you can give insights from the finances to other people.
Brown: Thank you so much for a great conversation today. Is there anything that we perhaps haven’t covered that you think is really important to add in to this?
Athwal: Definitely. I think we talked about finance individuals. Finance individuals for me, especially those that have gone and got the qualification, CIMA qualification – the qualification is worth so much. I always say the doctor will never take the “Dr.” from the name, and also accountants, especially if they’ve qualified and have the letters behind them, it’s an equivalent to the highest professions worldwide.
We need to believe that actually we are of the elite to be able to go after that qualification and wear the badge proudly because not many people do that. Belief for me is a big thing. It’s believing that you have got that qualification and you’re absolutely worth it, and some of the stuff that you do around that can add value not only to yourself, but the companies and the businesses that you operate in.
Brown: Devya, thank you.
Athwal: You’re welcome. Thank you for having me.
