The Finance Leader Podcast
The Finance Leader Podcast
Bonus Episode 47: Your Inner Circle Matters
Who you have in your inner circle matters. Who you have around you, and who you associate with regularly affects your mindset, how you approach life, your happiness, and the overall level of your mental, spiritual, and physical fitness. Who you let in your life matters, and it affects everything in your life.
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Hi, this is Steven McLain of the finance leader podcast. This is bonus episode number 47. Thank you for joining me this week for another bonus episode. New full length episodes are coming back very soon. Thank you for the incredible support. Over the last few weeks I talked briefly about overcoming a challenge and the importance of having a support system in place. I'll go one more step beyond that this week. I had mentioned this many times before, but who you have in your inner circle matters. Who you have around you and who you associate with regularly affects your mindset, how you approach life, your happiness, and the overall level of your mental, spiritual and physical fitness, who you let in your life matters and it affects everything in your life, you rise to the level of influence you have in your life, and not everyone you have around you wants you to win. We often have a variety of people in our lives, which includes relatives like a sibling, or a cousin, or an in law school friends, especially from high school colleagues, and who we attend church services with, and many more examples. Not everyone is excited on the inside about you growing and developing. And even when you outgrow them, your friends and relatives, particularly those who are not growing may find your growth as damaging to your relationships with them. Or they may even be jealous of your success. So be careful who you let in your life. You want growth oriented and supportive people who you can rely on for mentorship and positive influence, and you in turn can do the same for them. I want you to watch people's comments, and how they react when you win and when you grow. And are they encouraging you. I want you to watch and then take action if you need to. This week I am sharing an encore episode from season four, Episode 40 to adopt a wellness life philosophy to maximize your total wellbeing and goal achievement. The outline for this episode is one you need to invest in your team to the benefits of wellness. Three, use the resources that are available and for the importance of mindfulness. Please enjoy this encore replay. Thank you today I'm talking about wellness as part of an overall fitness plan. We should not just be surviving our jobs our life, but in fact thriving, where we go to a higher level of overall fitness that leads to healthy growth, mindfulness and prosperity. I am encouraging leaders at all levels to set the example to embrace wellness programs to include wellness in the team's overall performance plan. Please enjoy the episode. Welcome to the finance leader podcast where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host Stephen McLean. This is the podcast for developing leaders in finance and accounting. This is episode number 42. And now we'll be talking about wellness. And we'll highlight the following topics. Number one, you need to invest in your team. Number two, the benefits of wellness. Number three, use the resources that are available. And number four, the importance of mindfulness. Jay Stanford baseball player and coach said, health is a state of body. Wellness is a state of being. Today I prepared myself for the day and week ahead. I invested in myself so I could be my best self. I worked on my health, my mind, my overall spirit. How was your morning routine set you up for success today? I talked about morning routine and habits last week. Also, have you reviewed your goals in the overall plan this week. So let's continue to stay on progress with our goals and our plan. This week I'm talking about wellness. Why should we look to wellness? being thoughtful about our health is not just for when we are having problems, but it should become a life philosophy so that major health problems can be possibly avoided altogether. Wellness helps us to produce a better outcomes. It's an approach to our mind and body so that not just to survive, but we thrive. We grow and develop so that it leads to prosperity, mindfulness and becoming something bigger than just an achiever. We are doesn't only consider our health and well being after something has happened, but we need a lifestyle of wellness. So we are working on future problems now. So they don't become a problem. We become healthier in mind, body and spirit. So we have more fruitful interactions with everyone, our experiences become richer and engaging. Wellness also involves the components of self care and community care. They are intertwined. Both are important and both can be achieved. I am advocating total wellness as an individual, and as a part of a greater community. We treat ourselves with the needs we have and serve our community with the same needs for it to work properly both have to work together. A typical wellness program usually consists of the following dimensions or categories physical, intellectual, emotional, financial, vocational, social, spiritual, and environmental. It's an accounting of our entire being, everything that touches or affects us. It is a total being approach to ensuring we can thrive wherever we are not just at home or in the workplace. Everything is connected in everything affects our potential for greatness. That is why I have high expectations of leaders, leaders ensure they are growing their team, but they also need to engage in their own wellness programs. So they are in fact setting the example for others to follow. I heard a great response to this recently, while listening to sports news. You are either growing or regressing. There is no staying the same, you can't stay the same. Those who don't seem to have a growth plan are actually regressing in performance. So as a leader, please be aware of this, always be focused on growth. I dislike complacency for this reason, because that leads to the regressing of our skills and abilities. So let's talk about wellness. Number one, you need to invest in your team. Everything that we do as leaders for our team should be seen and treated as investments and never burdens. Your company hired your team, because they saw the potential in them and what they could provide. When we see our labor force is only an expense line on the profit and loss statement, then we don't truly see their incredible value. They may be theoretically an expense, but in our minds, we need to change them to an investment. As a leader, you should know the resources that your company provides. And if they are inadequate that have a list of local government or nonprofit resources that may be available. Total Wellness is about ensuring your team member is prepared into the future to complete their role, not just today, or even tomorrow, but well into the future. It takes commitment by both parties. Wellness should be a part of the culture, we will commit to be our best selves and it will spill over to all aspects of our lives. Number two, the benefits of wellness. The best feature of wellness is a changeover in philosophy, from only surviving, but to thriving, to thrive is to grow and to benefit and also prosper from that growth. We want to grow in a healthy way. It doesn't make sense to grow your career and at the same time your health and well being are sacrificed we grow with respect to our goals, but our overall well being needs to be intertwined with our goal setting and achievements. Our workplaces are usually built around unhealthy choices. It isn't built towards health and well being we sit for long periods of time, we are stressed we unhealthy items. I've already talked about carbs and caffeine in another episode, which help us get through the stress. Stress is usually a part of our profession. But a wellness program is about overcoming the contributors to unhealthy living. This requires a commitment by the company, the leaders and the employees together to make it work. Wellness should be a part of the company's culture, not just another program we talk about, it must become something we will engage in together and continually. Number three, we must use the resources that are available. I encourage you to find out what resources your company has to help you and your team become more well and more healthy. If they are not adequate, then go ask HR to come up with a program. I would also research government and nonprofit resources that may be available in your area and include wellness in your one on ones and all team type meetings. Set the example yourself and talk about what you are doing to become more well. Your KPIs should also tie into wellness if we believe that wellness positively affects our performance. Now number four, the importance of mindfulness. If you are goal oriented Did I will guess that you become so obsessed with goals, that you may overlook other aspects of your life. I love the goal focus. But I also don't want you to miss out on life. I do live in the future. But that outlook sometimes may have contributed to me missing out something great today, mindfulness is about enjoying the moment, living the moment, not getting so overwhelmed and what is happening to us, but to enjoy how we are living within what is happening around us. I know that in finance and accounting, it can be stressful to enjoy the moment until we find balance in the accounts until the projection we calculated. Makes sense, or the report we are putting together actually will help leaders create value. We love our finance and accounting jobs. But when the numbers aren't making sense, we get stuck in a cycle of stress. Until that golden moment of clarity, when the check figures match the trial balances are equal. And what we have projected to happen is very close to the result, that actually did happen. It's all stress. And then the numbers match, we've become victorious and unstoppable. No one really likes the process of monthly close. But when it's over, and we have a usable product, and everything becomes happy again. One aspect of living the moment for me as a leader was to celebrate the achievements of my team. Celebrating others gives me joy, because my team overcame tough conditions to achieve a high level of excellence. I believe that mindfulness enjoying the moment is a critical part of wellness. So please don't overlook it as part of your overall health and state of being enjoy the moment don't let it go by while serving in the army. We definitely had an emphasis on being fit, but not really on the concept of total wellness, which is a higher level concept of fitness. Wellness is more than just exercise. It's an entire philosophy of mental, physical and spiritual fitness is more than just health. Wellness is ensuring that you are ready to overcome adversity in the multiple dimensions that you live in the physical and your mindset. Can you overcome challenges and problems and how you interact in your environment. The Army talked about it a lot, but everyone was left to figure it out on their own, which of course leads to an uncoordinated approach. We were great at creating a physical fitness plan, but not an overall wellness plan that included nutrition, and mental health. In the basic training environment where everything was more controlled, soldiers are definitely more fit overall wellness has to be more deliberate and included in an overall plan for your team's long term productivity. So for an easy win today, I want you to find out what wellness resources and programs your company has. And I want you to talk with your team regularly about what is available, and assure your share with your team. And then set expectations I want you to buy into it too. I want you to believe in it. I want you to continue to talk about wellness at your one on one meetings and team meetings. And you set the example of wellness so your team can see you improve, and they don't want you to talk about it. I want you to talk about what you did, how you implemented it in your own life, and your career and your goals. And then I want you to track and understand how wellness has improved your team's performance. Finally, continue to make adjustments and communicate results. And I bet you will see some different results after people believe in the program and see how it has changed their overall lifestyle. Now I know this is difficult, people have to make different choices. And we often don't want to go beyond a boundary that belongs to them only. But I also believe that the wellness program will actually give you bigger results. Those results will translate not only to the workplace, and the work product you are doing, but their entire life even beyond the workplace beyond the tasks beyond the requirements that they're doing. So that's why I'm encouraging you to go find out what the wellness programs are in your company, and then talk about it and encourage it and live it yourself and set that example wellness is a great topic because we often overlook it as another corporate program that checks their block. But when you combine wellness with goal setting, it gives us the quote unquote soft resources to help us accomplish what we want to achieve. So don't overlook it. Explore the benefits in all the dimensions it has to offer. Wellness is definitely a concept that I will personally continue to research and incorporate into my own life philosophy. So don't overlook it, research it, take a look at what it has to offer and see if it can fit into your goal setting plan. I have a free guide for you. It's called the leadership growth blueprint for finance and accounting managers. In the guide I talked about three leadership areas communicate Mission, Team growth and empowerment. Plus a few recommendations around challenges with the systems you are probably using to complete your work. The link to the guide is in the episode description. Or you can go to Steven mclean.com. Please use it to help you with a few leadership wins today. Thank you. This episode is sponsored by my new online course offering through finance leader Academy is called advance your finance and accounting career developing a promotion strategy that will set you apart. Are you having difficulty getting recognition from your leadership despite all the hard work you pour into your job and your organization. To advance your career, you must set yourself apart from your peers, and you must be marketing yourself constantly showing up every day and completing your daily tasks, even to a high degree of excellence will not guarantee you a promotion. This course helps you establish your professional Foundation, and how you can set yourself apart from your peers. By growing your leadership skills and developing your executive presence, you can go to Steven mclean.com. For more details. Today I talked about the importance of wellness and highlighted the following points. Number one you need to invest in your team. Number two, the benefits of wellness. Number three, use the resources available. And number four the importance of mindfulness. Our wellness is critical to our goal achievement. Goal Achievement is not in itself exclusive. Those of us who are goal setters and achievers we often become obsessed with the goal. Goal setting is important because it lays down a plan to attain our dream for without a plan, we have no focus and maybe no hope. We have to rely on luck, which often doesn't work. But when you combine goal achievement with wellness, we become so much more aligned to set ourselves up for success, we can begin to thrive instead of just survive to the next goal level. So interweave goal setting with wellness to go higher, but also healthier along multiple categories of your being. Next week, I'll be discussing how to deal with conflict. It's a tough topic for many people. And if you want to lead people, there will always be conflict. I hope you enjoyed the finance leader podcast dedicated to helping you grow your leadership. I hope you enjoyed the show. You can get this episode wherever you find podcasts. Until next time, you can check out more resources at Stephen mclean.com and sign up for my updates so you don't miss an episode of the show. And now go lead your team. And I'll see you next time. Thank you
