Now Jen and I often talk about credible leadership in a financial context, because credibility is at the heart of a high performance finance function. credibility establishes context of conversations. I'll say that again, credibility establishes the context of conversation. When credibility is absent, stakeholders begin challenging information. They lack the belief, they lack the understanding and the contributions they are making to the organization. When a financial executive lacks credibility, they're on their heels, they're continuously putting out a never ending string of fires.

But you, you as the credible financial executive have it all under control. You have the people, you have the process and technologies embedded throughout the organization that helps pinpoint issues as they arise and they gives insight into the performance of every level of the organization. And in this final lesson, we're going to look at how one becomes an x as the credible leader. Now let's begin with becoming Leader. First, we've seen some of these ideas and some of the quotes of earlier lessons. But to summarize, the actions of the leaders begin by first setting a very powerful vision that is widely shared and adopted by all.

Secondly, by establishing and expecting high standards and how that vision will be achieved. Very often, you'll see people define the values of the organization. They will live those personal and organizational values and create an organizational culture that does the same. You will empower people giving them a degree of latitude and encouragement. And finally, you're going to show empathy by caring about people by developing them through coaching and mentoring and giving them fair and transparent feedback. Those are the actions of leaders.

Nothing is further from finance and accounting than empathy. and developing empathy is crucial to our executive presence. Consider the empathy demonstrated by Nelson men Allah. When Nelson Mandela emerged from prison, he famously included his jailers among his friends and put the leaders who had put him in prison in the first place in his first cabinet, even though he despised these men, he would call them on their birthdays, he would go to family funerals. Seeing each of these events as opportunities. He reminded his enemies that his new government had taken over and assured them that no one would be dismissed, and he established warm relations with all and in turn, they became totally loyal.

In the words of one bodyguard. I like this quote, I used to do it for the money, and now I do it for him. So let's take a look at credibility in our leadership quality. In a 10 year study by Kusum Posner in their book credible, they asked corporate participants questions about what makes someone credible, and in the studies that they repeated year after year, the four top characteristics were honesty, competency, forward looking and inspiring. Clearly your ability as a financial executive, to be honest, is and always will be very important, because the advice the information coming from you and your finance function must pass this most simple of tests. Yet sadly, how many times have Gemini been into companies where we've seen financial executives burying bad news inside information where they hope someone is not going to notice it or ask a question?

So in the absence of honest information, think of what happens. No one believes you know, your value executives, not the board, not the analysts following your company, not your shareholders. And when people lose belief in your thesis, you lose people's faith in you and you lose your following and ultimately, the organization will lose value. Next, consider the attribute of competency and it goes without saying that finance is heavy in highly technical matters that demand a high degree of competency. failure. A competency implies that your analysis is either flawed or just flat out wrong.

It Won't be long before credibility will once again suffer. Conversations get sidetracked, people begin defaulting to decision making based on gut instincts instead of factual financial analysis. Let's consider forward looking. And here's a unique challenge for those of you in finance, and that is to provide decision makers with forward looking information that accurately predicts the future senior executives and directors of the board and the credible forward looking information to make strategic decisions. Take a look at your own forecasting in recent years and ask yourself, are you a credible source of predicting future earnings a month from now a year from now, five years from now, and if not, this two needs to be something you need to explore. And finally, let's look at the attribute of inspiring What good is the information if it fails to influence or is misinterpreted by those who have the ability and the authority to act, finance more so than any other finance has all this to say relevant, action oriented information right at our fingertips, but sometimes uncovering it, revealing the hidden messages in the volumes of data requires a little bit of a little bit of wisdom.

So let's take a moment to reflect on these ideas. It seems straightforward enough and obvious enough, but let's start with honesty. How can you exemplify honesty as a financial executive? Take a moment, how are you exemplifying honesty as a financial executive? Okay, so to boost your credibility on this element, consider some of the following. invest time into clarifying your own values.

Examine your own behaviors in light of of these values. Look at developing your own level of what Jen and I call ethical intelligence. make a commitment to consistently tell the truth and share equally the good and bad news. build a reputation for ethical behavior. If you make mistakes, be truthful about it. Rather than cover it up, give credit to colleagues and subordinates for their work.

And finally, just be objective, be that neutral bystander that messenger who is transparent in the information that you're sharing with other executives and important stakeholders. Now let's take a look at the next one. How can you exemplify competency and in turn build your reputation as a credible leader? Consider that for a moment. How can you exemplify your competency? Well, to boost your credibility on this element, consider some of the following actions if needed, complete your degree or consider the next degree that you need.

Executive programs and certificates helped elevate your own knowledge, confidence and credibility. Take on high visibility projects get involved outside of the finance function, or find ways to increase your cross functional presence. This helps build awareness of your competency while adding value to different areas of operation. So perhaps actively sitting in on other meetings that are operation or sales in orientation, ask probing questions and make insightful comments. Never assume that you know at all consistently work on building your level of competency in a wide array of technical areas and soft skills. Your competencies also demonstrated through the strength of communications that you make and circulate.

So returned to the course on communication skills to develop this trait of executive presence. The next trait of credibility was forward looking. What can be done here? Take a moment. How can you develop a more forward looking persona? Well to boost your credibility on this element, develop the following habits.

Consider the impact your decision has on other departments or other groups. Ask others for input into your decisions, especially regarding the impact on them. Avoid making snap judge Because when you make snap judgments, you tend to ignore the longer term implications, continually forecast financial results, and get a feel for the what we call the cadence of the business. Use the budgeting and planning process to develop a deep understanding of the business model. And finally, identify opportunities to add value to the conversation, using all that evidential data driven insights that you have at your fingertips. It's so much more powerful than anecdotal evidence about what people think will happen.

And finally, let's look at how you become more inspirational and in turn, build your level of credibility. Let's look at a few ideas. So when you're inspirational, you need to first think about how you can change the tone of your communications. Those with executive presence communicate optimistically. This means trying to focus on what can be done as opposed to what can't be done. And those Are inspirational also tend to be friendly, reach out to people and initiate greetings.

Practice finding the humor around you. Particularly when you're in stressful situations. This relaxes people, it opens their mind up in courage, creativity, express gratitude, privately, publicly in writing all the time you get the idea because this reinforces positive behaviors and encourages commitment. demonstrate an interest in the work of others, show them that you care. And finally congratulate others celebrate their successes. All are a part of becoming an inspirational, credible leader.

It seems pretty simple to talk about being more honest, more competent, more forward looking more inspirational, but in practice, this is really hard for many of us to put into practice, and there may be one or more ideas that you just haven't done before. Let's take a look at some of the barriers to increasing our credibility. So for Is there maybe one or more of the idea that you just haven't done before, you may lack a track record that prevents you from assuming that lead role. For almost 70% of us at some point of our career, we may lack the self confidence to assume credible leadership. And we talked more about this in depth on the course of building your executive presence through confidence. And a few of us may suffer arrogance, ourselves, perhaps the arrogance of others that may hold us back from exemplifying this trait of of credibility.

And finally, it's hugely important, hugely important. When our track record has past mistakes. It's makes regaining credibility so much more difficult, because you could spend years building up your credibility and lose it all with one mistake. So in exercise 11 in your workbooks, I'm going to ask you to spend a moment documenting a few ideas of how you're going to improve your credibility in the eyes of others because this is so Important, so important for building your executive presence and getting you to that next level. So you may identify things like building a good reputation, something that we talk about more in the personal branding course, or improving your communication style, something that we talk more about in the communication course. following up with people, improving relationships, bringing a positive attitude, engaging in as many activities and meetings as you can around the organization's take a few moments to document those ideas and I'll and then come back to the video and we'll carry on.

Welcome back. So now you've documented a few ideas as to how you're going to elevate your credibility. Now becoming a credible leader doesn't just happen overnight. It comes from practicing leadership over years and years. You can continue to elevate your leadership by asking and answering three questions and make these a part of your daily routines and every time you have to make an important decision. So answer these questions is what I'm about to do likely to one, help employees think more about themselves to help employees know how important their work is.

And three, help employees value their relationship with leaders. Interesting. So again, it's not about you, when you're a leader, it's about your employees. When you start thinking about your everyday decisions in terms of your employees first rather than yourself, then you're making this transition from being a manager to becoming a leader. Now, credible leaders put others ahead of themselves by being authentic and acting with humility, not entitlement. Leaders exemplify traits such as listening, using a caring approach developing their people, advising others mentoring, recognizing contributions, so you get the idea of being a credible leader is so much more than being perhaps the financial professional or the manager that you are today.

That's all for this lesson. Let's wrap up the course on credible leadership in our final lesson.