Accountant, May I Bust Your Comfort Zone?

We’re talking about how accountants can remain relevant in the future which means they’ll have to do different tasks than what they do today. I’ve highlighted some options going all the way back to school and shared my own story about my evolution from financial controller to business partner. Now it’s time we dig into the uncomfortable stuff i.e. your own personal development and what it will take for you to make any kind of sustainable change. Because the truth is that if you want to be successful in the future you must step out of your comfort zone, expand your comfort zone and step out of it some more. There’s no other way. Let’s look at how you can do that through the concept of Full Engagement. 

It starts with your energy 

Stepping out of your comfort zone to do whatever is needed to develop skills that you need to succeed in the future is going to require energy. Lots of energy. Therefore, it’s important you understand what gives you energy and how you can get more of it. To get this understanding we’ll look at energy in a straightforward way.

• Physical: which you affect mainly by eating, sleeping and doing regular exercise
• Emotional: which you affect mainly by keeping a good balance in your relationships to people all around you and not least your family, manager and colleagues in addition to removing or neutralizing the toxic people in your life
• Mental: which is all about your ability to focus on something specific like personal growth i.e. following some of the tips in this article will automatically help you to focus on what’s most important to you
• Spiritual: being your purpose for doing what you’re doing. If your purpose is strong you can often overcome lack of energy in the other energy forms yet few people have truly found their purpose in life or their career. Rather, they just happen to end up where they are for no particular reason.

To get an idea about your current energy level you can do a small exercise. Try to score yourself on a 1-4 scale in each energy area. A low score means low on energy and a high score means high on energy. If you sum if it up the result will quickly tell you if you need to manage your energy better.

If you can maximize your energy, you’ll also handle much better stepping out of your comfort zone and believe me you will need to step outside to remain relevant in the future. 

Can you give an example of stepping outside the comfort zone? 

We all have different comfort zones based on personality and experience so one example I could give would feel like a piece of cake to some and a complete nightmare to others. I’ll try to use myself as an example. When I was working as a student or just out of school calling up someone with a request that they didn’t necessarily expect was painful to me. I would much rather send three e-mails to push the issue or send a chat message than talking to a person on the phone. I’m not sure why it was like that, but I would try all I could to get out of the situation. Somehow, I got over myself and I don’t have as big of an issue doing this anymore. The next step was then going over to talk to a person especially if I didn’t know exactly where they were sitting. Asking for directions felt terrifying as asking a stranger about anything was just not something I did. So, I could walk around for a long time trying to find the person and when I did find them I was sought of okay again. This still feels uncomfortable to me but the only way of getting over it is simply to JUST DO IT. The more you do something the better you master it and the less uncomfortable it will feel. It’s a quite straightforward logic when you think of it. It’s just like networking. Most people hate it because it feels uncomfortable but the more you do it the better you become and of course there are also techniques you can apply to help you.

This will also be the case for accountants. There are tools available that can help you build real relationships with other people to collaborate around achieving better business results. You can take a 100% analytical approach to this like analyzing your trustworthiness through the trust equation or your communication style through personality profiling. It makes building relationships a lot easier.

So, are you ready to step outside your comfort zone to develop as a person and prepare for the future of work of accountants? If not, what’s holding you back? 

This is the sixth article in the series where we uncover the “Accounting Profession Paradox” and if you haven’t done so already you can read the two previously articles below.

What Is The Accounting Profession Paradox?

Is The Accounting Profession Really Growing?

Blip. Blop. Accounting Robot. Are You Ready?

To Re-Invent Accounting We Must Go Back To School

Accountant Today. Accountant Tomorrow. HELP!

For previous articles about robotics, accounting or finance transformation please continue to read below. You can also follow me on Twitter here.

Are You Ready For Robotics Process Automation?

Have You Met Your Robot Accountant Yet?

What Defines A Finance Master?

The CFOs Roadmap To Transforming Finance

How Finance People Can Be More Successful

The New Career Path For Finance Professionals

Do You Have A Finance Business Partner Mindset?

CFOs Are Going Virtual And Here's Why

This Is What Analytics Is All About!

Anders Liu-Lindberg is the Head of Global Finance Program Management Office at Maersk and I have more than 10 years of experience working with Finance at Maersk both in Denmark and abroad. I am also the co-founder of the Business Partnering Institute and owner of the largest group dedicated to Finance Business Partnering on LinkedIn with more than 6,000 members. My main goal at Maersk is to create a world-class finance function not least when it comes to Business Partnering. I am the co-author of the book “Skab V?rdi Som Finansiel Forretningspartner” and a long-time Finance Blogger with 23.000+ followers.