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Challenging Personal Growth: Leading the Whole Person

“When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves.’”

~ LAO-TZU

Although it is true that most of your partners and senior team members are extremely well qualified accountants, are they fully developed as people? Are they the kind of people who can carry and build a conversation with you, your other team members, and your clients? Are they devoid of quirks, poor manners, odd behaviors, and career-limiting communication skills? Some would call this being boardroom ready. A person who is well rounded and well spoken and understands social graces is a person whom clients will seek out for advice and counsel. A person who can only complete a tax return or financial report on historical data will limit himself or herself and your firm.

The challenge that many firms have is bringing in team members from a variety of experiences and family backgrounds. Some are well-rounded people, and some have been limited by their training, innate personalities, and blind spots. Rich Caturano, office managing partner, Boston, of the national firm McGladrey & Pullen, LLP, shares

I found out that I am an introvert, and when I looked at what my goals were in life, I determined that I’m not going to be successful as an introvert. If you want to be able to accomplish all of these things, how do you deal with that? So, that’s probably my blind spot that comes out in me every once in a while. And when it comes out, it means that you are not getting things done that you should get done; you are not picking up the phone; you are not striking up conversations that you should.

One of your roles as a leader is to help your protégés identify and deal with career- and personally-limiting blind spots. You must have the courage to challenge the personal growth of your team members, so they are bringing the whole person to your team.

The best leaders have an intensity about them that can focus everyone’s attention on the task or goal at hand. Usually, this intensity or sense of urgency has been developed through many years of personal growth. These leaders are clear about their visions and missions and how these connect to the work at hand.

In this chapter, we’ll discuss the leader’s role in developing your team members’ whole person. Some call this process getting boardroom ready or challenging personal growth. In other words, it’s taking the work that we did in chapter 7, “Teaching, Coaching, and Mentoring: Multiplying Your Leadership,” and applying it to the individual, beyond his or her professional expertise. We will cover the barriers to challenging team members’ personal growth and give you some tips to work through those challenges. Then, we’ll wrap up by sharing some ideas to help your entire team grow into people who can communicate well in many business and social settings.

Personal growth begins in childhood as we become civilized. Without nurturing and training, a baby would mature into just another wild animal. Parental guidance provides a framework for early personal growth, such as mind your manners, pick up your room, say thank you and please, and share your toys with your friends. Through these guiding words, parents help their children begin the personal growth necessary to cope in a complicated world and to take responsibility for themselves.

To be effective in life or business, a person must continue this personal growth into adulthood and on into retirement. Some of your team members have been well trained and have grown into well-rounded adults. Others are still using some childlike coping mechanisms to navigate their adult world. Childlike coping mechanisms, such as lying, telling you what you want to hear, avoiding conflict, and using anger to get their way, are frustrating and offputting to those around them. As a leader in your organization, you have to model personal growth and challenge your team members to continue their own personal growth.

Even after Chris Allegretti, CEO of the regional firm Hill, Barth & King, LLC (HBK) in Boardman, OH, met his goal to become a partner of HBK, he never stopped learning. “I absolutely consider myself a lifelong learner. I grew up the son of a schoolteacher. And I frankly always wanted to be a teacher, but my father led me in a different direction.” Allegretti is constantly evaluating the best way to manage his staff and company. “We all need to grow, and if you’re not growing, I’m not sure where you’re heading.”

A Path to a Better Person

Personal growth has nothing to do with becoming a better accountant, though that may be a side benefit. It has everything to do with growing into a better person. Stephen Covey’s eight habits would be a good road map here—things like being proactive, beginning with the end in mind, and doing first things first.

Some of the best growth lessons we learn are from our own mistakes. Frank Ross, director of Howard University School of Business Center for Accounting Education in Washington, D.C., challenged his supervisor in front of other people. It was through his own embarrassment and self-awareness that he learned. He says

One day, I was in the middle of meeting with my client when this senior manager came over and began loudly yelling negative statements to me. In the past, I’d ignored it as much as possible. But this was the day I would let him know how I felt. Once he’d gotten started, I stood up and let him know in no uncertain terms that I had had enough of his bullying and didn’t appreciate his speaking to me in that way, especially in front of the client’s staff—the same people I was expected to get answers from.

We met in the elevator later that day. He turned the elevator off and let me have it right there, saying I could be fired. The point is, I had lost my temper and could very easily have lost my job. Now that I know myself better and understand office politics better, I would have certainly have talked to him alone, not in front of the whole room. At that instance, though, I didn’t focus on what could happen after that.

But I would never stop learning important lessons about myself and how to turn what others perceived as my weaknesses into strengths inside the corporate world. For instance, it took a while, but I eventually learned how to use my quiet demeanor—what some partners thought would be a detriment to my career path—to my advantage.

Ross used this very negative experience and his poor reaction to that experience to take responsibility and grow in a manner that enabled him to function at a high level in some of the largest organizations in the country.

Challenging team members in the area of personal growth takes courage and insight. Many people do not achieve their potential simply because they have not been challenged. In high school, I was able to make good grades without studying much, so I spent four years just cruising and having fun. Ms. Mildred Lindsey, my Latin teacher, was the only one who really challenged me, and she is the teacher whom I remember and appreciate the most today. Ms. Lindsey had the courage to hold my feet to the fire, but she also had insight. She knew that I was more than a C student, and she would not let me settle for an average grade.

Personal Growth, Firm Growth

Personal growth also ties to firm growth. Rick Dreher, CEO of the megaregional firm Wipfli LLP in Green Bay, WS, is all about growth in both areas, and his entire staff knows it.

As part of my campaign to become managing partner, I challenged the firm this way: if you’re not growing, you’re dying. And I don’t know how else to say it any simpler than that. Everybody in this firm knows, and they accuse me, at times, of, “Well, Rick, you’re just all about growth.” If you truly want to be a survivor, there is nothing else in my mind but growth.

Rick continues to work with all the partners to ensure that they are helping to shape the firm’s culture and focus on growth. “I’d say our partners are on board with that, and there are probably still a few who’ll go to their graves never getting on that train, and that’s just the way it is. Somehow, those people are confused that the past is somehow a guarantee of the future, and that is just so incorrect.”

In business or life, most successful people have had a leader who looked beyond their personal limitations and saw something that could be improved, something that the protégé might not have been able to see. If we define success as progressive accomplishment of personal worthwhile goals, then success becomes a never-ending process. Progressive means that each goal is higher than the last one.

Growing Pains

Your protégés’ growth potential is limitless because we live in a world of abundance. Opportunity is everywhere. As a leader, you can help your protégés sort through the many choices they face. We all become a product of those choices, and by making consistently good choices, we will continue to grow and succeed. Debbie Lambert, managing partner of the top-100 multioffice firm Johnson Lambert & Co. LLP in Raleigh, NC, shares, “I was captain of my cheerleading team in high school. My husband calls me the cheerleader because I’m always cheering people on. I love to root, I love to build people to their potential, and I really love to compete in the marketplace.”

Some people view success as beating the competition, but that is not a true definition of success. Success is a realization of a personal accomplishment, not besting your opponent in a rivalry. If your potential is limitless, then your realizations must be limitless, also. Discovery is infinite because inside one discovery lives the potential of another. Potential is only limited to your ability for acceptance. A goal is like a target: in order to hit a target, you must know your target, take aim, and then shoot.

Some people just want to grow into better accountants, but they resist the personal habit of being proactive, described by Covey’s habit one. Habit one, or being proactive, means that when challenged to make choices in accordance with good principles, protégés may exhibit a hostile or passive-aggressive attitude. Being proactive means that you control your response to events, so they are in alignment with good principles of human dynamics, not your emotions.

“While it may be difficult to confront hard issues, it is more unfair to not confront them,” says Kris McMasters, CEO of the national accounting firm CliftonLarsonAllen LLP in Milwaukee, WI. “If we fail to confront the tough issues, they will not go away or get better. They will always get worse.”

Each team member’s potential for success lies within. We are each the ultimate factor in our own development—no excuses, no recourse. However, part of the job of a leader is to see hidden potential in your protégés and challenge them to more satisfying careers and lives. As a leader, your role is to challenge your staff members to take advantage of the abundance that surrounds them. The reason most people don’t achieve success is because they don’t have a clearly defined concept of success in the first place. They won’t take that first step because they don’t know in which direction to step.

“As a leader, you must be willing to have really tough conversations with your people. Sometimes, those are uncomfortable situations,” says Bill Hubly, founder and managing principal of Corbett, Duncan & Hubly, PC. “But if you’re going to grow as an organization, and the individual is going to grow, and the leader is going to grow, you have to be willing to have these conversations.”

I think there are two fundamental ways to provide challenging and difficult conversations in uncomfortable situations. First, you must talk straight while, at the same time, being respectful. Preface your feedback with a phrase like, “Bill, you have a lot of potential, and I am disappointed that you are not achieving your best work here.” Such a phrase shows that you recognize that your protégé has untapped potential, and you are willing to help him get better. Another phrase that you might use would be, “Jane, I want to share with you some of my observations, and they may be totally off-base, but it’s important that I give you my perceptions; then, I’d like to hear your perceptions on this matter.” After showing respect for the other person’s capabilities or perceptions, you will be able to give the person direct and challenging feedback and keep the emotions in check. When you become hostile and make broad charges or name call, you will lose your effectiveness in having tough conversations.

Second, I recommend that you do not use the old method of giving someone the so-called “crap sandwich.” This method suggests that you give a compliment at the beginning, corrective feedback in the middle, and end with another compliment. Unfortunately, many of these “sandwiches” fail to communicate the tough information. They often fail because too much emphasis is given, by the leader, to the compliments, and cursory attention is given to the correction. Other times, the hearer will disregard the corrective feedback because twothirds of the message was good, so that may be interpreted that no real change is necessary.

Personal growth comes to those who understand that success is more than money. Personal growth is about becoming the master of your life, rather than the victim. Success is fulfillment and meaningful personal growth. We all have the potential to achieve worthwhile, predetermined goals, but most people end up being pushed and pulled around, never mastering their lives and never receiving the guidance that could put them on the right path.

Steve Mayer, founder, chairman, and CEO of the regional firm Burr, Pilger & Mayer LLP in San Francisco, CA, says

If you don’t grow, you can’t attract great young professionals into your firm. We had a situation at a meeting yesterday where a person was saying she wasn’t going to do something. I said, “For a long time, I’ve been meaning to tell you that you are really difficult. You do things that really hurt you, and nobody will call it to your face, but I am now.” I got home that night, and she sent me a scathing e-mail about how rude that was. The next morning, I got up, and I e-mailed her back, and I said, “When somebody that I’ve known for 25 years tells me that I’m doing something wrong, and they’ve been meaning to tell me for a long time but just never had the right time…” I said I really listened to them. And I said, “I was trying to give you some constructive criticism. I was trying to help you.” Interestingly enough, a couple of hours later, I got an e-mail from her, and she said she thought about it and thank you very much; I was probably right. So, that was a touchdown.

As a leader, your role is to help your team members master their lives and make their own choices. You want to challenge them to see their potential and the abundance around them and learn from their weaknesses. Your leadership mission should be to make leaders out of your followers; otherwise, they will be doomed to despair because they are blind to what they have the power to do.

Accountants who play the victim card frequently are not being responsible and seem to be pointing fingers and blaming. Jim DeMartini, managing partner of the top-100 firm Seiler LLP in Redwood City, CA, says

Problems are not fine wine. They do not get better with age. We’ve never lost a client over an error being made. In fact, we’ve had circumstances where clients have become significantly bigger clients today than they were at the time we immediately went to them and handled an issue. It seems like common sense, but you have to be committed to do it. Blaming is unacceptable to me. One of the things I learned a long time ago is when people make a mistake, my strategy is to get with them and say, “What do we need to do for the client?” If you blame people, they’ll stop talking to you. All professionals are great at the blame game. Blaming isn’t tolerated in our culture.

Intentional Success

If you agree that the definition of success is a progressive movement toward one’s life goals, then success cannot be realized by accident. Success is a forward movement; it is an expansion process. All of creation is expanding as it moves forward in time. That which is not expanding becomes stagnant and dies, you can only coast one way.

Outstanding firms are created from an extraordinary bond from within. At the core of this bond is a genuine love for your work and people. A good firm will always involve love—the kind of love that is patient and kind, not rude or arrogant, but also the kind of love that will challenge your people to give the best they can give. It is your role as the leader to love your people enough to not play games with them and to challenge them to grow personally.

Bob Hottman, CEO of the top-100 firm Ehrhardt Keefe Steiner & Hottman PC (EKS&H) in Denver, CO, says

Most of my day is meeting with people. I meet with every one of our partners at least once every other month. I believe you can change a person, but they have to see the benefit of focusing on others. If they don’t, you won’t change their intent.

I challenge all our partners to get better as individuals, so we can get better as an organization. In order to be successful in our profession, you need to get outside your comfort zone and stretch your personal limits. And that’s a risk.

Barriers to Personal Growth

Challenging people to respond to situations from a solid core of values and to not allow their feelings to guide their every move makes you and your team stronger. When you work with your team, your feedback is an essential part of their development. Don’t overuse the phrase “great” because everyone can always improve. Instead, use the phrases, “good,” “that’s good,” or “that’s getting better” or “come on, you can improve on this.” Even high-achievers can be challenged to continue to improve, so I think you should hold your “greats” for that small percentage of really outstanding achievements.

Scott Dietzen, managing partner, Northwest Region, of the national accounting firm CliftonLarsonAllen LLP in Spokane, WA, says, “I can’t just rely on inspiration. I always have to be the father who is demanding excellence and accountability, even when it’s unpopular or uncomfortable. It’s an obvious observation when you step back and think about it, but for me, it was a key learning.”

The reason for feedback is to challenge or educate; feedback should change behavior. It takes great skill to challenge people without engendering ill feelings. If you develop animosity or anger in the team member you are challenging, it will be destructive.

Lisa Cines, office managing partner, Rockville, of the megaregional firm Dixon Hughes Goodman LLP, remembers a partner who she encouraged to develop new skills as they were creating a new product line. “She said, ‘I’m never speaking publicly; just know that.’ We worked together, and she began to slowly develop. Within a few months, she had a 10-minute part of a presentation. Within a few more months, she became a vocal expert. Now, she speaks everywhere.”

As leaders, we have to confront the barriers that prevent us from reaching our potential and from challenging our team members to reach theirs. Some are external, some are internal, and some barriers to personal growth can be remarkably personal—what goes on in the head. You must help provide the knowledge, time, and resources that keep your people from getting stuck in ruts and never getting out of them.

Some barriers to personal growth and development include the following:

1. Mind barriers. This is the most challenging barrier to personal growth because there can be no positive growth when there is overwhelming victimhood, cynicism, or fear. Such negative emotions can overwhelm our protégés.

“I think that to have a fresh perspective and diversity of experience is an important element of challenging who we are every day. We sometimes need someone else to break our mental blocks to progress,” John Wright, managing partner of the top-100 firm Padgett Stratemann & Co. of San Antonio, TX, says. “One of the most significant things that we’ve experienced in our firm was the willingness to bring in outside leadership. This allows these new people to challenge what we do, how we think, and our culture.”

2. Environmental barriers. We all are limited by our coworkers and peers. If our peers have their own set of limiting beliefs of how to live successful lives, we too will be strongly influenced. Peer pressure doesn’t subside as people mature.

3. Heritage. We are all born with certain imprinted characteristics. I think Tiger Woods was born to be a golfer, and with the help of his father, he nurtured that skill to become one of the top players in the game. What would have happened if Woods’s father had not seen the potential in him and challenged him to grow in that skill? How many other Tiger Woods are there in the world who were born with that nature but have never picked up a golf club? Many people have been raised under difficult circumstances: death of parents, divorce, mental illness, or abuse, to name just a few. You have people joining your team from a wide variety of family cultures, and they may bring some of those perceptions with them.

4. Lack of experience or poor experience. People who do not value personal growth are mostly unmotivated. Poor experiences, including education, will not hone the budding leader to improve himself and grow. One of your roles is to challenge those who lack the education or experience to supplement their shortcomings in these areas.

5. Bad habits. With routine accounting work coming at staff all the time, it’s easy for them to fall into ruts, keep their heads down, and never look up.

6. Laziness. Let’s face it, some people are like I was in high school. They only do what they need to get by, and if they have lots of natural talent, they may have the most potential to contribute if they can be motivated. Although I appreciate the professional challenges that public accounting presents each one of us, when I compare our work lives with the work lives of lawyers and doctors, the excuses begin to fade. It is not uncommon for lawyers to bill 2,000–2,500 hours per year while working 3,000 hours or more. The same is true with many physicians who work, on average, 60–80 hours per week.

Barriers will always exist. As a leader, one of your roles is to help your protégés see ways to go around, over, or through the barriers, even their self-imposed ones. You can create an environment to challenge their personal growth. You role is to teach staff members how to prevent barriers to personal growth from happening or recurring in their lives.

In the last few pages of this chapter, I’ve suggested a few strategies, techniques, and exercises to help you and your protégés overcome many of these barriers.

Dealing With Change

One constant that accounting firm leaders can count on is change—constant change. Change in technology; the rules; firms; competition; people, partners, and staff members; and, yes, the economic climate. How you, the leader, anticipate and respond to the constant and turbulent change that envelops a firm is usually the difference between success and failure.

The past few years have also changed the kind of work available for accounting firms to build their businesses, says Larry Autrey, managing partner of the top-100 firm Whitley Penn LLP in Ft. Worth, TX. “I think we created a group of people who thought that compliance was the answer because that’s all we really had time to do. There’s a group of people who are now managers, maybe even some young partners, who didn’t grow up having to go and hunt for work and didn’t have to do consulting.”

In chapters 11, “Vision: Reality in the Future”; 14, “Managing Processes for Your Future Firm”; and 15, “Building the Future Firm Continuously,” I deal with building and managing the future firm. We can either allow change around us to regularly upset our lives, or we can anticipate or create the change in our lives and businesses. Choosing the former, allowing change to upset our lives, is also choosing to be the victim of circumstances—a malady that great leaders shy away from. Choosing to anticipate or create change in our business, so that we are in sync with, or ahead of, the change cycle, will allow us to master our circumstances.

Overcoming Barriers

I have thought about ways to overcome personal growth barriers during my 30-year career leading large and small groups of accountants, sales and marketing professionals, and technicians. Most technical and business people dislike uncertainty. Uncertainty breeds distrust, fear, loss of confidence, anger, rumors, and all the attributes that complicate and usually impede progress and success in the office or at home. Therefore, the first priority for the leader should be to reduce uncertainty in the workplace and replace the undesirable attributes previously mentioned with facts, sensitivity to employee concerns, and clarity about group goals and objectives.

Here are four rules to follow, especially in times of uncertainty and turbulence:

Rule 1: Believe in the Meaning of Your Work

The best leaders have an intensity about them that rivets everyone’s attention on the goal. When this intensity is intelligently applied, you may express disappointment in the performance of one of your key leaders without berating him or her. How will you be able to ask others to control themselves if you, as a leader, cannot control yourself? Emotionalism produces an inconsistent result, and the leader must know the difference between intensity and emotionalism. You need to guide staff members to take pride in their work and assume ownership and accountability for their results.

Rule 2: Communicate Regularly and Honestly With Team Members

Communication takes many forms. In addition to full staff meetings, departmental meetings, and one-on-one and partner meetings, periodic written communication will help stabilize a team or firm. Also, the leader should continuously improve and employ keen listening skills. Employees need to be heard, and their issues should be discussed and resolved. By practicing these various communication skills, a leader can find a pathway to motivate and even inspire the workforce.

Rule 3: Leaders Must Always Be Moving Toward the Larger Goals

Keep your and your team’s eyes on the bigger goals. A micromanaged person or team will be demoralized and cynical. Leaders should focus on their goals and make it clear that they are always available when needed to support employees who seek help.

Rule 4: Recognize Your Team Members

Recognizing includes both moral and financial support. Most people like to be recognized for a job well done. Recognition takes many forms, and the successful leader deploys many types of recognition, including financial bonuses and raises and verbal or written recognition that is given in a public or private setting. The key benefit of this rule is that employees will feel that their work is important, appreciated, and valued by their leaders.

Consistently practicing these four rules during good times and bad will help establish a stable team not churned by the emotion of the times. These guidelines work best when the senior leader practices them and requires direct reports to also use them. One of the performance measures of the senior leader’s staff should be how well they are able to implement these rules.

For many accountants who believe deeply in the value of their work, they often are not able to express that conviction to others because of their weak communication skills. Ray Strothman, managing partner of the local firm Strothman & Company, PSC, in Louisville, KY, provided a terrific model for his team as he set out to improve his communication skills, so he could better express his passion to others (rule 1) and move toward a larger goal (rule 3) of building his firm into one of the largest in central Kentucky.

While I had built my skills as an able accountant, I had not learned how to attract new business to our firm as well as I should to really be a leader. I really believe you must be a business developer to lead a small or a large firm. I decided to join Sales and Marketing Executives International (SMEI) because I needed to learn more about how to be a business developer. I felt that by joining SMEI, the skill would flow to me through osmosis—that it would ultimately sink in. Here I was with all these gregarious, free-spirited people, and I was this conservative accountant, and little by little, I started coming out of my shell.

SMEI was very influential in helping me become the business developer and leader I am today. I think that a number of successful people aren’t as extroverted earlier on in their careers. Then, they find out that they must learn to be great communicators. It takes the discipline to commit to personal self-improvement. Today, much of what I do with my team is to challenge them out of their comfort zones by getting involved with things that will improve their whole person. I want our team to not only be great financial advisors, I want our team members to be the kind of people to which others are attracted.

Finding Balance

Unfortunately, a great many people are unhappy in their jobs. They go to work every day out of necessity, not because it is of interest to them or a challenge. Each day, they spend eight hours in misery, with no room for personal growth. Personal success is only a flicker because the fire is never able to ignite. The desire to succeed is a human trait that is there in the heart waiting for the right moment to become a blazing inferno, but the necessary drive to succeed is often squelched by a desire for security and a need to please the family.

As a leader, you can help your people find their jobs—and lives—more meaningful. The challenge for all of us is to find that right balance, so that we succeed in both our personal and professional lives. As a busy professional, you may experience pangs of guilt when you’re working late or traveling away from the family. Sometimes, when you are with your friends or family, you may feel the gnawing responsibility of a work project. The only way that most people cope with these competing demands is by drawing clear boundaries. One of my friends makes it a practice of eating dinner with his family at least three nights per week, and he leaves his iPhone in the car and does not check e-mail until early the next morning. These boundaries allow him to be present with his family from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM If you or your protégés have difficulty with these conflicts, you might consider what rituals or boundaries might work for you.

Often, the tension that is created from the pull between one’s professional and personal lives boils over into hostility. Ted Mason, president and CEO of the top-100 firm Laporte Sehrt Romig Hand in New Orleans, LA, says, “Recently, one of our vice presidents blew up at one of our directors. He really crossed the line. Later, both of them acted coolly toward each other. Probably 15 years ago, I would have just gone to each of their offices and ranted and raved. But by having patience and working through the issues together, we came out with a great relationship among us all.” As a leader, you will teach powerful lessons when you can help your team members resolve their friction in a productive manner.

Many messages in the marketplace discourage personal growth, but self-assured people face life on the assumption that they will be successful. There is no maybe or perhaps, only doing. They know that they must be precise in formulating a plan for success by acquiring knowledge, becoming as professional as possible, and being persistent. They realize that there is a price to be paid, and they are willing to pay it. They develop a desire that drives them toward better things. Their family; religion; and financial, social, and physical elements are balanced for continued growth. The formula for this balance is as varied as there are people on your team. I’ve learned that the leader must understand the personal mission and core values (discussed in chapters 12, “Values: The Character, Actions, and Outcome,” and 13, “Mission: Making a Difference”) of each one of his or her protégés and make certain that this mission aligns with the mission of the team that he or she is leading.

Because self-motivation is self-induced, there are no guarantees for sustaining its endurance. No one can work at full capacity every hour of every day. It is more desirable to maintain a balanced, structured approach to the work schedule, with each work period directed toward a final outcome. Through planning and sticking to it, you can minimize nonproductive times that might threaten to undermine your success. The more you are active, the more you want to be active.

Tips for Achieving Personal Growth

Challenging people to grow is not about taking tests or attending seminars; in fact, most of that stuff is a waste of time and money. Personal growth really comes from challenging team members and their beliefs. Stimulating your protégés well and encouraging them to perform at higher levels will take time and patience and a willingness to change.

Bob Bunting, former CEO of the megaregional firm Moss Adams LLP in Seattle, WA, says

During the course of leading the firm, I have had responsibility for dealing with people who are very eloquent, and yet, they have performance problems. They didn’t want to take responsibility for their performance problems.

I changed from a guy who liked people to agree with me to a guy who realized that if people won’t disagree with me, nothing was going to happen because they weren’t engaged. If there is no real conflict, nobody is helping improve the decision, nobody is really buying into the decision, nobody is committed to the decision because there is nothing going on.

Personal growth is an investment in myself that I take very seriously, and I always have. I spend a lot of time on introspection and understanding why people are the way they are. I’ve worked very hard to understand my core values and to also understand the values that others use to operate. Doing this consistently has transformed me as a person, making me much more able to comprehend new situations and better equipped to understand and control how I respond to them.

Personal growth is not just about identifying and developing professional skills; it’s a broader pursuit of personal excellence. Here are seven tips you can offer to your team members to challenge them to grow personally:

1. Understand what you value most. Most people have a sense of the right thing to do in any given circumstance. Whenever that small voice tells you that something is wrong, ask yourself why you feel that way. Keep trying to break each answer down into more and more fundamental pieces—things that you are sure are right and things that you are sure are wrong. If you invest some time into this, you’ll find that your beliefs and reactions of right and wrong slowly begin to make more sense to you, and you can explain them much better, as well. More importantly, it becomes much easier to figure out the best ethical and moral decision when something new comes up.

According to Mike Cain, founder and comanaging partner of the top-50 firm Lattimore Black Morgan & Cain, PC (LBMC), in Nashville, TN

A tricky aspect of managing your firm’s growth is figuring out how to manage multiple partners who all bring something different to the table. As professional services firms get larger, you have multiple partners, all of whom are very responsible, very confident in their own abilities, and very interested in the overall direction of the firm.

So, you do have to do much more consensus building and put in much more effort to get people on the same page throughout the organization if you are going to be successful moving forward. That doesn’t mean you have to run everything by committee, but you do have to get more buy-in from a broader group of people than a lot of our clients do in their businesses.

2. Commit to an activity that benefits someone else. By this, I mean volunteer work. Spend time on any sort of volunteer project, preferably for the benefit of a group that fuels your passion. Perhaps you can spend time helping out at a soup kitchen or building a Habitat for Humanity house if you sympathize with the poor, or maybe, you can start a small volunteer project at a retirement home if you feel passionate about helping the elderly. Many accountants find that committing time to improve our profession really helps you grow personally and professionally.

3. Travel. Intentionally travel to experience different peoples and cultures. Although I travel over 150 nights per year on business, I still periodically take a half day or more to visit cultural sites. I’ve visited most of the U.S. presidential museums and libraries; over 20 state capital museums or archives; and many, many other things to expand my horizons. I’ve visited automobile factories in Detroit, Munich, and Stuttgart; zoos in San Diego, Detroit, and Belize; and art galleries in New York, Paris, Florence, Cape Town, Amsterdam, Accra, Cologne, London, and many other cities. Get off the beaten path for more than a few days. If you live in a small town, spend a few days in a big city. If you live in a city, go live in the country for a while. Visit other parts of the country you live in, and if you can afford to, visit other countries, as well. Vacationing is fine, but the real value comes from exposing yourself to the life of people who you don’t know.
One experience that had a significant impact on the career of Marc Elman, CEO of the local firm PSB Boisjoli in Montreal, Canada, was a project he led for eleventh grade students.

Two years ago, I was a chaperon for 36 grade 11 students on something called the March of the Living, a two-week trip where you go to Poland to visit concentration camps from World War II, and then, you go to Israel and see what they’ve built there. It’s meant to show the transformations that have taken place amongst the Jewish population from the 1930s until today. It involves a tremendous amount of preparation: you have to learn about the Holocaust, Israel, and about Jewish life. I’m Jewish, and it was an outstanding experience in understanding human nature, leadership of students, and our heritage. One of my inspirations for going was my older daughter, who had gone the year before.

It involved 2 weekends of preparation plus another 20–25 meetings. I think in terms of introspection and in terms of looking at this world and asking questions of yourself about what you’re all about and what other people are all about. I found it a great leadership experience, both in terms of trying to give very impressionable young minds a sense of who they are and a sense of their Jewish heritage.

It showed me both the frailty of humanity, while at the same time, there were so many inspirational stories. We traveled there with survivors; we met people who risked their lives to save other people.

I left the students with a few questions, and one of the questions was, “Take yourself being a Jew at that time and stuck in a camp; how would you behave?” Some Jews survived on cunning and their ability to use other people for their own advantage. I asked, “How would you have behaved if you were a German who was recruited into the army? How would you have behaved if you were just a person living in France who had neighbors that were Jewish or that you knew were in peril?: And I said, “The answers may appear obvious, but when you really think about them, it’s not obvious as to what you would’ve done. Would you have risked your own family for someone else?”

4. Read challenging books. A John Grisham novel is fun, but it doesn’t really stretch your understanding of how human life works. Read books that challenge your perceptions, such as Mandela’s Way: Fifteen Lessons on Life, Love, and Courage by Richard Stengel or The John Wooden Pyramid of Success by Neville Johnson. I recommend picking up any Pulitzer Prize-winning novel or any of the New York Times all-time best nonfiction books. Almost all of those works will force you to reach a little bit, to understand lives and existences different than your own. When you walk away, you’ll have a deeper understanding of what it means to be different, and the more you read, the deeper your appreciation for the varieties of human experience will become.

Lisa Cines is an avid reader. “My day isn’t complete unless I’ve read something, unless I have read a book. I enjoy reading how people have overcome what’s been put in front of them or they have managed or led their way through it.”

5. Explore the spiritual side of life. The vast majority of people on earth incorporate some form of spiritual experience into their lives. I’ve attended a variety of religious services, and I’ve found that they have a lot more in common than most people tend to think: they all involve people trying to connect with something greater than themselves. It is this commonality, paired with the huge diversity of the specifics of practice and belief, that really makes clear that most people on earth are trying to take different, parallel paths to the same goal.

6. Connect with a mastermind group. Napoleon Hill coined the term “mastermind group” as a small group of like-minded people who meet regularly to support each other’s growth. The common denominator is that each member of the group accepts responsibility for supporting, advising, and challenging other members in pursuit of their goals. Hill defined a mastermind to be created through harmony of purpose and effort between two or more people. In his book The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons, Hill said, “Success in this world is always a matter of individual effort, yet you will only be deceiving yourself if you believe that you can succeed without the co-operation of other people.”

Mike Cain says, “No matter what role you play in your firm, you can always learn plenty from other industry professionals. You come in contact with great people throughout this profession. Involvement in our professional associations builds practice in leadership skills that you can bring back and apply in your own organization.”

The Private Companies Practice Section of the AICPA has a variety of networking groups that are built for sharing ideas to help build your personal and professional life. With your own mastermind group, you have your own personal group dedicated to supporting you, challenging you, cheering you on, and inspiring you to achieve your goals. The group’s interest and attention to your goals provides a subtle yet powerful incentive for accountability. Though your growth is personal and individual, something only you can accomplish, you will benefit from the support, encouragement, and energy of others.

7. Relentlessly pursue personal growth. Without personal growth, a team slowly dies. Without personal growth, your people will stagnate and lose their value in the marketplace. Because most employees are likely to change jobs multiple times throughout their careers, it makes sense to develop new skills every year. These skills should be transferable and consistent with the business and technical goals of the firm. Each year, as part of an employee’s performance appraisal, a section addressing personal development goals should be jointly discussed and pursued. Most employees will find this exercise motivational and view it as a strong signal that the leaders value and depend on their contributions.

Conclusion

You might try all seven of these personal growth activities and find that only one or two work really well for you. Never use that as an excuse to not bother to grow as a person. No matter what, seek out things that challenge the fundamentals of what you believe, both about yourself and others. You’ll either reinforce your deeply held ideas or you’ll discover that, perhaps, they weren’t as perfect as you believed they were, and both things are incredibly valuable.