What does your leadership inspire?

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” - John Quincy Adams, US President

There are many books, webcasts, videos and more on leadership. This quote from John Quincy Adams exemplifies why leadership is such an important topic. It is not a trendy subject, but one that has significant impact on our businesses and lives. This is why we added “Leadership” to our list of top subjects to cover in this year’s #DigitalCPA Webcast series, as well as the closing keynote of the Digital CPA Conference (DCPA15)

Recently, Orlando Magic’s Senior Vice President, Pat Williams, Paychex’s Master Leadership Trainer, Tom Bachmann, and CPA.com’s President & CEO, Erik Asgeirsson discussed “A Winning Leadership Presence” (Access the Archive)

Pat focused on “from Managing to Leading” through mastering 7 leadership principles: vision, effective communication, people skills, character, competence, boldness, and a serving heart. With quotes and key characteristics from strong leaders, such as Joe Namath, Vince Lombardi and John D. Rockefeller, Pat stressed that great leaders care about people, empathize with others, and genuinely like them. They are visible and available to others, and empower their employees to use their strengths to improve the whole team.

Tom Bachmann dove into ways to improve your leadership presence. “The leader with presence is the one person in the room that everyone else is listening to, not necessarily the one doing all the talking.” By looking at your character, and ways that you communicate, connect and present, you can find areas to improve your leadership presence.

The type of leadership qualities and characteristics you demonstrate in your personal lives are the same as in your professional lives, and vice versa; there is no real separation. We can clearly see that with the overview Pat Williams and Tom Bachmann shared. Sometimes we focus more on managing the job at hand, instead of thinking about our leadership strategy and inspiring our teams to be proactive.

I will view myself as a successful leader if I can accomplish this:

“The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.”Ronald Reagan

Which leadership principle or characteristic will you work on?

A Closer Look at Our Startup Accelerator Companies

The CPA.com/Association of International Certified Professional Accountants Startup Accelerator is an annual program that finds, invests in, and guides early-stage tech companies with solutions that support accounting and finance professionals. This blog series provides a deeper look at the five companies in the 2021 cohort.