004: Mindset Determines Your Outcome

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Welcome to the finance leader. Podcast. I am your host, Stephen McLane. This is the podcast for developing leaders and finance and accounting where we get to grow your leadership and we're not gonna be focusing too much. On the technical side of in this episode, we're gonna talk about mindset, one of my favorite categories of leadership that really effects how you see the world, how you lead your team, how you grow potential of your team and how you grow your own potential. I think mindset is the single most important thing that lead you to success that allows you to reach your maximum potential. Because if you don't get the mindset right, then you won't see yourself a successful, and you won't get to see all the potential for opportunities out there and take a little risk. I believe that if you change your mind set, you will change your outcome. If you change your mindset, you will change your outcome. I've had my own issues with mindset over a very long career. I always approach things where I'm not gonna fail. I want to do the very best I can. I have also come up across things in my career that I've had to do that maybe may have been a little bit uncomfortable, but I know down deep inside me that I want to get this done. I want to accomplish the tough tasks I want to reach my maximum potential. And sometimes you got to do the uncomfortable. Sometimes you got to get a little vulnerable. You gotta take a risk. And that's how I approach things. I never wanted to fail, and so I would approach a task and say, This isn't going to get to me. This isn't gonna take me down. I'm gonna figure out how to do this. I'm gonna dig down deep inside, I'm gonna find it. I'm gonna find the guts and the strength and the determination to get through this. No matter what the task was gonna be. I'm gonna pull that positivity out of me. I'm going to not let anything get in my way. I'm going to have an attitude of determination. I'm going to get it done now. I know in the finance and accounting, we are always up against tough processes were up against systems that aren't designed the best that can help us get our get our work done. I know the challenges that we all face in this profession. We have horrible processes. We have cumbersome process is we have systems that don't give us or feed us the information that we need to do our jobs. We're continually do manual processes in place off a system that should be feeding us information so that we can use our brains instead of our mouths every day. In doing like I say, cutting a pasting, we need to just continue to get out of that cutting and pasting mode. I will talk about that probably are nearly every episode of this podcast. We need to go beyond that. So our mindset is that we need to be pushing to be better, pushing to accomplishing it in a higher standard in a better way. And sometimes in these processes and the systems that we have in our profession, vacuum effect, our mindset that can start to wear us down and start to have us start thinking about that, this is tough, this is hard and it's cumbersome and then we come into work miserable. But there's a better way we can dig down deep, we can figure it out. We can make recommendations, we can make a better system. And that's why changing our mind set is important. Our mindset contributes to how successful we will be, how successful our team will be, how successful our organization can be. Because ultimately I believe that leadership is the environment of making the impossible possible. I'm gonna say it again. Leadership is the embodiment of making the impossible possible. We are up against systems that don't help us up against processes that don't help us up against tough deadlines, tight deadlines. We're up against a monthly close process that is long takes many days. It takes a lot of movement, a lot of coordination, and I know we can make it better. We can make a better process. We can develop better systems. Leaders tackle the tough problems with an outlook of strength and determination. That's in everything. I don't care. I know I have ah, career, a long career in the military that where that is how you approach every task and every challenge and every problem that comes out you. But I believe that same attitude of determination and strength can be can be put into any industry, any kind of office environment, any kind of profession, anything that you're going to be doing any kind of manager doesn't matter whether it's come back to my career in the Army or if it's our profession and finance and accounting. We approach tough problems with an attitude and a mindset of strength. We're not going to let it get to us. We may feel frustrated, but guess what. We're gonna figure it out. We're gonna solve it. We're gonna find the right people to get the right people in the room. We're gonna not let this get to us. We're gonna make it better. We're gonna figure out the best solution to go possible. And we don't show defeat to our team because if we show defeat to our team, they will be defeated. They will feel the toughness. We gonna internalize that a little bit. We're gonna probably talk to our peers. They want to talk to our boss. But how to figure it out and want to come in with solutions, not problems were not going to exacerbate the problem. Not gonna create more problems, but we're gonna create foundational solutions to the problem. And I know that with every tough problem, we can come in with a positive approach and we can come in with courage that fuels our team of strength. I know that. I've done that. I've been there. I've had to tackle those tough problems. I've had to deal with it now. I haven't done it. Always perfect. But I've always come in with the solution. We're gonna figure it out, We're gonna fix it. And also, I believe that you can let your team fix it. You give the right guidance. The right direction you coordinate for resource is you give the authority and responsibility get that down to that team member and you let them get it done. Whatever problem, Whatever issue you're facing, whatever set of problems your team is facing, that's how we did. That's how we create Ah, positive mindset. We dig down deep, we find it inside of us. We pull it out and we create this environment of positive Ah, positive approach to whatever issue that we're dealing with. Now let's dive deep into a little bit more about what mindset can do to you. It really determines everything. It determines how we view people, how we view the world, how we believe other people are viewing us. It's how we approach our work every day. It's how we approach our relationships. It's how we approach our problem solving, to get a real strong, positive mindset. It really comes back to our confidence. And in order to build confidence, you've got to take a little bit of risk and you take a little bit of risk and you get some tasks and a project accomplished to a very high standard. You get that recognition, you start to build that confidence, you've gotten a little bit of success, and that just continues to strengthen your mind set. But there's a couple of other things that may be affecting you, affecting how you view a task or how you view your relationship with other managers. Relationship with your team members relationship with your boss, and that is your thinking about how they're thinking about you and they're probably not. But I tell you what, 99.99% of the time they got too many issues of the room deal with, and they're not thinking about you. They're not talking about you. They're dealing with their own problems. They're dealing with their own situation every day and they're not thinking about you and you think they are. But they're not. They're they're rate in the middle of their own issues. They're trying to solve it and try to overcome whatever things that they're dealing with. So let's just get that out of our minds. Let's just get out of our minds that other people are thinking about us and let's just move past that. And that way we can focus on what we can control. And the only thing we can control is us in our approach and how we see the world and how we view people and how we view a task. We have to continue to tell ourselves that we matter continue to train ourselves that what we have brings value to the organization. I can make a difference. I can bring positivity to the organization. I can get projects done toe a high level start to continue to tell yourself that what I deliver is valuable. What I deliver brings value to the organization. What I deliver helps the organization move forward in a strategy. Now I'm gonna ask you a question. Question around how you accomplish things or what's preventing you from accomplishing things to a high standard. I want to know what is holding you back. What obstacles do you believe are stopping you from success? You had to probably think about it for a moment. You probably came up with a couple of ideas. Maybe someone stopping you or something is stopping you. Someone has said something to you, Or so you think that someone's thinking something about you. And then I want you to ask yourself again, Are those situations riel or these some situations that you imagine to be riel? Is there someone really trying to stop you? Or do you believe that if you go take a little bit of risk of something that someone's going to stop you or someone's going to judge you or someone's gonna do something that will affect your performance? Did all that come to your mind? And I'm gonna tell you what I just said a few moments ago is that we need to get out of our minds. We need to We need to go forward. We need to take a little bit of risk. We need to ignore the noise, ignore negative voices and ignore negative influences we're not gonna worry about. Maybe another manager saying something, potentially seeing something in a meeting. We're gonna do it anyway. We're gonna deliver our best. We're gonna present whatever it is we're going to get our work done or not gonna worry about others that are judging us. We just got to get it out of our minds. We got to get that mindset. We're gonna get that mindset working for us, thinking positively our mindset to know that we can accomplish whatever it is that comes before us. We're gonna figure it out. We're gonna take a moment. We're not gonna let something get. Give us down. Getting back to the same idea. A lot of times we worry about things that really don't exist. And then we doubt our own abilities. I'm gonna say it again that you can only control yourself and how you view yourself and how you view your relationships with other people and how you view your relationships with the team. Can't control others, can control all they think. But you can control yourself. You have to believe we have to stop creating situations in our mind that gonna affect our mind set. We have to remove negative influences from our lives. We know that boundaries are essential to remove the wrong people from your life. If those things are happening, we have to stop listening to these things in our mind. Even stopped listening to people who may be around us that are affecting our mindset. We need to create different relationship with positive people. Surround yourself with as many people that have winning attitudes. We need to continue to seek out positive influences. People who wanna win when you're around, people who wanna win, you will see something different. You will see the language is different. You'll see the attitude is different. You will see that you'll see what success could become or success. Success come translate for yourself. You start to see that things aren't as bad as they are or bad as you think they are. Once we adapt, Ah, positive mindset, our team or dot that same mindset. They adopt the mindset that we have. If we think positively, they will think positively. If we think we can be successful, then they will think that they can be successful. So I have a suggestion for when for you. If you are dealing with a negative mindset or a mindset that can't really push you to hire successful level. I recommend that you volunteer for high visibility project if you can get on it, a project that will take several months because I believe high visibility projects develop you. They're tough. They really push your limits to your skills because you got to come in with great ideas and these air projects that go in front of the executive team. These are projects that probably that the executive team is looking to do to either create a very important line of business that fits their long term strategy or fixes a problem that prevents them from going to a different level for the business. This is opportunities for you to have a lot of in front time with the executive team, and this will push you. This is what you need to be on. This is what you need to be doing, or something similar like that you can you will have the opportunity highlight your abilities, your skills you'll grow in doing high visibility project or something like that. Some equivalent you'll you'll build a showcase of highlight that your skills, you're gonna you're gonna do the hard work, you're going to gain a little bit of success, and you're going to gain a lot of confidence. And you just need to take that risk. You just need to get yourself out there. And once you get on this team, build very positive relationships, bring a lot of positive energy, bring a lot of ideas. Don't be afraid with other people going to say do the work when you're after you meet after you Project team meets and you kind of figure out what the milestones are and what a lot of the other sub tasks are. Whatever task you have, you just bring it. You just put it 100%. You put in the hard work, you get it done and you come back to the table and you present and you present in a positive way. You feel the importance of the project and you like, make this everything that you have. Every pit of success relies upon how you do well in the project, and you just approach it with this high energy, We're gonna get this done. We're gonna make this work for the organization. This is going to be successful. I'm gonna be part of this successful program. We're gonna go in front of the executive team, and we're going to showcase what we have done and how we can help them grow the business. This is going to be a great thing. This is what I want you to do. Find something you can get on like this, and it will. It will build your confidence if you approach it the right way. But that's what you gotta do. You gotta come in and say, Hey, we're gonna be successful. We're gonna do this. We're gonna get it done. So finally, when you don't see yourself a successful, you're gonna limit your potential. So we need to change that. And I hope this discussion in this episode today get you to start thinking about the things in your own life, things that may be preventing you from reaching your potential. What is going on in your life in your career that you believe that is stopping you? And when you believe something is going to stop you it probably will, even though it's not true. So in this episode we talked a lot about mindset. We talked about how mindset, affection, potential. It affects your relationships. It affects how you view the world and how you view yourself in the future. How you view yourself as part of the organization as a whole and bottom line is if you change your mind set, you will change your outcome. If you start to have a positive mindset, you're gonna have a positive outcome. I believe that it's happened in my own career, and I've seen other people I've seen. Other people have success when they start changing their mind set into a positive way. You confined this episode and past episodes on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google podcast and many other areas. You can download the show notes at steven McClane dot com On Hope You had, ah, great time learning Today in this episode next episode, we're gonna talk about the joy of leadership and why I love to lead. I love to lead a team I love to grow others. I love to see what we can become with a potential we get to do the great impacts that we have in the organization. This is why I love to lead. We're gonna talk about that. We're gonna try to figure out why you like to lead. And we're going to have this dis amazing discussion, and we're gonna be a little introspective and think about why I wanted to go to that next level and start leading a team. That's going to be a great discussion. I hope you enjoyed the show today. Please join our community on Facebook, the finance leader podcast Facebook Group. This will be our community to grow within the finance and accounting profession until next time you can check out more. Resource is at steven McClane dot com. Please sign up for the 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 very much.