Teaching Middle Managers to Lead

Source: AICPA CPA Insider

The following includes excerpts, reproduced with permission, from an article by Donny Shimamoto, CPA, CITP.

The key to a CPA firm's success and sustainability is the ability to engage all of its members (top down to rank-and-file) in its mission. If you think the answer is a management program, you're wrong. It is a leadership program.

An increasingly complex world is causing the professional workforce to be split into specialists and versatilists (one step more advanced than generalists), bringing new meaning to the word teamwork. Thus, when approaching a complex problem, team members need to do more than cooperate – they need to collaborate. Only by ensuring that all members of the team take ownership, can a firm truly ensure the sustainability its team. Collaboration also enables innovation. Team members cooperate to deliver the final solution – a better solution than they each could have provided on their own.

If a firm's traditional leadership isn't the enabler of solutions, then who is? It is the leadership in the middle. These are the upcoming individuals to whom staff members turn for everyday advice (whether technical, social, or political). CPA firm management needs these key individuals to follow the firm's mission and engage in its success. While the firm's management is at the helm, leaders in the middle are the people who keep the teams going and enable the collaboration and cooperation that provide the best solutions.

Due to the diversity of versatilists and specialists on a team, a person leading from the middle is essentially a facilitator. In a nutshell, the facilitator guides the team's collaboration, enabling the firm to leverage the diversity of the team to deliver innovative solutions and services to its clients.

For the complete article, read “Leadership From the Middle.”

From AICPA CPA Insider, April 25, 2011, http://www.CPA2biz.com.