BONUS | IMA's Young Professional Leadership Experience

IMA's Young Professional Leadership Experience:
https://www.imanet.org/career-resources/volunteering-with-ima/young-professional-leadership-experience



FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:00)


Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA’s podcast about all things
affecting the accounting and finance world. Today's episode will
be another bonus episode of our IMA focused mini-series. Over the
last few months. We've interviewed former IMA, young professional
award winners and ask them specific questions about their early
careers.


 


Mitch: (00:22)


Through this episode, we will feature snippets of four different
conversations that highlight different aspects of an accounting
and finance professionals. Early observations of the industry.
Our featured speakers respectively are Jayada Samudra, Izz
Ansari, Tiffany Larsen and Hari Ramasubramanian. These young
professionals talk to us about their educational background in
early starts, vital skills to advancing through their careers,
what strong leadership looks like and provide advice for entering
into the accounting world. Let's listen now.


 


***


 


Adam: (00:58)


Could you please tell us a little bit about your background and
what you're currently working on?


 


Jayada: (01:04)


Sure, so I would say that the interesting thing about my
background would be that I get to have that in two different
cultures. One was in India and one was in the United States and I
would say it would be in two different ways as I got a blend of
accounting and finance. Academically I would start academically.
So, I am certified management accountant. I already pursued my
CMA two years ago and I would be graduating right now in August
with my third masters. I would say it's a blend of two because I
started off with my undergraduate in accounting and later on did
my first master's in accounting but then moved over to finance to
pursue MBA in finance. And right now, I'm graduating with my MS
in finance. Right now, I'm working as a graduate assistant in
enrollment and admissions where I'm helping, I'm acting as a
counselor for the students. I'm helping the enrollment division
to budget and forecast the prospective students and how the
things I want to work with the incoming freshmen.


 


***


 


Mitch: (02:13)


What role do presentation and effective communication skills play
on the job? Is it critical to have these skills at every level in
your opinion?


 


Izz: (02:22)


Yes, actually the truth is that technical skills, while they are
very important and we cannot underestimate the importance of
those skills, they can only take you to a certain level. After
that what really matters is how you present your point because
after every time that you have applied your technical skills and
Daniel work there, there comes a point when you either have to
explain your work to someone or convince someone to see it your
way. And that can be both wearable origin phones and mobile
phones. It can be in the form of a meeting in which you have to
convince, for example, your was or your clients to see it your
way or to convince them that what you have done actually reflects
the actual scenario or in a written form, which can be in the
form of a report where you have to present your findings and
justify them also. So just as an example, if I were to go to
something from my work, if I am working on a financial one and I
have taken some assumptions in my model, I have to later justify
them to whatever I've done technically, makes sense, right? In
the simplest words, it makes sense. So, it will depend on how
well I articulate my thoughts and how well I present them so that
they sound justified and convincing to help whoever I'm
presenting them to. So yeah, I think that communication and
presentation skills really do matter at an end. New York. The
second part of your question was, is it a critical skill to have
at every level? Oh, well, of course. Because these skills
actually make you stand out no matter what level you're at. First
of all, it makes you receptive to new ideas and new thoughts,
which we generally don't count in effective communication in
presented presentation skills, but it actually matters because if
you have good communication skills, you're actually also
receptive to new ideas. You're actually also a good listener. And
Lastly, you also know how to respond well to any situation that
comes up, whether it be in a meeting or just, you know, a random
hi, hello with a client or something like that. You know, how to
respond well to that situation. And that also includes your body
language, you know, nonverbal cues that you give with your body
when it comes to every level. Well, for example, if you were to
talk about the most junior member on a team, he or she has to
explain his or her work. Do whoever is supervising him or her
when it comes to managers or directors or partners in firms or
just, you know, CEOs or CFOs, If you go up to that level they're
like walking, talking grants for their company or whatever film
they're representing. Right? So even at the level of partners or
managers or directors or CEOs or CFOs, at each point of time, and
they have to present themselves at their best because they are
walking in talking brand for their company or professional firm
or whatever they're representing.


 


***


 


Mitch: (05:36)


In your opinion as leadership skills are developed by
individuals, if you were someone who is entering a team or on the
outside looking in at an accounting team, how do you identify who
the leaders are? What are some of those signs of strong
leadership within an accounting team?


 


Tiffany: (05:57)


I think that they trust each other that when there's a problem,
when there's a lot of communication, they're asking for advice
and thinking through and you can kind of tell for the leaders are
because they're kind of the go to person. For example, in my
previous job, if someone in finance then in the request to our
systems administrator refer for a change, that person would come
to me because they knew I'd be able to access, blame the request.
In a way they would understand that there were some managers, but
trying to talk with the system admin, they weren't affected
because they weren't talking the same language. The system admin
didn't have a back grounded in accounting. He's really good at it
programming. And so, the leaders are those people that people go
to for advice that they seek out their knowledge to build their
skills. They know that person has different tools that are
relevant and all of this is built on trust if there's the culture
and you think that by sharing an information, somebody else is
going to take your idea, claim it as your own, and they get ahead
on your idea. Well, that's not a sign of trust if everybody's
helping each other out to get the work done because sometimes
you're going to be busier than your colleague. And so, if there's
this trust, then one way to get trust is to have a feedback and
depending on your relationship with the person or your need, your
communication style there, the feedback loop is going to be
different. Well this could be like when I was a remote employee,
I'd have one on one meetings with my boss two to three times a
month. It was just dedicated time for us to talk in private.
Other times it will just be a less formal. The conversation, Hey,
I'm having this pro...