While you may feel comfortable managing your clients’ accounts, you may not feel as comfortable managing your staff. But in order to build a profitable accounting practice, you must effectively manage a team that understands and executes your vision.
Unfortunately, you’ve been trained as an accountant, and not as a manager. So how do become an extraordinary manager? Experience will provide you with the best schooling, but to avoid major obstacles and find success more quickly, here’s a crash course in managing that will put you on the right track.
1. Permit others to do their job. Because you’re a good accountant, it’s tempting to look over shoulders and micromanage a time or two. But remember, you instill greater confidence and performance in employees when you trust them to do their jobs. You can best promote success by enabling your team to succeed. This means that rather than telling them how to do their job (which you might occasionally have to do), you must ensure they have the resources they need, eliminate unrealistic deadlines, and, if possible, provide them with proper training.
2. Provide vision and support. Good managers inspire success with clear vision. It is your job to look to the future and envision how you would like your business to evolve. Once you’ve shared this vision, you need to provide your team with the necessary support to accomplish the vision.
3. Practice good communication. Without good communication skills you’ll find it difficult to lead your team anywhere because they won’t know where you want them to go. You must clearly communicate your vision, your objectives, and your expectations. But if you’re doing all the talking, your team will quickly tune out. Communication runs both ways; you must listen well and engage in productive discussions with your team.
4. Plan for success. It’s cliché because it’s true: if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Managers look ahead, anticipating difficulties, critical events, and opportunities to move forward. If you want to succeed, you must take the time to evaluate your business’s current standing and make plans for improvement.
5. Pose questions. How could we change this procedure to save time? What about the current system is/isn’t working? What can we do this year to increase the company’s tax deductions? Asking questions is a good way to boost success. Don’t be afraid to question the way things have been done. If you give yourself permission to question, you’re giving your business permission to improve.
Managing a team can be daunting, but it’s crucial to your business’s success. With a little time, and the 5 P’s of managing success, you’ll find that maybe you’re more of a natural than you first thought.
Universal’s Training Programs are All Online!
If you’re looking to build your business and your clientele, we suggest you complement your offerings with tax preparation and QuickBooks services. And Universal’s online training make that more convenient than ever, enabling you to enroll today and begin changing your career tomorrow. We offer 5 programs designed to make your business more profitable. To sample our online courses for free, visit Universal today!
