Taking the financial executive to the next level.

• Author: Flores, Mario A.
• Position: QUICK STUDY

Financial leaders often achieve their positions primarily by using left-brain analytical skills that are focused on the numbers. To tap into their fullest potential as human beings and evolve to the next level, either professionally or as part of their personal growth plan, they need to develop right-brain thinking.

When focusing on more than just the numbers, a broader value-based lens is created from which to see the world. The result can be transformative for the business and the people involved with it.

The evolution of financial leader to business leader necessitates a migration from technical to behavioral competencies. This evolution occurs with a shift in the direction of thinking from left brain to right brain. This means evolving from a sequential approach that specializes in text and analyzes technical details to the simultaneous, specializing in context, synthesizing the big-picture mindset.

While left-brain-directed aptitudes will still be relevant, they will no longer be sufficient. In (he book, A Whole New Mind, author Daniel Pink says right-brain-directed aptitudes will be necessary and complementary to left-brain-directed aptitudes.

Pink describes throe important factors that will drive the need for increased reliance on right-brain-directed aptitudes to serve as a business diffentiator in the future. These three give rise to critical essential right-brain-directed aptitudes that move from Intelligent Quotient (text) ruling the day to Emotional Intelligence (context), bringing balance to help create the heart-centered mind.

Evolution to Transformational Leader

Where should financial leaders start the evolution to the next level toward becoming transformational business leaders? A good starting point is gaining an awareness of gaps in behaviors that prevent the leader from achieving his or her fullest potential. Obtaining a behavioral assessment is a good first step to gain these gap insights and thus have a baseline for making appropriate behavioral changes.

Becoming a transformational leader requires having emotional intelligence where the business leader produces sustained win-win outcomes. The transformational leadership style taps the process of influencing, in which the business leader changes his or her associates' awareness of what is important.

It moves them to see themselves, their opportunities and the challenges of their environment in a new way that looks out for each other, rather than for serving (heir own...