Why Your Associates Aren’t Doing the Right Thing
I usually use this platform to speak to the younger professionals in their career that tend to be public accountants at the intern, staff and senior associate levels. However, today I want to speak to the managers, because many of us, including myself, are guilty of asking “Why don’t they get it?”
What Aren’t They Getting?
Depending on the manager you ask, younger professionals:
Don't understand the basics of communication in the workplace
Are impatient when it comes to career progression
Don’t understand how to check their work
Keep missing obvious errors that they are making
Don’t understand how to dress professionally
Don’t know how to write a resume
Are afraid to talk on the phone
Don’t know when they are spinning their wheels and wasting time
Are somehow even more clueless than ever before
And you know what? I've seen circumstances where all of these are valid criticisms. Even if these concerns are valid, it's not always the fault of the staff. Whenever topics like these come up in conversation, it's important to understand that the lower level professionals are missing two key things: perspective and experience. For professionals to grow and “get it”, they are going to need to gain that perspective and experience. Let's jump into each!
Perspective
What is it? - in the context of this article, perspective can be defined as the way that a professional views the world around them shaped by their previous exposure to other professional situations in the past. Perspective allows the manager to know which clients to prioritize, when to involve partners and higher ups, when to delegate responsibilities, and when to ask questions.
Why Don't the Staff Have It? - these younger professionals are not managers for a reason. They likely have not seen the number of jobs that you have. It's likely that you have seen more complex jobs than they have seen easy ones. As a result, they need more exposure to rise to your expectations.
How Can I Give My Professionals Perspective? - You can either let them learn over time, or you can consciously sit down and talk to them. Over the course of multiple jobs, a professional will gain the perspective of servicing different types of clients in different types of situations and they will be able to take that knowledge with them and build on it throughout their career. However, there are times where the manager needs to explicitly share what they are thinking so that the other professionals can gain those insights.
Experience
What is it? - in the context of this article, experience can be defined as the collection of professional skills gained over the course of a career, usually involving the hands-on skills required by the profession.
Why don't the staff have it? - this one can be a bit trickier because many accounting professionals expect a certain level of experience coming out of the classroom. Unfortunately, the covid-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the way that students developed and were assessed in recent years and for some students it has led to stunted professional development. Pandemics aside, it's also important to understand that years of working experience matter as well. Those younger professionals have probably not seen enough spreadsheets to know what a good one looks like.
How Can I Give My Professionals Experience? - Train them. Be patient. Put them in positions to learn from their work instead of being a slave to a deadline. Go through, review comments with them and resolve them together instead of playing issue tag. Everyone, including yourself, learned through some combination of classroom and on-the-job training. As a manager, you are responsible for giving your staff the attention, education, and opportunities they need to develop themselves as a professional.
Why Am I Writing This Now?
Professional development should be an incredibly important aspect to any professional services firm. In recent years, there has been significant shifts in the way we work due to advances in technology and a global pandemic. As a result of these shifts, things that managers think of as common sense or common knowledge may not be as well known by the newest group of professionals. Knowledge that used to be shared and learned via in office (or client site) chats or over-the-shoulder instruction is not as common as it used to be and the comments about “Staff not getting it” that I mentioned above are becoming more and more common. Managers have a responsibility to adapt to this changing environment and communicate these lessons to their staff so they can get better. It’s not all on you though! Younger professionals also bear the responsibility of being teachable, having a good attitude, and learning to communicate. No matter what your situation is, I challenge you to take a step back and reflect on how you can share your experience and perspective with your staff to accelerate their development so they can meet or exceed your expectations of them. Good luck!