Welcome to June!

By Ben Towne, CPA

There are a couple of events I would like to highlight. Candidate members, please note that Thursday, June 10 is the Emerging Professionals “Get Certified!” event. Be sure to attend for tips and advice on navigating the sometimes-tricky path from exam to final licensure. Also, our CalCPA Council meeting will take place June 24–25 in the happiest place on earth … Anaheim! Please share any of your concerns that we, as chapter officers and council representatives, can bring to CalCPA.

In May our first session of the Emerging Leadership certificate program went off without a hitch. David Veyna, former chapter president, led our young and emerging professionals in a discussion that followed a statewide webcast panel on thinking like a CEO. The feedback from participants has been excellent on this collaborative effort between CalCPA’s chapter and state-level teams.

Of course, cooperation and producing more than the sum of the parts is what being surrounded by good people is all about. Let me talk about that for a second. Say you’re a leader. You’re smart, experienced and highly skilled. But you may be tempted to surround yourself with people who can’t or won’t challenge your primacy. If you do that, you may be setting yourself up to fail.

I say, step outside of yourself. Talented people are not to be feared, but cultivated. If your team relies only on your skills and ingenuity, the team will eventually hit a wall when it needs something that you aren’t strong in. If you aren’t surrounded by talented, empowered people, you and your team may meet an insurmountable challenge.

Be brave in developing your subordinates. The better they are equipped, the more powerful your whole team can be and the more they can accomplish. And let’s not forget that when the team looks good, so do you.

“Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.” — Oprah Winfrey

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010 at 1:04 pm and is filed under President's Message. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.