As a modern CFO, you need to be far more than the classic “chief accountant.” Because that’s not what you are these days. Yes, you need to be on top of managing and evaluating financial risks and decisions, submitting reports, and overseeing business process management. But you also need to be a visionary, a leader, a coach, and a planner. Not the easiest thing in the world to juggle.
The good news is that there are plenty of TED Talks out there than can help you to grow into these roles. With subjects ranging from the economy, to leadership, to learning even after you’ve hit the C-Suite, there are talks for everyone. Here are our Top 10 TED Talks that you should put on your listening list right away.
Dambisa Moyo: Economic Growth Has Stalled. Let’s Fix It.
Moyo discusses how the current capitalistic practices don’t necessarily foster the growth needed to continue the upward mobility and improving living standards desired by populations. As a CFO, you need to constantly evaluate your position in the marketplace, and note what effects your company is having on the local community and the business community. Like it or not, part of being a business is having certain social responsibilities. Moyo’s discussion highlights how your business can help or hinder growth, locally and on a higher level.
Tim Jackson: An Economic Reality Check
Somewhat of a companion to Moyo’s talk, Jackson touches on the contrast between materialistic prosperity and meaningful prosperity. As a CFO, it often falls to you to make the final call on business practices and investment decisions. This talk covers how taking different paths in economic investing can also help counter social issues and mend social ills.
Nigel Marsh: How to Make Work-Life Balance Work
Striking the delicate balance between family time, personal time, and work can be difficult, for employees as well as employers. Finding the perfect balance is the Holy Grail – everyone is searching for it, but it is hard to find. Marsh gives his observations on how he found the best work-life balance that works for him after a year away from work. As a CFO, you need to find the work-life balance that works for you, but at the same time, help your own employees find a balance that works for them.
Susan Colantuono: The Career Advice You Probably Didn’t Get
As someone who has reached a career pinnacle, or is very close to reaching it, the time comes to give back in the form of mentoring. While this talked is aimed at female workers, it has takeaways for workers at all levels. At the C-suite level, you should utilize these takeaways to help your employees grow to be the best leader they can be. Even if there isn’t a leadership role for them at the immediate point in time, this advice can be used to propel them through their career and be ready when the opportunity arises.
Kathryn Schulz: On Being Wrong
You’ve spent your career avoiding being wrong. You don’t want to embrace your own fallibility, and at the higher levels of businesses, you probably even see admitting to being wrong as weakness. As Schulz drives home, constantly feeling that you are correct and constantly feeling that you are on the correct side of everything can build up, and lead to dangerous and disastrous results.
Simon Sinek: How Great Leaders Inspire Action
With 37 million views, it’s clear this isn’t just a talk for CFOs, but a talk for everyone. But as a CFO, you have two very important aspects of your job: subject knowledge, and leadership. We concentrate on the former throughout our schooling and early professional career, but not enough on the latter. Sinek explores how great leaders do more than manage or dictate, and instead focus on inspiring others to action, inspiring them to rise.
Simon Sinek: Why Good Leaders Make You Feel Safe
Sinek is a prolific TED talker, and for good reason. Going back-to-back on our list, this talk focuses on a different side of leadership. Coming two years before Google’s famous study regarding team make up, Sinek touches on how a good leader can make workers feel safe – and how that safety can help workers to grow and explore their capabilities. He highlights the difference between those who are leaders and those who are merely senior-level executives, and explains why the former are more effective in business.
Jim Hemerling: 5 Ways to Lead in an Era of Constant Change
With the business world constantly evolving, the individual business needs to be agile and adaptive. For CFOs, that can mean constant headaches, the feeling of always fighting uphill, and exhaustion from trying to keep up. Hemerling explores how this push to change and evolve can be spread out through the organization, not just lessening the impact on the CFO but also energizing and empowering members at all levels.
Celeste Headlee: 10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation
Let’s face it, many of us are terrible at conversing. Whether we have been crippled by our reliance on text-based communication, we are shy, or for whatever reason, our levels of conversation are lacking. As a professional at holding conversations, Headlee provides ten actionable ways a CFO can have meaningful conversations, whether with their peers at the executive level or with the most junior members of their organizations. As a leader, you need to be able to have meaningful conversations to foster good work relations and an effective, productive work environment – and Headlee will tell you how.
Julian Treasure: 5 Ways to Listen Better
In case the last talk didn’t drive home the point, how you converse as a leader is integral to bettering yourself, your company, and your workers. Unfortunately, as Treasure points out, we are terrible at the listening half of conversing. He provides five ways you can become a more active, more involved listener, which will lead to better and more meaningful conversations.
These ten TED talks are the perfect companion for CFOs looking for self-improvement, as well as looking for direction to help their business and their employees improve. These are wonderful resources, and any modern CFO or other executive would be wise to utilize them as part of their work day. We encourage you to explore the site thoroughly – beyond those we have recommended, there are plenty that may apply to you both in the business realm as well as in your personal life.
Bonus talk – check out Richard St. John’s 8 Secrets of Success. It’ll only take three minutes of your time. It’s humorous, touching, and compelling.