The ACT’s Future Leaders group held their second breakfast workshop for the Middle East chapter in Dubai, UAE. We were delighted that Caroline Stockmann, the ACT’s chief executive, came to speak to us and provide some invaluable insights and experience on strategic influencing learned throughout her successful career.
Whilst eating a zaatar croissant and sipping on Turkish coffee, attendees kicked off the day with networking - developing and making new connections. With over 20 attendees I was impressed by the talent pool in the Middle East and by the appetite to develop skills and the willingness to learn from others.
THE PASSION BEHIND THE VALUES
Your personal values are paramount to business motivation. It takes passion and drive to succeed, and when a true belief system is at the heart of it, that’s when magic happens.
Take inspiration from Caroline, her journey begins as a professional musician with a desire to educate young people in her spare time and then goes to helping children across the world in her capacity as the CFO of large not-for-profits such as Save the Children and the British Council.
Caroline embodies the power that values have on careers, and how they are the foundations for success. She uses the ‘so what’ methodology to find out the true reason we do things. If you ask ‘why’ enough times you will be able to uncover what genuinely motivates you. Roshun Tulkens, the Group Treasurer for Mantrac Group, was the brave volunteer for a goal setting exercise. In this hypothetical example he was asked: what do you want?, to which he answered “promotion to Group Treasurer” – Why? “To challenge myself” – But why “To progress my career” – But why? “To have better financial security” – But why? “to provide for my family and give them a nice life”. And just like that, Roshun was able to see that this final reason needs to be at the forefront of his mind when decision making and that it is a powerful self-motivation attribute too. The important point to takeaway is to make sure your values match with your career choices, resulting in a happier, healthier and more successful career.
So why do you do what you do?
DO YOU HAVE YOUR OWN COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY?
Excellent communication and marketing skills are prerequisites for all successful leaders. From personal PR to selling yourself – this is the key to paving a golden path. How will all of your ideas be implemented if you can’t clearly communicate them or sell them to your senior leaders? Or how will you have a successful team if you can’t make them believe in your strategies? Caroline emphasised the importance of developing your own communications strategy to build relationships and to achieve your goals. These are 7 key points to summarise:
Once you have your comms strategy in place, use it. As Caroline said, life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.
For information about the Future Leader in Treasury group visit treasurers.org/futureleaders
