Ep. 62: Doug Boyle - The Emotionally Intelligent Accountant

Apr 27, 2020

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Contact Dr. Doug Boyle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-douglas-m-boyle-dba-cpa-cma-4004468/

Dr. Boyle's Articles and Resources:

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:05)

Welcome back to Count Me In. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and today you're going to hear how emotional intelligent plays such a key role in the success of management accountants. Mitch spoke with Doug Boyle, the accounting department chair at the University of Scranton about this topic. Doug also serves as the director of the doctorate in business administration program, the nonprofit league program and the high school business scholars program. He is an award-winning researcher and teacher and recently researched and wrote about the components of emotional intelligence as they relate to accounting and finance professionals. Let's hear him explain what it means to be an emotionally intelligent accountant.

Mitch: (00:47)

So today we're looking to talk about the emotionally intelligent accountant. And I would first like to kick things off and ask you how important is it for finance professionals to have emotional intelligence?

Doug: (00:59)

Yeah. Research has shown that a financial managers who have mastered emotional intelligence are the ones who typically reach the highest levels of the organization. For example, a chief financial officers along with, you know, superior technical skills. What really sets them apart from their peer group is that their ability to master emotional intelligence and connect with individuals. And there's several research studies that support that. So it's really important if one wants to advance especially to the higher ranks of an organization that they engage in and starting emotional intelligence in developing themselves and that area.

Mitch: (01:37)

And I think this is a good opportunity to really establish a common understanding for the rest of our conversation here. I know you mentioned connecting with others, you know, but how do you actually define emotional intelligence?

Doug: (01:50)

Yeah, emotional intelligence is a pretty complicated construct and we'll talk about the components later on from a high level. It's really someone's ability and capability to be aware of their own emotions and control those emotions and express their emotions in a way that facilitates strong interpersonal relationship with others. So for example, if I'm a CFO and I'm presenting to a group of analysts, it's very important for me to connect with them and really, express trust in confidence in a way that makes them believe, you know what I'm saying? Makes me credible, makes me convincing. So it's really all around controlling an individual's emotions, understanding emotions of others, and being able to manage those emotions too to build very strong lasting trustful relationships.

Mitch: (02:45)

Well, you just kicked off that answer right there with my next question. I know a little bit about emotional intelligence, but I'm hoping you can kind of identify and define the components that go along with emotional intelligence.

Doug: (02:59)

Yeah, there's four major areas and you don't have to master all the areas at once. Some of us are stronger in some areas naturally, and some of us have to work on other areas. The good thing about emotional intelligence is everybody could work on it and you get better. So there's four really big buckets with subcomponents. I'll walk through them, pretty briefly, but, you know, we could spend more time talking about individual ones later if you want. Now the first one is self-awareness. So that has two components, which is emotional awareness. So are we aware of our emotions and how we're reacting in a given situation? Next one is self-confidence under any self-awareness. So am I somebody who's confident in myself, somebody who makes people around me more comfortable because they believe I'm confident in what I'm doing and why I'm saying so that's the first component. The second component is self management. So then there's a little more, elements here. The first one is self control. So when I'm under pressure, am I able to maintain, control and control my emotions in a way that are effective instead of destructive? A second is trustworthiness. So am I somebody who delivers on what I say I'm going to do, can I be relied on and dependable? And that's a big part of emotional intelligence. Next one is is conscientiousness. So am I somebody who follows up, am I somebody who is into the details enough to make sure things are getting done without being a micromanager? But I need to be conscientious. Next component is adaptability. So am I somebody who could adapt the situation or am I rigid and I try to solve all problems the same way every time? Cause maybe that was successful for me in the past, but it would probably be limiting in the future. And then the last one is innovation under self-management, which is am I somebody who's always questioning the status quo and trying to figure out new and better ways of doing things. So self management has the most components. The last two components are social awareness, which is empathy. This is really important, especially for accountants because as accountants, sometimes we tend to be very analytical. where in business it's very important to show empathy towards your employees, empathy towards your shareholders, empathy towards your lenders or bankers to really let them know that you care about them and their interests as well as the company's interest. So empathy is one that's very important for accountants. And sometimes it's an area where, you know, there could be some skill development. last one under social awareness is organizational awareness. And this one is when you tend to need, when you get higher up in the ranks. So, not only do I understand my own emotions and my little group around me, but do I understand the entire organization and the various cultures and protocols across different geographic boundaries? And how do I respond in those different areas. The last bucket is relationship management. And in a lot of these are very important when you get to the higher level. So for example, the first component is influence. So am I able to be convincing and get folks to move in a certain direction that you know, I need for them to move forward, you know, a company's success or organizational success and how do I do in a way where I bring them along where they're part of the decision making as opposed to me just, you know, mandating orders. Next is conflict management. Cause as we could just senior management is lots of conflicts between divisions, between employees, maybe conflicts with the vendors or even competitors. How do we manage that conflict in a way that's productive and that's, you know, destructive or, cannibalizing, the situation. Next one is, teamwork as again, as you get higher, your teams get bigger. So we got...