Training Supervisors in Your Firm
California CPA magazine: July 2008
By Ronald C. Evensen, CPA
Whether in public practice, education, government, industry or somewhere in between, a key indicator of your success will be your ability to work with a wide variety of people. As a result, more and more CPA firms are investing in the “soft skills” that allow their team members to be better communicators, negotiators, supervisors and overall contributors to the firm.
Investing in Supervisors
It’s been a rough several years for CPA firms in terms of recruiting and retaining talent. And as anyone who has been through the process knows, recruiting can be quite costly. That’s why retaining quality staff is so important to a firm’s bottom line.
A key way a firm can invest in its staff at many levels is to ensure its supervisors have the tools they need to do their jobs. Supervisors play an important role in controlling personnel costs through proper motivation of staff, delegation and on-the-job training—thus the increasing importance of people skills to the success of supervisors.
Consider the following:
1. Supervisors spend an increasing portion of their time dealing with people and their problems (assistants, managers, partners and client personnel).
2. The definition of productivity typically changes as people progress in their firm. Early in a person’s career, the firm wants to maximize chargeable hours. Later, the firm may want its people also to be involved in developing or teaching CPAs, recruiting, dealing with potential clients and updating technical manuals, functions that can be classified as productive non-chargeable time.
3. Frequently people problems are intermixed with technical problems, requiring not only technical knowledge, but also people skills.
4. A supervisor must learn to work smart and teach others to do the same.
5. Dealing with people is an exciting part of personal growth and an opportunity to increase your financial rewards and personal satisfaction.
Supervising, Evaluating and Counseling Assistants
One of the cornerstone commandments for any supervisor is to train your replacement! If no one else can do your job, how can you be promoted to bigger and better things?
Training your replacement involves assigning, teaching and providing feedback to assistants. To be fully effective at this, you must personalize your efforts for every employee because each has differing personalities and experiences. In spite of stereotypes that imply that all accountants are clones, the truth is that “one size does not fit all.”
When less-experienced staff are asked to identify the qualities of their best supervisors, they include such things as “effective teacher,” “good explainer,” “excellent communicator,” and “was patient.”
Professionals are not all motivated the same way:
• Some are motivated by achievement; they need to complete worthwhile and difficult tasks.
• Others are motivated by recognition; they like to be the center of attention. Some have a need for affiliation; they want to be part of a team or group.
• Another motivational need is for calm and stability; they are most comfortable where urgent immediate action is not required.
• Finally, there is the need of security—to be assured that their basic needs will be met. They are not comfortable in risk situations.
How does one discover which of the above needs most motivates someone working with you? By getting to know your assistants better. Ask them what they like to do. Use open-ended questions—questions that imply more than just a yes or no answer are desired. Then, listen to their responses! This does not have to take a tremendous amount of time, but can pay big dividends.
With this understanding, what do the best supervisors do? They:
1. Give assignments to assistants that not only get the job done correctly and efficiently, but also provide growth for the assistant.
Take time to give thorough instructions to your assistant, then give them time to go over those instructions and see what questions they may have. More time is lost trying to correct mistakes made because of poor instructions at the beginning than is spent giving thorough instructions. Many people in CPA firms feel that they show how good they are as a supervisor by how many review notes they write. The volume of review notes really indicates the quality of the supervisor’s initial instructions.
2. Frequently check on assistants during the job to see how they are doing.
This can improve performance by correcting problems early. If assistants are on the right track and you feel they understand what is needed, less frequent checking is necessary.
3. Properly deal with questions.
This affects assistants’ morale and performance. Be willing to listen and not make assistants feel less of a professional because they ask questions. When someone continually asks questions, and it significantly interferes with the supervisor’s work, have them write down their questions. Many times, just by seeing the question written, the answer comes to the person. Then, the supervisor only has to help with the most important questions.
4. Give timely feedback after a task is completed.
How this is communicated is critical to staff development. A supervisor’s job is to help build effective, efficient, successful professionals—not to destroy them.
Future Success
With competition in the profession continuing to increase, the mastering of these human relations skills becomes critical to the success of each CPA firm. According to a survey of 400 companies, as published in the Journal of Accountancy, November 2000, “By acquiring the right mix of personal and business skills, accounting and finance professionals can increase their chances of being promoted.” The personal skills listed as being most in demand were, and continue to be: leadership, interpersonal, management and supervisory communication, problem solving, decision making, time management and teamwork.
Ronald Evensen, CPA has served on the AICPA Committee on Small Business Development and as president of the Arizona Society of CPAs. He can be reached at rmi@mstarmetro.net.
