A Wonderful Opportunity For Your Tax Team To Grow

This is the last post in the 12 week series titled How To Develop A Leading And Productive Tax Team. Originally the #12 post was titled Time To Get Your Tax Team Offsite For The day- Why You Should Do It. Although I have now changed the title to A Wonderful Opportunity For Your Tax Team  the purpose is the same. Leading a tax organization requires a lot of time, effort and understanding of how your team thinks and interacts. Knowing if your tax team is operating effectively is essential to your management success. Anyone who sits in front of the computer monitor each day knows that our minds get fixated on the screen, next email, next report, etc..  If you have more than 25 years of experience in the tax profession, you will be very aware of having the same experience I am about to describe for you. Years ago, our phones would ring incessantly and people would communicate in full sentences; however, the phone does not ring as much as before because everyone is now emailing, texting in short bursts of expressions and acronym’s, twittering in 140 characters or less, facebook and linking up in a variety of different ways on the web. If you stay away from your desk for a day, you arrive back to your computer screen to see you have 200-300 emails (I know I do).  Whether you realize it or not your communication with others has been altered dramatically as you spend your day responding to emails and text messages and tweets.  Give your tax team a wonderful opportunity to grow professionally by communicating offsite for a day or away from the distractions of their computers and cell phones.

There is an exercise I recommend you do once a month with your team and you do not need to go offsite. You will be surprised at the progress your tax team makes implementing this one idea once a month. Situate everyone away from their desks and distractions of any kind. Make certain they all have a notebook and pen when they meet with you so they can write down notes and ideas from the encounters. If you can put them in a circle are around a table facing each other it is best.  Ask each of your team members to explain the 3 primary projects they are working on this month. Ask them what problems they have run into on this project or information they found interesting. You will uncover a great deal of valuable information about how your team is operating when you hear these responses. You will even uncover people who do not know what they should be doing. As you uncover what everyone thinks is a priority and learn about the projects they are working on, you can make more informed decisions in managing them and the tax reams priorities. Knowing this enables you to help them refocus on the most important tax department priorities, and enables the more experienced team members to assist less experienced members focus on what is important. Everyone has more projects than they can handle these days so prioritizing them is essential to your overall management success.

Managing your entire team in a way that keeps them in step with the rest of the team responsibilities is a wonderful skill.  Engaging two, three or more minds on any particular problem usually turns up great ideas and solutions fast. When you are constantly facing tax deadlines, saving time is a valuable asset to your entire team. Taking the time to take a time out, so team members understand the priorities and the goals, makes it so much easier for the team to be more productive and successful together. Your ability to get your team offsite, away from their desks and computer screens, and communicating effectively their projects and ideas, is a very powerful management tool. It is a wonderful opportunity for you and your tax team to grow professionally together.

THIS IS #12 OF A SPECIAL 12 WEEK BLOG SERIES: HOW TO DEVELOP A LEADING AND PRODUCTIVE TAX ORGANIZATION IN 2016. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO RECEIVE A PDF OF ALL POSTS IN THIS 12 POST SERIES, PLEASE REGISTER HERE

 

—We Recommend You Read The Previous Blogs In This Series—

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