The CFO “X-Factor” is Mental Fitness

As an Executive Coach for CFOs, I see a light bulb go on for leaders when they compare mind-fitness to the concepts of physical fitness. “If you are not physically fit, you feel physical stress as you climb 10 flights of stairs.” And CFOs are asked to climb fast, metaphorically run fast, day in and day out.

As with muscle-fitness, unless you have a certain level of mind-fitness, you feel stress — such as frustration, anxiety or dissatisfaction — while you lead difficult projects and as you work with others. Which is not unusual: 80% of CFOs score below the minimum level of mind-fitness required for peak performance and happiness. (Assess your own fitness here, in 5 minutes.)

The good news? Recent breakthroughs in technology and neuroscience prove one can dramatically increase one’s mental fitness in as little as 6 weeks. According to studies led by Stanford University researcher, lecturer and CEO coach Shirzad Chamine, experts can literally see visible changes – growth in the “gray matter” of regions of the brain that control executive function -- on an MRI scan.

3 Core Muscles constitute mental fitness for CFOs

Based on research that included 500,000 participants from 50 countries, including hundreds of CEOs, finance, operations, sales and technology teams, elite athletes and Stanford students described in the New York Times best-seller Positive Intelligence, these 3 key muscle groups are:

1. The “Saboteur” Interceptor Muscle.

The concept of a Saboteur is a useful metaphor, a personification of a group of behaviors that don’t serve you well. In fact, these behaviors derail you and get in the way of your own success. It’s the reason that only 20% of CFOs and their teams achieve their true potential.

Your Saboteurs generate all your NEGATIVE emotions – such as self-doubt, stress, anger, blame, guilt, procrastination, discontent and the like. Mental fitness equips you with the ability to discredit the false messages of your saboteurs, intercept them and disarm them. Below, we paint a clear picture of the 10 saboteurs, so you can more quickly identify which 2 or 3 most frequently interfere with you. None of us are beset by all 10; we typically have a few favorites we’ve allowed to form as strong habits.

2. Your “Sage” Muscles.

The “Sage” is a metaphor for your inner leader. The true you. The part of you that delivers peak performance with relative ease through the POSITIVE powers of your mind and body. This inner leader in you equips you to Empathize, Explore, Innovate, Navigate and Take Action, all at just the right time. Your Sage has great access to wisdom and insight. To clarity and certainty. To courage, and boldness. The key is to quiet the negative, interfering voices and to amp up the volume of your inner leader so you can hear it more quickly and easily.

3. The Self-Command Muscle. 

These are the mental muscles that enable you to more silence whichever Saboteurs are jostling for undue influence, faster and easier. You can build strength in the part of your brain that dissipates self-doubt, and recover from disappointments with greater speed than you have ever known.  You can spend much less time in anger, regret or indecision. These muscles can be built with an innovative set of 10-second exercise that build up the crucial Self-Command muscle in the brain. This enables you to prevent a Saboteur-hijacked mindset from running your decisions and actions.

Because insight is not enough. It does not last. Most change comes from building the core muscles that give you the strength to act in the face of an onslaught of negative thoughts and behaviors.

Executive Coaching for CFOs results in peak performance

What are these 10 Self-Sabotaging Behaviors for CFOs?

Let’s count down – and notice which 2 or 3 of these most resonate in your own mind.  My own top ones include the Hyper-Achiever, the Stickler / Perfectionist, and the Pleaser.  What about you?

WhAT GETS In YOUR WAY as an executive?

The “Judge” is the only self-sabotaging behavior that research shows is universal.  Every human being is subject to the internal voice of our own Judge, which is why it heads this list. Your Judge is the voice that beats you up over past mistakes. It fixates on what’s wrong with you. And with others. And with your circumstances. It is the cause of much of your stress.  And it reduces your effectiveness as a CFO.  When you learn to intercept your Judge, you free up great energy and capacity to focus on curiosity and exploration, to be able to navigate your challenges and come up with innovative solutions that move your company forward.

While few people make it to the C-suite with a victim mentality, as an executive coach for CFOs I do notice it among a subset of leaders who have experienced a series of setbacks and have begun to become passive about what is happening in and around them.  It’s the attitude that gives in to thinking, “Bad stuff is happening externally, or it’s being done to us, or to me. I don’t have much control.”  It is subtle and insidious, and it robs a CFO of his or her power to move the needle in the way your CEO, COO, colleagues, or private equity firm expect you to. One question I ask when I notice this mindset is, if you as the CFO -- the most influential 2nd or 3rd person in command at your company -- doesn’t have the ability to initiate, navigate and take action – who at your company does?  To whom are you ceding you power? A wake-up call and a specific, measurable approach for regaining mental fitness in this area is often a game-changer.

A restless CFO is easily distracted, with a scattered focus. This is a leader who juggles too many competing plans and tasks already, yet is always ready to start the next project. Aside from the negative effects of rarely finishing the hard stuff and completing challenging projects, your behaviors make it hard for others to keep up with the frenzy and chaos. You burn them out, and it’s impossible to build sustainable results this way.  A restless CFO finds it hard to create a visible track record of success, which can lead to some hard questions from your CEO, your Board, and from investors.  Addressing the root of what drives restlessness – often, the fear of missing out on something – is the key to a lasting shift.

Vigilance is part of what CFOs are hired for! Yet too much of it stifles the energy and creativity of both your team and your colleagues, and also impacts areas like operations, sales and I/T. A car needs an accelerator, not just a braking system. So does operations & finance. Seeing trouble around every corner wears people out – and you, also. More importantly, when real danger arrives, a hyper-vigilant CFO and his or her team has little left. Plus, hyper-vigilance creates doubts about your ability to respond with flexibility and resilience. You become less trusted, or even marginalized, because those who are more determined find ways to work around you. Given the changing power dynamics of most companies, how long can that last? Creating a more balanced approach is key.

One temptation in high-pressure roles is to avoid difficult or unpleasant tasks, not to mention some of the fierce conversations that are required in the C-suite. Or to focus on the positive and pleasant stuff, to the point where you downplay the importance of real problems, and try to deflect others. Procrastination is a way of life for an Avoider, along with losing oneself in comforting routines rather than facing difficult tasks head-on. This self-sabotaging behavior allows your Avoider saboteur to overcommit, and then often drop the ball. Instead of being direct, CFOs in avoider-mode resist others through passive-aggressive means.

If you consistently avoid or put off the hard but important in favor of the mundane but seemingly urgent, others begin to question your effectiveness. The tools of Positive Intelligence equip a CFO to shift his or her mindset from denying conflicts and negatives that do exist, to seeing the potential gifts each can be turned into. With new skills to turn any setback into some gift of knowledge, or strength, or inspiration, your confidence springs up again, and others’ trust level is greatly increased.  When what you’ve dreaded and avoided – especially in team relationship dynamics – stops festering, it frees up great energy to move forward with speed and ease.

If you’re wondering, “How can this possibly be a way I sabotage myself as a CFO?!” you are not alone. Many leaders say, “Being a Hyper-Achiever is how I campaigned for and won every job in my life. This is why I was chosen every time.” Yes, that may be true. It’s also true that your extreme focus on external success leads to workaholic tendencies, and to unsustainable pressure on yourself – and on your team. You overlook the needs of others. And your self-worth is only as good as your last pat on the back, which is not a fulfilling way to live. High achievers can also be hard to relate to. We’re unwilling to show much, if any, vulnerability. This intimidates many, and they feel judged or used -- valued only for their latest performance.

“So what”, you wonder? Well, how can you create cohesive, loyal teams? How can you reap the harvest of benefits that come from a high-functioning set of departments that are under the umbrella of today’s CFO? Unless you learn to appreciate others for more than what they’ve done for you lately, your effectiveness as a CFO will be limited – regardless of how much you personally achieve. The key instead is building muscles that create a measure of empathy, to navigate decisions in greater alignment with your broader VALUES, and to explore other effective ways of getting the desired results.

Some CFOs have a very strong need to be liked by their team, their peers, and in fact everyone. So, while they always go the extra mile, they also need a lot of reassurance. Reciprocation is important too, but it’s hard to express those needs directly. So, what happens? You suspend caring for your own physical, emotional or financial needs. You begin to feel taken for granted. Burnout begins, and resentment builds. Then one day, you’ve had it! There’s an explosion, or perhaps some implosion that leaves others surprised. You suddenly quit your job? You left the relationship? If so, it’s probably because you gave too much of yourself away. And now, you’re spent.

Another hallmark of a Pleaser saboteur is saying yes too much. “How is that self-sabotage,” you might wonder. Because your boss and colleagues love you for it!  Ah, but the cost!  You overcommit. This leads to either dropping balls, or more typically among the CFOs I coach, they go into hyper-achiever mode which leads to burnout (see above). Of course, because Pleaser saboteurs make it very hard for us to ask for what we want specifically, even adamantly if the situation requires it, the teams who report to such CFOs also suffer burnout.

That is because the CFO is not as effective in obtaining the resources to run the Finance organization with proper balance, or infrastructure investments to improve company analytics, and so on. More importantly, the Pleaser saboteur makes it  hard to drive the full level of accountability required to make sales or operations more effective. If your Saboteur has persuaded you that it is too risky to press those issues, you are setting yourself up for failure. But when a CFO is able to shift to a mindset of saying “Yes, IF …” certain conditions are met, or “No, UNLESS …” others are in place, he or she finds it’s incredibly freeing. And the fear of rejection or other penalties is greatly neutralized.

Rationality is highly prized in a CFO. Yet when you rely on your mind to process everything -- including relationships -- you can be perceived as cold, distant and arrogant. You over-rely on your brain, to the point where you devalue any information that comes from emotions or intuition. You ignore vital clues ​on what is important to others. If you are consistently baffled about people’s motives, if you often think to yourself, “I don’t get it!  Why would they do that?!” then you may also be the one who ends up saying, “How did they not pick me?!” or “How did I get fired?! It makes no sense!!!”

And you’re right. It makes no sense to your mind. But not everyone is rational all the time. If you think everyone makes decisions, even decisions related to M&A, funding, hiring, promoting and so based on facts, you are wildly kidding yourself. (Ask me about my early days working with CEOs and investors when I was in investment banking, doing M&A.) The point is: if your only tool is a hammer, you may treat everything like a nail. Look to your inner wisdom; that will clue you in.

Your body has a lot of signals you are likely ignoring, and it was made for more than just to carry that amazing head of yours. Your heart, gut, hands and feet have a lot of information they are trying to convey to you, which you have been discounting. Yet that’s the way to connect with others. The fact is, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. You need to connect with others with resonance, on their wavelength. Check this link to a video about resonance, and consider the metaphor of what it means to create resonance with others through your role as CFO.

Some of us say this with pride: “I’m a stickler for details,” or “I’m a perfectionist!” “Well, now what’s wrong with that,” you might ask. “I simply have high standards – and the world would be a much better place if everyone did also.” Yet being a perfectionist carries a very high price for CFOs. Your intense level of criticism – of yourself and of others – causes you to be rigid. You are less flexible in dealing with change, or with other people’s styles. You’re constantly frustrated.  But more than that: your style causes resentment in others, as well as self-doubt and resignation. Their experience is that no matter how hard they work, they can never please The Stickler.

You are constantly frustrated and disappointed with yourself and with others for not living up to ideal standards, anxious that others will mess up the order and balance you have created. We perfectionists seem to give off self-righteous overtones, perhaps even sarcastic or angry, thinking we are clearly right. Trying to avoid the fear of judgment, thinking we must always do everything in a way that is above reproach, is no way to live.

The good news is, you can find freedom as you build muscles of empathy for yourself and others, as you explore options to focus the power advantages of being a perfectionist on the 20% of things that DO require it.  For the other 80%, you can find ways to handle them in ways that can prove just as effective, and with a much lower cost: enabling you to get more done, faster.  This is one key to creating capacity for yourself, and to empowering your team so that you are better able to both leverage their skills and value, while encouraging them. Because when a perfectionist believes in you, that can be highly motivating.

Of course, Controllers are so important in finance, that’s a proper job title!  But “controlling” CFOs undermine the performance of their teams. They rob them of autonomy. They take charge of situations and people in order to bend them to their will. Highly impatient, sometimes angry, controlling behaviors always backfire.

You may see yourself as a straight-talking CFO. You may think you are connecting with others through competition, challenge, physicality or conflict. Instead, others see you as pushy and confrontational -- perhaps even intentionally intimidating. Yet you’re surprised when others get resistant, or rebellious!  That’s because people resent being controlled.

Now, you may reject the idea that it’s in response to your behavior. You can blame others for not stepping up, but that creates a nasty cycle. People give up and become passive. They wait for you to do it all, or they wait for you to fail. You’ll wonder why “they” aren’t working as hard as you.  Why your team’s not more effective!

Controlling CFOs find it hard to step back and consider the possibility that “Maybe it’s me …?!”

As an Executive Coach for CFOs, when I work with a controlling leader, the rate of turnover on the finance team is one of the first places we explore. It’s hard for confident, high-performing staff members to stay motivated and loyal, until you learn to shift your mindset and begin to build muscles that enable you equip others to lead. As you learn to encourage others, you will be surprised how well they can actually navigate situations based on a set of guidelines you can offer, without you having to keep your hand on the rudder at all times. This creates capacity for you to work on the issues most important to your CEO, COO and your Board.

Discover YOUR Saboteurs