What My Role as Finance Manager (at a Leadership Company) has Surprisingly Taught Me about Leadership

At LIW, we advocate Leadership that shows up through practice. Working in finance at LIW has offered some of the most unexpectedly rich leadership lessons and, surprisingly these lessons have shown up through practice. Here are my 5 leadership lessons as a finance professional:

1. Financial competence is a whole-company discipline, not limited to a corner desk

Every person in our organisation is, in essence, a mini-CFO. They make decisions every day that affect our financial health, how time is spent, what resources are used, what's prioritised. When the team understands finances and engages, everything shifts. Competence starts here, equipping every team member with the language, the tools, and the confidence to engage meaningfully with financial outcomes. Our financial framework, budgets, business plans and strategy are communicated throughout the team and often, discussed at sprint plans, weekly finance and sales operations meetings, quarterly reviews and annual forecast meetings.

2. Clarity is everything

If your team can't explain why results look the way they do, that's a leadership signal, not just a finance one. Understanding what drives performance and delivers results is the Clarity required for a successful, inclusive team. The same is true for leadership. Clarity in priorities, expectations, and communication is what separates leaders who react from leaders who act with purpose. We discuss financial results down to the client and the project each month and learn about the results and where to direct our focus and energy to improve those results to benefit our clients as well as our team. It’s clear that throughout the team right now, everyone could confidently discuss our P&L and gross profit margin, understanding our results and how we got there. This is the perfect platform for us all to discuss our future direction to ensure profitability.

3. Climate is essential: Finance shouldn't be smoke and mirrors

One of the biggest cultural shifts we made as a company was to bring financial transparency out of the boardroom and into everyday conversation. At LIW, we talk openly about our financial health, the challenges, the opportunities, the decisions we face. That kind of Climate builds trust, ownership, stronger collaboration and collective accountability. Transparency isn't a risk, opacity is. Asking your team about the external forces that may impact us financially; How long do you think this will last? What effect do you think it will have? What are you hearing from your clients? What are some possible outcomes? also creates a Climate of psychological safety and inclusiveness.

One of the best examples of this in action was a round table ‘all staff’ discussion, we had at the start of the COVID pandemic. It was an open, honest discussion about what we each thought may happen, how long we thought we’d be in lock down, (my prediction of a few weeks was obviously hilariously off), how COVID would effect our clients and the economy in general. We all had a voice in our proposed response, the changes we needed to make financially and otherwise to get through and ultimately thrive as a business (a team) in good health.

4. Competence in action: Know your levers and talk about them openly

At LIW, we regularly discuss the levers that shape our results: gross profit margins, the balance between permanent team members and our broader consulting team, and how and when we invest in marketing and events. These aren't executive secrets. When your whole team understands what moves the needle, they can contribute to moving it. That's Competence in action and it's powerful. Financial competence means we all have a voice; we are all equipped to make decisions on a day-to-day basis considering the financial health of our organisation, and we all contribute ideas that move us forward and contribute to our future success.

5. Clarity, Climate and Competence

I've learnt the importance of building a culture where financial conversations are safe and frequent (Climate), making sure everyone knows what success looks like and why (Clarity), and investing in the skills and knowledge that we all need to contribute (Competence).

And perhaps the most important lesson of all, is that financial health doesn't exist in isolation. At LIW, we've come to see it as part of an integrated system, one that balances financial health, team health, and client relationship health together. Nurture all three, and you create the conditions for truly sustainable performance.

When you get all that right, finance stops being something that happens in one department and becomes something the whole organisation creates together.