You are well aware that you want to progress in your finance career, probably moving from a manager to a director, perhaps other leadership roles. You take the right steps to the best of your knowledge; your technical skills are on point, and you stick to deadlines, but when it is promotion season, somehow you are overlooked. Perhaps it is not about promotion; it is about having a balanced career life, exercising more and the right influence, or maybe you want a career that brings you better job satisfaction.
Could it be you are missing something? The truth is the journey to career progress in finance is not a straight line, and some of the obstacles that hold finance leaders and professionals from making their desired progress are often subtle and hidden in blind spots. In this article, we are going to provide you with the non-technical obstacles that hold you back from progress in your finance career and also practical steps to deal with these challenges.
What is Involved in Preparing Your Finance Career for Leadership Roles
Excelling in your finance career takes more than your technical skills; of course, your technical skills get your feet into the finance industry, but your progress lies in adjusting from being the finance professional with excellent technical expertise to becoming a strategic finance business partner. This means you will invest time and resources to intentionally build leadership skills, such as clear communication, influence and the ability to develop finance teams that can own business processes without constant hand-holding.
Additionally, you also need to become the finance professional who is able to use data for strategic forecasting. Be prepared to handle difficult conversations; in fact, learn how to handle them instead of running away from them. In summary, for your progress to happen in finance, you need to continually nurture both your people and strategic skills.
5 Obstacles Holding Your Career Progress in Finance and How You Can Break Through
Now let’s discuss the 5 obstacles holding you back from progressing in your finance career and strategic steps you should take to deal with them:
Fear:
Being in the finance industry means being in a place with no room for mistakes and the fear of making mistakes or failing. This fear can also be imposter syndrome, but for a lot of finance professionals, their biggest fear is how they will be able to transition from being a technician to leadership roles and the uncertainties. If this is your plight, I urge you to focus on what you can control and let go of what you cannot.
Prioritisation (your career always comes last)
You have this unending plan to work on career development, but you keep procrastinating. Your calendar is filled with other activities that you’ve placed over your career. Over the years, your career has been waiting as a side project, and this particular challenge is very common among finance professionals. If this is you, you can start by treating your career like a deliverable; in your busy schedule, create an uninterruptible slot for your career development and treat it like you’d do every other project that matters to you.
Overthinking
Your technical training has made you an analyst, and this is a desired hard skill for finance people. Things actually get funny when this particular skill leads to analysis paralysis, where you become so engrossed in weighing your next step that you never get to act on any of your decisions. The irony here is that this desired skill has now turned into the obstacle that is keeping you from progressing in your career. How can you deal with this? Practice time blocking, create a rough plan and start working on it. You gain more clarity on a goal as you work on it, not as you think of it.
Perfectionism
Another desired skill in finance is precision, but this skill can be misused by a finance professional when it comes to your career progress. It can make you scared of working on your career progress because you don’t feel 100% ready, which rarely happens in life. Start now and accept that there’s no perfect moment or a perfect you; step up to your career progress. That’s how you get ready for what it brings.
Self-sabotage
You have drawn up your to-do list, your intentions are on point, but when the opportunity comes, you let it pass by, and this happens again and again. This is where curiosity becomes an advantage; rather than crossing with yourself, become curious about the repeating pattern and identify what tends to obstruct you at the important moments, perhaps one of the 4 obstacles we’ve discussed above.
Take note of the overlap between these. Perfectionism is fuelled by fear. Self-sabotage is fuelled by overthinking. Most of them stem from a lack of self-awareness and clarity about your true desires. That’s human, not a defect. However, awareness is the first step toward progress, and it is very difficult to discover on your own.
I am Melanie Coeshott, founder of Blue Diamond Coach. I am an FCA chartered accountant and ICF PCC accredited coach with 22 years in finance, and I coach finance professionals and leaders through exactly these obstacles. I have sat where you sit, and I have watched many capable finance people get unstuck once they see clearly what has been holding them back.
If you recognise yourself in any of these, you do not have to work it out alone. Sometimes one honest conversation with someone outside your situation is all it takes to see the way forward.
Book a Free Chemistry Session: a relaxed 30-minute chat about what is holding you back and your next step.