Most CPAs earn a leadership role by being the best at the technical work. Then the promotion comes and the things that you did to get the role are no longer enough. Your results become the team's results and the habits that made you a strong performer start to work against you. This course describes the changes in the skills required in moving from technical expert to a trusted leader.

• Recognize the expert habits that become bottlenecks in a new leadership role. 
• Apply three practices that build trust as a leader:  
  • Set a clear performance standard for the team 
  • Delegate work that grows people and improves throughput 
  • Have the conversations they have been avoiding 
• Build a 30-day action plan from a leadership self-assessment. 

The expert trap. As a technical expert you were rewarded for having the answers and doing the work yourself In a leadership role that same instinct works against you. When you solve every problem and review every detail, your team stops growing and you become the bottleneck. This section names the trap and explains why the habits that earned the promotion are the ones that hold you back once you are leading people. 

The two kinds of trust. The trust an effective leader builds is different from the trust a technical expert earns. Experts are trusted for their answers. A leader has to earn a harder kind of trust: that their judgment is sound, that they will develop their people, and that they will say the difficult thing when it needs saying. This section covers what changes, and why it drives how a team performs.

Setting the Standard for Performance. Most new leaders carry a standard in their head but never say it out loud, then get frustrated when the work comes back wrong. This section shows you how to make your expectations clear, so your team knows what good looks like and can meet it without you redoing their work.

Enabling the Team. The instinct to do it yourself feels faster today and costs you over the year, because your people never develop. This section reframes delegation as the main tool you have for growing your team. You learn to hand off real work with the context and authority to carry it, which builds capability and takes you off the critical path.

Navigating the Hard Conversations. Many technical leaders would rather solve a hard problem than have a hard conversation, so the difficult ones get put off. Avoided conversations do not go away; they compound. Your best people already know who is not pulling their weight, and your silence costs you their trust. This section gives you a practical way to approach the conversation you have been avoiding.

Reading your leadership self-assessment. Before the session you complete a short self-assessment that scores you across six areas of the move into leadership. During the webinar we walk through how to read your profile and pinpoint the two areas where you have the most room to grow.

Building your 30-day plan. You leave with a one-page plan for your first 30 days, built from your self-assessment results and what you take from the session. It names your two priority areas, one practical action for each, and a simple way to track your progress. 

Live webinars have varying levels of expected interaction, with some requiring microphone and camera capabilities to support a proper learning experience – please email pdreg@bccpa.ca if you have concerns. 

In general, we encourage participants to have their cameras turned on to enhance their virtual learning experience. This practice promotes a stronger connection with the instructor and fellow participants, and fosters improved communication and collaboration.

Live Webinar FAQs can be found here.  

Registration terms and conditions, including the cancellation policy can be found here. If you require further assistance, please contact the PD Department.