Our second Finance To Leadership (F2L) program was addressed by Matt Turner, the Head of Finance at Seven West Media.
Matt’s career path started as an audit cadet in Big 4, and he progressed through to an M&A Tax Partner. He then left professional services to join Campus Living Villages and grew through a number of roles and assumed the Head of Finance & Tax role. Now at Seven West Media, he is the Head of Group Finance and has an oversight of the group finance function.
Having worked in different environments, Matt’s biggest learning experience around managing different stakeholders and their expectations is to stay true to his values, and to work harder and smarter than the others.
Matt also shared some of his key values that helped him throughout his career.
1. Find the right examples of people/mentor you want to follow and actively choosing not to follow the others.
2. Recognise your own strengths and playing it to your benefit, and compensating for any weaknesses that you may have.
When asked about what he found to be the most effective approach to developing his teams, Matt suggested that it is very important to keep the individual’s development ‘personal’, and making sure it is more focused on the individual than anything else. He also believes in letting the team take the credit for any successes they may have while bearing the brunt of any criticism on his own as a team leader.
We appreciated having Matt present frankly and honestly to our F2L group and all our participants certainly took something valuable away from the experience.
If you would like to find out more about our F2L program, please visit our website http://snip.ly/u5fzt
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