Erin Daiber, an accounting career coach who spoke at the Foundation for Accounting Education's Business and Industry Conference Wednesday, knows that the past six months have been difficult and admitted that they have been difficult for her too. But rather than view the challenges of this pandemic as an obstacle, she invited her audience to view it as an opportunity for meaningful change in a new environment.

Beyond the technical skills that have always served CPAs well, Daiber said it's important for leaders to cultivate their "inner game," which "includes our consciousness, who we are, how we make decisions, our emotional intelligence, our values and belief systems." Times such as this, she said, demand no less.

"This is really important, because when your environment becomes more complex, and arguably it is more complex than it ever has been today, it requires more of us as leaders, and our inner game must evolve in complexity. ... When that doesn't happen, when we stay stunted at a previous level, as the environment gets more challenging or complex, it will start to hold us back. We cannot perform beyond the level of our inner game," she said.

A major part of doing so, she said, is moving away from what she called "reactive leadership," which is a style of leadership premised on responding to threats or problems as they arise rather than planning ahead. For instance, she said, imagine getting an email from your supervisor at 5 a.m. demanding to know where a report she asked for is. You feel an immediate sense of fear, a desire to make this problem go away, so you act and then feel a sense of relief when the crisis is averted. But Daiber said this becomes part of a pattern where "the same thing happens all over again: We fear or panic, we react, we handle things fine, we feel better until the next problem happens." She compared this state to a thermostat: Its goal is to achieve an equilibrium state within a narrow bound. This, however, limits our abilities, which she said will be seen in our business results.

"When this pattern plays out in our leadership, if we find ourselves constantly reacting to, and behaving to avoid, these problems and threats, our business results over time will look similar, where we might, if we take a sales person for example, we might realize, 'Uh-oh, our sales are down, I better jump into action and pound the pavement and knock on some doors.' Then my results peak and I feel good again. I'm not in any danger of getting fired, so I'm just going to relax, to settle down for a little, and my results may drop" she said.

This pattern can lead to situations like where, in an effort to be everyone's favorite manager and have time for everyone, one's own work suffers. Or, conversely, it could mean being so concerned with delivering results that a manager sets exacting standards that are impossible meet and so feels the urge to micromanage everyone else when they mess up. It could also lead to situations where one's absolute certainty of being right on a technical issue, on the one hand, does lead to people acknowledging a manager is intelligent but, on the other, turns off the clients and co-workers the manager talks down to. Or it could be the reverse, where managers are so full of uncertainty and doubt that they refuse to take control or intervene in situations that require their attention.

Being friendly, being diligent, being intelligent, or being humble are all behaviors that serve people well at first but can hold them back if they become a psychological crutch.

Daiber said that this is where a lot of leaders get stuck, to the point where the mindset can even get embedded into the culture of the organization itself. She noted that reactive leaders can and so still get results, but it's a fraction of what they could be if they would step outside their comfort zone.

"If we don't change the mindset from that reactive place, we continue to act based on that need that we have, whether for results or relationships or intelligence," she said. "We need that safety and security, and if we don't get it, we often double down, we go even harder to get that validation, but the reality is we have to be willing to let go of some of those things that may have worked for us in the past in favor of moving forward."

To do this, she said, one must shift from a reactive mindset to what she said was a creative one. Instead of being oriented around problems and threats, a creative leader is focused on vision and purpose, "not just any purpose but one they are committed to, that they're excited and passionate about and that inspires you to get into action. And the more action you take, the closer you get to that purpose and vision becoming reality, which inspired more excitement, more commitment, more passion and, over time, your business results will move in an upward trajectory."

On what, specifically, this means, Daiber said to focus on vision and purpose. She recommended a diagnostic called the Leadership Circle Profile, which is an assessment tool for qualities such as "authenticity" or "integrity." In the short term, she said people can also work to identify their reactive behaviors and make a plan to reduce them (she noted that everyone has both reactive and creative tendencies, and the goal is more to de-emphasize the reactive).

"Be as specific as you can about those behaviors that you do when you're reactive that you want to stop doing," she said. "Say you're really quiet in meetings and want to speak up more, or maybe you jump in too fast and want to step back. Be as specific as you can so you can recognize these behaviors as they're about to happen and stop yourself. So that would be step one. And we want to replace that behavior with creative behaviors, more effective leadership behaviors."