Numbers
When people find out I am a CPA they tend to assume that means I am good at math. I am expected to be the scorekeeper when we play chicken foot and to count the dots on other people’s tiles when they have been stuck with lots of points when someone else wins a round. That or they ask me questions about their taxes. Not my area of specialization.
While I started out in the Assurance practice, auditing the financial statements, that wasn’t about performing mathematical calculations. My roles transitioned to Risk which involved assisting my clients with improving the processes that led to creating the numbers in the financial statements. So how to make the processes more effective and efficient, again not math. Then I moved into Learning where I assisted my clients with identifying the learning needs and then designing and developing effective learning strategies and content to address the need. Never in my career did I need to or claim to be good at math.
Yet there is a fascination with numbers.
Does a person’s salary or bank balance represent their true net worth? Not even close in so many cases. Many of the most giving, caring people I know aren’t the ones with the largest paychecks.
Does a person’s age reflect their maturity, their zest for life, their abilities, or their future? Not necessarily. We have probably all met people who acted old even when they were young and hopefully we have been blessed to know senior citizens who still have a mischievous twinkle in their eyes and who can make every encounter fun.
Net worth, age, weight, IQ – we have so many numbers we use to categorize people. They aren’t necessarily inaccurate, but they may not be the most accurate description of someone. Besides, aren’t we all so much more than the sum of these numbers?
So rather than ask questions looking for a quantitative response, let’s focus on qualitative characteristics – put the tape measure around someone’s heart and focus on the attributes that really matter.
Blessings,
Vicki
© Chateau Life Coach