A distinguished finance leader answers our question: When you entered the CFO office for the first time, what’s the one piece of advice you wish someone had given you?

Dickerson: As far as leadership goes, I keep coming back to self-awareness. Where are you going to add value in the organization and where are you not? Build around those to balance out the competencies you need in your group to be successful. The thought here is that weaknesses are not necessarily a bad thing, and the biggest strength is understanding what they are and building the right competencies and the right attributes around yourself so that you have the right balance around your team to be successful overall.

I also think that patience is very important. Patience to learn and develop. Put the time and energy into developing your skillset so that when you do become a CFO, you’re ready for it. Too often today, I think, people want to jump that learning curve a little bit, and they are very focused on taking on as much responsibility as possible. I’ve seen too many examples of people who have moved up the learning curve too quickly, and they didn’t appreciate the time required to develop and learn.”