Kingsley Aikins, Good work doesn’t speak for itself… But you can!

In the Season 4 finale of Difference Makers Discuss, Kingsley Aikins makes the case for the career skill we were never taught.

There is a piece of career advice that many of us have heard at some point, delivered with great confidence by a well-meaning mentor or manager: keep your head down, work hard, and let your good work speak for itself.

It sounds sensible. It feels safe. And according to Kingsley Aikins, it is pretty much the worst professional guidance you can receive.

That is the arresting starting point for the Season 4 finale of Difference Makers Discuss, the popular online series from Chartered Accountants Worldwide. In this final episode, host Sinéad Donovan sits down with Aikins for a conversation that is at turns funny, frank, and packed with genuinely practical insight for anyone navigating a career in finance or professional services.

Who is Kingsley Aikins?

Kingsley Aikins has built a career out of understanding how relationships work. He is the author of Networking Matters, published by Chartered Accountants Ireland, the founder of the Lansdowne Club in Sydney (now the largest Irish business network in any city in the world), and the man who spent 21 years running the Ireland Funds, raising hundreds of millions of dollars for projects across the island of Ireland.

His own story is proof of the principles he now teaches. He arrived in Sydney not knowing a single person. He invited twelve people to dinner and called the gathering the Lansdowne Club. He wrote a cold letter to Tony O’Reilly, one of Ireland’s most prominent business figures, and was invited to lunch. That lunch led to a 21-year career.

None of it happened by keeping his head down.

Networking is not what you think it is

One of the most refreshing aspects of this conversation is how directly Aikins dismantles the assumptions many people bring to the word “networking.” He is candid about the fact that he once disliked it intensely, associating it with something transactional and inauthentic. What changed his view was a gradual realisation that networking, done properly, is simply about being genuinely useful to other people.

The distinction matters. Approaching a professional relationship with the question “what can I get from this?” is immediately obvious to everyone in the room and, Aikins argues, it rarely works. Approaching it with “how can I help?” changes the dynamic entirely.

He also makes a point that surprises many audiences: introverts often make better networkers than extroverts. They tend to ask better questions, listen more attentively, and engage with greater authenticity. The person working the room and firing off business cards is not necessarily the one building the more valuable connections.

The skills that schools do not teach

Much of the conversation touches on a theme that will resonate strongly with professionals in the Chartered Accountancy world. Technical skills, Aikins argues, are essential. They get you through the door. But the skills that actually drive careers forward are the ones that are almost never formally taught: listening, curiosity, resilience, communication, and the ability to build genuine relationships.

His formulation is memorable: hard skills get you on the ladder, but soft skills get you up it.

Sinéad Donovan, who is involved in the education of Chartered Accountants, picks up on this thread, noting the profession’s growing awareness that the next generation of accountants will need to be far more than technically proficient. As artificial intelligence continues to take on more of the technical workload, the distinctly human skills become more valuable, not less.

You can make your own luck

Another idea that runs through the episode is the relationship between networking and serendipity. Aikins is a firm believer that luck is not simply something that happens to you. It is something you can, within limits, make more likely.

His argument is straightforward: luck, serendipity, and happy coincidence do not tend to occur when you are sitting at your desk or at home. They happen when you are in motion, when you put your talents on display, when you talk to people you would not ordinarily meet, and when you are open to the unexpected. The researcher Daniel Kahneman puts it this way: great success is about a little more skill and a lot more luck. Aikins’ point is that some of that luck is within reach if you go looking for it.

On personal brand

The final section of the episode addresses personal brand, a phrase that makes many professionals wince. Aikins acknowledges the discomfort directly, but his argument is difficult to argue with.

Whether you have consciously shaped your professional reputation or not, one already exists. Other people have a view of you, often before they have even met you. The question, as he frames it, is not whether you have a personal brand. It is whether you want to be in the driving seat or the passenger seat when it comes to what that brand actually says.

Watch the episode now

This is one of the most engaging and practically useful conversations in the entire run of Difference Makers Discuss. It is available to watch on demand now via the Chartered Accountants Worldwide website and YouTube channel.

Whether you are early in your career, mid-way through, or in what Kingsley Aikins cheerfully refers to as your “third act,” there is something here for you.