🗺️ Secret Roadmap to a Thriving Finance Career

Gone are the days when finance professionals spent their days crunching numbers and cutting checks. Times have changed — we’ve taken a front seat. 

Now more than ever, finance professionals are expected to take on organizational leadership roles where they drive change and lead innovation, all while guiding seamless operations. In turn, when building finance teams, the focus has shifted further away from technical skillset (while it is still important), driving demand for professionals with existing strong interpersonal skills.

If you’re looking for a roadmap to a successful career in finance, you’re in the right place.

Communication ➡️ Influence 

Communication is the first step to influencing business decisions, but you can’t stop there. Sure, communicating as a finance leader ensures both parties understand the other clearly, but this ends without one key factor: changed minds.

When you draw the line at clear communication, you achieve little more than talking in circles. Each side continues to argue why they’re right — Unproductive, right? Shifting from a communicator to an influencer is the key to getting past circular conversations by:

• Letting go of emotional attachment to the topic and your perspective

• Focusing on data and allowing it to guide your conversation

• Shining a light on what’s actually going to help push your shared goal(s) forward

Challenging The Status Quo

“This is how we’ve always done it” is a fantastic excuse to continue business as usual, but it’s a terrible approach to innovation and growth. 

As a finance leader, you have to have a healthy impatience with the status quo.

Apply empathy and respect (along with a little bit of pressure) to what everyone has always understood to be “the only way.”

✅ Advocate for creative solutions to address organizational problems. 
✅ Ask tough questions (empathetically) to lead to data-driven solves. 
✅ Invest in understanding how the problem began and how it can be addressed in the best possible way.

Strong leaders have to become change agents— 

And the road to successful change management is paved with sharpened interpersonal skills.

Pressing the Gas Pedal 🚗 The Power of Interpersonal Skills

It’s not just finance leaders who should be thinking about cultivating strong interpersonal skills. This might sound like it’s easier said than done, but following this process will prove these skills can be coached:

Conduct an honest skills assessment
Reveal where you and your team exhibit empathy, problem-solving, project management and data-driven influencing skills — highlight where those behaviors are lacking as well.

Look for a willingness to learn
Part of building a team is ensuring buy-in — that includes fostering a willingness and desire to learn these interpersonal skills. Without the willingness (and want) to learn, skill-building will not be possible.

Create the right environment
Interpersonal skill development requires vulnerability. Without a safe place to learn, grow and occasionally fail, your team might stray off the beaten path. Leverage empathy and communication to ensure your team feels safe to learn and grow.

Show up
A team can only go as far as its leader. If you’re not committed to showing up, learning and growing, what incentive do your team members have to do the same? Want to foster the interpersonal skills that build strong professionals and great business partners? 

Show up. Ask the hard questions. Lean into your own vulnerability. And celebrate calculated risk-taking — even when it doesn’t work out perfectly.

Want to master the art of interpersonal skills, communication and data-driven conversation to elevate your finance career? We cover everything you need to know. Tune into The CFO Show for the full conversation.

In case you missed it…

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What’s next…

Do you ever wonder if you are measuring the right business metrics? Sometimes we become complacent, measuring the same things because that is what we’ve always done. How do we know when it is time to retire some of the metrics or replace them with new ones? Joined by Craig Schiff, President & CEO, Lead Analyst, BPM Partners, we uncover all you need to know to select the right metrics for your business.