Confidence, Communication and Influencing Skills for Finance Business Partnering
By Andy Burrows
I want to give some helpful thoughts today about developing the behavioural skills needed for Finance business partnering.
I’ve written in the past about how essential it is for Finance business partners, CFOs, and indeed Finance professionals in general, to develop behavioural skills. And I know that other Finance writers are talking about this too.
And people are hearing the message, and I get asked about it. One question I received during a Finance careers event went something like this:
“I’ve worked in technical accounting and as a financial accountant, but my ambition is to do the best I can in my career. So, I really want to move to a Finance Business Partner role, as I feel there is more career growth potential in that area. My challenge is that my behavioural skills need a serious boost. What can I do to help improve my communication skills and my ability to influence or persuade my stakeholders, or even to simply be convincing enough at...
Synergies are not cost savings for the best CFOs
By Andy Burrows
After qualifying as a Chartered Accountant in public practice in England in 1995, I went to manage a Finance department of 16 people in one of the smaller divisions of a big bank.
It was my first experience of management, which was one of the reasons I took the job. I wanted to learn new skills.
Fortunately for me, at that time the bank was revamping its performance management processes and putting everyone from team leaders to senior executives through new management and leadership training.
And that made me reflect quite deeply on what it meant to manage people and lead teams right from the start of my management career.
One of things I quickly realised was that managers and leaders shouldn’t see themselves as delivering personally. It’s the team that delivers together, not the manager alone.
What that meant for me was that, whilst I had my own individual responsibilities, those responsibilities were secondary to ensuring the required output of my team....
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