A large portion of your success as a CFO depends upon your colleagues and how you interact with them. It all starts with connection.
Home Depot CEO and former CFO, Carol Tome, told her story that emphasizes this point.
“During my first presentation to investors as Home Depot’s CFO, an investor in the front row fell asleep. He wasn’t fighting nodding off… he didn’t close his eyes for just a second… he didn’t have a glazed look in his eyes. He fell asleep and fell off his chair.”
After that, Tome realized that even if you know your firm’s numbers inside and out, you are toast if you can’t effectively communicate. This is especially true of your relationship with your colleagues.
Three major steps connecting with people within your firm:
- Don’t be a Bobblehead – Communicate clearly and often; play a role in operations; become involved and support organization-wide initiatives which originate outside of accounting and finance. Simply saying “Yes” or “No” without discussing your extended thought process becomes a lost opportunity.
- Piggyback Opportunities – Use business analyses as opportunities to show alternative solutions to issues. Often a CFO’s main involvement with colleagues is limited to financial analyses and resulting decisions. Challenging a business issue is not always about dollars.
- Put People First – “You have two ears and one mouth – use them in that proportion” a mentor once told me. Listen first and act second. This shows that you care about people’s opinions and respect their knowledge.
- To be an effective CFO you must take the lead to forge strong relationships. Your success as well as your firm’s depends on it.