Communication is king

Think of the best finance leaders you know…

What 1 thing do they all have in common?

For me, it’s the fact that they’re all excellent communicators

It has nothing to do with their excel skills, advanced financial modeling abilities, ability to leverage ai in their day-to-day work, etc.

It’s simply about how they can communicate complex topics in a simple way.

And if you’re looking to level-up your career and improve your communication skills, here’s a few tips on what’s worked for me:

Prepare, practice, repeat

2 weeks ago I gave you a full look into my results meeting preparation efforts.

And I can’t underscore this enough (so I’ll mention it again here…)

You need to be thoughtful about what and how you communicate.

Communication is not simply a skill us finance professionals are born excellent at - we’re overwhelmingly introverts and our brains are moving 100mph.

Often what comes out of our mouths is not what we intended.

Therefore, our goal is deliberate practice on improving communication.

For me, this looked like getting a small group of us finance people together to practice communicating in a safe space.

We’d each take turns in a mock real-life scenario (e.g. presenting financials to the VP of Sales) and giving each other feedback on what went well/didn’t.

We did this every month… for years.

If you want to get better at communicating, the fastest way is deliberate practice.

Write for clarity

After a decade in corporate FP&A, I’ve learned 1 critical thing about myself:

I don’t know things as well as I think I do

There’s this weird thing that happens when we keep ideas in our heads - we think they make perfect sense to us until we have to write them down or teach them.

And while I believe teaching is the best way to gain clarity around a topic, sometimes we don’t have the luxury of teaching someone else.

A more universal approach is to simply grab a blank piece of paper and write out exactly what you would teach someone about a topic.

Your brain has this way of smoothing over what you don’t know in your head, but when you are forced to write something down you become aware of exactly what’s missing.

Data visualization = data communication

A dying art in finance is the ability to tell a clear story with data (tables, charts, graphs, etc.)

And while I don’t advocate you spend all your time behind a screen, sometimes that extra 2 hours of making a better visual to tell the story of the results is well worth it.

Many talented business execs speak the language of data and finance. So mastering data visualization clarity can set you apart.

Just think about how you interact with social media…

If you’re anything like me, you appreciate a well-created visual (can be a simple doodle) to illustrate a complex topic.

In finance we have the ability to do the same thing. We have access to all the data in the company and therefore are in a unique position to tell compelling stories with data visualization.

The art of organizing information into a framework is more of an executive skillset than you might think.

In summary:

There are a few ways I like to improve my communication.

And none of them are silver bullets.

But knowing that communication is an executive skillset can help you focus on improving yours to grow your finance career.

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