Financial professionals are now front and centre of decision-making and the need to develop influencing skills is considered a vital part of their toolkit.

The importance of influence for finance and accounting professionals cannot be emphasised enough. The need to earn trust, understand audience preferences and adapt communication styles are essential skills for the modern financial professional.

But what if you don’t necessarily have an outgoing personality? Not a problem, experts say. Indeed, many executive coaches would argue that a sociable disposition is not a prerequisite to developing influencing skills.

“I guess influencing may come more naturally to some than others, but I think the most important skill of influencing is not what you say, but how you listen and what you do before you speak,” says Chris Paterson, an FCA and accredited Master Executive Coach at Smile Be Curious.

Vital skills to hone one’s influencing skills include political agility, clarity of goals and understanding the decision-making processes. But, critically, financial professionals have to earn enough trust to be able to be included in key conversations first.

To effectively influence as a finance and accounting leader, finance professionals should focus on strong analytical skills to translate complex financial data into actionable insights, communicate clearly with diverse stakeholders, build strong relationships across departments, demonstrate strategic thinking by aligning financial goals with overall business objectives, and present findings with confidence and enthusiasm to gain support from decision-makers. 

Part of that is in finance-business partnering, such as how skilful you are at bringing numbers to life. It’s also about the core influencing skills of understanding your audience, their motivations and their worldview. 

Play to type

Some business psychology tools, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, break down individuals’ character traits into categories such as analytical, extrovert, intuitive, thinking and feeling. But many experts argue that humans are, in general, a mixture of all of these, with some people showing more of one trait than another. 

Avoid diagnosing individuals though, warns Paterson, but do consider that people are different. Some colleagues might be more analytical than others and will therefore require deep detail to be persuaded. While others might be more action-orientated and just want the headlines. When dealing with those people, consider being “brief, bold, and gone”. 

“My approach to being a finance professional always involved influencing. It’s basically part of the job. And there’s a much more interesting version of being a finance professional where you spend time looking up, out and forwards (as opposed to backwards, inwards and down into detail), and that typically then involves decision-making, and so being able to bring the perspective of a finance professional to those conversations is critical,” Paterson says. 

On the plus side, all of these skills can be acquired through shadowing your colleagues and bosses whom you admire, and listening to experts, as well as some self-reflection.

“As a leader it’s important to reflect on one’s experiences to date. Consider when you’ve enjoyed leadership the most, when you’ve been the most effective as a leader, and other patterns. A lot of leadership is about connecting and sharing with others and hearing their stories,” Paterson says.

Take a lesson

For political agility, the simplest way of thinking about politics is knowing who the decision-makers are, understanding internal decision-making processes and ensuring you understand enough about the process in order to follow it. 

There may be other layers to dig through, but in general once you can identify who it is that you need to influence and what you want them to think, feel and then take action on, then you’re on the right track to positively influence. 

Lessons from the now classic self-help book ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ by Dale Carnegie, first published in 1936, stand the test of time. Carnegie’s main message from the book emphasises building positive relationships through empathy, genuine interest and avoiding criticism, while also highlighting the importance of praise, listening and remembering names. 

Another facet of influencing is indirect influencing. If you don’t have a relationship with a certain person but another colleague does, then asking them to influence on your behalf can also be effective.

“For some people that might seem Machiavellian. It depends. If you could say that what you are trying to make happen is good for customers, good for the organisation and good for the people involved, then actually the end justifies the means and that’s absolutely fine. 

“Now, if you’re doing it to advance your own agenda at the expense of someone else’s, and it’s potentially going to do the organisation harm and not in the customer’s best interest, then yes, Machiavelli is at play,” Paterson says.

Critically, though, influencing can and perhaps ought to be a more ordinary day-to-day task, where finance professionals are business partnering and developing relationships with regular dialogue and sound advice.