Understanding the skills and competencies required in a modern-day finance team

In today’s business environment, the finance team is much more than a unit that keeps records of financial transactions. A modern-day finance team has to be knowledgeable in areas such as corporate governance and risk management, as well as up-to-date on the latest technology and analytics.

The members of your finance team need to be able to think strategically and anticipate challenges that your business may face. This means having a broad understanding of the industry, as well as an understanding of how different departments within your organization interact. They should also have the ability to offer insights into potential opportunities for growth and improvement.

During this lesson, we will explore the key skills and competencies of a modern-day finance leader and also consider what skills are typically needed throughout the finance team.

Finance Leaders

The GrowCFO Competency Framework outlines the nine key competencies that are essential for a modern-day finance leader. Each of these nine competencies contains five skills:

The competency framework is split into the three categories highlighted within the inner blue ring:

• Foundation Skills: These are key requirements within the role and support all other activities. Most CFOs will have been constantly developing these skills during their career to date, although these are continually evolving and the majority of finance leaders still have various gaps to address.
• Implementation Skills: These are essential for helping finance leaders to deliver the business plan. These activities require finance leaders to work closely with the wider business, combining hard skills and soft skills with a powerful effect. This is where finance will also be creating lots of value across your company.
• Impact Skills: These play a hugely significant role in the effectiveness of the finance team’s day-to-day activities and contain many of the essential skills that will make finance leaders stand out as a critical voice. These can often be the hardest to master and will help maximize the value of all delivered tasks.

Each finance leader will have a different balance of skills depending upon their background, characteristics, and career experience to date. Very few finance leaders will maximize their performance against each of these skills. However, to successfully deliver best practice in a modern finance team, they need to maximize the impact of their biggest strengths and develop a sufficient understanding across all 45 skills.

Here is a link to the GrowCFO Competency Framework digital toolkit, which benchmarks the skills and experience of a finance leader against their most relevant peer group and provides a personalized learning plan based upon their biggest priority skills gaps: The GrowCFO Competency Framework – GrowCFO

Finance Team Members

For business leaders to get the most out of their finance teams, it’s essential to recognize the range of skills and competencies that are needed in today’s finance roles.

• Hard Skills: Finance team members need to have a deep understanding of accounting principles, financial analysis, budgeting, forecasting and reporting. They must be comfortable with software such as Excel, Access and other financial applications. They should have a strong understanding of the organization’s financial data and be able to interpret it accurately. Finance teams require strong expertise at delivering key activities such as governance, risk management, treasury, closing the books, financial reporting and business partnering.
• Soft Skills: Finance team members must have excellent communication skills to discuss finance with non-finance people and to effectively explain complex concepts in plain language. They must be good listeners, understand what is being asked for, and have the ability to think through problems and provide solutions. They must also be able to work well with a variety of stakeholders, both internally and externally, to build trusted relationships and provide influence.
• Personal Effectiveness: Finance team members need to be organized and detail-oriented in their approach, as well as being able to prioritize tasks efficiently without sacrificing quality or accuracy. They must also be able to work independently and collaboratively, when appropriate, and deal with the pressure of working to tight deadlines.
• High-Performance Team Skills: Finance team members should have the ability to adapt their skills and approach to different scenarios, as well as the drive and motivation to continuously improve and develop their knowledge. They must also be comfortable with working on multiple projects simultaneously, delegating tasks when necessary, motivating other team. members and leading by example.

By understanding what qualities are needed to make up a strong, modern-day finance team, business leaders can provide their team members with access to the essential learning and development activities to develop their core skills. In turn, this will help them to become more effective and efficient in their roles, while also supporting the business to achieve success.

Here is the link to a training syllabus for modern-day finance team members, derived from feedback provided by over 200 existing CFOs: Finance Team Training – Courses – GrowCFO