The importance of charisma
The role of the CFO is rapidly changing as traditional financial management procedures merge ever closer with operational activities. Finance leaders no longer sit alone in their office analysing the financial impact of data, trends and strategic decisions.
The next generation of CFOs are becoming much more engaged with other departments and require a different set of skills to drive forward new behaviours. You will already be spending much more time:
- Helping to drive strategic decision-making on a number of key business matters;
- Analysing operational insights and using predictive financial modelling to drive profit improvement initiatives across your business; and
- Challenging your CEO and Board given your unique perspective covering finance and risk management.
These areas form an exciting, but yet vital, element of your CFO role and you will need to learn new skills in order to deliver them effectively.
Learning new skills
Many people argue that charisma is rapidly becoming one of the essential skills for the modern-day CFO.
The ability to influence people will carry increasing importance as your role continues to evolve. CEOs can be very unpredictable and often make quick decisions in order to drive forward their business. However, these decisions are not always properly analysed and the CFO needs to act as the conscience of the owner. This requires you to put the brakes on things where needed, challenge what people are doing and bring a sense of reality to ideas.
In addition to the above, the next generation of CFOs need to inspire and motivate teams to focus on strategic-thinking and to drive challenging goals. You will need to be capable of obtaining people’s buy-in and inspiring them to embrace change.
Becoming more charismatic
No matter how much charisma you may currently possess, there are lots of easy ways that you can become more charismatic within your role:
- Talk about your passions, in particular those that you share with others;
- Be conscious of your values and what you stand for;
- Be relatable about things so that you appeal to people’s feelings and emotions;
- Manage your nerves and act in a relaxed manner where possible;
- Listen with intent to show that you value people’s opinions;
- Ask more questions to show that you really care about people’s views.
- Portray your sense of humour when interacting with your teams;
- Be adaptable to each situation in order to appeal to people;
- Remember and use people’s names whenever talking to them;
- Have a genuine interest in other people and express this in your conversations;
Assess your skills
The above framework can help you to build your levels of charisma. Participants should now complete the following tasks:
- Identify people you work with who you believe possess high and low levels of charisma;
- Determine their key behaviours that lead you to these conclusions;
- Self-assess your own charismatic levels and benchmark them against each individual;
- Determine your skills gap for further improving your charisma; and
- Set yourself development goals with appropriate timelines and start implementing your action plan.
Summary
Charisma is rapidly becoming one of the essential skill requirements for a modern-day CFO. Your role is now much more focused on influencing key employees to adopt financial strategies and to drive operational change. Charisma is also a great skill for helping you to challenge your CEO and Board when appropriate.
