Karen Van den Driessche and Olivier discuss why treasury professionals need mentors from different backgrounds. They argue that internal consultants must be collaborative and solution-oriented, and that diverse mentorship accelerates both technical skills and career growth in finance.
In my organization, I would look more for internal consultants, but when I look for qualities or candidates, I really want people who know how the business works. Consulting, it's consulting, but practical consulting. So when I look for people, I don't really look at qualifications that much. What I need is people who have the right attitude, who have a can do mentality, who understand complexities of the business and who can identify solutions to help the business. So where I don't want it to be that our finance or business partner or businesses come to us and say we have this problem, solve it, we really want it to be a corporation, I guess, if that's what you would kind of call it. So that we bring expertise from both the business or the finance and the treasury team together and come up with solutions that are suitable for both. It also needs to fit into the treasury strategy. So when I look for really mostly aptitude, the way I always say it is I don't want passengers on the bus, I want drivers. For me, the meaning is it gives you a safe place to share IDs to voice your concerns. Because we always look as very strong men and women when we are in our profession. But we're all human, so we don't have all the answers. And we sometimes need to, in a safe environment, be able to share concerns, try out ideas, sometimes even doing a presentation or rehearsing a presentation without the risk of looking stupid, if that's the word.
A professional opinion in a sounding board environment where you can. What do you think of this? What do you think? Yeah, critiquing and saying, right, I think you should change this and this, or make it shorter or longer or whatever.
Yes. So that's on the technical side, I'll call it, but also on the career side. Right. How do I deal with certain people in the organization that I have a hard time connecting to? How do I convince people or how do I make choices or decisions within your own career environment? I mean, is staying in treasury the right thing? Do we want to look at something else? I mean, I also think that it's important for a mentor not necessarily to be in the same department or what would you call it, the same environment as you are. I have another mentor who used to be the VP of Finance of our technology solutions business. I still talk to her and she has this. She knows the business, she knows finance, she doesn't know treasury, which is actually great because she has a different point of view. And Olivier has always been like that as well. They can give you sound advice, additional elements to think of when you're trying to make a decision and help you guide or guide you on making your own well thought through decisions.
