The 5 Soft Skills Every FP&A Professional Should Master

Hello, FP and A guy here. Today I'm going to talk to you about the top five soft skills you need to master FP&A. Every week I talk to FP&A and finance leaders all over the world. I've done over 300 interviews with leaders, nearly 300 just for my podcast, not even counting webinars. And in FP&A tomorrow, I ask every guest, what is great FP&A? What does it look like? What is the number one soft skill FP and a professional should master? What is the number one technical skill FP and a professional should master? Today we're going to talk about those top five soft skills that will make you great at FP&A. If you can master these, you'll be ahead of 99% of the people in FP&A. Here we go. Number one, empathy. Number two, humble curiosity. Number three, active listening. Number four, data storytelling. Number five, influencing. Alright, let's talk about empathy. Empathy is not sympathy. I'm not telling you to sympathize, telling you to put yourself in the shoes and try to understand where your business partner is coming from. You want to really listen, ask curious questions, pay attention to their emotions. These are all things that can make you better at empathy. Now let me share an example of where I showed empathy and it really helped me in my job. I was a summer intern and I needed data really, really bad. I'd send in a request to get some data. Without the data, I couldn't do my project that I had for the entire summer. My boss said, hey, you need to email them and tell them to get you the data. So I did. They got this response, very negative, saying, who are you to ask me for all this data? You're an internal. Why should I prioritize you? Like, wait your turn. And I was like, okay. And so I got that and I thought about writing a snarky response. I paused and said, why don't I go down and talk to him? And so I went down to where his desk was. I said, hey, my name's Paul. I'm the one that sent the email to you. I just want to take a minute and explain. First, sorry for trying to jump the line. I understand that's frustrating. You probably get a lot of that. And I was like, but second, let me explain why. I said, look, the only project I have this summer is this project. My boss has asked me to get the data. I'm sitting around basically doing nothing at the moment. And if you could speed it up, it would really Help me. I got that data much quicker than what the deadline would have been because I went and related to him and showed empathy. So that's the first one. Number two, humble curiosity. What do I mean when I say humble curiosity? Well, let's first talk about curiosity. Being curious about business is critical to be great in FP&A. I've had so many people listed as their number one skill. The reason, say humble curiosity is curiosity is asking those questions. It's trying to learn, trying to understand the different parts of the business. But why are you understanding? Are you understanding so you can be right? Are you understanding so you can look superior? That humble curiosity means you're understanding to help your business partner. You're understanding to be better at what you do. And that is why humble curiosity is so critical, not just curiosity. So often when I ask this last question in my podcast, what is one thing people can do today to be better at FP&A? Often the answer is be curious. Ask why Ask questions regularly? Don't be afraid to say I don't know and ask somebody to explain. The more curious you are about what they do, the more they're going to be interested in having you help them. The more they're going to let you in, the more you're going to be a great business partner. So have curiosity. Number three, active listening. It's not enough just to listen. You need to listen to understand. As Steven R. Covey said, seek first to understand, then to be understood. One of the best lessons I ever learned about active listening is I went in to talk to a boss. That boss took the time to deliberately show me they were turning off their monitor. They turned it off, they slid over their chair and they made eye contact with me. I knew I was their priority. I felt listened to.