60. Managing Accountability Successfully in Finance with Colin McDonagh, FD of TTM

61. Soft Skills and the importance they have in Finance Teams with Howard Tunnicliffe

Hannah Munro: 1:10 

So, hello everybody and welcome to this episode of CFO4.0. My name is Hannah Munro and today we're going to be talking All about soft skills and finance. Now with me to help us on that journey and that discussion is Howard Tunnicliffe, who is Head of Finance for Subscriptions at The Economist. And on the side, his personal passion is helping others to develop their soft skills in order to advance their careers. So, welcome, Howard. Amazing to have you on the 

Howard Tunnicliffe: 1:37 

Yeah, great. Thanks a lot for having me on, Hannah. 

Hannah Munro: 1:40 

So, tell us a bit about yourself. How did you end up at The Economist and what have you been doing for the last few years? 

Howard Tunnicliffe: 1:47 

Yeah, so, I'm a SEMA qualified accountant. I spent a little bit of time at Ernst & Young and worked my way up various commercial finance roles over the last 13 or 14 years. And yeah, going pretty well, you know, I was getting there slowly, climbing the ladder. And then a few years ago, I had a bit of a problem. And that problem for me was a relationship breakup. So, that meant that I lost a lot of our mutual friends. I had to move out of the house that we were sharing. And it was a really difficult time for me. So, I was feeling like I was starting again. I wasn't really sure that I could have had the tools to start again. And I'm sure a lot of people have been in similar situation. So, I did what any sensible person would do. I moved out to Covent Garden. I rented a place there for a year thinking, right, I need to live in zone one, enjoy everything that London has to offer. And while I was there, I had a lot of spare time on my hands, and I saw a course which was all about how to structure a conversation. It was called How to Never Run Out of Things to Say. And I thought, well, what a brilliant use of my time. When have you ever come across anything like that? And it was really my first real introduction to soft skills and being coached on soft skills. And as a part of that, I had some coaching on soft skills over a couple of years and that was brilliant for me. So, light bulb moments, it was all about meeting people, talking to strangers, improving your social circle, all of those things, exactly the things I needed at that time. And then subsequent to that, I really realised that soft skills are so, important at work as well. So, it's a great crossover. So, from that, I've started to think more about soft skills in my career, really observing other people in soft skills and just starting to realise quite how important they are, really the key skills to get us promoted. 

Hannah Munro: 4:02 

Soft skills and finance, it's not two words that commonly go together, is it? And I completely agree with you; it's becoming even more important than it's ever been. So, why do you think it's so, important in finance in particular? 

Howard Tunnicliffe: 4:17 

Yeah, well, I think you've hit the nail on the head there, Hannah. And often we don't really think about soft skills in finance. And the route that we take as finance people so, probably we're quite good at school and we're passing exams left right and centre and getting a lot of respect for that and a lot of love for that and then we go on to do our exams and it's all about getting a high mark and it's all about passing our finance exams and that's really great for getting you through the door so, you know those grades get you into university they get you to your finance qualification And then they get you into your entry-level roles. And those technical skills, we do need them. We all use Excel pretty regularly. You need to be aware of numbers quite clearly, like numeracy is important. But it's really a base hygiene factor, you could call it. So, actually, by the time we start to move up from those entry-level positions, it's really not the technical skills that we need. So, I always think how... To ask a question for everyone, how good are you technically as a CFO or how good is your CFO technically? And the answer is, it doesn't matter. It really doesn't. If you have a finance team and you could be world-class at either technical or soft skills and average at the other, I really strongly believe I would much rather have a world-class team in soft skills and just average at the technical skills. And I think that would be a really powerful team. 

Hannah Munro: 5:53 

Yeah, because the finance role itself is changing, isn't it? We're seeing this massive shift and if you think really far back, all of the accounting was done with a quill and a ledger. Right. And I think I saw my last cash book, actual physical cash book about six or seven years ago. But now we have all this amazing technology. And for those that know me know, I love talking about technology. But we have this amazing technology to actually do that, almost that technical accounting piece, don't we, to do a lot of the hard work. It's even identifying issues with postings and reconciliations these days as well. So, actually, I think as we, you know, the next few years, exactly what you said, that that need for those soft skills themselves is actually going to increase rather than sort of be at the same level or, you know, or change in, you know, or decrease in fact. 

Howard Tunnicliffe: 6:45 

Yeah, I mean, there's no doubt about it. I think in work across teams, I really find that our roles are almost becoming quite similar. So, even in marketing, the marketeers need to be numerate. And then we in finance need to be able to tell a story. We need to be able to kind of sell ourselves and persuade people. And even if you look at teams across the board in product development or in data where you think that they might be more technical, and they certainly are more towards the technical side, but we're all working as a team. You know, we really can't do anything ourselves. So, the minute that you start talking to anyone else, then that's really soft skills. And even if you're coding something or you're building a big model, you're really going to need to be doing that as a team and you're going to need to be leveraging people to get their expertise. You're going to be needing to communicate with them to make sure that all the assumptions are agreed upon and getting people's buy-in and persuading them maybe that you don't need to do everything in as much detail, giving them comfort that things can be done perhaps at a higher level and saving you some time and saving you some complexity. 

Hannah Munro: 7:59 

So, this is probably a good opportunity because obviously we talked about soft skills quite generally, but what makes up soft skills? Are there particular categories that you like to think about in terms of how you would define the terminology? 

Howard Tunnicliffe: 8:16 

Yeah, I think that's part of the issue that soft skills has. So, it sounds like a little thing off to the side that might be nice to think about every now and again, but I summarise soft skills as it's really... everything to do with human relationships and human communication. And that's really both externally, but also internally managing your own thoughts and feelings. So, it really is, I'd say 99% of work really is soft skills. And I think we need to try and make that change, a real focus change. When I look at courses and training, it's almost always talking about case studies or it's talking about transformation in quite a technical way. But actually, I think we need to really re-evaluate that and think of soft skills as everything. Because as I mentioned earlier, when we're talking about growing up and we're talking about doing exams, we've got an exam, and it's marked out of 100. And if you do better than 100, it's very easy to measure if you're doing better or not because you get a high mark. But the minute that we move into the world of work, it doesn't work like that. You know, work is a very ambiguous, nebulous area. It's just full of problems and complexity. And soft skills really helps you to prepare for that. So, yeah, I think going back to your original question on exactly what soft skills is, it's really about communication skills. and relationships with other people. 

Hannah Munro: 9:51 

And if you had to, you know, we talked about exams not being important. If you had to put an exam together or an assessment of soft skills, what sort of ways would you categorise it or what sort of topics or modules would you have within soft skills? 

Howard Tunnicliffe: 10:05 

Yeah, so, you've got things like your own kind of internal emotional awareness and control. So, that's one thing. Also, awareness of relationships, social constructs and things which really drive other people. And I think also the relationship dynamics. as well with other people. So, yeah, there's some areas which are really more internally focused on you, really understanding yourself, your emotions, your desires and how you think. And then there's the other proportion are really looking outside. And it's about understanding the subtext quite often in relationships and what's really going on behind what people are saying. 

Hannah Munro: 10:58 

No, absolutely. And sometimes it's just as important what they don't say. I've learned that as a consultant is what they do. So, you kind of have to connect and understand. In terms of assessing soft skills, because it's quite intangible, isn't it? How does somebody go about assessing themselves, perhaps assessing their teams as to, you know, is this an area we need to focus on or work on? And, you know, how do you measure where you're currently at so, that you can plan where you need to focus in terms of development? 

Howard Tunnicliffe: 11:33 

Yeah, yeah. And I think you're absolutely right that it's quite a difficult area. set of skills to introduce yourself to and that's probably why they haven't been as popular just because it's a little bit more difficult to understand and get into them. So, I think that there's two questions really there and the first one is about yourself as a leader and the second one is about your team. So, one really interesting concept that really sparked a light bulb for me in soft skills is the concept of the competency ladder. And now some people may have heard about this, but really, really interesting concept. So, I would say do look it up if you're interested in soft skills. But the first step of the competency ladder is unconscious incompetence. And that really means that you don't know what you don't know. And that's a lot. A lot of people in a lot of areas are at unconscious incompetence and it can be okay. You know, ignorance is bliss. Some people don't need to work on things, and they get by fine. But I'd say in terms of assessing your own soft skills, there's plenty of resources out there. So, I would say have a Google. So, do some research yourself. Understand, you'll see lists of maybe 10 or 12 soft skills and then just start to kind of think about how you are in each of these areas and then begin to just lightly mark yourself. Well, is this something that I'm really aware of? Is it something I consider a strength? And then by building that list, you get up to the second step, which is the conscious incompetence. So, that's really understanding the areas where you're not so, good and the areas that you need to work on. And that's really the really humbling step, I call it. So, you... you kind of realize how much you don't know but I mean soft skills is such an amazing area that you'll never get to know even a fraction of it but you can just kind of keep on working on it and really enjoy that growth learning process because there's always more to learn and then just to touch on your second point around the team I think that's really important as a finance leader so, what we don't often realize is that we develop these skills as we climb the corporate ladder. We've developed these skills without even probably thinking about it. So, stakeholder management is such a key one that you don't necessarily have when you're earlier on in your career, but you definitely need it as you get more and more senior. Again, prioritization, something that more junior people really struggle with, and they're not aligned with their manager. But as you get higher up, then you really, you learn that quite naturally. Also, things like relationship building and networking. Again, not all the junior people are, no one's taught these things. People aren't necessarily good at these when they join, but actually as we get more senior, we naturally get more exposure and we learn, we see good people exhibiting these behaviours. So, one thing I'd say in terms of your team, think about the skills that you have now that you didn't have when you were younger and put some time aside with your team to really try and upskill them in those areas soft skills that you didn't need earlier on in your career, but you definitely do need now. 

Hannah Munro: 14:57 

Yes. And I think that's it, isn't it? Trying to take an individual approach and perhaps even, like you say, raising awareness because that training ladder is always quite interesting in terms of as you move up through it. And like you say that unconscious incompetence stage is a very humbling one. But until you know where the challenges are, you can't address them. And so, it's quite interesting once you start focusing on those areas. is what you find. So, but I guess, like, again, you know, having conversations around soft skills with your, you know, with your juniors as they go through the ranks, why do you think it's so, important, you know, especially for those younger individuals to have, you know, be aware of those soft skills? 

Howard Tunnicliffe: 15:50 

Yeah, I think it's really important because these are the skills that we're never taught know we get so, much of our training and time is spent on academic work and whether that's kind of at school at university or studying for finance and even like I said the professional development you go to a finance conference and so, much of it will be really technically focused so, so, these skills are really important because they're not taught and What we find in the current world of work, which is quite unfair, I think, is that really it's the people that are either naturally good at soft skills or the people that are good at learning soft skills are actually going to be the ones that get promoted. So, there's a bit of a myth that if you work hard, you'll get promoted. And there's a level of truth to that. early on in your career, maybe for the first few steps. And, you know, hard work is important, and commitment and ownership are all things that will stand you in good stead. But you get to a stage later on when it just doesn't work that way anymore. You need to be able to build those relationships. You need to have the network. You know, you can be the best person for the job, but if you can't market yourself and sell yourself either internally or externally in an interview, then you're just going to get stuck. And again, I think that's, it’s really unfair and what people tend to do is they tend to double down on what they're good at. So, if people aren't getting promoted, they're probably getting a little bit frustrated and they're doubling down and they're probably working harder and they're probably looking in the wrong areas. But by giving your team the soft skills, it will help everyone to communicate better, work better, but also earlier on in people's career, I think of it like compounding interest. So, imagine if you, I think a lot of people have seen that chart of if you got 1% better every day, just quite how quickly that adds up. But imagine if you'd have had training on the skills that you now have acquired kind of by accident early on in your career, you would be so, much further ahead and so, much better able to deal with the modern world of work. 

Hannah Munro: 18:04 

Absolutely. And I think it's especially true in finance because it's quite interesting, obviously, doing what I do. I work with people at all stages of their finance career. And, you know, not a lot of them chose to go into finance. They chose to go into finance more because they like numbers sometimes better than they like people, right? So, they chose finance because they're naturally good at it. They're naturally, you know, quite, like you say, quite technical, quite numerically orientated. And actually, what we're saying now is that in order to be successful, in your finance career. You need to develop this whole set of skills that nobody has ever taught you, that you've no idea if you're any good at, and that you need to develop. So, I think it's important we put maybe some of these skills into context, particularly around actual areas of finance. You mentioned stakeholder management is, and it's quite an obvious one when you think about it, you've got to have great skills, especially that. So, what sort of soft skills really come to play in that area? 

Howard Tunnicliffe: 19:02 

Yeah, I mean... Really, a lot of the soft skills do come back to listening. And you'll know that as a consultant. That's really key. So, I think with stakeholder management, it's about listening to other people's problems. I mean, that's really key as a finance business partner. And really trying to understand their motivations. So, there's a communication piece there as well. Just making sure that People are aware of what you're able to do, what your work crunches are, if things are going to be late or not. Equally, just giving people advance notice if you may have heard something from someone else that they've not heard yet. So, just making sure that people feel that they're in the loop is really key. So, yeah, it's kind of a combination of communication, but also understanding the other person stakeholders' point of view and making them feel heard and understood. 

Hannah Munro: 20:06 

No, absolutely. And are there any other particular areas you think we should be highlighting in that, you know, if you're looking to recruit in those roles that soft skills are super important? 

Howard Tunnicliffe: 20:17 

Yeah, I mean, as I mentioned, I think that the key really is listening and listening is really not sexy and it's not glamorous and it's not new and it's really hard work. But if I give an example of when I had an interview a couple of years ago, I was recruiting for an analyst role and I was just asking some fairly standard interview questions. And the person I was interviewing was talking a lot, but I would ask a question, and they really just weren't answering the question at all. reflected on it afterwards and I thought this person's probably thought they've had a good interview because you know we've got some good rapport going and they've spoken a lot but really they just weren't listening and I thought well if you're not listening to an interview which again is a fairly structured simple unambiguous question then I can't hire you so, yeah definitely someone that can listen I think for me the real key is trying to find someone with a growth mindset. And I know you've talked about this on your podcast before, that curiosity. And that's really important because what we know is that the skills that we're hiring for now probably aren't the skills that we're going to need in five years' time. Everything is changing so, much. Automation is happening. Finance transformation is happening. So, When I'm hiring, what I'm really looking for is someone that is adaptable and can respond to challenges. And like you said, sometimes in finance, it is more someone that's a bit more stable, kind of competent technically, good with numbers. But unfortunately, a lot of those roles are now going to be automated away, as you mentioned earlier on. So, twofold, I think I'm looking to hire someone with a growth mindset, but also, I think, how can we help our teams that maybe are a little bit more on the stability path and a bit more technically focused, maybe more numbers focused than people focused, as you mentioned? How can we help to upskill them? Because we don't want to leave those people behind as well. They've got a lot to offer. The technical skills are important too. And we just need to make sure as we go into transformation that we've got those people on our side because... If people are worried about losing their jobs and those transformations can't possibly happen, so, let's make sure that we're giving those people the tools to upskill them and then we can bring them along in that transformation journey, which is going to be way more exciting for everyone because who got very much job satisfaction out of doing a balance sheet rec for the 12-month end in a row? It very quickly... We don't really get anything in our lives from doing those technical things over and over. So, let's free people up to do some more interesting work that's going to really impact the bottom line. 

Hannah Munro: 23:20 

Yeah, and I love that. So, that's something I talk about a lot is that, you know, we have these incredibly talented people in finance. And like you say, they are adding, you know, they're still sometimes doing the basic tasks, which is a real waste of talent in my personal opinion. So, but, you know, we have to make sure that they have the skills to shift into the new role. So, in terms of your view, what do you think is the best way to develop for individuals within your, you know, within a team? to develop those soft skills? How can you help? How can people listen to this podcast help develop those areas within their team and those skills within their team? 

Howard Tunnicliffe: 24:00 

Yeah, so, I think the first thing for me is giving it some priority. So, I think it's something that historically we haven't really given that much priority to. And as we talked about earlier on, I think give yourself a little bit of a soft skills audit and then also consider what your team needs in terms of soft skills and that may be very different for different people as you mentioned it's not a one-size-fits-all approach some people will need different things and also go at different speeds so, you know you might have some people that are really keen to learn and they really take on these ideas like a sponge and some other people may be less so, but no that's fine we're all different people um I think in terms of training so, There are one or two companies now or coaches that are starting to offer things like finance business partner training. So, it's becoming a little bit more of a thing. There's still a little bit thin on the ground, but those training days and workshops for your team, they will often be quite focused on soft skills. So, it's something that the industry is slowly starting to get used to. I would also say as a finance leader, talk to your in-house training team. So, again, typically we tend to get the same courses from those in-house training teams, and they're not necessarily fit for the modern world. So, they probably haven't changed that much in my experience over the last 10 years. So, how about asking your in-house training team for a course on prioritization? That'd be great. We get some courses on time management. They're quite common. But actually, when have you ever had any help with prioritising? That's a massively key skill for people early on in their career to get to know. 

Hannah Munro: 25:56 

No, absolutely. So, a real mix of, like you say, coaching, some structured training, because I think it does, it definitely has its place in terms of supporting that. And so, for anyone that is looking to, you know, maybe have this as a focus for their team, what are your top tips to getting started? How would you approach, you know, soft skills as a whole within a team? 

Howard Tunnicliffe: 26:21 

Yeah, yeah, it is a difficult one. A difficult thing to make a start on, I think that's fair to say. So, my approach would be to kind of do that audit of your team and really just to focus on one or two areas. So, which are the things that you think, the soft skills that you think are going to make the biggest difference to your team and then to focus on those. And it's also really key, I think, to get people's buy-in for soft skills because often people don't really understand it. And we're all busy and it's very hard to carve out time. So, say take a little bit of time to introduce soft skills to your team and let them know how it helps you. And really you can be the leader that demonstrates in a really tangible way how you've used soft skills. And one thing that we're starting to do now at The Economist is we're doing a development hour. So, what I've found in modern working practices is normally Fridays are a little bit quieter than the other days because a little bit fewer meetings and people aren't necessarily in the office so, much, a little bit less hectic. So, what we're doing is we're having an hour on Fridays with the team, kind of a drop-in session. So, we might have some suggested topics for that session, but really, it's about people to come to the leaders in the team and discuss have some time set aside to talk specifically about soft skills because if you don't set time aside for it specifically it just won't happen um so, yeah, we're really excited about how that's going to be 

Hannah Munro: 28:05 

fantastic so, well that sounds like a great suggestion and like you say that you know um if you don't put time aside and put focus on it, it doesn't happen. And I love your comment on making sure people are aware of the reason and the need for this and the impact both on, you know, on them as an individual. Because, you know, once you get that buy-in and that, that view it's like any transformation project you know regardless of whether it's technology or people um you know people skills once you get buy-in and you get them on board then you know then people tend to more likely to deliver on those um those areas so, well thank you so, much Howard um it's been absolutely fabulous having you on the show and talking about um soft skills and making you know those soft skills a bit more tangible for our listeners out there so, um for those that are you know interested in for Perhaps connecting or learning more about yourself. What's the best way to reach out and connect with you? 

Howard Tunnicliffe: 29:02 

Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, LinkedIn is really my main medium for talking about soft skills. And I will post on LinkedIn.com. every day. So, the hashtag is hashtag finance soft skills and it's Howard Tunnicliffe. So, yeah, please come and join the conversation. Send me a connection request. That would be absolutely great. That's what it's all about. And also, I'm currently developing some online courses as well. So, as you've mentioned, it's quite a tricky area to get into and there isn't really one resource that you can go to for soft skills training. So, that's something that I'll be looking to build up over the coming weeks and months. So, yeah, by all means, come and talk to me about that and let's see how we can sort of help to solve each other's problems. 

Hannah Munro: 29:49 

No, absolutely. And I think it's really great because like, you know, as you said, there's not a huge amount There's a lot on soft skills, but not necessarily specifically for finance. And it's becoming such a major part of the role moving forward. So, for those that are listening, I hope you found today's session interesting and enlightening. And I think I'd love to hear your thoughts. You know, what are your questions around soft skills, around other skills you think are becoming more important? So, come and join the conversation. And again, thank you, Howard. It's been brilliant having you on the show. 

Howard Tunnicliffe: 30:19 

Yeah, great. Thanks a lot. It's been great to be here.