How To Develop Your Business Partner Personality

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Throughout this series, we've been exploring the shift amongst Finance professionals from a role of 'pure' numbers to that of the business partner.

We've looked at how the nature of the Finance Function is changing, with practitioners increasingly expected to move beyond the boundaries of their department and take on a new set of responsibilities. Those responsibilities revolve around enabling better decision-making at every level of an organization, cementing Finance's position at the very heart of a business. They also require a new set of 'traits' or abilities on the part of Finance professionals: interpersonal and collaborative skills; the ability to translate numbers into actionable insight; leadership skills; and many others. Some, or indeed all, of these traits, might not come easily to the stereotypical Finance professional.

This is, of course, the case in every profession and career: there will be elements of the work with which you are extremely comfortable and others that cause you problems or headaches. It is very rare for a person to love every aspect of their work.

But what if you're a finance professional who sees their future in business partnering, but whose personality or outlook doesn't seem 'suited' to the career? What then?

Find what energizes you

First, congratulations! You are clearly self-aware enough to realize that there is work that you can do in order to maximize your career potential and, most importantly, the fulfillment you derive from your work.

The first step is to identify the aspects of business partnering that you find (or think you are going to find) energizing. What types of work do you get most excited about, find come most naturally to you, and bring you the greatest satisfaction? Make a note of these, and then think about the types of work about which you feel the opposite: the ones that you find drain your energy, that you find daunting, and that you feel you under-perform at.

The trick is to turn those energy-drain activities into energy-givers - activities that you find bring you joy and fulfillment, rather than worry and stress. The best way to do that is to work consciously at improving your abilities in those fields. For much of the early part of my career, I struggled with exactly this. Too much of my time was accounted for by tasks that I didn't think I was suited for, or in which I knew I wasn't fulfilling my potential. Ultimately, I found that the best way to get energized by these tasks was simply to get better at them. I found my energy through developing my skills.

Develop the skills you need

So what are those skills? Let's identify the top skills of a business partner, and some simple ways you can develop or improve them:

Interpersonal communication: Successful business partners need to be able to communicate effectively, to make a compelling case to people in other departments in a language they will understand, and to be comfortable with conversations becoming the dominating part of their work. Find this hard? Try to identify role models within your organization, and study how they get people on-side. Seek them out and ask questions..

Collaboration: This is closely related to interpersonal skills, but it's a discipline in itself. Collaboration can come as a shock to some professionals whose work has up until now mainly involved producing reports or generating and analyzing data. You might find it useful to read about some of the most widely-used collaboration and project management frameworks used within businesses, and particularly those used in your own. Many of these, such as the Agile methodology, are derived from software development but are now used to govern and enable collaboration across every function.

Strategic thinking: Business partners need to be able to think beyond Finance, and instead take a holistic, strategic view of the activities of their own function and the business at large. At the same time, they need a bedrock of knowledge about business management, and of the market in which their organization is operating. Some of this requires a shift of outlook: business partners need to be able to "zoom-out", retaining focus on the financial details while also understanding them within a broader context. The best way to develop the knowledge required is, simply, to read! There is a huge wealth of information on business management and strategy online and in textbooks.

Leadership: Finally, business partners will require some degree of leadership skill. This doesn't have to mean that you have ambitions to become a COO or CEO. Instead, and just as valuably, it can mean becoming a role model for other Finance professionals trying to find their way in the modern Finance Function. Certainly, in the early part of my career, I struggled to find role models from whom I could learn. So, later on, I decided to become that role model myself - and that's exactly what you can do too.

Get started now

Developing the personality traits required of a business partner is absolutely within your reach. The most important step is the first. Get started straight away by committing to develop one of the traits or skills you think you currently lack. With a bit of work, you can turn your energy drains into energy drivers.

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This was the third article in my series "The personality of a business partner". You can read previous articles in the series below.

The Personality Traits Of A Business Partner

Does A Business Partner Need To Be Extrovert To Be Successful?

Why It Took Me Ten Years To Become A Good Business Partner

If you want to hear from other business partners talking about their career journey and energizes them about business partnering then check out some of the interviews below.

An Audit Officer's Journey Towards Becoming A Business Partner

One Accountants Untraditional Route Through The Business To Business Partnering

What This Accountant Learned From A Stint In The Business

How An FP&A Director Provided Line Of Sight To Millions Of Dollars

A Note To Self From The Future From A Soon To Be Business Partner

Fast-track Your Career Path To Business Partnering Through Mentorship

Interview Guidance To Would-Be Business Partners From A Senior FP&A Manager

What Is Your Sales Pitch To Land A Business Partner Role?

How A Technology-driven Approach Elevated This Accountant To Be A Business Partner

To learn more about how to become a business partner you can read my ten-article series "Becoming a business partner" below.

The Accountants Journey Towards Becoming A Business Partner Unlocked

Your Career Path From Chartered Accountant To Business Partner Defined

Why Delivering Results Is A Key Priority For Would-Be Business Partners

The Resume That Will Surely Land You A Business Partner Role

The Cover Letter That Lands You The Business Partner Interview

What Senior Finance Leaders Look For In Business Partners

What To Do On Your First Day As A Business Partner

The 100-day Plan For Successful Business Partner

Are There Second Chances In Business Partnering

The Senior Finance Leader As A Business Partner

If you want to become a better business partner you should consider taking our online course "Business Partnering Explained - Value Creation Unlocked" to get a better handle on the role. It's accredited for 5.5 CPD hours.

You can read a lot more articles about FP&A, Business Partnering, and Finance Transformation below. It all start's with “Introducing The Finance Transformation Nine Box” where you set the ambition for your transformation. You should join the Finance Business Partner Forum which is part of the Business Partnering Institute's online community where we will continue to discuss this topic and you can click here to follow me on Twitter.

All Successful Business Partners Are "Leaders" (the last article in the series about our new capability model)

Should We Keep Talking About Business Partnering? (part of a 17-article series where we deep-dive on the WHY, WHAT, and HOW of business partnering by putting it on a formula)

Your Journey To Successful Business Partnering Explained

How To Create Value Through Business Partnering

Everyone Can Adopt A Business Partnering Mindset (part of a six-article series about FP&A Business Partnering)

From Business Partner To Working Within The Business (part of an article series where I interview finance professionals about their careers in FP&A and Business Partnering)

Is Your Product Optimized For Value Creation? (part of a toolbox series where we look at what tools FP&A professionals should leverage to drive value creation)

How Business Partners Turn Analysis To Insight (part of case study series where I interview business partners about how they drive value creation using real cases)

The Future Of FP&A: Two Ways To Take The Reins

What Is The Accounting Profession Paradox?

What Defines A Finance Master?

The New Career Path For Finance Professionals

How Finance People Can Be More Successful

The CFOs Roadmap To Transforming Finance

How To Become A Finance Business Partner

Financial Analyst vs. Finance Business Partner

Finance Business Partner Is A Bullshit Job

How Business Partners Keep A Plan On Track

Anders Liu-Lindberg is the co-founder, COO (Chief Operating Officer), and CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) at the Business Partnering Institute and owner of the largest group dedicated to Finance Business Partnering on LinkedIn with more than 9,000 members. I have ten years of experience as a business partner at the global transport and logistics company Maersk. I am the co-author of the book “Create Value as a Finance Business Partner” and a long-time Finance Blogger on LinkedIn with 57.500+ followers.