Strategies to Enhance your Communication and Collaboration Skills

Last week, I wrote a post about 4 traits accountants can try to highlight in their annual reviews, resumes, and interviews.

Under the umbrella of each trait are several subskills, and while I could write pages and pages on each, I wanted to dedicate a couple posts to a deeper dive into a select handful of these skillss

One such skill that is valuable not just for accountants, but for any type of career, is communication & collaboration.

Whether you’re a sole contributor or a team leader, you have to interact with others in some capacity, including coworkers, team members, consultants, clients, vendors, and customers.

And while the list of different considerations to hone these skills is endless, I wanted to highlight some areas that come to mind that are especially important for accountants.

In this post, we dive into considerations to sharpen your communication & collaboration skills that will not only make your job easier, but also make you more marketable for promotions and job applications.

Incorporating Empathy into Your Communications 

While we as accountants are responsible for compiling financial information, chances are we are not the owners of the data that supports those financial results. That requires us to collaborate with others to obtain the necessary information to perform our jobs.

When obtaining this information, showing empathy and putting yourself in other people’s shoes not only increases your chances of successfully gathering the necessary (and correct) data, it also makes the interactions more enjoyable for everyone.

For example, if you work in audit or advisory, you have to obtain details from different client personnel. Or if you are a controller at, let’s say, a biotech company, you have to gather information from scientists/department heads to correctly account for projects. 

Both situations require some sort of communication and collaboration for you to be successful, but while obtaining this information might be super important for your role, it’s not likely important for the client or department heads. They have their sets of day-to-day responsibilities and their plates are likely full, so helping finance is not their main focus. 

As a result, these conversations and requests often feel like burdens.

With that in mind, when having these conversations, ensure you are cognizant of the other person’s time. Come to meetings well prepared. Due your diligence beforehand. Ask smart questions. Determine if it’s easier for them to provide the support over a meeting or over email. Try to avoid talking over points you should already know (to be clear, I’m not discouraging asking questions, I encourage it! Just make sure to remember the answers for future interactions).

The goal is to make the conversation as enjoyable for the other party as possible (or at least less painful) to the point they are not dreading that interaction every month, quarter, or year.

Be Transparent and Set Expectations

In line with being empathetic, one way to make these interactions run smoothly can be practicing transparency and setting expectations early.

For example, if you need a legal accrual every month from your internal counsel, don’t wait till the day before your financials are due to request this information. Your corporate lawyer has a ton on their plate. They can’t be expected to drop everything to give you the information you need (and that you probably should have asked for days ago).

In cases like these, work with other parties ahead of time to set expectations. Explain the need, the ask, and what process or procedure you think will help you accomplish your goal. A lot of accounting is repetitive processes and interactions, and like any repetitive procedure, a process can be established and all those involved can be educated ahead of time to make the operation easily function.

In the legal accrual example, you know ahead of time that you’ll need this information every month. Try to find a moment when you’re both not busy to sit down and hash out a monthly plan that allows you to get the information timely while not being a burden to your general counsel.

Not only will setting expectations assist you with your need, chances are, your counterparty has suggestions and input that will make the process even more streamlined.

Adapting Communication Style to the Individual

This is, in my mind, one of the most important aspects of communication. Adapting your messaging to the individual is key to successfully conveying results (and really takes the “empathy” consideration to heart).

For example, when communicating the results of a project, you would likely give the CEO an extremely high level overview. Depending on their personality and the work’s importance, that might involve boiling down the results of a months-long project into 30 minutes (or even just 5).

However, for those same project results, you might give the controller an in depth review that takes several hours and goes into the weeds of the work. 

Same project. Same results. Different messaging.

If you switched these tactics and gave the CEO the hours-long overview, they’d probably feel like you’ve wasted their time. If you gave the controller a 5 minute overview, they’d probably have a lot of questions and seek more information.

You’ve worked so hard on that project, so don’t let the incorrect messaging skew the results of your hard work.

Finally, when adapting these conversations, speak in layman's terms as much as possible, especially if you’re working on technical accounting. Besides auditors, no one, especially non-accountants, is impressed with complex accounting jargon. Keep the communication simple and you’ll likely see better results from these conversions.

Audit Your Communications and Keep Working to Improve

The list of ways to sharpen your communication and collaboration abilities is endless, from certain ways to craft written communications (emails, memos, etc.) to potential software that automates communication processes.

While working on the above factors can greatly enhance your skills, keep track of ways you are currently communicating with others. Perform a mini “audit” to see if there are ways you can improve those interactions. Chances are, you’ll find cracks that you can fill that will make your job and these interactions so much easier.

As always, feel free to follow me on Linkedin or contact me for more information.