Lessons Learned from pitching 300 CFO's

This was one of the best programs I managed last year. We had the opportunity to run a leadership program specifically for women in financial leadership positions. The program was for both the public and private sectors and it ran amazingly well.

My challenge was to get financial leadership through the country to back the program and get their women in the room.

My targets were Chief Financial Officers, Financial Controllers, and Finance Managers. Going into the program I had no idea about the roles I was going after but knew it was going to be a blast. I mapped out the biggest players first and then worked my way down. After an hour of prep, I was itching to go, I chucked on a headset and went to work.

The core learnings came from my use of the engagement question, "What would you need to see in a program like this to think "hey I need to get my people in the room"?" I pitched this question over and over again, to council after council, every energy company, every agricultural business, Tech and Telco, manufacturing, financial institution, every university, port and any other business you could think of. To my surprise, the answer was the same and it was more interesting than you would think.

Finance Manager Vs CFO

To Chief Financial Officers there is a clear difference between a Finance Manager and a CFO, its what sets them apart, and it comes down to one thing, communication. 9/10 CFO's would agree that the thing finance people lacked was the ability to communicate well. Very few CFO's cared about training in the hard skills of finance, they unanimously agreed that the skill to crunch numbers wasn't a problem.

I began to say things in my conversations like "Every CFO in the country wants us to do more in communication, they are all jumping at the program" the CFO would burst into laughter and say "my people could do with a bit of that, can I send the boys over too?". Soft skills are clearly lacking in this space and for young finance professionals to know that is a massive advantage. Last word on this principle, finance professional that can communicate stick out like a sore thumb.

Self Esteem - Resilience

There was one thing CFO's identified in female managers over male managers and that was a lack of self-esteem. CFO after CFO. story after story they painted this image of their desire for their women to see more in themselves. One CFO told a story about working alongside a female counterpart and both being trained by the same CFO to take over eventually. He always thought she was miles ahead of him and best-suited the role. He noted her skill and accuracy, her vision and her ability to do the role so well. When the time came and the role was finally opened she never applied, he remembers her saying how she wasn't good enough and the role was just too big. He laughed and said, "if it was too big for her there was no chance for me ever landing it". He decided to apply for the role and ended up getting it, that experience is ever ingrained in his memory.

This particular CFO spent his career building his people's resilience. He said any program that taught resilience was worth exploring. He wasn't alone both male and female CFO, Finance Manager and Financial Controller agree resilience was an important principle to emphasize.

There is a flip side to this principle because there were so many females leaders that dominated in their space. They wanted no handouts, no women-only events, they didn't want to be the best 'female' finance leaders, they wanted to be the best finance leaders full stop. After speaking to enough of them I realized that sometimes adding gender to the conversation doesn't add value to the product. I believe it's worth understanding both sides of this coin

Lack of Women

Though we have some great female finance leaders in New Zealand, there really aren't enough of them and it's very obvious. If I were to say most CFO's are men, that would be a huge understatement. Many organizations said they struggled to find female applicants and others said they were there but just get overlooked.

At the conference, this question was asked to one of the CFO's of one of the banks, I loved his answer because it was very honest and humbly given. He said, "it's hard to say but for so long this has been a boys club, its changing slowly but we have a long way to go". He suggested that change will come as more heads of organizations become women. He used the example of ASB and said: "a lot of progress has happened since the CEO was under female leadership, its not perfect but its better". He mentioned that the front runner for ANZ's next CEO is female as well, and being the biggest bank in NZ he expected that it would cause some kind of ripple effect.

Last Words

I can't believe how great a conversation these people are, from Datacom to Silverfern Farms, Kiwibank to Transpower. I have stories of people coming to chair executive meetings in board shorts straight after a surf and others having trained 15 current CFO's in major companies. Finance has a lot of personality at the top, a lot of stress in the middle and a lot of grinding at the bottom. To those who aspire to one day being a CFO just know that they aspire to be the CEO, those that aspire to be the CEO usually become exactly that. Captain of the ship.

Conway Karaitiana