PO 5: communicate effectively
It’s virtually impossible to carry out a modern-day role as a finance professional
without being an effective communicator. Whether your trainees are chasing
payment from customers, patiently explaining the need for purchase orders to
colleagues or negotiating credit terms with suppliers, a whole host of factors
around how your trainees speak, write, and even listen can determine how
successfully they subsequently perform in their job – as well as how they’re
perceived by people they liaise with (internally and externally), and those who
can influence their career progression.
But what can they do to improve the way they communicate? Here are a few
useful pointers:
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Trainees can watch and learn from colleagues (or even public figures)
who never leave anyone in any doubt as to what they mean. They can
learn how to modify their tone, volume, or vocabulary – while retaining
their own personal style – to ensure they’re understood perfectly?
Trainees should generate opportunities to stand up and talk to groups –
such as explaining a new procedure to a departmental team or
conducting a Q&A session on a specific area of their expertise with
colleagues. Doing this in pairs to start with (perhaps with you, their
workplace mentor) will help build their confidence in front of an
audience
Offer advice on communications they may send – give suggestions on
how they can be more concise, to help clear up any ambiguity and
‘listen’ to their tone: if they’re after something from their correspondent,
are they asking in a way that’s likely to achieve the desired result? Could
they sound more assertively persuasive – or less severely demanding?
(Reading aloud first is a constructively revealing strategy)
Encourage your trainee not to sit in silence during meetings – voicing
their opinion or asking good questions not only forces them to make
themselves understood by people at different levels and of various
backgrounds, but will also cultivate an image of self-assurance (and the
meetings will seem much faster too)
Identify career and networking events they can attend, especially those
that involve participation, such as role-playing to improve interviewing or
negotiating skills
Trainees should be proactive and volunteer for committees or projects –
or by attending their local ACCA network meetings where they can
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contribute their skills and experience. They’ll never be short of
opportunities to stretch those communication skills
Trainees should learn to ‘actively listen’ – by showing they’re paying
attention to the speaker and respond with honest feedback – or by
repeating back the essence of what they understand they’ve been told
Trainees should practise purposeful writing – thinking about the outcome
they want from any writing exercise: what will the reader have to do with
this report? What decision do they want from this proposal? If you read
this document, would you know what action to take?
When taking telephone messages trainees should ensure that they are
meaningful and that they understand them. If they don’t then the
chances are their colleagues won’t
Encourage your trainee to prepare properly for effective face-to-face
communication – if they’re on time, well-presented and, most
importantly, know their stuff (or at least know what they want to find
out), their confidence will shine through – and they’ll be far more readily
listened to and understood.
Other examples are listed online at
www.accaglobal.com/students/training_careers/professional – encourage
trainees to try (at least once each day) to consciously consider how they’re
planning to communicate something, and do one thing that’s different in order
to improve their effectiveness.
The next step will be for trainees to answer the three unique challenge
questions for this objective in the trainee development matrix (TDM), accessed
via myACCA:
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Trainees should describe situations where they have effectively
demonstrated each of the forms of communication mentioned (they
should think about what was required, in what format and with what
purpose)
Trainees will need to describe what they did in order to communicate
effectively? (They should consider the method of communication used
and why they decided to convey the information that way)
Trainees will need to specify how their communication skills helped
them improve their performance elsewhere? (What tangible results or
qualitative outcomes have been achieved, and how might these have
been lessened if they had not stepped up their effort to communicate
effectively?)
They will need to work closely with you, as you’ll need to sign this off – on their
activity and on their answers to the challenge questions – before they can
achieve this objective.
For PER support and advice on answering challenge questions
www.accaglobal.com/students/acca/per/support