IT directors and finance directors share many challenges
when it comes to interpersonal skills, according to consultancy
Positive Presence, which ran several seminars for IT directors and
finance directors last month.
About 50 IT directors in the financial services sector attended
the sessions at the City IT conference on board the cruise ship
Oriana, and another 50 attended similar sessions at the parallel
Finance Directors Forum.
"There are many similarities between finance directors and IT
directors," said Nicola Murray of Positive Presence. "Generally,
both are technical, their interpersonal skills are not so strong
and they are not as gregarious as other groups. They tend not to be
'people people'. They both tend to move through the ranks in their
departments, where there is no issue about communicating
internally.
"However, it is when they become more senior and they need to be
more outward facing that they come across problems, and these are
best identified early on."
Murray said the three core areas for IT directors to focus on
were: grooming, pitching ideas and behaviour. She stressed the
importance of appearance, body language, voice, and etiquette for
successful managers.
"They need to simplify their elevator pitches and communicate in
layman's terms when they communicate externally. IT people tend to
over complicate. They need to think simply and in bullet form,"
said Murray.
On behaviour, she said that IT directors should try to think out
of their niche and about who their target audience is. "They should
consider what the target audience knows, what it does not know, and
what it does not want to know."
Murray said they needed to be able to read people to get the
best out of them and to sell themselves.
Highlighting the differences between IT and finance leaders, she
said, "IT directors tend to be less confident than finance
directors because controlling the purse strings of the organisation
brings confidence and authority - but not necessarily
presence."
On the other hand, finance directors do not like surprises and
tend to be less quick at thinking on their feet than IT
directors.
Murray said that IT people were quick on their feet about IT
solutions but from a management perspective they were less quick -
they think of the design of solutions, but do not think so much
about the impact on business.
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