How Business Partners Become Trusted Advisors

In practically every finance transformation strategy, you will see phrases like “Finance needs to become a trusted advisor to the business”. You can replace trusted advisor with "strategic sparring partner" or "business partner", but they all mean the same. 

All too often, transformations focus more on process and technology than true people development to become a trusted advisor. This has left the individual business partner, controller, or analyst to themselves to figure out how to build a relationship with their business stakeholders. 

Becoming a trusted advisor is by no means an easy task. Unless you are a CFO, you often engage with business leaders that hold a position which is one-to-three levels above yourself. It is designed like an uneven relationship from the beginning, which means you must earn the right to partner. 

This does not happen by itself. You need to take the first step. This week we deep-dive on how to build such a relationship and become the trusted advisor of your business stakeholder.

It starts and ends with trust 

The fuel of all good relationships is trust. But what is trust? And how do you build it? 

We recommend taking inspiration from the trust equation, that was developed by David Maister in his book “The Trusted Advisor” from 2001. The equation was developed for consultants, but much like consultants, you will only succeed as a business partner, when you help your internal stakeholders delivering successful outcomes.

When assessing your level of trustworthiness, your stakeholders evaluate you along 4 dimensions. 

• Credibility (words): Do you know what you are talking about?
• Reliability (actions): Do you deliver on your promises?
• Intimacy (emotions): Can you be trusted with confidential information?
• Self-orientation (motives): Is this about your own or your stakeholder’s agenda? 

Here are a few examples for each of the four elements of how business partners can build trust.

Some of the elements come more natural to us than others, yet we must work with each of them to build a trusted relationship. Most important is to remove all self-orientation and hidden motives by clearly stating that as business partners we only have one goal. 

“To help our stakeholders meet or beat their targets!” 

This follows logically from the equation which shows that it is simply impossible to build trust if you are self-oriented. You must work actively on improving all elements to continuously increase trust with your stakeholders. It is hard to gain and easy to lose. Here is a practical example of how Anders built trust with a senior stakeholder. 

Developing trust with a VP three levels above 

Situation

Late 2018, Anders took up a new role as a business partner supporting a VP of product that was three job levels above Anders. 

Complication

The trust in Finance was low: 

• Finance had not been able to come with many expert insights…
• …were often delayed with input…
• …were spread too thin to have time to invest in getting to know individual business stakeholders…
• …and too often Finance had only cared about its own needs. 

Why should it be any different with the new guy? In other words, Anders had his work cut out for him. 

Resolution

Here are some of the things he did to gain the trust and confidence of the VP and his wider team. 

• Made it clear that his only goal was to help the VP and his team meet or beat their targets
• Invested time in understanding what it would take to positively influence performance
• Got to know not only the VP but even more so the team leaders as they were the ones responsible for driving business performance.
• Made business performance the first priority

Impact

At the end of the assignment, Anders got a nice note from the VP to say that he appreciated his contribution to the leadership team and personal engagement. That the standard for how Finance could support the business had been lifted. And that Anders could leave with a feeling of having left a mark on the team and the performance. 

Building a trusted relationship is a never-ending journey but you can get far in just one year. 

We know this is difficult for finance professionals 

Building relationships is not the easiest thing for finance professionals because we prefer to work with numbers rather than people. However, to make an impact with the numbers we must use them to influence decision-makers. It is much easier to influence if you have a trusted relationship. Our goal should be that they make no important decisions without consulting us, their trusted advisor, first.

What is your experience with building relationships? What do you find particularly challenging or do you have any success stories to share? We will listen eagerly to learn how finance professionals across the world are building relationships with their business stakeholders.

Business Partnering Institute can help you become better at building relationships by learning to understand others perspectives and what is important to them. In that way, you can best help them meet or beat their targets! You can reach us today at https://www.dhirubhai.net/redir/general-malware-page?url=contact%40businesspartneringinstitute%2eorg or get directly in touch with Anders on +45 2926 6410.

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This was the eleventh article in the series "Business Partnering On A Formula". You can read past articles in the series below.

This Is How We Succeed With Business Partnering

Business Partnering On A Formula

This Is How Business Partners Have Impact And Drive Value Creation

Here's Why You Want A Business Partner At The Table

Decision ≠ Action - But What Can Finance Do About It?

How Do Business Partners Generate Insights?

A Business Partner Is Like A Mechanic, Always Looking To Optimize The Engine Room

Performance Management Done Right Is A Gold Mine Of Insight

Here Is How Finance Can Grow The Business

If Only It Was Enough For Finance To Be Right

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.

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 8,500 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 45.000+ followers.