In the pursuit of creating greater value for the company, finance departments are increasingly being asked to collaborate or build partnerships with other departments. However, a key question arises: are you systematically training these soft skills? If so, what specific methods are you using?

Collaboration skills are not innate; they require deliberate practice and structured development. Many companies position finance professionals as "business partners" but rarely provide them with targeted training in communication, cross-departmental coordination, or conflict resolution. This gap between expectations and support can cause collaboration to become superficial, failing to truly generate business value.

Why is collaboration skills training often overlooked?

Finance departments have traditionally focused on hard skills (such as accounting, compliance, and reporting), and training budgets and course designs often lean toward technical capabilities. Soft skills training is often seen as a "nice-to-have" rather than an "essential capability." Additionally, the results of collaboration are difficult to quantify, making the return on training investment hard to assess directly, which further lowers its priority.

Possible paths for training collaboration skills

If you decide to incorporate collaboration skills into your training system, consider the following approaches:

  • Scenario simulation and role-playing: Design cross-departmental project scenarios where finance professionals can practice proposing suggestions, handling disagreements, and reaching consensus.
  • Action learning projects: Form cross-functional teams to solve real business problems, honing collaboration and communication through hands-on practice.
  • Mentorship and shadowing: Assign experienced business partners as mentors to help finance professionals master collaboration techniques through observation and feedback.
  • External workshops and online courses: Introduce collaboration, negotiation, or influence courses developed by professional institutions to provide a structured knowledge framework.

Key metrics for evaluating training effectiveness

To avoid training becoming superficial, it is recommended to set observable evaluation criteria, such as the on-time completion rate of cross-departmental projects, internal customer satisfaction scores, and the number of improvement suggestions adopted from collaboration. While these metrics are not perfect, they provide a degree of feedback.

Collaboration is not a talent but a learnable skill. If companies expect finance departments to become true business partners, they must invest in the systematic development of collaboration skills just as they invest in technical capabilities.

Ultimately, the question is not "whether to train" but "how to design effective training." Each organization's culture, resources, and business complexity differ, requiring customized solutions. But regardless, the first step is to acknowledge that collaboration skills need to be explicitly trained, not just encouraged verbally or through job rotation.

Therefore, review your training plan: does it include a collaboration module? If not, it is time to put it on the agenda. If it does, ensure its content is closely tied to business scenarios and supported by continuous evaluation and improvement mechanisms.