It’s good to know your lane. It’s better to know how to get out of it.

The other day I had the opportunity to speak with finance and accounting professionals at Western CPE’s Nashville conference. For me, it was an interesting adjacency to my usual audiences. I spend my work life with finance and investment professionals, management teams, and Board members. However accountants do make up a disproportionate percentage of my friends, family, and for a few great seasons, my kickball team.

The group asked me to talk about what, from my perspective, distinguishes great CFOs from the rest. As I reflected on the CFOs I’ve had the privilege to work with over the years, I think one overarching theme sticks out: the great CFOs were tremendous thought partners to their CEOs and their teams, not just excellent managers of money or financial planners.

Good CFOs have financial mastery of the business. Great CFOs though, they have that mastery and they couple that mastery with a deep understanding of the business and the market. When I’m running a strategy session, the great CFOs don’t just answer questions about finance when they’re asked. They also have insights on the M&A strategy, organic growth, operations, and how to prepare for the marketplace. They don’t leave those topics just to the people in charge of those areas. Instead, they engage in conversation with those people to bring the entire strategy to a better place.

From my work in strategy, I see that skill – being able to be a thought partner to other smart, high-powered leaders outside of your direct domain – as one that regularly separates the best leaders from good or bad leaders. I don’t have to be an expert in the valuations of pest control companies to help an M&A leader of a pest control business build a better M&A strategy – I know how to listen, what to listen for, how to ask questions, and how to bring an outside perspective that will help them create the best plan. That’s not a skillset unique to me or people in strategy – I watch people, sometimes with fancy titles and sometimes without, in all sorts of roles, do it all the time.

If you’re a leader evaluating how effective your team members are at making the team’s performance greater than the sum of the individuals’ capabilities, you’ll often know early on just by watching how they engage with each other.