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It\u2019s a story that Verizon CFO Matt Ellis seems to enjoy telling and one that he has undoubtedly related more than once before.\xa0

One evening while in high school, Ellis was working at the fish counter of a local supermarket when he received some feedback from the store manager.

Earlier in the day, the man had asked Ellis to clean a number of shelves beside the counter, but Ellis had soon become busy with fish patrons and hadn\u2019t able to complete the task.

More than 30 years later, Ellis easily retrieves the store manager\u2019s words: \u201cI\u2019m not disappointed that you didn\u2019t get it done\u2014I know that you were busy with your normal stuff. What disappoints me is that if you had only told me, I could have arranged to have someone else to do it.\u201d

This is a classic management lesson that many business leaders have communicated before, but when Ellis presents it, the message is endowed with renewed relevance for finance.

It is easy for us to imagine Ellis retrieving the store manager\u2019s lesson to enlighten a young finance analyst\u2014or perhaps even his own approach as he prepares to brief Verizon board members on looming strategy snags.

\u201cThis taught me two things: One was the value of communicating bad news as early as possible, and the second lesson was the way in which he gave feedback\u2014ranting and raving is not the way to get through to people,\u201d explains Ellis, who even today seems to muster genuine appreciation for\u2014and perhaps even marvel at\u2014the store manager\u2019s evenhanded demeanor.

It\u2019s not surprising that Ellis shares a lesson that reveals the power of communication in finance. This is no doubt a skill he acquired early in his career and that has co\xad\xad\xadntributed to his ongoing ascent in responsibility and reward.

Having worked beside CFOs at Tyson Foods and Verizon for nearly a decade, Ellis arguably understood the CFO role better than most when he eventually became a CFO himself, at Verizon.\xa0

Asked what advice he would have given himself in the first week of his tenure, Ellis responds that the parts of the CFO role about which he was most uncertain turned out to be those that up to that point had not been part of his experience.

\u201cIt\u2019s the interactions with the other members of the senior leadership team that become different,\u201d he reports. \u201cIt\u2019s the importance of one-on-one communication\u2014not the group meetings to which I had become accustomed before.\u201d

Here, too, Ellis\u2019s communication skills have no doubt served him well. \u2013Jack Sweeney