By Jonathan Killion

Do you enjoy solving complex puzzles, learning about diverse businesses, helping turn companies around and improving peoples’ lives? If so, you may have the combination of skills and curiosity necessary to be a restructuring specialist.

Based on decades of working with companies needing assistance, there are essential skills that will help you lead to outstanding career growth as a restructuring professional.

The heart of restructuring is twofold: an ability to remain comfortable and flexible in uncertain environments, and the skill to communicate successfully with varying levels of company stakeholders—owners, boards of directors, executives, attorneys, lenders, and the employee staff.  When analyzing a company’s structure, operations, and finances, anomalies and inconsistencies pop up that may materially affect the end solution. A good restructuring professional must be ready to address these challenges in a cool, level-headed manner. Sometimes these situations can be stressful, and those who thrive in these conditions have one thing in common: the ability to deliver unexpected or even bad news in an empathetic and professional manner.

Because restructuring also involves in-depth analysis of a company’s finances, a high level of technical competency in business with a rock-solid foundation in corporate accounting is imperative. Much of the work we do revolves around communicating with financial officers and sophisticated capital providers. It is critical that everyone on the team has a keen analytical mind, an ability to create solutions to complex financial challenges, and to communicate successfully across the entire spectrum of stakeholders.

Restructuring can be challenging, but also exhilarating–especially when you are able to realize a positive outcome, get an organization back on its feet, preserve peoples’ livelihoods and give great company a renewed lease on life.