Why are soft skills so hard to master?

'Soft skills' is a catch-all phrase used to describe a set of skills, knowledge and behaviours widely accepted as essential to the success of businesses of all shapes, sizes, sectors and purposes. They are the skills which are interchangeably described as professional skills, behavioural competences, interpersonal skills, personal effectiveness and even the 'pink and fluffy stuff'.

Soft skills are distinctive from the 'hard', technical, occupational or functional skills which people more happily attribute to their success in their chosen roles. Hard skills in law firms equate to legal practice, knowledge of the law, legal research and analysis and legal drafting for lawyers, and function-specific occupational skills for business services and support employees such as accounts, HR, office management and legal secretaries.

So, why are soft skills often regarded as second class or incidental skills? Some might suggest that, in order to differentiate ourselves in our roles, we focus on the specialist knowledge or skill set which best help to define our contribution to the success of the business. This might therefore account for the apparently disproportionate amount of time spent on 'hard' versus 'soft' skills development in ?law firms.

Attention and energy are given more readily to updating technical expertise, as this is essential if clients are to utilise the firm's services. Technical topics also tend to be areas of real interest to professionals, as it is normally these that attracted them to their chosen profession or line of work in the first place.

However, when you look at the plentiful research and feedback from clients on why they instruct the firms they do, they typically praise qualities and attributes more closely associated with competency in soft skills: efficiency, project management, communication and impact. In order to deliver these valued qualities, individuals need to be able to delegate, manage their workflow and time appropriately, present with confidence and credibility, lead and manage individuals and teams, and coach and develop others. Not a hard skill in sight!

So why are 'soft' skills so hard to master? Is it because we have so many variables to contend with when working with people - be they colleagues, peers, direct reports, managers or clients? By contrast, we can focus more easily on one or two specific components or elements when mastering a hard or technical skill. We are often in control of what we need to learn or develop. This is certainly not the case when looking to develop our delegation or communication capabilities: we cannot control; we can only influence the responses and behaviours of others.

Impact and influence

In increasing impact and influence, one of the habits from the late Stephen Covey's book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is apt: "seek first to understand, then be understood". Dealing with the less predictable aspects of our daily lives can take a good deal of energy and concentration and, in some cases, time, which is a precious commodity in any firm.

The inclusion on the soft skills menu of self knowledge, understanding and emotional intelligence is therefore essential to help ensure the greatest impact and influencing of others takes place. The assumption based on extensive studies and analysis is that, the better one understands oneself, the better equipped one is to impact and influence others.

Lawyers are constantly having to impact and influence others using their technical capabilities. There isn't an either/or approach to soft skills - they are an essential contributor to business success and, if mapped out, will quite possibly account for at least two thirds of the ?overall capabilities of a successful and experienced lawyer.

Many firms discount or reduce the value of soft skills development, particularly of more junior lawyers, placing significantly more emphasis on their hard skills. The development of managerial and leadership skills tends to be left to when lawyers are seen to be 'wanting' in that aspect of their performance, rather than spending time developing and practicing those skills much earlier in their careers.

Elite athletes don't suddenly start training a new skill set as they approach a major championship. They fine tune and practice what they have already learned and mastered over a number of years. This is an approach every law firm should consider adopting, if it has not already done so. Development centres and modularised programmes, together with short workshops to help with developing the behaviours that are valued by clients, are a vital investment in the future success of your firm.

?Sue Beavil is the senior learning and development manager at international ?law firm Mayer Brown ?(www.mayerbrown.com)