The current issue contains a short article of mine that should be of interest to all ambitious professionals. The editor has titled it: More than technical skills and has added a desription: Whatever you may think, personal development courses are there for good reason. But, Mark Lee asks, are you making the most of them?

If you don’t get to see the magazine and would like a copy of my article, please just let me know and I can send you a pdf.

I know that my own career success owes more to the development of non-technical skills than it does to my knowledge and application of tax law.

How do we gain our technical skills? No one is born a great auditor, lawyer, tax adviser or whatever. We learn by working alongside experienced colleagues, by studying to pass relevant exams and by our experiences in practice.

Why then should anyone imagine that the other key skills of a profitable professional can just be left to ‘common sense’?

Some people assume that all of the important non-technical skills can be developed merely by working alongside experienced colleagues and by our experiences in practice. No formal training is necessary. Older partners didn’t have such training. Anyone who needs training or support in ‘soft’ skills is not worthy of becoming a full equity partner.

It won’t surprise regular readers of this blog that I do not agree with these views or with another similarly flawed attitude one encounters all too often: Practice makes perfect. No it doesn’t. ‘Practice’ makes ‘permanent’. If you develop bad driving habits and practice driving, you won’t become a better driver. You will merely reinforce your bad driving habits.

I have long been a believer in the importance of developing key personal skills. My research helped me to identify and categorise 12 key non-technical skills that ambitious professionals need to some degree or another if they are to be profitable partners and contribute to their firm’s success. You will find a summary of these 12 key skills on the Ambitious Professionals page of this blog.

A mentor does more than coach you. The sessions will normally be confidential and take place by phone or meeting somewhere convenient and private.

Your mentor will help identify your development needs, give advice, open doors and help you to think through issues and problems. They will also ask you for feedback as regards what has changed since the previous session and remind you of ideas and suggestions raised previously. This form of tailored, personalised mentoring is, by definition, far more effective than conventional generic personal development courses.  The key characteristics to look for in a mentor are: Someone who will give you quality time, is empathetic, can spot unusual but effective synergies for you, can open doors and make connections, will give you independent advice and a fresh perspective – and whose judgement you can trust.

Ask your firm about mentoring.  You may be able to identify a suitably experienced and capable partner with whom you have a good relationship.  You’ll also want to be comfortable that they have the time, talent and training to do more than merely make encouraging noises.  The other option would be for your firm to engage a credible, independent and experienced mentor to provide the necessary guidance and support.

Whilst exam training focuses on developing technical skills most firms need tax managers and partners who also have a broad mix of business skills. As promotion is likely to depend upon such skills there are essentially only four options available to a firm. They will either:

• pray, hope or make a wish that you magically develop all the necessary skills so they can justify promoting you;

• send you on a range of generic personal skills courses and pray, hope or make a wish(!) that you pick up and practice sufficient tips to make the time and effort worthwhile;

• arrange for you to receive personal, tailored mentoring that overcomes the problems inherent in the “courses” approach;

• recruit someone else who already has proven business skills across the board.

Some firms combine the last two options and arrange mentoring as an additional benefit to attract potential recruits. In such cases the mentor is usually an independent third party; this evidences the firm’s commitment to the new candidate and will be a positive supplement to the firm’s conventional induction process.

Such mentoring can be equally motivating for managers, senior managers and even junior partners where traditional ‘hopes’ and courses have not enabled them to yet achieve their potential or to be as profitable as the other partners would prefer.

Most people would agree that we can all achieve better levels of professional success with the guidance and help of a mentor; someone with whom we can discuss our career plans, evaluate options and achievements, and work through issues.

Key managers often have many key skills but these may require honing or enhancing before promotion to partnership can be assured. There may be someone suitable in your firm who is prepared to free up enough time to act as a mentor. Often however even if someone is asked or expected to fulfil this role they are missing either the training, the talent or the time. There’s invariably something else more pressing to do than to fulfil their obligations as a mentor.

This is one of the reasons why it can make more sense to engage a mentor from outside the firm. Indeed, there is much to be said for engaging a senior, experienced, highly regarded and ‘expert’ practitioner who is committed to mentoring a select number of ambitious professions. Imagine the positive impact this is likely to have on their confidence. But I would say that wouldn’t I!

Accountancy magazine (July 2006) ran an article “Coaching: the new religion”  written by Wilf Altman.  In it he suggested that ‘leading firms of  accountants are surprisingly coy about coaching.’

In my experience however all of the largest firms run partner development programs and most of these include a form of coaching or mentoring.  I agree with Wilf that there is no single definition of ‘coaching’ in the context of “the new religion”.  Many accountants have heard of life coaching, business coaching or success coaching.  We have probably also heard of mentoring – typically where a suitably senior person shares their experience and their wider knowledge of the profession to speed up the development of a less experienced person.  

What the process is called however is less important than whether prospective partners and rising stars are motivated to enhance their skills. Most firms tend to rely on senior partners to act as coaches or a mentors.  In practice such partners rarely have the training, talent or time to be reliably effective in such roles.  The candidates cannot complain for fear of damaging their potential for progression and upsetting the senior partner.  The firms imply that the best candidates would take that chance but few people have the confidence that requires. 

Increasingly therefore ambitious firms are engaging experienced credible mentors from outside the firm.  Mentors such as myself are not subject to conflicting time constraints or political manoeuvrings within the firm.   We are there for the candidates when required and can provide a tailored programme that includes coaching in those, generally non-technical, skills that the candidate needs to develop further.

Most firms that are not large enough to run their own internal partner development programmes are increasingly looking to find cost effective alternatives.  They want to ensure that their rising stars stay and develop the key business skills they require to be effective and profitable as partners.  Some firms may describe this as ‘coaching’. Others will see this as mentoring – which is possibly more relevant for all but the really experienced partners.  Offering new recruits the (tax-free) benefit of a credible mentor can also assist the recruitment process during the ongoing ‘war for talent’.

This entry was also submitted as a letter for Accountancy magazine and has now been published as such on p23 of the September issue.

The more research I do the more it seems that I may be onto something. Firms of accountants that do not have functioning partner development programmes and recruitment consultants are telling me the same thing.

That is that managers and senior managers often have great technical skills but that their wider business skills have yet to be honed.  This is likely to hold them back from achieving partnership status. Tailored mentoring could help with this of course. In the mean time recruitment, succession and motivation issues are all conspiring to constrain the development of future generations of partners outside of the largest firms. There was a time when professionals were routinely categorised as finders, minders or grinders. The finders went out and developed new clients and brought in the business; the minders looked after the relationship with those clients; and the grinders were the ones who did the detailed technical work.  There is also a fourth category: Binders – those who keep (bind) the team together working effectively and who set a good example themselves.

If we assume that CPD focused on technical development covers the  ‘grinders’ quadrant of a potential partner’s development, that leaves Finding, Minding and Binding. In a subsequent blog I will set out the key skills that I think fall into each category.

For the professional firm the key benefits can be summarised:

* faster, more effective induction * development of staff and partner skills * instilling a feel good factor in staff * retention of quality staff and potential partners * enhanced development of key skills * gains in productivity and the performance of individuals * better communication, commitment and motivation * more motivated staff and partners