The Other Skills You Need

There is a notion that professionals are turned out of school ready to go. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Even after you’ve passed all your exams and are fully credentialed, you’re still many bricks short of a full wall. The truth is that the first day you put your feet under your desk you may be ready to stick needles in people, or draft a lease, or draw the plans for a loading dock, but there’s still a whole lot that you need to know before you are of much real use to society and before you can start to make a living commensurate with the money, time, and effort you’ve invested.

To be sure, some professions train their people better on the non-core skills, some keep the kids in the back room until they can take off the training wheels, and some young professionals come onstream just when the market for their services is white hot and you have to be really klutzy not to succeed.

But most of us are not as lucky, and the sooner we realize we need an extra bag of tricks, the sooner we can begin to enjoy what we do and make a decent living doing so. And the better served will be the consuming public.

Among the “other skills” that get only a wink and a nod in professional training are these:

1. The art of finding the niche for which you were born, and establishing your reputation as the best therein.

2. The art of communicating with accuracy, clarity and persuasiveness.

3. The art of managing your practice, including support staff and technology.

4. The art of finding great clients and avoiding bad ones.

5. The art of financial management for solvency and profit.

6. The art of collaborating with peers so that the team product is maximized for profit, safety, and reputation.

7. The art of working with adjunct professions for the maximum benefit of the client, and for the mutual benefit of the professionals.

8. The art of planning for your retirement, both financially and lifestyle, from the first day of your practice.

When I was a young lawyer in 1981 nobody even talked about this stuff. Today some of it is given token mention in continuing professional development programs, but it’s still the ugly sister to subject matter content. And that’s a shame.

It’s a shame because happy and successful lawyers and engineers and architects and project managers are far more likely to deliver excellent, cost-effective service to their clientele, and conversely, inefficient, unhappy, and frustrated professionals are far more likely to fall into incompetence and even fraud. The public, and the professionals, deserve better.