7½ soft skills to success

My favourite management model, the Peter principle, may not have ever been referenced in a Finance & Management article before now, but I’m quite sure you’re familiar with it – if not in name, then certainly in evidence. It may be nearly 50 years since Laurence J Peter’s book of the same name, but the principle still rings true today. Put simply, it suggests we all rise to a level of incompetence and then stay there!

For accountants, like many professionals, our technical prowess will only take us so far in our careers and in business. What really counts are our non-technical skills – our ability to manage ourselves, our teams, our clients and stakeholders. If we’re deficient in these, we’ll struggle and it’s unlikely we’ll progress any further.

In my work I see this from both sides – the prevention and the cure. Most of the time I’m training supervisors or new line managers precisely to develop these all-important skills just as they’re beginning to need them. Occasionally I coach individuals who have effectively hit their level of incompetence, so the focus here is retro-fitting some of these same skills – better late than never.

So if you’re looking to avoid, or at least defer, being tripped up by the Peter principle, you’re in the right place. Set out here are the 7½ soft skills I think all accountants need and also a suggestion of something to do or think about for each one.

This is your ability to ‘work a room’ – whether to build an internal network or sell yourself to potential clients, or employers. If this prospect scares you, don’t worry, you’re not alone. You can learn and rehearse the basics here, whether it’s how to get into a group, how to get out of one or how to get from small talk to business talk.

Develop a solid introduction. We usually default to our job title – “Hello, I’m Angus, I’m a financial controller”, but if you want to stand out, try saying what you do, rather than just your title, for example, “Hello, I’m Angus,I give the directors the financial information they need to run the business”, or “Hello, I’m Angus, I help our shareholders sleep soundly!”

This is to present your ideas, research or recommendations to a group of people. Together with networking, this can fill people with utter dread. The main concern is how to deal with nerves. It’s fine to be nervous – it’s acting as if you’re not that’s the trick. The biggest help is simply to know your stuff and realise that your audience is there to listen and learn, not to will you to fail!

To prepare, use the acronym INTRO:

• Introduce yourself: who are you? What is it about you that will build your credibility the most?
• Need: Why do they need to listen to you? What are they going to find out or be able to do as a result?
• Timing: How long will you take? Will there be a break? Are people welcome to ask questions as you go or would you prefer them at the end?
• Range: What media will your presentation range across?
• Objective: What is the main purpose of your presentation? If you cover these elements in your first few minutes, you’ll not only give your audience everything they want to know at the beginning, but by rehearsing it you’ll also give yourself a flying start.

If you cover these elements in your first few minutes, you’ll not only give your audience everything they want to know at the beginning, but by rehearsing it you’ll also give yourself a flying start.

Could be described as ‘the subtle art of letting someone else have your way’. Negotiating is ubiquitous for managers – whether it’s over price or fee, negotiating with staff over what you want them to do, or indeed managing upwards to agree your own workload for the month ahead.

Avoid spending too much time mapping out your ideal and realistic bargaining positions, however tempting. You’re unlikely to get your ideal, and you shouldn’t be too strict on what you feel is realistic – this will ebb and flow as the negotiation progresses. You need to be very clear about your walk away point – the worst deal you’d still be happy to strike.

If you’ve seen the much-quoted figures that words comprise 7% of impact, voice 38% and non-verbal 55%, then unsee it. It’s a misrepresentation of the original research, which was focusing on how we understand other people’s emotional states. It’s still useful to bear these three elements in mind, but assume they are about equal in importance.

In terms of voice, if you spend quite a bit of time on the phone, then be aware of how you actually sound. Leave yourself a one-minute message on your own voicemail; talk about anything you want – those last quarter’s income variances, your summer holiday plans, what signature dish you’d prepare for the MasterChef final... Now listen to it. That’s what others hear.

If you are balking at the mere thought of listening to yourself for just one minute, have some sympathy for your regular phone colleagues! And if this dose of self-realisation encourages you to vary one or more elements of your voice – speed, pitch, tone, volume – when you’re next on the phone, then that’s a minute well spent.

This is less of a skill and more knowledge of a toolkit of models that might help you develop strategy or solve problems. Remind yourself about simple models like Pestle, Five Forces, Ansoff and Pareto, and actually try them out. They aren’t too complex, but can be powerful shared with people unfamiliar with them.

I am a particular fan of Ansoff ’s growth matrix. It’s a simple way of helping people think about options for growing a business and can prompt good questions about how we understand markets (Geographic? Demographic? Psychographic?) and what new products or services could be developed.

Most mangers’ inability or unwillingness to have difficult conversations is the biggest skills gap in many organisations. It may be daunting to give negative feedback when we want to be liked by the people we work with, but the cost of not doing this properly and promptly can be huge.

However, it’s not just bad news we’re sometimes poor at delivering, it’s just as important to catch people doing something right. Central to giving constructive feedback, whether positive or negative, is to follow SAC:

• Situation: give them context – what was the task, project or client they faced?
• Action: what did they do or not do that you want to address?
• Consequence: what happened as a result of their (in)action? Sometimes junior staff don’t have the perspective you have and so don’t ‘see’ the knock-on effect.

It’s all too easy to spend an entire day (or week, year or indeed career) being busy with urgent stuff at the expense of important stuff. We tend to only do important things when they become urgent, and then we probably don’t do them as well as if we’d tackled them sooner!

The key here is making better use of our diaries. Commit three of your important tasks to your calendar and stick to them. Don’t defer them more than three times when the reminders pop up.

This is the most important of all in my opinion. So why just a half mark? Because I’m probably preaching to the converted, seeing as you’re sat here diligently reading Finance & Management.

If only professor Peter had known there was such an elegant solution!

• 7½ soft skills to success
  Business & Management Magazine, February 2017, p.28-29

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