Nobody teaches you this (well, almost nobody)

I once sat in on a training day for newly qualified solicitors. Technically, it was excellent. Contract law, client care letters, billing targets, the lot. Nowhere on the agenda was “how to talk to a stranger at a drinks reception without wanting to hide behind the canapés.”

That’s not a dig at the firm. It’s the same everywhere. We spend years training people to be brilliant at the law, the numbers, the audit, whatever the actual job is. Then we hand them a glass of warm white wine, point them at a room full of strangers, and expect relationship building to just… happen.

It doesn’t. Not because people are bad at it. Because nobody ever taught them.

Nobody teaches you what to actually say when your mind goes blank in a networking break. Nobody teaches you how to get someone to like you, as opposed to just tolerate you for the length of a conversation. Nobody teaches you how to ask for a referral without sounding like you’re selling something, or how to introduce two people properly so it doesn’t feel like a cold sales pitch landing in their inbox. Nobody teaches you what to do with the pile of business cards you bring home from a conference, or how to follow up with someone six weeks later without it feeling odd.

We assume these things arrive by osmosis, the way you’re supposed to pick up “workplace culture” by breathing the same air as everyone else for long enough. Some people do pick it up. Most just muddle through, quietly assuming everyone else finds it easier than they do.

They don’t. I promise you, the confident looking one in the corner is usually running the same internal monologue as you: what do I say, when do I leave, was that too long a pause.

Here’s the bit I actually believe, after years of doing this for a living: relationship development is a skill, not a personality trait. It can be broken down, taught, and practised, the same as negotiation or presenting or any other “soft” skill firms already train for. The only reason it usually isn’t, is that everyone assumes somebody else is teaching it.

Well, someone is. Me, as it happens. Though it’s a smaller club than you’d think, which says more about professional services (and every other industry) than it does about me.

If you run a firm, that’s worth sitting with for a second. You’ve probably invested heavily in technical training and left the thing that actually brings in the work, the relationships, entirely to chance.

So if there’s one thing I’d want you to take from this: stop assuming your best people already know how to do this. Most of them are guessing, same as the rest of us. Which means, happily, this is entirely fixable.