Influencing Without Resistance — Why Legal Needs a New Approach to Business Partnering
The Challenge for Legal
Influencing Skills for Legal Teams
In house legal functions are facing themselves in increasingly challenging environments. In today’s complex organizations, where the focus is increasingly on relationships, knowledge and technical skills are not enough. The focus is increasingly on reputation and interpersonal skills.
Even when Legal gives sound advice, it may be met with frustration or dismissed entirely. The instinctive reaction is often to push harder: cite regulations, clarify the risk, restate the logic.
Take this typical real-world example: A senior executive is close to signing a deal. Legal flags a clause – it seems like a small thing but further down the track legal know it could lead to serious implications. The executive, under pressure, reacts badly. It’s the last thing she wants to hear. This deal is the route to her bonus.
Legal pushes harder. The result? Tension escalates and trust deteriorates.
What happened here is textbook reactance — a well-documented psychological response where people resist what they perceive as a threat to their autonomy.
We helped this Legal team practise the same conversation under guidance. Through immersive behavioural rehearsal, they learned to acknowledge pressure first, then introduce risk. The shift in outcome was immediate.
But research shows that this often backfires. When people feel pressured, they double down on their original position — even if the facts are against them. Psychologists call this the backfire effect.
Influencing Without Resistance – Why Legal Needs a New Approach to Business Partnering
At Threshold, we work with Legal teams to overcome this pattern. Not by diluting their message — but by helping them deliver it in ways that are more likely to land. Just as culture has changed within corporations, we are seeing attitudes to Legal change. Gone is the era when Legal’s advice carried the day, simply by dint of the fact that they are… well… Legal. In the new world commercial acumen, emotional intelligence and partnering skills are increasingly essential components of the legal kit of parts.
Failure to recognise this means that Legal gets excluded from early conversations. Risk escalates before it’s addressed and Legal’s protective value is reduced, not due to lack of insight, but lack of influence.
In fast-paced environments, Legal’s influence depends not on authority, but on the ability to persuade under pressure.
Threshold helps Legal teams adapt to this reality. We teach them how to navigate resistance, frame advice effectively, and hold influence — even when the stakes are high.
How Threshold Helps
Our work is grounded in behavioural science and adult learning theory. We combine:
- Immersive theatre, creating emotionally realistic scenarios to practise real-time persuasion.
- Research-led facilitation, drawing on psychology and neuroscience to explain what causes resistance — and how to reduce it.
- Live coaching, helping Legal professionals strengthen credibility, empathy, and timing, through simulated conversations with experienced role-players
Legal professionals who master this shift gain earlier access, deeper trust, and broader influence.
They become strategic advisors — not just technical validators.
At Threshold, we are helping our clients to ensure that their human workforce is committed, engaged and ready for the technology revolution. We do this by bringing about small shifts in line manager behaviour that make a big difference. To find out more visit www.threshold.co.uk
