Consulting Lessons Learned 29: Understanding pressure
When working in consulting, the pressure you experience on the job will often look very much like a sine-curve. A constant change between very busy, high-pressure situations, followed by a certain “relieve” phase.
Some junior consultants start to feel not self-determined enough in these situations. You might feel your whole life is guided by the external pressure that is put onto you. For that reason, I think it is very important to understand work pressure and to build the right mindset around it.
For me, pressure means two things:
First: I have a challenge in front of me that I want to solve. Every relieve phase stands for a successful accomplishment of the challenge.
Second: Pressure is an important leadership instrument. Your job manager will always try to put the right amount of pressure on you, so you achieve the highest output. Some job managers are not good in managing the pressure themselves and just delegate this pressure further downwards. Understanding this principle will help you to interpret the behavior of your job manager.
Try to use pressure and transform it into self-managed results. Be self-determined and try your best to manage yourself towards the solution. In the end, this constant roller-coaster ride in consulting is the number one indicator for a super steep learning curve.
In our ConsultingPerfection Masterclass, we discuss how you can proactively manage yourself through your daily work in consulting and how to build a good working relationship with your job manager.
