What I Learned From 2,000 Hours of Consulting

July officially marked my two year anniversary at IBM.

After more than one hundred weeks, multiple client engagements and painful epiphanies, I’m excited to cross two years off my bucket list.

As a student interviewing for consulting jobs two years back, I remember poring into dozens of articles on Business Insider and Wall Street Oasis on the characteristics of a good consultant. I remember watching hours of the TV show “House of Lies” and wondering if I make decisions in my mind as quick as Marty Kaan or do mental arithmetic as seamlessly as Marcus Lemonis in “The Profit”. I collected all these narratives of what a good consultant should be, wondering if I could survive in a similar high-pressure environment. Here’s what I learned:

It doesn’t matter if you make mistakes. How you rebound speaks volumes.

My first client came up with a flurry of missteps. On my first day of work, I went to the wrong building. On my second week, I memorized a presentation without contextualizing it and got marred by the subsequent Q&A. I used confidence to hide faulty logic, refused to ask questions out of fear that they would make me look dumb, and often stayed quiet with new ideas. Fear doesn’t go away. Even when you conquer one fear or fix one mistake, you’ll be faced with a new one. While this can make a new consultant feel like an outsider, nobody is uniquely incompetent or ignorant. Making mistakes is as universal as it gets. Anticipate mistakes, learn from them and take each new client, manager, and day as a new opportunity.

It doesn’t matter how much you know. The real test is resourcefulness — how fast you learn and digest.

On the first day of a new consulting engagement, you are a blank slate. Your degree, GPA, plethora of memorized equations, and decades of marketing knowledge may be empowering to you and initially impressive to your client but will mean nothing if you can’t digest new information. The real test is resourcefulness. Do you know which questions to ask? What to Google? Where to look for new information? How to tackle a new skill that a client wants? Who to hire? What the client has done in the past that hasn’t worked? There’s a reason consulting firms hire hundreds of entry-level graduates every year that often don’t come from consulting backgrounds — experience can often lead to assumptions and hinder open learning. More than knowledge, consulting is about malleability and being flexible, composed, and agile in new environments.

It doesn’t matter if you have an amazing technical skill set. Balance it with emotional intelligence.

When new consultants ask what they should study, many are quick to jump on digital competencies. Study up on Excel. Understand SQL. Learn to Code. In a climate where automation, cognitive intelligence, and data mining are the hot button topics, I can’t deny that having these skills will make a value asset to any client. The best consultants, however, understand emotional intelligence. They understand the need to control emotions in a crisis situation, handle interpersonal relationships judiciously, and empathize with nonverbal clues — how someone feels, what creates stress and what motivates the best performance for others. Having a high emotional intelligence without any hard skill set will not automatically push you forward or make you well-liked — the skill set is still needed. Regardless, it’s very recognizable when a technically-sound consultant has no desire to recognize, dissolve or handle conflict.

Don’t get sensitized to criticism. Welcome and understand it.

Our pride makes us somewhat mechanical; we are naturally triggered to accept any advice or opinion that favors us and resent that which makes us unhappy. In consulting, every action and recommendation is subject to stringent criticism. The more sensitive you become to opposing opinions, the harder it becomes to not only see criticism as a constructive vehicle but to see learning as an asset. Understand that even if you are right 9 out of 10 times, the 10th time might be a generous wake up call.

Don’t worry about how many questions you ask. Ask the right questions.

People often worry about the stigma behind questions. If I ask fewer questions, will it make me sound able? If I ask too many questions, will it make me sound like a dimwit who constantly needs extra instruction? Ultimately, the perception doesn’t rest on thenumber of questions you ask, but whether or not you ask the right questions. Some issues can be resolved with one or two good questions. More complex issues may need multiple questions or even an hour or two of meetings. Most of our weekly status meetings contain an average of thirty-forty questions, some even coming from senior leaders on our project. The more you spend on the right questions, the more efficient you become overall.

Focus less on the number of hours you work and more on the depth of those hours.

Consultants, like many other hard-working professions, are prone to bragging about sleepless nights, long work weeks and exhausting days. I’ve been there and it’s nothing to brag about. In fact, on particularly long weeks, I reflect on how I spent the week and think about atleast two or three things I could’ve done differently to work smarter. Ultimately, it rests on the active impact you make and not the aggregate of hours billed. If you are regularly spending eighty hours a week at work with indiscriminate action, there is no glory in the long work week. As Tim Ferris says, “Focus on being productive instead of being busy.”

It doesn’t matter if you can’t outsmart someone. There is value in listening and caring.

In many circumstances, you won’t be the smartest person in the room. Even in your first client engagements, you will simply be in awe of the conversation standards. Luckily, there is still value in listening, being meticulous, and caring. There is still value in enthusiasm, warmth, and a nice smile. Ask follow-up questions. Many times, you will be depended on for information. Other times, you will simply be remembered as someone who brought light into the atmosphere and made people feel like they matter. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Set expectations before asking for permission.

On my current project, there are many changes we make because they are intuitive and many changes we bring to the client because they require more complex input. Defining expectations beforehand helps you understand what you don’t need to ask for permission. Clarifying what we could accomplish internally without client input has saved us a lot of time and enabled us to use client meetings for more valuable endeavors. Even work-life balance rests less on what your company tells you to do and how well you’re able to manage expectations. If you can get your work done on a weekend and arrange that with the powers that be, you will find a lot more freedom than you expected during the week.

Focus on following the instructions but remember to fill in the gaps.

Rules are meant to be broken. In consulting, this is no exception. Valued consultants are valued not for their ability to properly read and receive instructions but to find gaps and deficiencies. Even the newest members on our team become valuable when they begin to question the status quo and understand the meaning behind existing processes. While following the instructions is a beneficial skill, innovating on the process will set you apart. If the instructions don’t make sense, acknowledge it. I can’t think of a bigger regret these past two years than following instructions because I was told to and not having the gall to think deeper about their relationship with the desired outcome.

You don’t have to be a Marty Kaan or a Shark on Shark Tank to survive in business. Being self-aware, inquisitive, and constantly willing to learn will take you to many different levels. Fail forward and keep chugging. I’m glad I did.

Kushaan is an IBM Consultant based out of Washington D.C. His interests are rooted in strategy consulting, entrepreneurship, social media, and the intersection of technology with social impact. He enjoys blogging about life, career insights, social technology, and hacking the corporate environment. If you liked this post, follow him on twitter: @kushaanshah or click “Follow” at the top for more posts on Medium.