You’ll find the video above interesting for two reasons.

First, it’s a video presentation by an old friend, and former McKinsey colleague Angela Duckworth. By background she had degrees from Harvard and Oxford before landing at McKinsey. We had many 3am bonding sessions sitting in the hallway of the McKinsey NYC office waiting for presentations to finish printing.

One of those conversations was about how she thought consulting wasn’t a good fit for her. In general when you’re still at work at 3am, and expected to be back at work at 8am, consulting isn’t a good fit for anyone. But a few months later, she left McKinsey to become a high school teacher.

You’ll see from the video where her career path took her next. This leads me to my second point.

Today, Angie is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She has become a mini-celebrity in the education research field — a field I started following more closely once I had kids. She has focused her academic research on answering the following profoundly important question:

What is the underlying root cause of success?

I won’t spoil the surprise. I intuitively reached a similar conclusion and have used that as the basis for raising my own children. It has also been the primary cause of my own career success. Watch the video to learn more. It’s well worth your time, and you’ll probably be seeing and hearing more from Angie over the next few years.

In my consulting practice, half of my clients are women. This is very unusual as the industry standard is about 10%. I’ve had the great privilege of working with some of the most talented women in their fields.

The fascinating thing I’ve noticed over the last several years is the role self-perception plays in all of them. With ZERO exceptions, all of them have a voice in their head that says, “You can’t do that,” “Oh, that’s too much for me,” etc… The best of them acknowledge the voice and do it anyway, but they all have it.

What I’ve noticed is how often the voice is objectively wrong (assuming I’m actually objective here).

This is one half of the picture that I’ve noticed for a long time.

The other half comes from raising three wonderful daughters — all under 9 years of age. It has been a delight and joy to watch them grow into little girls, and soon into young women. What has surprised me by the experience is how enormously strong an influence culture and gender expectations play in their lives.

We don’t let our girls watch TV (except musical performances or sports like the Olympics). They see very few movies. They don’t get any of the teen magazines (that are in my opinion atrocious). In short, we’ve done our best to deliberately shield them from distorted body images, women as objects or accessories to men, and countless other implied messages which drive me crazy.

… And it hasn’t worked!

My three-year-old still wants to be a princess. (Honey, be an astronaut, not a princess.)

My 9-year-old thinks she’s fat (she’s stronger than boys 2 years older than she is, and equates muscles with being too big), and wants to wear make-up to look “beautiful.”

This of course drives me absolutely crazy — though I don’t use those words with them.

It takes a daily effort to attempt to counter those messages. It’s okay to be a princess, but no princess daughter of mine is going to wait around to be rescued by some prince. “Yes DAD… we know, princesses need to solve their own problems and not wait to be rescued.”

By the way, Disney hates me.

I know I’m having some influence, but I’m surprised at how much influence the rest of the world has on them. Every night I feel the need to de-program them from what they picked up from the rest of the world. Many days, I feel like I’m losing the battle, but I keep trying anyway.

On the one hand, I’m very much raising my girls to be future leaders of something, and on the other, I work with women 50+ years old who are already leaders in their fields.

I’m surprised how often the same issues come up in conversations with both audiences.

One of the big issues, probably THE biggest issue that I see in both my women clients and my girls, is what I call the Ability vs. Self-Perception Gap.

When a woman sees her own abilities as less capable than I see it as an outsider sees it, I call this a gap between their self-perception vs. their actual abilities.

Amongst the women I know, and much to my disappointment, all of them have had this ability vs. self-perception gap. There have been ZERO exceptions to this trend.

When we think less of our abilities than our actual abilities warrant, we tend to take on less ambitious projects. We don’t stretch ourselves on projects that are slightly out of reach of our actual abilities.

In business and in life, growth in skills comes from being slightly in over your head. These “stretch” projects force you to grow your skills in real time to succeed.

By the way, this is how General Electric produces Fortune 500 CEOs. They rotate their executives into new jobs, in new industries, in new functional areas every 2 – 3 years. It drives the executives crazy because they’re never 100% competent at their new jobs. The CFO becomes head of Sales. The head of Sales in the U.S. becomes country manager for Turkey. The expert in the aviation industry now works with plastics.

This is how you groom superstar CEOs.

HOWEVER, when you think less of your abilities than your actual abilities warrant, you risk not nominating yourself for these opportunities. Specifically, you risk not expressing confidence to your boss (often men) that you can rise to the challenge.

When it comes to tackling a tough project, a lot of men — and probably a lot of women too — (in the US, I’m not sure about elsewhere) use a meta data decision-making process.

A data driven decision-making process would be one where we look at factual data about the possible candidates to lead a project, and pick the one with the strongest set of “factual” skills. A meta data decision-making process is one where the decision is based in part on how confident you seem and appear about a project.

If you’re in fact very talented, but in demeanor nervous — to many decisions makers whose own careers will be based on the success or failure of your project — you will make them nervous and will not get chosen for the opportunity.

On the one hand, who could blame them?

When you ask the surgeon who’s about to cut into your body, “Do you think I’ll live?” and the surgeon, says, “Ehh… I dunno… I kinda, sorta, maybe hope so.”

This isn’t what you want to hear!

Male or female, I like my surgeons CONFIDENT. This is totally meta.

If I were going strictly off data, I would look at the survival rate of each surgeon’s track record and look at the average difficulty level of those surgeries (and possibly segment the data to look at survival rates by difficulty tier).

Maybe the one that doesn’t sound confident is a woman with a 99% patient survival rate. Perhaps my case is the toughest one she’s seen in her career and at best, it’s a 60% chance of survival. Perhaps her uncertainty comes from the fact that she’s a perfectionist and trying to be conservative.

Meanwhile, there’s a male surgeon that says, “Yes, I’m very confident you will live.” In my anxiety, I feel SO much better. But perhaps I didn’t look closely to see that his patient survival rate is only 90%.

Is this fair?

Probably not.

Does it happen?

ABSOLUTELY.

Now you could argue that there is gender bias at work here. And there probably is. And you could argue there is some structural societal issue at hand here. And again, there probably is that too.

But as I’m writing this at 5:00am at the dining room table before my kids wake up, I don’t have the energy to tackle “save the world” projects. I focus primarily on what is ACTIONABLE and within one’s LOCUS OF CONTROL.

And the nuanced reality to appreciate is that decision makers of all types make decisions based on both data and meta data.

In short, you get picked (or not picked) for choice projects based on your track record AND how you project how you FEEL about your track record.

I have yet to meet even one woman in my business career whose confidence level exceeded her abilities. NOT EVEN ONE! (This is especially true amongst high achievers.)

While I’m only one person, that’s still a lot of data points.

My conclusion is this:

Women are chronic UNDER-ESTIMATORS of their own abilities… the trend is RAMPANT.

My oldest daughter started exhibiting this trend when she was about 7 years old.

I work HARD to try and fight this tendency in her every day. It is by no means assured that I will win this battle of perceptions (where my perception of her as an amazingly talented little girl will supersede her self-perceived view that she’s fatally flawed and not as capable as she really is).

She came home one day and announced that only boys can be smart. I’m like, “Whoa…. Whoa… wait a minute. Who told you that?”

(My actual reaction was more like “WTF!?!,” but of course I didn’t say that out loud).

Do you want to know her answer?

It’s heartbreaking.

In response to the question, “Who told you only boys can be smart?”

Her answer was, “Nobody.”

That means the message was implicit from “everybody.”

Everybody is a tough enemy to fight, don’t you think?

In contrast, boys (and men) are often told they can do anything in life. Once again, “nobody” tells them this, which basically means “everybody” tells them this.

Interestingly, I find a certain percentage of men have confidence significantly in excess of their objective talents. You and I know this as arrogance. This doesn’t apply to all men, but probably 10% – 20% of the ones I’ve come across.

Now when one under-perceives or over-perceives one’s abilities, quite often both are a result of self esteem challenges.

[For more on this topic Click Here]

Some men will err on overestimating their own abilities, and women will almost always underestimate. The difference is when it comes to men, the overestimating of their own abilities can be seen in a positive light by male decisions makers, whereas a lack of confidence is seen as a negative by both men and women decision makers.

Now I’m massively over-generalizing here. Eventually the over-confident (usually male) person’s track record gets reconciled against his demeanor (e.g., the smart CEOs figure this out)… but sometimes not for a while. This dynamic can persist for some time.

If you take the overly confident man, he’s got a better chance to get a top project than the under-confident woman. He then gets the project, struggles with it, but eventually stretches his skills to the point where his actual ability is pretty close to his original self-perception. (Of course by now, his self-perception has grown even more, but that’s a separate issue).

Meanwhile, the under-confident woman gets left behind.

Is this fair?

Of course not.

Does it happen?

ABSOLUTELY.

Nobody said life is fair. The key is to focus on what YOU can do about it that’s within your sphere of control.

If you’re a woman, here’s my question to you:

Does anything I’ve said resonate with you?

If you have a negative self-perception bias, it’s VITAL that you be aware of it.

Although I’m not a woman, I too have had a negative self-perception bias for DECADES. I’ve only more recently become aware of it and I’m close to putting it behind me entirely.

The reason you want to be aware of the bias is so you can compensate for it.

For example, I’ve historically routinely underestimated my abilities by about 50%. If others think I have a skill level 10 in an area, I historically, routinely think I have a skill level 5. This started when I was recruiting with consulting firms. I was hoping I could barely eek out a single offer from any Top 10 firm. I had no idea I’d sweep and get offers from nearly all of the Top 10 firms.

At McKinsey, I was hoping to just not get fired after two years. The thought had never even occurred to me that I could even conceivably be in the top 10% globally at McKinsey. I mean come on, it’s McKinsey after all, right?

At every step, I’ve massively underestimated myself and though publicly my career seems like it has been pretty good (and it very much has), to be totally candid with you, I was too afraid to tackle the really HUGE challenges and opportunities.

I was so afraid that I didn’t even allow myself to consider the decision explicitly; I just implicitly assumed it wasn’t within my abilities and didn’t even think about it.

During the last few years, I started to become aware of this bias in my own self perception and started adding an adjustment factor.

I just put a 2x multiplier on any self-assessment of mine.

In short, anytime I’m debating whether or not I’m capable enough to tackle a specific challenge, I’ll do the following:

If my thinking is borderline… “Hmm, maybe I could do it… well, maybe not…. it’s kind of iffy,” I will remember my self-assessment bias and adjust for it. So any time a decision is borderline, I now tell myself with my adjustment factors that it’s a no brainer. I can definitely do it (or figure it out along the way) and my abilities are a non-issue.

If you have a negatively biased self-perception, whether you are male or female, it’s important you are aware of it and adjust for it.

Otherwise, you lose out on some “stretch” projects that become vital to long-term career growth.

Today, I work for myself so I am my own boss. You’d think this would solve all the problems, as there is no boss to have to worry about. The problem is in fact worse! Sure, I get assigned to 100% of the projects I’m considering, but because of my own biases, I often don’t even consider projects I should be considering!

To compensate, I am routinely FORCING myself to take on projects that intimidate me a little, projects that I perceive that I am only 75% qualified for. These are my own “stretch” projects — projects that stretch both my skills and self-perceptions.

If you have a negatively biased self-perception, it’s important you use some similar process to adjust for your biases. You want to put yourself into the flow of challenging “stretch” projects. ALL of my growth, in both my personal life and career, has come from attempting to do things I didn’t initially think I could do.

Early in my career, I got drafted and had no choice — but thankfully did rise to the occasion.

More recently, I’m making a conscious effort to stretch myself. Many things I attempted, especially as a entrepreneur, have failed, but often I learned the most from those and came back for a second or third attempt years later — much more skilled and ultimately more successful.

The key is to realize these opportunities are important, and not to let a self-perception bias prevent you from considering them.

If you’re a man that also has a negative self-perception bias, ALL of the above applies to you too.

If you’re a man leading or managing women, it’s very useful to be aware of the dynamic above. There are many women in my business and personal life that I trust much more than a man for their specific areas of expertise. I’ve come to this conclusion based on a DIRECT detailed knowledge of their work, talent and skills.

However, if I only paid attention to the confidence level (and often lack of it) that these women conveyed about their own talents, I would have never reached that same conclusion.

When you’re a man leading and collaborating with women, I find it useful to be more data driven and less meta data driven in making people decisions about women. You’ll make more accurate personnel decisions and get more results out of your team.

Growing up, I watched Michael Jordan play basketball. He was, with little argument, the best basketball player of all time. He was incredibly dominant — probably 5 – 6 standard deviations above the mean.

Michael Jordan has been in the news a lot because he recently turned 50 years old. There’s an in depth profile of his life and career from EPSN that I’ll share with you in a moment.

But, first let me explain why you might consider reading on even if you don’t like basketball.

It boils down to one simple reason:

SUCCESS LEAVES CLUES.

Just like you read what I write to pick up tips, strategies, and “clues” to how to succeed in case interviews, consulting, and to some extent life, I do the exact same thing by reading about and learning from others.

I have found that the underlying principles of success in one field are very transferable to other fields.

The Michael Jordan profile I’ll share with you in a second is fascinating.

First, you have to realize Michael Jordan is 50 years old. He hasn’t played professional basketball in a decade or so.

He has a partnership with Nike to create the Michael Jordan brand of basketball shoes. Today, the Jordan brand has 58% market share – even though he has been retired for years!

The Nike stand-alone brand has 34% market share as is. Combined, Nike has 92% market share — which is remarkable.

Even after all these years, Jordan dominates.

Second, as you learn more about his personality, you see that his drive to win is extreme… bordering on mental illness.

I’m certainly not advocating this approach, but it is fascinating to observe his mindset.

It’s also interesting to see how it has played out over the last 3 decades and how his “must win” mind struggles with a 50-year-old body.

For example, as a part owner of a NBA basketball team, his team recently recruited the second best college player in the United States.

Just for fun, during practice he decided to play 1:1 against this 21-year-old super star recruit.

Michael Jordan, the 50-year-old man, beat him.

That’s amazing!

But, reality is reality, and the next day Jordan skipped work in the office. Why?

…because his body was too sore to move.

He was in the training room, being iced all day and presumably taking pain medications. Despite the physical cost, you get the distinct impression that he felt it was totally worth it.

These days he takes his NBA championship mindset and applies it to playing computer games like Bejeweled and offline games like Sudoku. Apparently he is extremely good at both.

He has to win at something.

It’s fascinating to observe the history of such a remarkably successful person.

So what’s the big takeaway?

Here it is:

While talent counts, determination matters a lot.

* No Determination = No Success

* Average Determination = Average Success

* Extreme Determination = Extreme Success

While there’s most definitely such a thing as too much determination (when you’re willing to sacrifice health, relationships, etc… to get what you want), it’s useful to see the [determination = success] formula as:

1) A continuum

2) A choice

First, there are degrees of determination. Second, it’s your choice where you want to play along that continuum.

In striving to achieve any personal or professional goal, often the outcome is partially determined by factors out of your control.

But, the decision to choose your own level of determination and work ethic IS within your control.

Choose wisely (and keep in mind, more is not always the better choice). My message isn’t to advocate for more or less, but to advocate that you be conscious and deliberate about the choice.

You can read the full article on Michael Jordan here:
Michael Jordan Has Not Left the Building

On an entirely different note, I’ve noticed that the Case Interview alumni community has spread wide and far — not only into the many consulting firms around the world but also into industry, government, non-profits, journalism, finance, entrepreneurship, academia, and family-owned businesses.

To better serve this increasingly diverse audience, I have launched a monthly print newsletter called The Strategic Outlier Letter.

The focus will be on how to have an exceptional life and career — in any field — by using a strategic approach.

Think of it as strategies for case interviews, but for the biggest “case interview” in the world… that thing called LIFE.

If you’ve found my thoughts on the case interview and consulting helpful, or if you’ve been secretly adapting these ideas for your own non-consulting or post-consulting career, you’ll be glad to see that in the Strategic Outlier Letter, I address these issues (and more) directly.

Topics that have or will be covered include:

* My strategic approach for choosing a spouse and the optimal time to get married (You might not choose to use this approach, but you should be aware of it — so you know what potential problems to look out for.)

* Thoughts about life with children that I wish I knew before I had children (and how women in particular can approach this decision more strategically)

* How to take the analytical consulting approach and apply it to major medical decisions (yours or those of someone you care about) (I’ve spent weeks in the Intensive Care waiting room 24/7 for family members with life threatening illnesses; for starters if you’re the “family” of the patient, dress nicely. Your concerns will be taken more seriously and your questions answered more thoroughly.)

* The importance of “picking” a good boss — in industry this matters a lot.

* How to strategically plot the next 1 – 3 jobs to focus on to achieving your medium and long-term career goals

* The biggest regrets I had about personal finance and investing — something I wish I knew when I was a lot younger

Because none of the above is remotely related to the case interview and is only tangentially related to the consulting industry, I hadn’t written about these “off topic” topics in this forum.

But, in the Strategic Outlier Letter, I focus on these topics and dozens more like them (covering the span of life, career, and business).

The Strategic Outlier Letter is now available to the public. If you are interested in learning more about it and how to subscribe, just click the link below:

The Strategic Outlier Letter

A few days ago, I was in Manhattan taking a seminar on screenplay writing. During my time there, I had one night where I didn’t have any plans or commitments.

As an experiment, I invited a few dozen CIBs, 1Y, 2Y to a last-minute, impromptu Q & A session in the lobby of my hotel.

(The crowd got so big that we ended up taking over most of the lobby and they kicked us out! My apologies to anyone who came at the end of our scheduled time, as we had by then moved to a conference room. I was hoping 5 people would show up, but when close to 30 did, the hotel kicked us out. Lesson learned.)

During this informal “shop talk” a 1Y from McK asked me about how one can be more comfortable meeting strangers (e.g., new clients).

At the time, I gave what ended up being a partial answer. I was planning to send a revised answer to everyone who attended in person.

Instead, I thought I’d provide the full answer here as I actually get asked this question a lot. Usually the question is asked in the context of networking at information sessions or connecting with people in your network to secure an interview (for lateral hires, non target school hires, etc.…)

Before I provide several mindset shifts and techniques that I’ve found helpful, it’s useful to understand something fundamental about the strategy consulting industry.

The type of people who have the analytical skills to do consulting, tend to be introverted and unaccustomed to being around other people constantly in their work lives.

(If I had to guess, I’d say that at McKinsey 65%–75% of the consulting staff were introverts—albeit introverts with at least functional people skills. The remainder were extroverts with strong analytical skills. I’m oversimplifying here, but hopefully you get the idea.)

So here are some short, medium, and long-term solutions for how to improve your people skills—in particular the ability to meet new people for the first time, and maybe even enjoy it.

SHORT-TERM

1) GET THEM TALKING ABOUT THEMSELVES. When you meet someone for the first time, hands down the easiest thing you can do is ask them about themselves.

This is a very popular topic!

It is never an offensive topic. People always have something to say about themselves.

One of the tricks is to ask an OPEN question.

A closed question is a question that can be answered in a word or two. For example, you might ask, “How long have you worked here?” The other person can say “2 years” or shut up. Now the burden is on you to keep the conversation going.

There are many problems with asking closed questions.

First, because they can be answered so quickly, you usually have to ask many closed questions to fill the time.

Second, this is exhausting work for you.

Third, a series of closed question is NOT a conversation, it is an INTERROGATION.

Q: How long have you worked here?
A: 2 years

Q: What is your role at McKinsey?
A: I’m an engagement manager

Q: Did you graduate from XYZ school too?
A: No

Q: Do you know what the campus recruiting schedule is for this year?
A: No

You see how it feels like an interrogation.

The art of having a conversation, especially a conversation where you don’t have to work hard, is to ask OPEN questions—questions that require a verbal “essay” to answer.

For CEOs, I usually ask, “So how did you get started in XYZ field?” I’ve never gotten anything shorter than a 10-minute answer. I’ve even gotten 30-minute answers.

This is a good 80/20 rule of thumb for an introvert: Ask one question and get 10–30 minutes of conversation out of it.

When I used to do informational interviews for networking purposes, I’d ask the same question. When I was in college, I asked a famous venture capitalist that question at his desk and spent 45 minutes listening to the answer. I’ve asked senior executives at Wells Fargo and several investment bankers that same question. They all talk about it for 10–15 minutes or more.

It is a good question. So think of a few open-ended questions, and then ask them.

2) LISTEN DEEPLY. You would be surprised how few people ACTUALLY listen deeply to the other person. Most of the time when the other person is talking, we are putting all of our energy into deciding what we are going to say next.

Too often we’re being polite: we act as though we’re listening, when we’re really just waiting for them to stop talking so we can say whatever we were planning to say (regardless of what the other person just said!)

When you ask open question, they are going to give you a long and detailed answer. All you have to do then is ACTUALLY LISTEN to what the other person is saying. Then when you hear something interesting, make a comment about your own experience or ask a more detailed question about that topic.

You could say something like, “Wow. Really? What was that like?”

For example, I once had a lunch meeting with a prospective client—an owner of a small business, a market leader in a tiny niche. Our one-hour scheduled lunch turned into a FOUR hour conversation. It was just an interesting conversation.

I guess we started sharing more personal details (which tends to happen if you are being a good listener) during the conversation. I had mentioned that there was a brief period in my entrepreneurial career where I was selling a product I wasn’t proud of and was actually embarrassed to be associated with it, and it really sucked my soul dry.

I was explaining how it was a mistake, but I learned a lot from it. It’s also the reason why I now never attach my name to something unless it’s an exceptional product or service.

Well, I think I struck a chord at this point, because she said, “I know exactly how you feel. I used to be a stripper in Las Vegas.”

(I SO did not expect that comment!)

So what did I say?

Yup…

“Wow. Really? What was THAT like?”

And then off she went for another 20 minutes.

You see, when you ask an open question, the other person will tell you all kinds of stuff. Then all you have to do is listen deeply, look for something interesting and either comment on that or ask a clarifying question.

I’ve done this with bus drivers, waitresses, CEOs, parents—pretty much anybody.

The thing is, EVERYBODY is INTERESTING.

Usually most conversations stay at a superficial level, so a lot of the interesting stuff doesn’t come out. But, if you ask people open questions, listen deeply and show you are interested in hearing more, they will share more and more.

Also, this kind of interaction very much feels like a conversation.

If you show more interest in someone, they will often take a deeper interest in you. It’s a natural human instinct to reciprocate, so the more you hear them out, the more they want to hear you out. The “secret” is to hear them out FIRST.

3) TURN OFF THE INNER VOICE. When you’re at a networking or social function, sometimes instead of engaging with other people you end up having a conversation with your “inner voice.”

The conversation with your inner voice sounds something like this:

“I hope nobody notices I’m not talking to anyone. This is not going well.”

“Geez, I wish someone would come up and talk to me.”

“When does this thing end? Is my hair okay? Did I spill something on my shirt? Should I check my mobile phone to look like I’m busy? It’s better than just standing here with nothing to do.”

“Oh shoot, my drink is almost all gone. Maybe I should get another. But I don’t actually want one. But what do I do with my hands? I need to do something. I can’t just stand here.”

“Am I loser? No, I am not a loser. Then why do I feel like a loser?”

This is what the inner voice conversation sounds like. I know this because this is what I used to say to myself at cocktail parties, information sessions, and networking events—and from time to time still do.

When I was younger, when I was having conversations with other people, I would simultaneously have a conversation with my inner voice. The problem with this approach is I wasn’t able to listen deeply to the other person because I was distracted by also listening to myself.

Invariably, the other person would lose interest in the conversation because they didn’t like competing with the conversation going on in my head.

The solution is to turn off (or at least turn down) the volume on your inner voice, especially when you’re in the middle of a conversation with another person. Just pay attention to them.

4) ASSUME THE OTHER PERSON IS MORE NERVOUS THAN YOU. The majority of people I know feel at least a little awkward meeting new people (though some people are better at hiding it than others). Most people also tend to assume that everyone else is more socially comfortable than they are.

So what happens is, you have all these people standing in a room. And instead of talking to each other, they talk to themselves inside their own heads.

This ends up becoming a self-reinforcing cycle.

The way to break this cycle is to assume everyone else is more nervous or feels more awkward than you.

Then make it your job to help others feel comfortable by reaching out and engaging them. Even if they are not great conversationalists, that’s okay. Just ask them about themselves!

Then listen deeply, keep your inner voice quiet, and they will respond to you.

MEDIUM-TERM

5) GET MORE LOW-STAKES PRACTICE. If your career path has involved working on your own more than working with other people, consider getting more opportunities to practice your interpersonal skills.

The main reason my people skills were functional when I was recruiting was because I happened to do a number of extracurricular activities in high school and college that involved working with other people.

I also took two different sales jobs while in school: one selling Yellow Pages advertising face-to-face, and the other making cold calls for Merrill Lynch. At best, I was pretty mediocre at both of those jobs despite working really hard at them.

Every little bit of interpersonal interaction helps improve those skills. If you can, join groups, clubs, meetups, Toastmasters or industry associations so you have plenty of opportunities to practice.

If you’re on campus, go to information sessions of firms that aren’t in your top 10 list. Then go practice interacting with the people there.

The key is to use the skills in an environment where there’s no downside to doing it poorly.

LONG-TERM

6) BECOME COMFORTABLE WITH YOURSELF. It’s my theory that most social awkwardness and anxiety comes from some combination of:

a) being intimidated by the other person and putting them on a pedestal;

b) being secretly afraid the other person will see you and somehow find you lacking; or

c) being uncomfortable with being yourself.

The root cause of these three dynamics is low or diminished self-esteem. One trademark of low self esteem is the presumption that one is somehow inferior to others or, on the flip side, presuming most people are better than you.

Another way low self esteem expresses itself is by acting superior to other people. You might notice this as arrogance. When you’re right and have high self esteem, there is no need to convince others you’re right. It’s enough simply to know you are right and they are wrong.

But if you’re right and have low self esteem, the insecurity runs so deep that being right isn’t enough. There’s a need to prove others wrong, to make them see that you’re right and they’re wrong. It is this public perception of superiority that helps this kind of person feel better.

(The problem, of course, is that this comes at the expenses of others feeling worse about themselves, which makes them unwilling to work with or be near you)

This behavior is a severe over-compensation for low self esteem. Basically these kinds of people don’t feel good about themselves and don’t want anyone to discover this “fact”, so they act arrogant and cocky, with a lot of (false) bravado to hide their insecurity.

People who over compensate by conveying superiority are people who place themselves in a “One Up” position.

And when someone tends to automatically assume they are in some way “less than” other people, that’s a person who places himself in a “One Down” position.

Both of these extremes are enormous obstacles to being comfortable with yourself. The premise of both points of view is that “something is wrong with me.”

The One Down person tries to “hide,” hoping nobody will notice and see these self-perceived flaws. The One Up person tries to act bigger than they are and hide behind a mask of superiority.

In the general population, I’d say 75% of people are either One Up or One Down. Within McKinsey, its a fairly open secret that 80%+ of McK consultants are One Down-type people—myself included.

Here’s why.

While there are many ways One Down people cope (e.g., addictions, self-medicating, abusing others), one of the more socially acceptable ways is to be addicted to work and, as a byproduct, achieve extraordinary career success.

There’s nothing wrong with hard work, unless you’re doing it is an addiction because not working (and therefore saying something about you and your worth) scares you to death.

This is not to say everyone who is successful is doing it for these reasons.

But among this group, in which I include myself, the implicit rationale is, “If I just get X (an MBB offer, a Harvard degree, a 2nd Harvard degree, a CEO position, etc…) then everyone will congratulate me, treat me like I’m special, and I’ll feel better about myself.”

(I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it doesn’t work. There’s a temporary high from a new career achievement, but it fades within a few months. I know this because it describes most of my life. More on this later.)

Even if you are not a One Up or One Down person, I believe there’s a 100% chance this dynamic impacts the people that you interact with every day, including clients, co-workers, family members, and friends.

If you want to develop exceptional people skills, you absolutely, positively have to understand how this dynamic works.

You need to learn to recognize it in yourself, recognize it in others, and know how to work with yourself and others, given their tendencies.

For example, if you have a client that has a tendency to go “one up,” he will often resist any idea that’s not his own. If you’ve been in the corporate environment, particularly in the US, you may have heard of the acronym: NIH (Not Invented Here).

A One Up person does not like any ideas that were Not Invented Here.

The key to winning over a One Up client is to let your idea be his idea. He is not threatened by “his” ideas. But he is threatened by an outside idea (that he did not think of himself), especially if it’s a good idea. It is perceived as proof that he wasn’t adequate to the task at hand.

By the way, One Up people are not inherently bad. One of my very good friends from high school went “one up” all the time. All it says is he’s just afraid people will think he’s not good enough. It’s a fear reaction.

When you understand the humanity behind such outwardly aggressive behavior, you learn to feel compassion for the other person. They will detect this and allow you to develop a closer relationship with them because somehow you “get” them.

Once you understand the psychology of the people around you, you begin to handle things differently. The above example is just one of dozens of scenarios that you’d handle differently once you understand people better.

This is a very big topic that’s impossible to cover in a single article. While I have a deep personal interest in this topic, I recognize not everyone else does.

If you’d like to learn more about concepts, ideas and tools for dealing with what I call “being human” problems, just fill out the form below:

Question:

First of all thank you so much. I bought your books on Amazon and devour your newsletters and this has been an essential part of the exciting story I’m about to tell you. I want to give you a very short version to see if I’m so lucky as to get your advice.

I am an engineer from a developing country, I have no MBA or any other degree. I’m married and have two kids. Medium term I want to settle in Silicon Valley and found my own company.

Thanks to your material and my hundreds of hours of preparation, I’ve been offered a post-MBA position in one of the big consulting firms (M/B/B) for their [South American city] Office. At the same time one of the big tech companies has offered me a position in Silicon Valley… as an inside sales associate for half the salary than the consulting offer.

I’d love to make use of this extremely unique opportunity and take the MBB offer, but I’ve heard that it is a nightmare and almost impossible to be transfered permanently to the US in consulting. Is this true?

I want to follow my heart and logic and take the consulting offer but I fear that I may prove extremely hard to relocate to the US in the future.

Thanks for any word that you can give me.

My Reply:

Congrats on the offer!

In terms of your question, here’s my brutally honest advice.

Assuming you don’t have any Visa restrictions to relocating back to the US after a stint in [South American country], and barring any personal factors you haven’t mentioned, career wise it is a no brainer to take the MBB offer for 2 years. Assuming living in that country isn’t a problem, forget the transfer, just quit after 2 years (or heck even 18 months) and move to the U.S. and look for a tech job.

International transfers are difficult, they typically do not happen until year 3 and only for the honest level performers, and even then it’s not a guarantee.

A good segue for you would be a business development job, looking for strategic partnerships or mergers and acquisitions, or product management.

Inside sales in tech is a dead end job. The upward trajectory is limited, you never deal with strategic issues, it doesn’t set you up to be a founder in either skills, connection, reputation or credibility.

I don’t know of any unemployed ex-consultants in Silicon Valley. A job search from [the other country] is difficult, so you will want to save as much money as you possibly can so that you can afford to just move to Silicon Valley without a job and give yourself time to look for one. You will have to network a lot, and it won’t happen immediately, but it is totally doable.

As an engineer + MBB + tech business experience, you could raise financing from a VC if you wanted. As an engineer + inside sales, that’s a very rare profile in terms of self raising capital.

If you need to stay in the U.S. for spouse and kids, then stay. If you have flexibility, the MBB path will be better for you in the long run. It gives you more higher level job options in tech, and gives you fall back employability if your startup struggles or fails.

Good luck !

Question:

Really enjoying your materials. 2 questions:

1) Related to [my post on How to Structure a Case Interview ]. On the answer in your website you try to come up with frameworks that are MECE. I am having trouble understanding why the “old/new products and old/new customers” segmentation is MECE but the “old/new products & old/new customers & old/new distribution channels” is not. Doesn’t the first framework miss part of the solution (which is distribution channels)?

2) I bought your book. I’ve also been watching your videos. In what ways would your book usefully complement what I am first seeing in the videos? I ask because I don’t want to keep rereading the same stuff.

Thanks!

My Reply:

1) For the less MECE example, if you were to attempt to grow revenues, which of the 3 categories would one categorize introducing a new product? It could logically be included in the product, customer or channel categories. This occurs because the categorization structure is overlapping, this is not mutually exclusive. In the former example, if you are in one cell, you can’t be in another cell.

2) The book is more current. I’d recommend reading it through as it’s good review for areas you’re already familiar.

If you’re in a rush, the key differences are on issue trees, hypotheses, and non interviewer-led case formats which aren’t covered in the videos.

Success Story:

Thanks for all the help from the websites and your daily blog.

As an experienced professional, the process is just the same. But for me, I had a full day of interviews and the PST (first and final rounds combined). I got the verbal job offer that evening.

So just a few items of feedback.

You have talked about the parade approach. I had 12 situations prepared and in each interview did one in full and used elements of others. Each interviewer was very clear telling me not to reuse a situation. Equally each interviewer asked for something slightly different. So candidates need to have several situations prepared and not just enough for one per interview.

I have been practising the PST and felt quite comfortable going in. My feedback is the same as you have mentioned before. Tough, just got finished, no time to check and not a clue how well I had done. Thanks for all the tips and practice.

Finally, math practice is critical for both the cases and the PST. I cannot tell you how effective the math practice site is. I used it for about 4 weeks 10 to 15 minutes per day. Always estimation, random and hard. I went from being average to virtually top 20% in terms of accuracy and speed. I cannot underestimate how valuable going from 5 to 9 per minute is. It buys you so much time.

I appreciate the help!

In consulting or any professional service type industry, the “thing” you sell and provide to clients is intangible. Your advice, your guidance, your analysis really comes down to conveying an idea from you to your client.

Unlike a tangible product, you can’t touch, taste or even smell an idea. When a client or a boss seeks your guidance, they are really getting two things:

1) How you visually convey your idea (e.g., a chart, exhibit, or email memo); and

2) How you explain your idea with your voice.

Most every consultant I know of focuses on and usually receives training in the former – how to create a PowerPoint deck.

But very few receive any training nor do any work on the latter – your voice.

At McKinsey, I didn’t receive any voice training what-so-ever.

While one can probably get away with this as an analyst, the higher you go in consulting (and in industry) and the higher you aspire to take your career, the more your work becomes increasingly dependent on your voice.

As an analyst, your main work products are spreadsheets, slides, and memos. At the partner level, your entire work existence focuses around listening, thinking, and speaking.

The same is true in industry. Once you’re past the entry level individual contributor type role into Team Leader, Director, and Vice President roles, it’s pretty much all about going from one meeting to another. In these roles, there is much less “doing” and a lot more listening, deciding, and yes, speaking.

There will come a point in your career where it makes sense to focus on improving your voice. This point differs for each person and depends in large part on how well your voice is or isn’t serving you currently.

Here’s the reality. When you speak or present, not only do your ideas matter, but how you convey your ideas matters too.

Senior level executives (whether they are your client, your boss, or your boss’s boss) have two parallel decision making modes:

1) data driven; and
2) meta-data driven

The former is about the facts and analysis, the latter is in part about how you seem to feel about your recommendation.

Now obviously, a senior executive can’t really know how you feel about an idea, but they infer this based in part on how you sound when you explain your idea.

If you sound nervous, hesitant, uncertain, or convey any emotion other than absolute certainty and conviction, it causes the other person’s meta-data “alarm” to go off.

I’ve actually been working on improving my public speaking work and one of the things I’ve been working on is my breathing. It turns out that I’ve been breathing completely incorrectly my entire career.

I’ve historically been a chest breather, as opposed to the more optimal diaphragm breather.

Here’s a simple test to see what kind of breather you are:

1) Take one hand and put in on your chest at about heart level.

2) Take your other hand and put it on your stomach covering your belly button.

Now breath as you normally do and notice which hand moves up and down.

Now take several deep breaths and see which hand moves.

If you are breathing optimally the hand over your chest should hardly rise or fall with each breath. Instead the hand over your stomach should rise a lot with each breath.

The reason you want to breath through your diaphragm (which is located in your stomach area) is because it allows you to take in a lot more air at once. This in turn allows you to project more sound from your voice for longer periods of time.

Before I learned how to do this, I had a bad habit of speaking too quickly. In addition, I would tend to rush how quickly I would enunciate each word being spoken.

For most of my career, I got complaints, especially from non-native English speakers who had difficulty understanding what I was saying. They couldn’t keep up with the rapid speed combined with words that weren’t being expressed very clearly.

It turns out the root cause for these bad voice habits which have been following me around my whole career is largely due to incorrect breathing.

Because I would breath through only my chest (which takes in very little air, compared to diaphragm /stomach breathing), I wouldn’t get enough air in my lungs to express a long thought or sentence without running out of oxygen.

So in my unconscious desire to avoid oxygen deprivation, I would just speak faster to compensate. It is such a simple solution, I am kicking myself for not having discovered it years ago.

I’ve been using improved breathing and numerous other voice training techniques I’ve learned over the last few months to make my voice sound better. My voice coach Roger Love is one of the best, if not the best in the business.

You can see my interview with Roger Love, which includes his tips for improving your voice, at:

www.CaseInterview.com/Confidence

Question:

I want to thank you for the assistance you give thousands of people interviewing for consulting firms.

I have an interview with BCG for an associate position in [African city]. However, the first round of interviews are in [U.S. City]. I read that usually case interviews that are given to candidates are based on their educational background and experience. (i.e they wouldn’t give a mathematics major a top notch case study with abundant business jargon). I ALSO read that the case interviews are geared to the location the position is based.

In my case, does this mean that I should focus on ….let’s say new market entries, growth strategies, etc…since many businesses in Africa are focused towards that direction?

My Reply:

It’s very hard to predict what type of case you will get. Some firms and some offices will standardize the cases given so it’s random. In some offices, the case is determined by each individual interviewer, and they will tend to give cases based on their own client work — so the cases will skew towards whatever type of work that office does (where the interviewer works, which may differ from the office you want to work in).

In terms of focus, I wouldn’t over think and try to guess the case type. Practice a range of cases and work on sharpening the underlying SKILLS that allow you to handle any type of case or industry.

Success Story:

I wanted to offer my sincere gratitude to the free resources that you’ve posted online, which helped me clinch a job with BCG.

I followed your videos religiously and kept track of my case prep throughout the entire month that I had. Turns out that the whole practice of developing good case habits really works wonders.

I had a total of four interview rounds of which I was able to do really well in 3 (although I confess my third round was outstandingly bad even by amateur standards). That’s a brief snapshot of the process which I went through.

I really appreciate the help and guidance that you provide to multiple aspirants like me across the world.

Thank you Victor. Will definitely avail your newsletter, going by my past experience, it is going to be of a lot of help.

Thanks for all the help again. Wouldn’t have been possible without you.