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As an ADC applying this summer for 2022 start, I haven’t gotten a chance to connect with any L.E.K. Consulting members and I really want to get to know the company better before moving on with my application. Any L.E.K. Consulting fish out there willing to spare a few minutes to chat about their work, the company, the culture etc? Thanks!
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There was a period when I kept crying during confrontational situations at work, especially in high-pressure meetings. I could not control it, tears would just form in my eyes and would start streaming down my cheeks. It wasn’t because I couldn’t handle the job, it was because I cared deeply and hadn’t yet figured out how to process that intensity in the moment. But every time it happened, it undermined my credibility, and I knew it.
One day our CEO pulled me aside, not to reprimand me, but to mentor me. She told me that she had gone through the same thing early in her career. She said, “you have to learn to be present while you feel.” She gave me a stone she had kept in her pocket for years, a tool she used to ground herself when the situations rose. It was her way of saying you don’t need to toughen up, you need to channel the fire without letting it derail your message.
That conversation shifted everything. I didn’t stop feeling things, but I stopped losing my voice. And when I started staying in the room fully, emotion and all, people started listening differently.
Honestly for me it was some harsh feedback that at first I was resistant to and then over the years I have come back to over and over. One of my first managers told me that sometimes my critical eye could come across as just negative on a team. I've always known myself to be a strong critical thinker, but I wasn't thinking so much about delivery and perception on a team. It's definitely feedback that has followed me and helped me improve but at first I was nothing short of offended.
I'll never forget it: my first year out of college, I did an internship with a marketing agency and at the end of my contract, I was so incredibly nervous to ask for a full-time job. My coworkers pushed me to ask, but I was extremely nervous. I think I was just kind of hoping I could avoid the entire conversation and the director would come to me and make an offer. But as my contract end date drew closer and closer, I realize it wasn't happening. I eventually started looking for other jobs because I assumed, if they didn't ask me, they didn't want me working there. When I found a new job and had my final meeting with the director, she said she was very sad to see me go and was hoping I would stay on permanently. She budgeted for my position and everything. I started crying and I asked why she didn't tell me, because I would have loved to stay. She said, "you'll never get anywhere in your career if you don't ask for what you want. You can't rely on other people handing you things, you have to put yourself out there and have the confidence to know that you're worth good things." That was a really tough conversation, but a really, really good one and it has shaped my entire career for the past 20 years.
Visual Storyteller
Always work on Plan B. She meant always work on your next chapter. In marketing and advertising, layoffs are a way of life and to be prepared. She never let me go fortunately, but when it happened, I always bounced back faster than me co-workers because I had things in place.
It wasn’t actually feedback for me more directed at me. As an intern the company I was interning with took me to an event, and there was so much chaos at this event. No one knew what was going on. So my manager looked at me and said imagine this was your event , what you would do differently to make things smoother. And that is always stuck with me and in fact any time I go to any event, I look around and think what could be better to make everything run smoother. And when it comes time for me to run my own events or projects, this mindset really helps.
Take no pride in being the top turd in the turd pile.
This was a situation when a project wasn’t going well but the current issue under scrutiny wasn’t my team’s fault and we were blaming another team. My managing director pulled our team aside and said that quote. We decided if we weren’t all successful then none of us would be successful.
I had a boss tell me once that I needed to learn how to stand up for myself and not be afraid to speak up. I realized then that I was letting people walk all over me and not saying what I really meant. And people don't respect you when you don't know how to use your voice and not back down from a fight.