Ever heard of the saying “take care of your mental health before your mental health takes care of you?” This sums up the fast-paced, highly pressured environment of management consulting.
There are a number of reasons why people decide to take up a career in consulting, including:
- Exposure to a variety of projects and industries
- The opportunity to solve real world business problems
- Rapid career growth
- Numerous opportunities for learning, growth, and development
In focusing on these attractive upsides of consulting, many individuals (including myself) overlook the challenges they may face while trying to climb the consulting ladder. The biggest challenge for many is how much the consulting profession takes a toll on your physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
Similar to other high-powered professions, like law or investment banking, a career in consulting can lead to stress, anxiety, and fatigue. When would this burnout normally happen? Well, it happens when you delay the process of taking care of your health and wait for your body to shut down before you start acting. It happens when you put on a brave face and delay asking for help or talking with a therapist.
In the best case, stress and anxiety can degrade your performance and productivity. In the worst case, a mental breakdown can see you end up in hospital and required to take months off work to fully recover.
Before joining the consulting industry, you should read a lot about the industry. The words that always stood out for me were “fast-paced, highly pressured environment”. Before making the decision to join consulting, make sure you fully understand what these words mean and are comfortable working in such a setting. Although consulting can be highly rewarding, it is also a challenging and stressful industry. For instance, the standard working hours within the consulting industry are between 60 and 80 hours a week, excluding any work you might need to do on weekends. Consultants are drilled in perfectionism, which means they are consistently stretching their limits in order to overachieve. This is why consulting firms only hire “top tier” individuals. Overachieving comes at a price though, the highest price being your own mental, physical, and mental well-being.
Bitter experience has taught me that you should not wait until the eleventh hour to seek assistance. Accenture, like most large firms, offers free and anonymous mental health services for its employees. I have personally benefited from these internal services as well as seeking support on an external basis. Learn to listen to your body and understand that when you are feeling tired, it means you need to rest and not push yourself to the point of breaking. Instead of postponing, never miss a session with your therapist. Keep a journal of your daily thoughts. What rewards are you gaining? What challenges are you facing?
Wellbeing requires taking a holistic approach. According to Dr. Bill Hettler [pdf], co-founder of the National Wellness Institute in the US, wellbeing requires a balanced life that cultivates six dimensions: social, physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and occupational. Placing all of your energies into your occupation, and neglecting the other areas of your life, might be analogous to flying a passenger aircraft on a single engine. You can do this for a short period of time, but it will place the entire plane under tremendous stress. If a passenger aircraft has even a single broken engine, it will not be allowed to fly. The risk is simply too great.
Be honest with yourself about your state of wellbeing. This is a difficult thing to do. I had to do it myself. I learnt through this process the importance of open and honest communication, investing in a therapist, investing in a work mentor, and creating clear boundaries between my personal and professional life.
“If you feel burnout setting in, if you feel demoralized and exhausted, it is best, for the sake of everyone, to withdraw and restore yourself”, Dalai Lama.
Thanduxolo Love Mtsweni, is a Management Consultant Analyst at Accenture in South Africa. She holds a Bachelor of Administration in International Relations and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Management (PDM- Business Administration). She is passionate about empowering the youth, educating and advocating for better youth employment opportunities.
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