Accept tasks well and understand expectations
Imagine you find out that you worked on the wrong question. All this hard work is for nothing, wasted time. The feeling of embarrassment is overwhelming.
Imagine your manager asked you to do one thing. You have done something completely different.
Ouch!
Sounds familiar?
It happens to everyone.
This is a very bad mistake. It kills your productivity.
It damages your reputation. The leadership begins to question your basic cognitive abilities.
It destroys leadership trust. Once you lose it, recovering is almost impossible.
It destroys self-confidence. You get disappointed in yourself and start questioning every decision, making work a nightmare.
Why does it happen?
It’s because you often don’t understand expectations when accepting tasks.
You don’t ask clarifying questions to probe for more information.
You don't have enough confidence.
You don't want to look stupid and annoy your leadership
But every time this happens, you make a simple trade-off.
Do you want to feel uncomfortable now or look stupid later?
Let's learn how to accept tasks well to understand your leadership expectations better.
1. New Hires vs Tenured Consultants
There are two different situations why this happens.
It depends on the tenure of consultants.
1.1. New Hires
For new hires, it’s normal not to understand what they are asked to do.
For example, in my first 2-3 months, I had no idea what was happening around me. All this consulting talk sounded gibberish to me, and the pace of everything was too fast to comprehend.
It’s understandable. Consulting firms are quite peculiar in how they work. Their methods completely differ from the normal ways of doing things in the industry.
New hires don't understand it, not because they are not smart, but because it’s a completely new language.
Leadership may have forgotten how difficult it is to understand all this consulting lingo. They should be more patient and understanding.
1.2. Tenured Consultants
Tenured consultants often make the same mistakes as well.
It’s a direct result of under apprenticeship and coaching. It’s a problem that is hard to identify yourself. Someone has to tell it to you.
Imagine consultants bringing their outputs to leadership, which are consistently rejected or reworked.
They do another iteration after another. They spend a disproportionate amount of time on simple things and then don't have time to think and overdeliver.
In fact, this might be the most damaging mistake that inhibits your performance. It’s a bleeding wound. It must be fixed as soon as possible.
If you are an MBB consultant and want to improve your slide-making process and achieve high performance, book a free 1-1 consultation to discuss how exactly I can help you. There is no commitment, and you can ask me any burning questions you might have.
2. A Simple Solution
Over time, you must become a person who doesn’t accept stupid or unclear tasks. Build confidence and experience to filter out these tasks.
For now, the recipe is simple.
Push to understand leadership expectations.
Ask questions. Clarify unclear points. Play back your understanding. Propose your own approach and outputs.
Of course, it's easier to say than do. It requires practice.
Let’s deep dive into that.
3. Two Types of Tasks
There are two types of tasks. Each of them requires different treatment.
3.1. An Ambiguous Question
Quite often, leadership will ask you to do something that they have no idea what it is.
You should recognize it by the vague language they use. They ask you to 'look into things,' 'research it'’ and 'come back with some ideas.'
This is a normal situation. This happens all the time.
A mistake here would be trying to clarify the task further. The more you ask questions, the more you annoy your leadership. You will make them feel stupid because they have no idea.
They see it as your job to figure out what it is and come back with your perspective.
But ensure a basic understanding of the task. Playback what you have understood. Say something like: 'This is a new topic we must explore. You want me to look into it and come back with a few options for approaching it. Right?'
Ideally, you need them to acknowledge that it is an ambiguous question. And output here can be anything. And they can’t expect a specific slide.
3.2. A Precise Task
There is another situation when your leadership is asking for a very specific task to do.
You can recognize this by the precise language they use. They will discuss details, such as layout and messages.
It happens because managers and partners think in slides. They already have one in their mind. And if you don't know what it is, your chances of delivering a good output are close to zero.
If you produce a different slide, it will trigger a cringe reaction from your manager because it's not what they already expect.
I know it sounds unfair. But we are all humans. React emotionally, even if it doesn’t make sense rationally.
In this situation, your priority is to extract all these ideas from your manager.
4. WHY-HOW-WHEN
When asking clarifying questions, follow the Why-How-When framework.
This information is absolutely necessary for you to successfully complete any tasks.
4.1. Why
You would be surprised, but many consultants don’t ask why they are asked to do something.
Not asking the why question, you reduce yourself to a mere executive assistant, not a business problem solver.
You also deprive yourself of solving the problem most effectively. You might have better information than your leaders and can come up with better solutions.
4.2 How
The How questions are the most tricky ones.
If you ask, “How should I do this task?” you will trigger your leaders and get an answer: “Why do you ask me this question? It’s your job to figure it out.”
Instead, you should ask about specific expectations of your leaders. You can’t know their expectations. So you can phrase your questions something like that:
“Thank you! I think I understood your tasks. But could you let me know if you have any specific expectations of how I should do them? In terms of outputs or approach.”
If you create space for your leaders to speak, they will likely spill the beans.
4.3. When
When questions are easy to ask.
They are not triggering for your leaders.
They understand that you must know their timeline and deadlines.
Actually, not asking the When questions may cause you some serious trouble.
These rules are not strict. Once you understand basic principles, with practice, you'll learn to combine them and use them fluently.
The important thing is that you don't allow yourself to accept tasks you don't understand them.
Give yourself a chance to win in this game.
If you are struggling as an MBB consultant, this is where I can help you.
The consulting journey is complex and treacherous.
Walking it alone is extremely difficult. It’s helpful to have the support of someone experienced (me, wink wink) who has gone through this journey and helped many others.
That is why I developed a coaching program for MBB consultants to help you achieve high performance and become successful.
If you are an MBB consultant and sick of struggling with performance and development, I would like to speak with you.
Book a Free 1-1 Consultation to discuss whether I can help you through my coaching program. There is no commitment, and you can ask any burning questions in a risk-free environment.
Read this post to learn more about the Hero’s Journey coaching program.
I really liked the point about ambiguous tasks here. Sometimes I do that myself with my team. I want them to figure it out based on a broad objective.