From culture to consultant

People often ask me where I am from when they hear my accent and the truth is, I have no idea.

I grew up as an expat child. I was born in Zimbabwe and although my parents consider themselves Zimbabwean, I certainly don’t. I was a few years old when I left, I couldn’t even tell you my home address.

After leaving Zimbabwe, my parents moved to the UK with their jobs. So, does this make me British? Well yes on paper sure, I have a British passport which legally tells the world ‘I am British’, but I don’t really consider myself British.

I spent the next phase of my life, my teenage years, in the Middle East, in a country called Oman. Although Oman resonates closest to home for me, neither on the basis of any legal document, religion, language or heritage can I call myself an Omani.

I then went on to spend many years in South Africa before doing a full circle back to the UK, hence the slight Saffa twang in my accent.

So why am I telling you this?

Well, since entering the consulting world I have come to realise how growing up as an expat child has prepared me for my consulting journey and the challenges I may face whilst on this rollercoaster.

As an expat child my circle of friends expands to the four corners of the earth. I kid you not, my friends are more politically, racially and religiously diverse than the United Nations. Like my friends, our consultancy is similar, from our internal invent family to our clients spanning across all sector units and capability units are very diverse. Each client we consult with has a different corporate culture, vision, aim and needless to say different problem – or else we wouldn’t be there.

I have found that living the expat lifestyle forces you to embrace change and diversity, I quickly realised that no one person thinks the same, everyone has a different story, similar to that of our clients and company. Initially I found this very intimidating. Rewind two decades, there I was, starting a new school halfway through a term, in a new country. To put it into context of how diverse my school was, there were 54 different nationalities of children. I remember clearly thinking how am I going to fit in at this school? Will they like me? What if my new maths teacher insists on doing long division instead of short division? (she did and I didn’t like her for it). As time went on and I gained a little confidence, I thrived on meeting new people, learning new ways of doing things (Although, I still put my foot down at long division) and experiencing different cultures. I came to realise what used to intimidate me now excites me.

Fast forward to today, I have found being able to understand different ways of working and thinking has prepared me as consultant. It has prepared me to smoothly transition between projects, interact with different people, embrace different practices and adapt my own ways of thinking to fit in to this new and ever-changing environment. Furthermore, it has taught me to harness and build on my previous experiences, learnings, and adapt and apply these to new interactions especially when faced with a problem.

I have recently read a study of how employers don’t only look for people who have high IQ’s and EQ’s but now are more focused on applicants who have AQ.  For those of you reading who’ve never heard of AQ, it is your Adversity Quotient. Simply put, AQ refers to a person’s resilience. Now, resilience is a concept and trait that is highly valued in all areas of life, with business being no exception. When things are going wrong in business, who gets the call to handle the situation?

While the term is most often associated with the field of psychology, its meaning is clear and relevant in virtually every industry. Considering Capgemini’s clients basically spans across every industry you can begin to see its rather important as a consultant.

I’m not saying I’m an AQ genius here, but moving around every few years, starting over, making new friends over and over again does build up one’s resilience. During each move, I had to gain the trust of new friends, adapt and learn new ways of thinking and living. Similarly, like each project we work on, we have to gain the trust of the client, adapt and learn their ways of working and doing business, whilst at the same time encouraging our clients to embrace change and be resilient.

Embracing change and resilience are two characteristics I have found to be important when working in the consulting industry, but there is one last key characteristic I would consider to be vital – although often overlooked – confidence.

As a graduate, entering a corporate like Capgemini, we can often feel very intimidated looking up at all these consultants who have decades of experience over us. As a child, I more often than not found myself in situations where I didn’t know anyone in the room, whether that was starting at a new school or attending one of my parents work events. When attending such events, the thought of mingling and talking to a roomful of strangers who all knew each other was incredibly daunting. I felt like I’d been thrown in the deep end with a sinking weight attached to my foot.

Needless to say, my confidence quite quickly developed as I didn’t like the prospect of being the friendless kid in the corner. Similarly, clients want to see a proactive, positive and growth mindset from consultants as essentially you are employed to solve a problem and be confident in that solution and this stems from developing one’s confidence.

I know how I grew up was not the ‘norm’ but I’m sure everyone reading this in some way can relate to how their past experiences has provided them with examples of change, resilience and confidence. Going forward, we will depend on our ability to reshape and reflect on our past experiences in order to build and reinvent ourselves to remain competitive, not only on a global scale but as individuals too.

Author

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Amy Broughton

Associate Consultant