- I had moments in my career where I really felt stressed and anxious during my time in consulting
at Accenture and McKinsey, but also right now in a C-level position at a German retailer. There are moments at work
that are just so stressful that I really felt crushed
both mentally and physically. And from a little survey that I did on my Instagram
account Firm Learning, I know that I am not alone, but many of you are
feeling similar as well. This video is going to
cover exactly this topic, and this is how to handle stressful and anxious situations at work. I will talk about the three situations that at least from my experience are the key driver of stress for young professionals
in a work environment. And this is first being told by your boss that your work is not good enough. So pretty much getting negative feedback. There's a second, the
feeling of imposter syndrome, so that you are pretty
much here by accident, that the company made a
mistake in hiring you, and you are actually not good enough, but you need to cover
this up to hopefully avoid that your colleagues find out that you're actually incompetent. And third, the feeling of just
being overwhelmed with work, that there're just far too many things that you need to do that you can handle. And then of course, often
this is also combined with sleep deprivation. So for these three types
of challenging situations, I will first tell you
a very personal story of when I faced situations like that in my work life as well, and then I will share
some tips and reflections of what I think you
can do to actually cope with that and to reduce your stress and level of anxiousness. So welcome to another coffee break here on my channel Firm Learning. So today I'm sticking to water because it's already quite
late here in Germany, but feel free to help
yourself to a cup of coffee. My name is Heinrich, and on this channel I want to help you to become successful in the first years of your career, but I would be super happy to
hear from you guys as well. What are the situations that
are stressing you out most? Feel free to leave a comment below in the comment section to tell me about the things that bother
you most at the moment. But now without further
ado, let's jump into it. The first reason for
stress and anxiousness on the job I wanna talk about today is getting negative feedback. Getting negative feedback can be crushing, and I know this from my own experience. So let me share with you guys a story from my own professional life. This happened when I
was a young associate. I was about one year
into my consulting career and the project that I worked on, and specifically my area of
responsibility on that project just did not go away. We didn't really make
progress on the topics that we are supposed to work on. The client, of course, noticed that. And after a couple of weeks, he was unhappy and unsatisfied, and he started to critique
our work towards me, towards us, towards the team, and of course, towards the partners. As I was the responsible associate for that specific piece
of work on the team, of course, I was very quickly
in the focus of the critique and it did not take a lot of time until not only the clients, but also our partners started
to make me responsible for what didn't go well on the project. Now I could talk a lot about
what went wrong in hindsight, and for sure there are some things that I could have done better and then made my own learnings from the situation going forward. There were also several factors that at least I felt like
were out of my control at the time that contributed
to the overall bad situation. But in the end, whatever the reasons were, the result was that it came to a point that pretty much every single day I was told both by
clients and also our team or our partners that I
was doing something wrong, that what I was doing wasn't good enough, that I was not adding
enough value to the project. And this for me at the time was an immensely stressful situation. I remember Sunday evenings sitting at home feeling literally sick to my stomach just thinking about on Monday
needing to fly in again and to expose myself to
the whole situation again, and I know that this situation
is not completely unusual. Almost every consultant
you talk to will be able to tell you about a project
in his or her career that was really draining. A project where they had issues of the one kind or the other. A situation where they felt so stressed. What do you do when you get
such negative, tough feedback that you start to question yourself? That you start to question
your future in the company and therefore, potentially
also your career as a whole. So let me share some reflections
on situations like this, and what I did to better cope with them. So first of all, often I strongly felt that I somehow got treated unfairly. That the person from whom
I'm got this feedback, got it all wrong. That he misunderstood that I
pretty much no chance at all of actually doing what he now tells me that I should have done. But in the end you need to realize that all of this doesn't matter. There is a saying that goes,
"Perception is reality." In these kinds of feedback situations, there isn't usually much value in trying to argue about the reality, trying to argue about the facts. Because the problem is the perception that the other person
has about the situation. This perception is the
reality for the person, and of course, this reality
might be very different from the reality that you are perceiving. But therefore, arguing with that person about the reality is often very difficult because again, it's not
about the hard facts, but it's rather about the perception that people have about these facts. Especially in corporate environments, it is often very important
to manage the perceptions that other people have about you. So do ask yourself what
you can do the next time to also manage the
perception of your team lead so that these situations
arise less frequently. Another idea is that people do not want to feel like a failure. Why is it bothering you so much
that you get this feedback? That you get told that
you are not good enough? Well, of course, because
you don't want to feel like you are a failure. You don't wanna feel like
you've failed at work, you failed at whatever
task you were asked to do. People tend to attach lots
of meaning to failure. Now for sure I can tell this about myself. So if I fail, I often associate with it that it was because I wasn't good enough. If I fail it's because I
haven't worked hard enough. If I fail it's because
something bad about myself. But the truth is failure means nothing. Let this sink in, guys. Failure has no meaning at all. Failure has only the meaning
that you attach to it. So yes, maybe you did fail at
something, but so what, right? What does this really say about you? What does this say about anything? It's in your hand what
meaning you attach to failure. Lots of successful
people fail all the time, so don't beat yourself up about it, but rather just think
forward and ask yourself, "Okay, what can I do in
the future to improve?" And another thought that really helped me when I was getting
critiqued and asked myself, "Well, is this really the job for me? Can I really do it?" In these situations I ask myself, "Okay, what is really the worst thing that can happen to you?" If you do lose the job,
if you get kicked out, if you got fired, what will you do next? Because the truth is
that the majority of us here in the Firm Learning community, we are privileged enough to
work in high-profile careers. We are privileged enough to earn salaries significantly above the average
of the general population. So even if you are kicked out of your job, at least I often told myself, "Well, what is the worst
that can happen to me?" Even if I only need to accept a job which maybe pays me a quarter
less than my current job, I would still be able to
live a very comfortable life, and probably even get a significantly better work-life balance. So what is really the
problem here anyways? And of course, this is just another reason why I believe it's always a great idea to keep your savings rate high because this gives you the confidence that you can comfortably
survive on a salary that might be significantly below what you're currently earning, and I also made a whole video about that. I will link it somewhere above here. Check it out to learn more
about my thoughts on saving, on getting your finances in order. So all in all, whenever I
got tough, negative feedback like that, the mindset that
I tried to adopt over time is that, you know, well, I will try to do my very best every single day. And if in the end, this
turns out to be not enough, then this is what it is, okay? Then I need to look for something else. I will find something else. I have this confidence in myself. But if it just doesn't
work out, then it doesn't. The second type of situation I wanna talk about in this video is the feeling of not being smart enough. It's the famous imposter syndrome. According to Wikipedia,
the "Imposter syndrome is a psychological pattern in which an individual
doubts their skills, talents or accomplishments, and has a persistent, internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud." Now from my experience
talking to many colleagues, I know that this is a feeling that many people have
who work in environments where they are confronted with many other smart people as well. You very quickly get the feeling that everybody else seems
to be a genius, right? But you just somehow
manage to middle through, but you are not closely as good enough as all these other people
that you are surrounded by. And again, sharing a story
from my personal life, I for sure felt this way on my very first project in consulting. I remember being in the team room on my first day on the job. It was a big team, a project
lead with three associates. And while, of course, my project
lead was great and amazing, I understood that he was though already several years further down
the line in the career. But I, of course, compared myself to the other associates in the room. And for me when I started, the perceived difference between me and all these associates was so immense that I cannot even start to describe it. What they seemed to be
able to do in there too, it's like Excel and
PowerPoint, just was amazing. They were able to do everything
three times, four times faster than I was able
to do when I started out. But similar also the social competencies and also perceive brain power. The way that they handled tough situations when talking to clients or just when they needed to solve problems when they stood in front of a flip chart and just tried to come
up with a brainstorming together with the clients. That just was crazy to me. For me, it seemed completely unthinkable that at any point in the future would only reach any
level that was only close to what these guys
apparently were able to do, and this, for sure, stressed me out. I quickly started to feel
like a false positive, like an error in the recruiting process that probably I just
kind of slipped through. But actually if they really
did their homework right, they should never have
hired me for this job because I clearly perceived
myself to be not even close as smart as all these
other guys in the room. So what are my thoughts on that? And here I believe the
key radius to understand that a lot of people feel like that, and I believe the key reason
is that everybody, of course, has strengths and weaknesses. And if you don't perceive
other people in your team, you will often notice
especially the types of things where they are better than you. So in areas where you
have clear weaknesses, it is often especially clear to you when the other people in your
environment perform better. Maybe you have a strength
where you have such a weakness. For instance, some people are
extremely good at mental math. And if maybe you aren't that good at it, and if you see somebody in front of you doing crazy things with mental math, then of course you will feel stupid. Of course you will feel like these guys are so much smarter than you are. But maybe you are much more empathetic than these other guys. Maybe your strength will be
to handle client meetings, to handle difficult client situations. But these types of strengths, of course, aren't that visible after
only a couple of weeks, and for you it will be less obvious that maybe this is something where you really are
better than other people. And the second thought that
I wanna share with you here is to really trust in the process. So in the beginning, I was
probably very much right and correct that all these guys, for sure, really were much better than me in all these different areas
that I just talked about. But the truth is also that in
the first one or two years, my skillset developed so much that after this time it
could have easily been me in the role of these associates that I admired so much in the beginning where I thought that they
were so much better than me. This just was a development process. And after some time I was there as well, even though the distance
seemed huge when I started out. The third point here though is that these thoughts
often never go away. Also, many of these people
that you admire so much, they might have similar thoughts. They also might think about themselves that they are imposters. It's just something that never goes away whatever the level is, and at some point you just become good in covering it up. Because the truth is that all these guys are not perfect as well. They also have weaknesses, but over time you just learn little tricks how you can cover up your weaknesses, how you make them less obvious, and especially how you can
really emphasize your strengths. This is really the key to success, guys. Just make sure that on your weaknesses, you are okay, right? You don't need to become
great in your weaknesses and probably you will
never become that awesome, but especially focus on the things where you are really good at. And maybe it's the social component of being good with clients. Maybe it's the analytical components of really being great
with complex analysis. Try to really identify
that spike that you have, and then really build
your career around it. The third situation I wanna talk about when it comes to stress and anxiousness is just the sheer amount of
work and sleep deprivation that you will face in many
high-profile jobs and careers. If you follow my channel for some time, you will know that the work-life balance of a consultant can
often be not that great. I even made a video talking
about a typical week in the life of a consultant. If you wanna have more insights
about that, check it out. Some are above here. And indeed the truth is
that maybe not all the time, but for sure there are projects where you will regularly
work really, really late, significantly after midnight, and this can put you
under a lot of pressure. Now sharing stories from my
personal, professional life, I for sure had several projects where this very much happened to me. There were several weeks in a row where I only slept a
couple of hours every day. I was waking up in the morning just tired. And just knowing that I had
such a long workday again in front of me, but not
any type of work day, but work where I know that, of course, a lot of things are expected from me, and I would have actually
needed to be rather well-rested than sleep-deprived as I was. Again, unfortunately, if you
work in a high-profile career in consulting, banking or
also many corporate jobs, this just is the reality of your life. For sure this will not
happen all the time, but this will happen
probably a bit more often than you would have hoped for. So the question is how do you handle this type of stress and anxiousness? So now taking a step back, of course, if you're feeling stressed and anxious, because you just have too
much work than you can handle, the best way you can do is
really talk to your project lead and find ways how you can
reprioritize your work. And I know this is not always possible and can sometimes be quite challenging, but there are little tips and tricks and techniques that you
can use to get this done. Now talking about this would
probably be a whole new video. So if you're interested in this, let me know, please, in the comments. Would be interested to hear
whether this is a topic where you would like to have a video on. But from my experience, even if the situation is as it
is and you cannot change it, and there's lots of work
and very little sleep, there are a couple of
things that you can do to improve your well-being. The first is in these situations to be extra cautious about what you eat. Especially if you're sleep
deprived, it helps to eat light. Avoid eating pizza for lunch. Avoid eating lots of pasta for lunch. Food like this will make
you feel even more tired, but rather keep it light. Maybe eat the salad instead of a pasta, and then this alone should help you to get through the day easier. Similar to that as the effect of sports. Even if it's already late
at night in your hotel room, try to get a short 20, 30-minute
run in on the treadmill or any other type of cardio
activity that you like to do. This at least for me, for
my personal well-being was always a huge difference. Whether I was going
through such a tough week and didn't do any sports at all, or whether I was able once or twice within the week to go for a little run, to move myself, to clear out
my head out of all the things that were going on throughout the day. I know that sports has a
different effect on everybody, but at least for me, this
always was a game changer. And lastly, why this might not
help you in the very moment where you are facing
this kind of situation. Now in hindsight looking back
at my time in consulting, situations like this
where you sit together with your team in your
team room working late, facing these tough challenges at work, these were the situations
that at least for me, often led to building the deepest bonds with your colleagues. The people I worked with on these projects often tended to be the people that then I liked to hang out with most also after the project. This is the material out of which these war stories are build
that then you can talk about and think about back even
years after you left the job. So again, while I know that
in the very (chuckling) moment this doesn't help, also look
at it from this perspective that you probably in a couple of years will look back and also
see some positive sides that you took out of this experience. So if you took any value
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every single week on Saturdays. So please enjoy your weekend and see you again next Saturday. Cheers, guys.
