- Strong personal presence, combined with compelling and professional presentation and communication skills
- Real thought leadership, combined with strong analytical and problem-solving skills (which includes both a quantitative and qualitative orientation)
- Personal leadership qualities, including an ability to manage people, drive change, and accomplish challenging goals both alone and with others
- The ability to work independently, while simultaneously being able to forge productive team relationships
- Business judgment and maturity, including the ability to develop a 'big picture' view and use it
- Intellectual curiosity
I copied the above text from one of our career service's presentation and I am actually quite surprised at how well they have synthesized the key attributes of a successful consultant. If you read these attributes carefully , you will quickly know that they are pretty generic and describe the key success factors in almost any industry. However, the thing that strikes to me is most is that our formal education doesn't really emphasize in any of them: It didn't encourage us to work in teams, it rarely gives us the opportunity to develop our leadership qualities and it's so result/grade driven that students find it no benefit in preserving the intellectual curiosity. I think the main reason is that the professors/teachers we had when we were in school are hardworking nerds themselves and they care much more about their research paper than personal development.
Don't be a nerd and seek oppotunities that allows you develop these skills
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