Meet Michael Hall

The path to consulting doesn’t always lead straight from an MBA program, a fact that Michael Hall can attest to. After earning his Ph.D. in social psychology and considering research and academia, he pivoted to consulting. His passion for helping private equity and corporate clients hire great people, enhance their leadership, and foster effective teams was born from exploring the vast options available to him at ghSMART.

In this article, Michael discusses what led him to consulting from his Ph.D. experiences and shares why people are at the heart of his work at ghSMART.

From Academia and Research to People-Focused Consulting

Like many people, Michael took an interesting, nontraditional route to consulting work. He started out in psychology research, something that he was drawn to during his undergrad days at Tufts University. After spending a couple years working at UC San Francisco on NIH-funded clinical research studies at their interdisciplinary Research Center, he considered pursuing a career in academia because he loved teaching and mentoring. But the Ph.D. process made him realize something unexpected.

“I really wanted to be a university professor at first,” Michael says, “but I realized what I loved most was a pretty small slice of the pie. Ultimately a professor’s performance is judged not just by teaching, mentoring, and research, but by how much you publish in academic journals, and that wasn’t as motivating for me.”

As he looked for options beyond academia, Michael discovered consulting as a career path. He talked to a couple of people he knew — one at McKinsey and one at Boston Consulting Group — and found out those firms wanted a certain percentage of their new hires every year to be from non-MBA alternative degree programs.

“The more I learned about it, the more I thought it would be fascinating to work in that world,” says Michael. “It was a favorable contrast to all the things I didn't like about academia. Consulting was pragmatic and focused on shorter-term problem-solving. It presented a continual refresh of interesting, stimulating new things to learn about.” He eventually landed at BCG in their Washington, DC office.  

After some time with BCG, ghSMART’s recruiting team reached out. Realizing that ghSMART offered leadership advisory and consulting work aligned with psychology and behavioral science, it seems like an ideal fit for Michael’s background in psychology and research.  

“I thought, I'm at the center of the Venn diagram of those things, so how could I ignore this opportunity? Every call I had with the firm, it was like hitting green lights every step of the way. I really enjoyed the interviewing process, and every person I met I really liked. It all built my conviction that this firm and role was a better mouse trap for me, especially over the longer term. By the time I got the offer from ghSMART, it was a pretty easy decision for me."

Freedom to Choose the Work That Ignites You

From the start of his tenure at ghSMART, Michael appreciated the way the firm blended training and mentorship with flexibility to create his own path. In his early days at the firm, he met many of his new colleagues, gained exposure to numerous different clients, and sampled what he might like to do longer-term. This “pre-solo” process, he says, is a great way to get to know people and land on the work you love to do.

“Ideally you find the people you enjoy working with, and the feeling is mutual,” he says. “It’s usually in settings like this where you produce really great work. You can form deeper relationships that way.”

Michael discovered something surprising along the way — a passion for working with private equity clients, a sector he had little exposure to during his days in academia. “If you had told me five years ago that would be true, I’m not sure I would have believed you,” he says. “Back in my psychology days, I didn’t know much about what private equity did. At BCG, I did one private equity due diligence and got some exposure there, and it was a tough project. But fast forward to now and I work almost exclusively with private equity clients, which I love.”

His work revolves largely around leadership development, evaluative hiring, and organizational effectiveness work in private equity – including at PE firms themselves and in their portfolios – as well as corporate clients. The variety, he says, is satisfying. But even more so, he enjoys the people component, which is how he chooses the clients and projects he pursues at the firm.

“Mostly, I've just found people that I really like working with,” Michael says. “As an example, I’ve been working with my favorite client for a few years now, and I have a really good sense of what their firm culture is and who's who around the firm. There’s a couple dozen people I've assessed who work there now. I love feeling how calibrated I am there. That’s where I'm at my best — when I have a lot of that data and expertise to draw on.”

Freedom to Control Your Career Path

Michael’s favorite part of ghSMART’s freedom and flexibility model is the ability to lean into relationships that provide a good synergy for work and life success. He’s been able to take control of his consulting career by focusing on the things that bring him the most energy and that he’s most passionate about. “I love that you have the ability to lean in that way,” he says.

What he appreciates most is the sense of connection he can foster with colleagues and clients as he builds his career. “What we do is all about relationship building. Yes, we focus on doing high quality, rigorous work. But at the end of the day, what we really focus on is becoming credible advisors to people. It's rewarding for me, and it’s cool to see when it is rewarding for somebody else, too. ghSMART is really a people business at the end of the day.”

Michael’s full bio can be found here.