I recently left a big consultancy firm with that type of strong hierarchy and male-dominant leadership. I worked there a couple of years and did quite good which meant that I worked closely with partners on other departments. That was how I started working with him. And we can call him Michael for the sake of the story. Me and Michael had worked in the same projects before, but with a lot of other consultants so we never really talked just the two of us. So this project would be the first with just him, me and some newly hired juniors.
My initial thought was that he was a giant douche who’d come from another firm the year before and had an obvious complex to show his power. He was a partner, 15 years older than me, and with a strong tendency to talk on the top of his mind which usually was characterized by hidden insults. He had this authoritarian presence that was enhanced by his dark voice and dry humor that made other men respect him and women want to please him. You want to know the worst of it? He knew all of this.