Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - DAY 5/7 - SELL YOUR VALUE | Mini Trainings: Career Growth Challenge

Episode Date: March 25, 2025

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Hello and welcome to day five of our seven-day Career Growth Challenge. So it is finally the time we're going to talk about asking for a job promotion and salary increment from your boss because you did an amazing job and to make sure that you get rewarded for your hard work. Now the mistake that many people make is that they only focus on that one conversation that they will have with their boss in terms of the performance review. You have no idea how many people tell me that maybe can you give me the script of exactly what I'm supposed to say to my boss for my performance review because I'm not sure if I can convince my boss that I deserve a promotion. Now that is exactly the problem

because if you're going into this one conversation, not even confident of the value that you're adding, the good work that you're doing, then how are you going to convince your boss and the big bosses, especially the head of departments and directors who will be signing off the budget to say, yeah, you know, you deserve to be promoted, right? So you're really starting off with a back foot. And the second mistake also is that a lot of people believe that the decision to promote someone, the decision to give a pay rise, that decision is made during the performance review conversation at the year end.

Actually that's not very accurate. And I can tell you this, as someone who used to manage a department, actually looking into headcount, budgets and so forth, the decision to promote someone to the next career level, that is decided usually by month 9 or 10, not during the final year-end conversation, year-end performance review that too many people are focused on. So what you need to recognize is that your performance throughout the year really really matters and that is why when we started this training, I really wanted to focus on your deep understanding of exactly what you're hired to do because the reason why a lot of people don't feel confident to sell their value, to ask for the promotion, to ask for the salary

increment is that they cannot really explain what they have been doing. So if you cannot explain that, then how is your boss going to promote you, right? So the clarity on your job scope, the clarity on what you're hired to do is actually the most important thing. Being able to identify that performance goal, be able to identify that KPI and ensuring that you have already aligned that with your boss and your boss agrees to say, yeah, this is what you're going to be measured against and if you do a good job, then obviously you will be way more confident knowing that, hey, boss, I've already completed my goals, right, I've done

my part, then now I want to ask for the promotion, the career level up, as well as the salary increment. So making sure that if you haven't had the time to really understand your job scope, to gain clarity on that, I would say that is the number one priority because if you don't know what your job is supposed to be, you will never be able to have confidence when you enter into a conversation with your boss about your performance. It's not necessarily really even during the

year-end performance review, but any conversations with your boss, you will always feel lack of confidence. And also the other thing is that if you don't know what your goals are, then how can you be sure that whatever up upskilling and learning that you're doing, it's even helping you meet your career goals? Or the learning is just pointless, right?

So that is the other thing that you want to take note as well. So selling your value is not so much about, like I said, that one conversation, but it's all the groundwork, all the fundamentals that we have set up step by step, right, from clarity of your job scope, from confidence in your value, from having the competence to exceed your performance goals and gradually ensuring that you are visible in front of your bosses and be known as someone who has good reputation, someone who does a good job as someone who has good reputation, someone who does a good job,

someone who is very responsible, very proactive, basically someone who is ready for the next career level. So this is exactly how you're gonna increase your chances. Now, at this point, I'm gonna give you an exercise on preparing for your performance reviews, but maybe not even that. It's about thinking through whether do you feel that you have set yourself up for a promotion?

And I think this is really, really, really important. So I'm gonna have a couple of questions for you. So question number one is, what are the top three things that you have delivered in your role this year? Right, so what are the top three things that, have delivered in your role this year? So what are the top three things that, you know, the job that you're hired to do, you did an amazing job, that's like your KPI, right? The top three things that you did well.

Now, next question. What are two things that you went and helped out, right? So this is just like the extra work, right? So what are the two things that maybe it's not really part of like your main job scope, which is the, you know, it's not the thing that if you don't do it, you're going to get fired. But it's just stuff that you have been helping out throughout the year. Maybe your boss gave you this task or maybe someone else gave you this task, but it's just additional workload, right?

Then the third question is, what is the one main skill that you have been upskilling this year? Now, the one main skill that you're upskilling this year is also really, really important because we wanna show your boss that you are progressing in terms of upskilling as well. Like you wanna get better and you are gradually preparing yourself, increasing your own value, right?

So that you can go for that level up, like you deserve it because you have been preparing and you've been delivering your work, you're doing a good job and you're also preparing yourself for the next level. So that is really the reputation that we want to portray, right? I just want to be very clear, right? Asking for a job promotion is beyond that 30-minute year-end performance review conversation. It's about setting yourself up, setting up all the foundations, which is why the clients that I work with,

the members in my career program, so I have a career program, it's called The Corporate Survivor, and interestingly, actually when a lot of people join the program, one of the first thing they tell me is that, Mei Ping, how do I get visible? And it's fair, everybody wants to get recognized for their hard work, everybody wants a promotion,

everybody wants progression, everybody wants level up, everybody wants to make more money. I completely understand that otherwise why are we working so hard? But the foundational question is that why are you struggling to get that level up? Why are you struggling to get that promotion? To even have the confidence of that? And when I dig a little bit deeper, it became very clear that they are saying that they want to get visible, they think that visibility is the problem. But sometimes it's about your own work confidence. How clear are you in terms of the work that you need to deliver?

Are you having ongoing face time with your boss? When all those things are not set up, obviously you're going to walk into that meeting with your boss, feeling very stressed out, feeling worried, feeling like you're not good enough and then you're looking for someone to give you the answer. And that is why, right, for new students who have that kind of mindset, when they first join my career program, I actually tell them to start the three-step framework. So I teach a three-step framework, which step one is get clear on the corporate world, where we really deep dive into exactly the job

that you're hired to do. Remember what I was talking about, ensuring that you can identify your key performance goals so that you will have confidence to explain the good work that you have done to meet those performance goals. Otherwise, how are you gonna explain that, right? Then once we are clear on the job scope,

then we also get clear on the people that we work with, because remember what I said in earlier trainings as well, right? The corporate world is a jigsaw puzzle. You do not work alone. And the highest chance that you're going to get a promotion and salary increment is showing your boss that you can work well with other people. People skills are so critical in the corporate world. So once you have nailed step one, right, which is get clear on the corporate world, right?

The structure, your job scope, people, now we know exactly what to focus on at your job, right, how you're actually adding value. Then we move into step two. So step two is get confident with corporate skills. Now, I know that you want to have that conversation around job promotions, but I want you to set yourself up to go into that conversation about job promotions,

being able to clearly explain that you have met expectations and you are more than ready to get that level up, right? Whether it's salary, career progression and so forth. And this can only be done if you are planting the seeds along the way. So you need to feel confident that you have done a good job. Because if you don't feel confident, your boss is going to sense it and your boss will not have confidence in you that you're ready for that salary and career growth. So confidence, right, and also up skill, the core corporate skills.

So as I also mentioned in the previous training that you don't need to learn 10,000 skills, you just need to master the top four corporate skills that are all connected, which is communication skills, people, relationship building skills, then big picture critical thinking skills, and then productivity. Just mastering these four, you will be able to easily meet your performance goals so that now, when you're going to get visible to your boss, right,

you have actually something good to say. There's no point having good visibility or asking for a promotion if your boss can just immediately say, oh what do you mean? This job, this work messed up. I don't think you did a good job in this project. Like if you know that's the answer that your boss is likely gonna give, then we need to make sure that we sort out our work quality first, right? We reset those fundamentals, right? We learn the corporate skills to be able to make sure that you meet your KPIs so that when you have the opportunity to get visible, to prepare for that conversation

for your boss, to ask for the promotion, you know deep inside that you deserve it. Then you will have the actual motivation to ask for it and more importantly, you will feel like you can take charge of your career because even if your boss doesn't give you that promotion or the company cannot give you that promotion, the progression or the salary increment, guess what is going to happen? If you already know that you deserve it because you are very very good, you know your own value, what do you think you're gonna do? Now you'll be full of confidence and you'll probably look into your backup plan

and say, hey, if this company cannot pay me, maybe I should start looking out because I'm sure other companies are there. I'm sure other HR recruiters and hiring managers would really want me, want to hire me to their company. So when you have that level of like confidence and full of assurance of your own value, that's where your career can really grow. That's why I always say, career growth, salary growth, we try to focus on our company, existing company, because everything that you pick up in your role is something that we can include in your overall value to sell to your company for promotion, right?

That's that one. But there's also a backup plan as well. If the company or your boss can't give it to you, then I want you to have that You know assurance knowing that hey, I'm valuable enough So I'm gonna make sure I have a backup plan because career growth, style growth is important to me And I'm gonna take the next step whether it's this company or the next company I'm gonna make sure that I take the action to grow my career because I know what I'm worth and I want to get paid

what I'm worth and I want to get paid what I'm worth. So this is where I would pause for today's training and just to kind of do a very very quick wrap up is that the formula is this right and this is something I teach all my corporate survival members because this is the three-step framework. You want to get clear of your job right and then you want to have confidence? Get confident with corporate skills and then you wanna get visible. Your visibility does not just mean that you'll end performance review conversation.

Visibility is that professional reputation and this is the kind of reputation that you want to build. And the stronger professional reputation that you have as someone who is value adding, someone who's very good at their work, someone who is like a super level up, the person that the company really wants to retain, the person that the company is willing to pay a lot of money for, willing to promote, doesn't want to lose, then you are gradually selling your value to set yourself up that when it comes the time for that promotion conversation,

it's going to be super easy because at that time you know that promotion conversation. It's gonna be super easy because at that time you know that you deserve it. The company and your boss has been monitoring you and also felt that you are someone that they want to retain right talent that they want to grow. That is purely a win-win situation and that is the situation I want you to be in.