Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep01: Soft skills or hard skills for career success?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. In today's podcast, I want to talk about soft skills and why soft skills are the real hard skills in today's world. I live in Asia, so the emphasis on getting that good grades and paper qualification, yeah, those are real things, big things as well.

Starting point is 00:00:50 If you speak to any Asian parent, whether if you're in this part of the world or even in the US, UK, Australia or wherever, I bet you hear something close to this as well. Study hard, get good grades, go to a university, become an accountant, engineer, lawyer, doctor. Those are the really favorite professions by Asian parents for some strange reason. Well, now you have graduated, you feel good, you're ready for a full-time career and most importantly, you have gotten that paper qualification that you have worked so hard for. But the thing is this, most graduates do believe that they are well prepared to go out in the workforce, to go and join the corporate world. And this is something that I'm seeing quite consistently because I do mentor undergraduates at universities

Starting point is 00:01:49 and this is something that I'm hearing firsthand from Generation Z. So this is real. The thing is this, in school, you are really only taught the hard skills. So that would be the technical skills. So if you are an engineer, you learn all about engineering and all the nitty-gritties and stuff like that.

Starting point is 00:02:10 If you're an accountant like me, in university or college, you learn about the accounting concepts, you know, how do you do performance management and how to use an Excel, la la la, stuff like that. If you're a lawyer, something similar also. Well, the truth is this. Smart, brilliant, and talented people with poor soft skills

Starting point is 00:02:34 get fired every day. It's happening, whether we realize it or we don't. So, if you truly believe that a paper qualification is all that's needed for you to be successful and thrive in your new job or in your new business, then my friend, you need to reconsider.

Starting point is 00:02:58 Soft skills. I think what sometimes people don't really focus on soft skills is because it's not something that we can measure. And in this society, we like to measure things, right? It's all about grade A's, 100%, level up, and so forth. So soft skills is something that's not that easy to quantify. And hence, I feel like we don't really place a lot of emphasis on them. And I can give you an example. I'm a trained accountant, so I have a lot of accountants as well as auditor friends. And this is something that I commonly see, which accountants are very, I guess, risk-averse,

Starting point is 00:03:41 yet very hardworking people who work kind of behind the curtains. And some of the common things I hear from them is, how come people don't recognize my hard work? How come I'm not getting promoted? How come it's so difficult to work with another department and they are not helping me? So these are very common problems. to work with another department and they are not helping me, da da da. So these are very common problems. Whether you are a fresh graduate working for 3 to 5 years or even working up to 10 years, for example, the challenges are the same because you have yet to master the soft skills needed to overcome and address these problems

Starting point is 00:04:27 so that you can actually have a win-win relationship. Be it your boss, your manager, your colleague, your peers, people from the other department, pretty much similar things. So the question I have for you today is where are you in terms of your ability to communicate clearly, creative thinking, problem solving, managing your time, getting along with others and taking the lead. I know sometimes these soft skills sounds a little bit woo-woo and the question is, okay, how do I get started? Well, the answer is just get started because if you don't try and don't practice, then how will you know which method works for you? Because we are all different people, so we learn differently and how we interpret things and you know kind of what works for us

Starting point is 00:05:25 are different as well but the thing is this the thing is the mindset behind it if you don't believe that it's important then you're just not going to care one of the other examples i can share with you is as you know these professional bodies whether you're a lawyer, an accountant and whatnot, there are those programs such as rather known as the Continuous Professional Education, CPD or CPE sort of programs. And what is very interesting is that you see a lot of people sign up for those technical courses. You know, so learning about the business world tomorrow and what do I need to know in terms of whatever legal standards and whatnot. But in those what I call soft skill courses, soft skill talks, the turnouts are significantly lower.

Starting point is 00:06:18 And this is something that I got based on the conversation that I had with one of the head of memberships at one of the global professional bodies. So this is happening and unfortunately in this current society, we still think that hard skills are the most important one. So the more we can level up our technical skills, that gives us a better chance to succeed. This is also a very common thing that I see with some of my coaching clients. So they come to me and they say, okay, you know what, I need to take up more Excel courses, more data analytics courses. But the thing is that once we deep dive, the problems are very clear.

Starting point is 00:07:08 The problem is a soft skill problem. It's a skills gap, specifically soft skills. Because yes, they are very good at doing the work, right? They could produce results. But it may not be exactly what their boss wants because they weren't able to communicate and get precisely the purpose, the deliverable, and how can they best achieve the team's outcome. So all of the hard work will feel like it's down the drain.

Starting point is 00:07:38 And of course, you know, you then get emotional and then you get stressed out. And you know what that that's very common in the corporate world so so in this podcast i really want to put it to you that you know what are the real practical things that are that you can do and you can learn to level up your chances for success whether you have joined the corporate world and you intend to climb the ladder, or you can be like some of my entrepreneur friends who decide to come out and run a business,

Starting point is 00:08:13 start a business as an entrepreneur, solopreneur, or generally a creative person. It's the same. If you can't communicate your ideas clearly, then how are you going to get buy-in? If you can't manage your time, then how are you going to find enough time to do anything? And most importantly,

Starting point is 00:08:36 if you can't get along with other people, then who is your audience really? What are you selling and who are you trying to convince if people don't like you? Right? Yeah, so soft skills, like I said earlier, I know it sounds a bit woo-woo sometimes,

Starting point is 00:08:55 but it's a real thing. And I'm not saying that the paper qualification is not good. Of course it's great, right? In some careers, you do need that paper qualification as a ticket to get in. The thing is, once you get in, then what happens? Because unlike in school, where you would be consistently told, okay, you know what, if you didn't score, I don't know,

Starting point is 00:09:22 90 or 100 marks, then there are some gaps. So in the real world, it's not so clear-cut. There are people dynamics involved, and like I always say, the working environment can be quite complex because there are a lot of dynamics and a lot of things going on. So really it's about recognizing that soft skills are important and taking the steps to learn and practice. What do you think the soft skills that you need to thrive in your career or in business? So again, I genuinely believe that soft skills are the real hard skills in today's world. So it's really up to you to realize it for yourself how important that might be. Start now

Starting point is 00:10:17 and you'll give yourself an amazing chance. If you start later, you might spend many years trying to figure out why work is so tough, business is so tough, when you know what, I've just told you the answer. So yeah, soft skills are the real hard skills. And over the next week or so, I will be doing a series talking about some of the most important soft skills that you need to develop. So stay tuned and I'll see you next time.

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep01: Soft skills or hard skills for career success?

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