Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep03: How to get along and fit in at work.

Episode Date: February 24, 2020

✅ Get My FREE '5-Day Career Growth' Guide + Training 👉 http://www.meiphing.com ✅ Grow your career in the 9-5 corporate world with clarity, confidence and opportunities! ⚡ 👋 Welcome to the Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing — corporate career coach, ex-corporate leader who has led multimillion-dollar projects across 43 countries and creator of the ultimate career course for 9-5 professionals, The Corporate Survivor™. On this podcast, you'll learn how to grow your career in the corporate world without getting stuck with Mei Phing's 3-step framework to gain career clarity, improve work confidence and attract new job opportunities. ✅ WEBSITE ⮕ https://www.meiphing.com ✅ FREE GUIDE ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co/5days ✅ COURSE & COACHING ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co ⚡ 📌 ABOUT MEI PHING: Mei Phing Lim is a Professional Career Coach and former Corporate Leader in the financial services and consulting industries. Mei Phing went from a shy quiet introvert to leading multimillion-dollar projects with teams from over 43 countries as the Senior Director and Head of Governance at Standard Chartered, and now teaching 9-5 professionals how to navigate the corporate world and grow their careers with her career coaching course, The Corporate Survivor™. Mei Phing has been featured as a LinkedIn Top Voice 2023, sharing expert career advice in guiding young professionals to plan, navigate and grow their careers. Mei Phing is a keynote speaker on corporate culture, work performance and career growth, and sharing perspectives on what truly takes to build a strategic and successful career without getting stuck. ✅ LEARN MORE: https://www.meiphing.com

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 getting along with people. Is there ever a day that we don't have to deal with people? Maybe for some of you hermits out there, the day actually exists, but we all live in the real world

and in the real world, to progress in your career or to do well in business, you must be able to get along with other people. Yes, there are a lot of things that you can do on your own. However, a huge portion of that will also rely on other people to support you, to help make things work. And even if you have a product to sell as an entrepreneur, you need clients and clients are people. So there are some very, very highly prized abilities such as teamwork, collaboration, cooperation, coordination. Guess what is the fundamental of all these things? People. So I want to share a piece of truth with you. At the end of the day, we like people who are like us. And that is a very fundamental thing about human nature is that we resonate with people who maybe look like us,

sound like us, they like things that we like. So there is an inherent bond that's being built and that is really the fundamentals of human connection. So ask yourself, what will happen if you cannot get along with people in general? I would foresee a very miserable, lonely lifestyle where you would hide at home and pretty much cease to exist. That sounds like a very dark future, isn't it? And I don't want that for you. And you shouldn't want that for you. It's not good. So how do you get along with people? as you guys know i am a passionate traveler i've traveled on business and traveled personally to 37 countries and counting

and what i really enjoy when i travel is to observe the local culture, observing other people. And what's very interesting is that when you travel, suddenly you feel a sense of camaraderie with the people from your own country or your own region. So for example, when I travel to Europe, every single Asian face that I see, I feel like I'm at home. Even though, you know, they might be from other countries, but you just feel like that sense of connection with them. And that's what I'm saying, right? And the biggest lesson I learned from my travels is to smile. A smile truly connects people from all over the world, regardless of nationalities, social class, and everything else. So I also like to travel solo, and I've done that for many,

many trips. I've been to many, many countries where I went alone as a sense of adventure and curiosity. And I found that just the ability to smile and be friendly and kind of exude their positive vibe, people are very keen to help you and engage with you. Even if it's a barrister at a cafe or someone waiting at the train station, people resonate with good vibes. People resonate with other people that have high and positive energy. So if you really want to get along with people, you need to be a friendly, high vibration, happy person yourself. Happy people attract other happy people. Now, I'm not asking you to like to smile the whole day and like look like a crazy person.

That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is just be open, be open to other people and recognize this. Not everybody's like you and that's okay and you shouldn't want everybody to be like you then then then we'll have like 7.7 billion robots that look like look and sound and think exactly like you and i don't think that would be fun in fact that would be quite scary given that we are moving towards the ai robot age. So keep the essence of you and also recognize that other people are unique personalities and individuals as well. So to really connect with someone else, we need to find some commonalities.

What do they like and where are they from? And is there something that we can connect with? Is that something that we have heard of or we understand? And you can use that in conversations with the other person just to kind of get a sense of like, okay, this is some of the things that they like. What do I know about it? And what can we talk about so again back to my um my travel stories so when i visit a lot of countries obviously you know i i don't know 37 languages um but i smile and normally i at least learn a couple of words to say their local language like hello thank you goodbye how are you just a couple of local words and you'll find that they really appreciate it a lot

so like an old saying goes if you speak in a language that a person can understand you speak to their mind but if you speak understand, you speak to their mind. But if you speak to them in their local language or native language, you're actually speaking to their heart. And I find that there's a lot of truth in that. Even though I know it sounds cliche, but there is absolutely a lot of truth in that. Like I said, the sense of camaraderie, the sense of connection, it is very primal, it's very deep within us. So if you've always grown up speaking, I don't know, maybe Cantonese,

and for someone to speak Cantonese with you, even though, you know, they may not look like an Asian, it automatically brightens your day, automatically makes you feel a lot closer to that person already. At the end of the day, we don't live alone on this planet. Wherever we are and whatever we do, we are somewhat interacting with other people. The extent obviously depends on what you do, whether you're at work, in business, or you're a housewife, or you are still studying.

But the gist of it is the same. As humans, we value human connection. That's why we watch videos of other people, we listen to podcasts, we pretty much check out what other people are up to on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, right? So always value this piece of human connection. And honestly, getting along with people is not very difficult,

but it's about developing the perspective and realization that not everybody is like you and most importantly not everybody will actually like you so mangoes are amazing like personally i love pineapples but no matter how tasty that pineapple is there will be people out there who don't like pineapples period so those people cannot be convinced but what i'm saying is put in the effort smile be cordial be open ask them how are you how was your weekend right make conversation people like to share about themselves what people don't like is listen to you babble on about your own life without realizing that a communication is a two-way street. A connection is also a two-way street,

right? So you're giving and receiving at the same time, whether it's you or the other person. It works both ways. The good news is, like I always say, it can be learned. It all takes that realization that I spoke of, as well as practice. Actually get started and try it out. Because you can learn as many little tools and tips as you want, but until you do it, that's when you know. Whether it works, it doesn't work. And you know what? What actually works best for you?

This is a trial and error thing, but it doesn't take away from the fact that you should try. So I wish you guys all the best. And I'm very sure that you will reap massive rewards down the road with this special ability to connect with anyone, as many people as possible. Obviously, to a certain level of genuine and deep relationship, not a touch and go, it doesn't count. Just saying hi, bye to someone doesn't actually count

um yeah so so time to sharpen up your little superpower and good luck