Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep04: Build good relationships at work.

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 creating win-win relationships. This is a very interesting topic for me because I've spent many years in the corporate world where I see lots of people getting stuck because

Starting point is 00:00:46 they make things all about them. Things are not always about you. It's also about the other person, right? What value are you bringing and how are you actually helping? But unfortunately, I see a lot of people getting stuck in their heads about the whole me, me, me, you have to do this for me. And you'll see this very common in meetings, where the negotiation starts with, I need this done, that done, You guys have to do this for me. You owe me an email. You owe me a report. But the thing is that I'll be trying to understand the other side as well. Because just imposing your request nonstop, regardless of how urgent or important it is,

Starting point is 00:01:40 it's not the best way to build and nurture a professional or business relationship. In this world now, it's all about the win-win. So when you want to get support, the question is, how are you supporting? How are you providing support before you ask for that support. Until this conversation or negotiation or collaboration can be a mutually benefiting one for both parties, then the conversation pretty much will just go in a circular motion, creating a lot of frustration, obviously a lot of annoyance because meeting deadlines will be missed or the quality will

Starting point is 00:02:27 not be as good just because it's not being prioritized. So when you don't prioritize something, you spend less time on it, then the quality suffers. I think that's just kind of like the natural way things happen. So when you are in a discussion ask ask yourself how can you help this other person that you're talking to and how can they benefit from doing what you have asked whether it's a report it's a presentation or something else i want to share a personal story with you. And the gist of the story is this, the punchline is this, right? People need more self-awareness. So listen to this story. And if this is you, I encourage you to rethink the way you operate and see how you can do better in the future. Alright, here goes the story. So I'm pretty much a person who will just reach out to people on LinkedIn and Facebook

Starting point is 00:03:32 and say, hey, happy new year, how are you, and whatever not. So in the past, I've also been very open to coffee sessions, chit chat, catch up, how are you, this and that. It's just my way of you know building relationships so recently not recently a couple of weeks back over christmas and new year's i sent a roundabout of greetings and conversations with different different people so i understand that you know at some point we just stopped replying and I totally get that. So for this particular person I was talking to and I initially regarded this, you know, professional relationship as a pretty good one, you know, we've worked together for some time and we've always been able to collaborate quite well when I was at my corporate job.

Starting point is 00:04:36 So what was very interesting is this person did not respond at all to any messages I sent pretty much since I transitioned to do something new. But just a couple of days ago, came to me and dropped me a message asking how are you and the next thing is like i have a lot of problems that i just need help with so this gives me an indicator it indicates that this person does not intend to have any whatever long-term you know professional relationship a genuine one but this person is in its own mind because everything is about okay how are you but let me get to my problems as soon as possible because i have this problem that problem and i need your help to do the advice give me this give me that okay guys if this is you not cool and this is not how you build relationships and communicate with other people if you're going in with a i need this and you need to do this for me that one question to you is who are you who are

Starting point is 00:05:46 you to dictate someone do stuff for you when clearly you have not even tried to be a good partner a good friend a good colleague or ex-colleague at that and this is also something that I see happen quite a lot now that I'm very active on LinkedIn is the fact that people add you and in the first or second message, they bombard you with all sorts of requests. Can you find me a job? I need a job. I'm miserable at work. This is not fair. Again, question for you, who are you? I don't even know you yet right and this is something that you need to ask yourself are you doing this to someone else i know it's very subtle but you should really ask yourself this question and i take this quite seriously obviously but

Starting point is 00:06:43 if you're really doing this to someone else, ask yourself, when was the last time someone did this to you? And how did that feel? I'm pretty sure it sucked. And let's just get honest about it. So the lesson here is, don't do unto others what you don't want done to yourself.

Starting point is 00:07:03 Because things move in a full circle and for me now I know who are the people who genuinely want to build a long-term long-lasting business relationship with me a win-win one at that and people who just are freeloaders for lack of a better word. And this is something not just in the workplace. It is also similar if you are running your own business, right? How can you go into a conversation to create a win-win outcome? Not going in blasting everyone and just say you guys are supposed to do blah blah blah blah blah and you guys haven't done it hence it's unfair and this happens i'm not exaggerating this actually

Starting point is 00:07:54 happens and the fact that i coach young entrepreneurs i do see this happen quite a bit whereby i wouldn't say it's a sense of entitlement it shows all about lack of self-awareness or limited self-awareness that the world does not always revolve around you yes you have your priorities you have some sales that you want to make you have some projects that you want to deliver but other people have a life too they have other priorities they have other stuff that they need to get done so on your end what you can do is that you try to understand what are their priorities what do they actually want to achieve and how can you best support because it's a give and take relationship not well i guess not give and take but the give and then you receive. Not receive, receive, receive, and then when I'm in a good mood, you know, 10 years down the road, then okay, fine,

Starting point is 00:08:49 I'll give. Doesn't work like that. This is a barter trade economy now. And we're moving back to the olden days whereby we are bartering. I mean, whether you see it or not. So yeah, creating win-win relationships. And why is that important? Because you can't get anything done without other people's support. Yes, you can do things on your own to a certain extent, but how much of a good result can you really achieve? Because a good piece of work will require different inputs, different perspectives that all make a piece of either a product, report or project holistic. And if you're shutting away other people's perspectives and just shoving down other people's truths, yours, then I think you're really missing out.

Starting point is 00:09:42 Perspectives, insights, these are absolutely invaluable and will allow you to move forward so much faster down the road. Yes, maybe a little bit troublesome now, right? You have to ding dong with this person, that person, but recognize that it will allow you to propel forward so much further and so much faster down the road. So I'll end with this, as I always do. These skills are totally learnable.

Starting point is 00:10:10 It's not something that you're born with and if you don't have it, you don't have it. Not true. You can learn it. End of day is about your willingness to put yourself in someone else's shoes and really take that step forward to offer your support first. May not come naturally, but if you want to, I'm sure you will. If you don't want to, there's nothing I can say to convince you otherwise. So I'll leave you with this thought

Starting point is 00:10:40 on whether and how you can give and then receive rather than just take take take take take all right

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep04: Build good relationships at work.

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