Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep10: Adapting to change is a skill.

Episode Date: March 4, 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 adaptability because the truth is nothing ever stays the same. So we hear a lot of words thrown around such as transformation, change management, and every person, whether in business or in corporate,

are constantly talking about this ability to adapt as well as be flexible. But why is that really important to us? It's because the world is changing at a rapid pace, whether you want to recognize it or not. There was a place and time where we had, we use passbooks, checkbooks, those days are long gone, right? We are moving into a digital world what that also means is that personally it might be easier for us to adopt a new headphone or a new um payment app and whatnot but for organizations it is not so easy to pivot because it is a giant entity with a lot of dependencies. And if you are in a corporate job, you are one little part of this massive machine. And even if you're running your own business, you are ultimately reliant and collaborating with other people.

And they are also going through their process of change. So everything moves at a different pace. So this very interesting ability to be able to adapt is a very critical one. Recently, I had a conversation on a post that I shared on LinkedIn on whether EQ is more important or IQ is more important. And you guys know how passionate I am about EQ, right? So there's one comment that was dropped in this post that I shared. And this person said, you know what? AQ is so much more important, which is the adaptability Quentin or the agility one. That's why nowadays we hear a lot of words thrown around also around agile coaching, right?

And I mean, as a leadership coach, I also have people come to me and ask me, what is this whole agile coaching thing? And do I need to get an agile coach? Ultimately, it's all about dealing with change. Whatever fancy word that you want to call it, right? It's about navigating complexities, which I work with my clients on, but complexity comes in different ways, right? There could be people, there are organizational complexities, there are your internal alignment complexities as well. But all in all combined, this is a very important aspect to take note of.

Because if you can't adapt, you will constantly feel very frustrated, irritated, annoyed when something doesn't go according to plans it can it can be something as simple as someone made an appointment for lunch and there are slight delays or they have to reschedule so the ability to adapt of course you know depending on circumstances because you could have a friend who is constantly late and you decide not to tolerate that. But that's another story. So what I'm saying is, yes, specific to a corporate job or if you're dealing with an agency for marketing and promotions and whatever not. So we always start with the JD, right?

The job description. And when you choose to join a company, you would sign a contract saying that this is my role and these are my responsibilities. Great. I understand that some people like certainty, some people like things to be cut in stone. But guess what?

In this new world, there's no such thing. Or even if there is, it will not last for a long time. So it is up to you to recognize that that is truly the case. So I guess it's not a matter of like, if you want to accept that, it's a matter of when, because it's happening all around us. When was the last time you were told that, okay, you can do this job for 10 years, you're actually only going to do this and nothing's going to change. The procedures are not changing. The systems are going to be as is. I challenge one person to tell me if such a job exists. I would be extremely interested to find

out. The reality is we start a job, right? We take on a new role with a good expectation of what is required. But ultimately, you need to understand what is the objective of your role. By not understanding the objective, it is going to be very difficult for you to pivot and decide what are really the critical things that you need to work on. And even if there are lots of work coming in which are the ones that really matter and which are the ones is just okay fine i can deal with it later so being able to adapt is not just the action in terms of what we do it is also a mindset because it is a change in perspective and the change in perspective can only come when you truly dig

and understand the why some things are changing, what are the fundamentals, what are the foundations and how does it impact you. If you understand it better, it's going to be a lot easier for you to accept that, okay, this is my new role, this is how I contribute in the new, either it's the ecosystem, it's a system release, procedural update, right, and a change in the client relationship, it will definitely help. The challenge for a lot of people I see is that we are very comfortable with the old way of doing things. And I get that. Change is uncomfortable. Change is a growth process.

And for some people who are highly structured, they like to know exactly what's going on every minute of the day, it can be uncomfortable. And I completely understand that. The bigger question for you to ask yourself is, do you want to stay stagnant or do you want to move ahead with the flow and give yourself the best chance to move ahead towards the big dream, big vision, big goals that you've set up for yourself. The thing is that now, if you're not moving forward, you are moving backwards. Because everything else is moving forward. I think the idea of being in a neutral space, being at this neutral spot whereby if you don't do anything, things are just going to be hunky-dory, it's just going to stay as it is, I don't have to worry. Those days are long gone.

Like I said, it's a matter of whether you want to acknowledge it or not. If you choose to acknowledge it today and start today, right after this podcast, start with a beginner's mind of wanting to, okay, I'll try new things and yes, it is a problem, but what else can I do to adapt instead of complaining? If you're constantly complaining about your business, about your job, then life is miserable. And if life is miserable, just remember that you're not just being miserable in your own space. You are also impacting the people around you. And you guys know how I'm very passionate about getting along with people and being likable

because that is a very key tenant of collaboration and really moving forward together and you've if you have missed my earlier podcast then please check those out so the point today is this if you don't adapt then you die point blank that is it so think about even some of your colleagues parents maybe bosses friends people who are constantly complaining all the time but they are not choosing to adapt to their new circumstance and find a way to either overcome the challenge or some new ways of dealing with the challenge right so think about those people that you have in your life either in your personal life or your professional life how fun are they? And how much do you actually enjoy those kind of conversations with them?

Well, if you think that you don't have any such friends in your network, then maybe you are that friend. You are that colleague. You are that team member who doesn't realize that you are the one getting stuck in your ways. And like I always say, it is you that's getting in your own way. Don't blame everyone

else. It's you. So until you decide to move aside and take a new approach and start with a beginner's mind and learn how to adapt, be agile, then don't wish that it'll be someone else's responsibility to help you get there. They can't if you're unwilling to. And I'll leave you with this. Till next time. Bye.