Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep123: Is it okay to make mistakes? How to get better.

Episode Date: May 7, 2022

✅ 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.meiping.com. This is Mei Ping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to my 30-day careers live stream. And today it's day seven.

And what I want to talk about today, it's all about mistakes. So we are constantly told that it's okay to make mistakes. We should be understanding, forgiving, and we should more importantly forgive ourselves and celebrate our progress. So all of that is great. It's very motivational. It's very inspiring. But in today's live stream, I actually want to talk about something that's a little bit of a different perspective. And it's all about how do you know if this is a mistake that is recurring or you are actually taking tangible steps to fix it.

So anyway, the thing that really got me thinking about this topic around making mistakes, is it okay? Is it not okay? And to what extent mistakes are still? And to what extent, you know, mistakes are still acceptable? Or to what extent that, you know, your boss legit gets really angry at you? And, you know, it's obviously a much more serious problem that needs to be addressed. So generally speaking, I find that most people fall into two categories. The first category are

people who make mistakes, but they don't know that they are making any mistakes. So it's likely that you are in a situation where you may have very limited knowledge, maybe limited exposure, skills, knowledge, experience. And because of that limited understanding of what needs to be done due to, you know, multiple limitations or just because you're a little bit younger in the workforce, maybe the mistakes are happening because you have blind spots, right? You don't know what you don't know. So, first group of people are, as I said, makes mistakes, but they don't even know that these are mistakes. So, like, completely blind spots, right? Then there's a second group of people.

And the second group of people are all about, they made a mistake, they try to fix it, but it doesn't get fixed. So the good part is that these people in group two, they recognize that they are making a mistake, but the problem is then not knowing where the solution is. So it's usually during this time where this group of people

will then go and talk to their friends and, you know, complain about it over the weekend, or they may be a little bit more productive as well. You know, they may go to Google or YouTube or blogs to try to search for solutions.

So it's like recognizing the mistake and then taking action. But maybe the action is not the right action, right? It's like you can say that, hey, I made some effort to fix my mistakes, but if it's not churning result, obviously, you know, it's not the right answer. So then there's the third group of people. There's the third group of people who recognize their mistake, made an effort to try to fix it,

but then maybe are not consistent or don't persevere long enough to see the outcome of the effort that they have put in, in terms of the solution. So this is a little bit different because if you know, if you take action to fix a problem and you go all the way, you're still not getting results, then, you know, it's the wrong strategy, right? It's the wrong steps. But there are some people I noticed that they will actually give up right in the middle. So let me give you some, maybe a client story to illustrate this. Now, earlier in the year, I did work with actually a few clients with this similar issue. So obviously, you know, job search is something that can be really, really frustrating. And I think a lot of times, a lot of people actually

make mistakes in the job search process, but they are not aware. So this is a very, very common theme when I work with job seekers. And they will always tell me that, oh, maybe I think I did really well. How come I'm not progressing? I'm not getting the job. I'm not getting interviews. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's use this job search example, and I'm going to break down these three categories of people who make mistakes so that you can maybe resonate a little bit better. So the first group of people are people who have blind spots and don't realize that they are making mistakes in their job search, for example. So they may think that, hey, you know, I've made a lot of applications. I think my resume is pretty good. I think my interview performance

is good. How come like I'm not progressing? I've done everything and, you know, everything seems fine. But yeah, how come I'm not, you know, getting any interviews or getting any offers and, seems fine, but how come I'm not getting any interviews or getting any offers and really be able to land a new job, right? So this is the first group of people who don't even realize that they are making mistakes. So I'm a very strong believer and you can ask any client who work with me one-on-one.

I always tell them we need to learn what not to do, then we learn what to do. Because if you're just going ahead blindly, it's almost like rowing a boat that has holes. If your boat has holes, how far can you go? Probably not very far. So it's really important to identify your blind spots,

identify all your mistakes. And I can tell you that if you're not getting results, there are definitely mistakes. I've actually been doing multiple one-on-one career consultation sessions in the past week or so. And all clients start with like, maybe I think I did everything correct.

Why? Why? I'm like, okay, let's break it down, right? And then actually identify which part is broken and then help them see the blind spot, give them that perspective. So this was something that I also talked about in yesterday's live stream identify which part is broken, and then help them see the blind spot, give them that perspective. So this was something that I also talked about in yesterday's live stream, where I talked about how a career coach can help you. So if you missed that episode yesterday, you can feel free to check it out. But back to today's point around the three categories of people who make mistakes, I just wanted to use this example to illustrate to you as well. So anyway, that's the first group of people. Then the second group of job seekers are job seekers

who realize that they made a mistake, right? Then they decided to try to fix it on their own, using their own strategy, their own steps, and, you know, probably through tons of free content that you find on blogs, YouTube, and Google, and so forth. So the good part is that they now realize what not to do, which is a really important step. You should know what not to do. But the problem is the solution that they are getting, either they are like coming up their own ideas or they're scouring through different social media to find the answers, are probably not the right answers. So what then happens is that they go all out, they really put in the effort, and this second group of job seekers

are people who really, really put in the effort to try to get the results. But the problem is that because the strategy is wrong, they don't get results. So I'll give you guys a very, very simple example here. Now, a lot of people think that for a resume, you need a very beautiful template and you need very fancy fonts. Now, this is probably an think that for resume, you need like a very beautiful template and you need very fancy fonts.

Now, this is probably an advice that you can randomly Google and, you know, you get told all of that. But if clients come to me with this problem, like when I review their resume, if I think that the font or the template is very distracting, I would just let them know. And I'll tell them that from a hiring manager's perspective this is not okay like it doesn't look professional it does you know but all this negativity they are basically mistakes that you are making in your resume or for example in an interview coaching session they tell me that okay i did this you know i went to youtube youtube told me i need to answer the questions like this yeah yeah yeah and when i listen to it, I'm like, yeah, no, because these are

whatever that you say can actually destroy your chances, and I explain to them why. So this is what I consider the second group, where they are aware that they have some problems, but the solution that they are getting is not the right solution, even though they put in 100% effort. It's like, if you use the wrong solution, the effort doesn't make sense, right? Because it's kind of like using the wrong tool to solve a problem that is not related. So that's that. Then there's the third group of job seekers,

and these are what I call impatient job seekers. Impatient job seekers. And I'll actually give you a real example here. So sometimes, you know, I do work with a lot of clients on job search, right? So I have a very clear process on how we work around job search, right? From career clarity, options, direction, and then we do resume review, and then we do LinkedIn, and then we do the job search strategy, and then we do interviews.

So it's a very, very specific process. Now, sometimes I do also meet clients who know that this is the right process. And they know that this is the right steps. But they may not want to commit because they are hoping for some other magic pill. Or they think that it's not to their liking. They want to put in something else which they believe is better, which again, side note, is very strange if you come to a coach and then you still want to do it your way.

So, you know, long story there. But anyway, so this was a situation that I encountered with a few clients. And what I noticed is that because they are impatient, there are certain things where, you know, you need a bit of time to let certain things happen, right? So, for example, if you are waiting for the

LinkedIn algorithm to generate better jobs for you, right, there is a process to go through from, like, optimizing the settings and then waiting around for certain time. All these in detail, I actually go through in my online course and online training but the point is this some things take time because there are some things that will require time to see the result it's not like hey if i do this right now within 24 hours i'm gonna get a job offer like it doesn't work like that so i have situations um for clients work with me who tell me that hey you know maybe this doesn't work that doesn't work yeah yeah yeah and i then have to explain to them like how certain things are supposed to function and it's really up to them whether they are consistent or not.

So, after explaining this, I then again meet two kinds of clients or rather two kinds of job seekers. There is the first group who believe in my job search process, believe in what I say and then be consistent in whatever that I tell them. And they do see results. So recently, I actually had a client land a job in the UK. And initially, actually, I can share with you, initially, when we were going through the LinkedIn update

and job search process, she did it for a few days. And then she actually WhatsApp me and messaged me and told me that, hey, Mei Ping, I don't think that I'm getting results. I don't want to do this one. I want to do yada, yada, yada, whatever other brilliant ideas that she thought she had, right?

Then I explained to her the logic as to why the sequence of things and the importance of certain yada, yada. Then, interestingly, two days later, she texted me again and told me that, oh, I should have just listened to you because I actually received two DMs from two recruiters who really wanted to invite me for an interview.

So it's not that, you know, it's not that my LinkedIn strategy didn't work. In fact, it worked brilliantly. It's just that it needed a bit of time for the results to come, but she was too impatient. So sometimes, like, you can apply the right strategy, but if you are impatient and decide to stop doing it, then you're definitely not going to get results. It just doesn't work like that. Then I also have this other, a few of my clients will happen as well, where they decide that, hey, I don't want to commit to this process.

I want to do something else. Or in the process of working with me, before we even finish our sessions, they end up like talking to multiple different people to get different ideas. Now that is already a deviation of the process because, you know, different people have different ideas on what works, right? And that's why I always tell my clients,

like if you want to commit to listen to and follow my process, then you should really give it a chance. If you're going to ask like 10 people to tell you the best thing to do, like get advice from 10 people and implement those 10 things, it's going to be tough because different people, you know, different coaches, different mentors have completely different methodology. And there may be things that you did based on what the other coach told you. And I may say that, hey, I don't agree with this because this is not what gets

results for my clients. And for hundreds of my clients, this is whatever that gets results. So the point here is, you know, if you decide to follow a certain strategy, whether it's a job search strategy, whether it's a career strategy, it's a career plan, whatever that has been outlined with a coach, with a mentor or, you know, something that you have thought through, are you giving it time for results to come? Or are you just going to give up if you don't see results within 24 hours?

I think that's a question that only you can answer. But generally speaking, I found that if the process works and not just work for you, it has worked for so many other people, then if you follow it, it's likely going to work for you. So if you decide that you want to do your own thing, then it's already going to be a problem to begin with. So these are the three groups of people that I consider, you know, makes mistakes.

But more importantly, what are the actions that you are taking to try to fix those mistakes? So those stories aside, I just want to share maybe a bonus point of view as well. So I also know a lot of people say, hey, you know, actually it's okay to make mistakes. It's fine. You know, we all learn from mistakes. Well, I agree to a certain extent and I'll tell you why. Because if you are making the same mistakes again and again and again, then are you truly learning from that mistake?

Like if something that happens again and again and again, right, it tells me that actually you don't have a solution for it or the solution that you are applying is wrong or the worst thing is that you don't even take the mistake seriously. So I can share with you from the perspective of like a boss, for example, no boss likes to repeat the things that you have to do, especially if the roles and responsibilities have been clearly outlined. And what is then missing is like execution, tracking, like all these things that, you know, there's this thing called taking responsibility for your work, right? So that in that sense, I feel like for mistakes or mistakes, so to speak, it's the nature of the mistake but i also think the frequency of

the mistake is something that is worth talking about because if you are making the same mistake again and again and again your boss has to remind you like 10 times hey can you stop doing this can you stop doing this remember to do this remember to do that then actually it just means that like you know you are not making uh taking the uh mistake, or you don't actually know how to design a solution to fix that mistake. And that's actually, I saw for much bigger problem, if that makes sense. So yeah, I want to hear from you. What do you guys think about mistakes? Do you make mistakes very often? And how do you catch yourself on knowing whether you're making a mistake or not? So are you in the first group that I talked about where maybe you're making mistakes,

but you think that everything is fine and you're not even aware of it because you don't know what you don't know, right? Or are you in the second group where you know that you have some problems, right? Maybe in job search or maybe in your career or maybe working skills or you have some relationship problems with people, then how sure are you that the solutions that you are getting can actually fix the problems? Or are you in the third group where you found some solutions to fix your mistakes but you are not consistent, meaning that you give up very fast because you keep changing your mind, it could be one. Or maybe you are in a situation where you think that you should get immediate results. And therefore, when you don't get immediate

results, then you just feel like, okay, this doesn't make sense. I'm just going to ignore it. I don't believe in this, and then yada, yada, yada. So which one are you? If you want to share, you can definitely feel free to put it in the comments. So in case you are new here, hi, my name is Mei Ping. I'm a professional career coach and former corporate leader working global multinational companies and running projects across 43 countries. So nowadays, as a career coach, I help my clients to plan and grow their careers. And specifically, I'm also the creator of the Corporate Survivor,

which is my signature program to help you get clear, confident and visible in your 9 to 5 corporate job. So if you want to catch this full episode or want to catch up on this entire 30-day live stream series, you can go to YouTube or Spotify where I'll be uploading all the replays to make sure that you can catch all the series. So what is the inspiration for this 30-day live stream is I have been looking around social media a lot, and I find that there are a lot of bad advice out there. There's a lot of confusion and so forth. So this is a 30-day series where if you have any questions or anything that

you came across on social media, whether it's on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or any other platforms that you think that, hey, maybe this advice is a little bit wrong. Like maybe what do you think? So if you've ever come across anything like that, you can send me a message on LinkedIn and let me know that, hey, this is a topic suggestion for the 30-day live stream. Then I may consider including it in an upcoming episode.

So recently, some of you guys DM me asking me if I can share more client stories. So last year, I did a 30-day client success story series. So it was a 20-episode over 30 days. I think it's episode 62 to 71. No, 62 to 81 on my blog, you know, Spotify and YouTube as well, where I actually went through clients who work with me and got gotten success in the job search path, as well as the work performance and career growth portion. So it's a 20 episode over 30 days

client success story series. So yeah, I i mean let me know in the comments or drop me a dm if you want to hear more client success stories and maybe from next week onwards i may dedicate multiple episodes so i can actually share individual client success stories so that you can get inspired and hopefully also learn something from the importance of having a strategy for your career whether it's at your workplace to improve your skills and performance or to improve your job search success as well. So that was actually a really highly popular series that I did last year.

So yeah, I mean, if you guys are interested, drop me a DM, let me know. I'm happy to dedicate multiple episodes for this live stream to talk about some of the client success stories that I have. Even up to today, a lot of students who join my signature program, The Corporate Survivor, a lot of them actually told me that they got very inspired from the client success story series,

which is episode 62 to 81. So if you missed out on that one, feel free to check it out after today's live stream, and hopefully those episodes inspire you as well. All right, so I think there may be a couple of comments and questions. I'll try to take them now. Hi, Atul. Good to see you here. I think you're watching from YouTube, right?

Which is really awesome. So in case you guys don't know, I actually have a YouTube channel that I did not take very seriously last year. It's mainly a home for me to keep all the podcast episodes that I have been recording since 2020. So a lot of job search content, career clarity, career mindset, as well as work skills and career growth. So if you want to have like a one-stop shop for all my video podcasts and more career advice, you can definitely subscribe to my YouTube channel.

So this live stream will also be uploaded on YouTube. I think I have a playlist for that. So you can feel free to check it out in case you miss any of the days and the live stream. So definitely very good to see you here, Atul. Cheers. All right, so I see a question here. How do I move on when I get fired from making a mistake?

So as I was saying earlier, which category are you in? Which category are you in? Are you the person who may not even realize why you made the mistake? Then that's a cause for self-reflection. Or are you a person that has made the mistake but don't know how to find a solution? Or are you the third category where you found a solution but you are not consistent with it? So categorizing kind of like where you are on the journey,

of the mistake journey, I think that will be a really, really good self-reflection before you take any further action. But as I said in the other earlier episodes as well, I do have a free training that's at www.grewyourcorporatecareer.com that walks you through the six steps to plan your career from finding career clarity, job search,

and then moving on to joining a new company and really beefing up and improving your corporate mindset, mindset, skill set, as well as visibility online and offline as well. So if that's something that you want to do, and you know, this month is May. So for those of you who have been slacking off for the first four months of the year, and you know, you want to really kickstart and get back on focusing on your career,

then feel free to check out this training, www.growyourcorporatecareer.com. Okay, so let's have a look at the next question. All right, I had an interview last month and they said I had applied before the same job earlier, which I hadn't, and rejected me. I replied to the HR, but haven't gotten a response until now, and I don't really know what to do. So, this sounds like a bit of a unique situation. It sometimes could be a situation where you may, maybe you have a very common name. And I think that happens. Like, you know, in Asia, there are a lot of like very common names and, you know, Malay name, Chinese names, like, you know, even Indian names, sometimes very, very similar. So I think that this, to me personally, sounds like a one-off situation.

I don't really think that it's sort of a recurring thing. But I think that maybe the way that you have responded to the interviewer needed to be clearer. But yeah, I mean, I really sympathize with this situation because I don't think it usually happens. Actually, this is the first time I'm hearing about this I think it may be challenging but you could what you did was I think right you replied to the HR but I think what you can do knowing that this may be a problem and I think maybe a problem in the future as well maybe to also prepare yourself because the funny thing is that if you have really been

called for the interview, right, that means that like, why would they call you for the interview if they don't really want to pursue? So it could actually be a mistaken case or mistaken identity. So I guess the way that you answered probably made all the difference. So if you answered it not in a not so convincing way, probably I don't think there's much you can do about it. But yeah, I mean, knowing that such mistakes might happen, perhaps prepare yourself a little bit better if somebody says that in the future, then how are you going to respond? All right. Okay. So let's have a look at one of the other questions. All right. Last time I got many interviews, but not many job offers. Well, as I said, this is actually a sequence that I teach and cover in the free training at www.growacorporatecareer.com

where I actually break down step-by-step of the job search process for you to better identify which part is broken. So if you're saying that um if you're saying that you have oops so if you're saying that you have been getting interviews but not job offers then likely it's the interview process that's broken but um i will not be going through the six-step career planning training over here so if there's something you want to learn more about you can always go to go to the free training link that I shared earlier at www.growyourcorporatecareer.com to get the insights that you need in terms of the sequence and the step-by-step and which one comes first.

Okay. So today's live stream, and I know that today is saturday so i'm really appreciative of whoever that is um watching live and actually leaving comments or even if you're a silent watcher um really really appreciate it as well so what i'll say is this like mistakes in general it's okay but i think that repeating your mistakes and not realizing and not taking the appropriate action and sticking to finding a solution is actually the bigger problem. Like personally for me, like, okay, if you make the mistake the first time, yeah, sure. But if it continues to happen again and, you know, I need to keep telling you about it like so many times, I need to keep reminding you this and that, like,'t think it will work out the reason is because like um you know i do think that you

know we are adults and we should be able to manage ourselves and you know be responsible for our work right so i i mean i don't know like in the past when i was working i actually worked with um somebody who's quite senior who told me that like she does not want to hire a team where she has to babysit everyone. So that was something that I kept and remembered for a very long time. And later on, as I became a leader, I told myself that I do not want to be a babysitter because it's not my job to be a babysitter. I think that we are all adults. We should be able to manage ourselves and manage the responsibilities that have been agreed when taking on the job. So if you struggle with managing your responsibilities,

then likely you need to realign expectations or you need to actually improve on your skills gap because if you have you know problems with like productivity skills right or critical thinking communication organization skills adaptability all these are going to definitely affect your performance and it will likely lead to more mistakes and more broken promises and broken yeah just the way that you are going to perform is going to be really messy. So that's probably what I would suggest. And for those of you who are making multiple mistakes at work,

I can almost tell you that it's likely a skill gap problem and you really need to assess yourself against the, I have a top 12 soft skills that I would highly recommend that you assess yourself against. So if this is something that you want to do, it is actually covered in one part of the six-step career planning training I was telling you about when I talked about step five under job soft skills. So in this training, I'll actually go through an exercise to help you assess your skills

gap. So we're not going to go through all because that's for my paid clients. But in this training, I definitely go through a few as well for you to get a sense of like, how do you do the skills gap assessment so that you can improve. So you can definitely check this out. It's in step five, then get a bit more insights on what you need to improve and to work on so that it doesn't negatively impact your work performance, whether it's your first job, your new job or your existing job. But if you want to go through a little bit more detail you want to learn more on how to holistically understand the corporate culture mindset people assessing your skills gap and

then using my signature matrix to evaluate yourself as well as going through the relevant skills like step by step to build that you can always check out my signature program. It's www.thecorporatesurvivor.co. That is a comprehensive A to Z corporate world program to help you get clear, get confident, and get visible so that you can perform better

at your job. So if you're someone who feels really lost in the corporate world, you keep making mistakes and you're not really sure what is going on and you feel like, you know,

you don't really know anyone who, you know, has had leadership positions or really the real corporate insights beyond the motivational rara, then definitely check out this program. So a lot of my students who signed up for this program are working in 9 to 5 and some of them starting their first job,

some of them starting a new job or some of them starting a new job, or some of them just want to improve on their current job to do a little bit better. So you can feel free to check on that and hopefully that helps you to grow your career as well. So thank you so much for joining today. If you want to get the replay,

make sure that you check it out on YouTube or Spotify, which I will upload very shortly also. So with that, thank you so much and I will see you in tomorrow's live stream. Till then, all the best in your career. Cheers.