Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep130: Career Learning: How to upskill the right way?

Episode Date: May 14, 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 career live stream series. And today we are on day 14 where I want to talk about learning.

So learning is one of those topics that everybody talks about. But sometimes I wonder whether are you clear on what kind of learning actually can help you grow your career? What kind of learning actually allows you to move forward and allows you to add more value, not just at work, but throughout your entire career journey as well? So throughout my many conversations that I've had with 9 to 5 working professionals, one thing that is very consistent is everybody knows that they need to learn, right? Learning is a good thing. Learning is improvement. Learning is enhancement. And learning potentially means more money in the future. I also noticed is some people are, maybe not some people, I think more people nowadays, more people nowadays are falling into the trap of what I call learning for the sake of learning, or getting the illusion of learning, feeling like you've learned something, but you have actually not learned anything. So that's the second one, right? So as I said, first one is learning for the sake of learning without a very clear objective on what is the problem

that you're trying to solve. Number two is the illusion of learning, meaning that you're not actually learning anything, but you feel good that you're getting some sort of value and so forth. The third group is people who are learning the wrong thing. Learning the wrong thing. So why I want to talk about learning today also is I feel like I've, you know, throughout the many conversations that I've had with my community, you know, my clients and my students in my online program, I noticed a very consistent pattern.

And that is the commitment to learning is one thing, but the problem around not knowing where to start. And I think that probably it's a problem that you can resonate with if you know that you're an ambitious person, you're enthusiastic, you really want to solve a problem. But I think how you go about learning really matters as well. So in one of my earlier podcast episodes, I think it's episode 97, I actually talked about the four ways that you can learn and why it's really important for you to tailor the best method for you to learn so that you can actually absorb a lot of the material. So I'm just going to give you guys a really, really quick snippet here. So the first way to learn is visual, meaning that you enjoy watching videos or you enjoy

watching somebody demonstrating how to do something to you. So in the context of the workplace, it means that if the best way for you to learn from a senior or a manager is that the manager maybe shows you a presentation or shows you a chart or maybe draws out an image for you, or it could also mean that your senior or manager is actually demonstrating the thing for you,

meaning that you're actually watching that piece of work being performed, like step-by-step. Okay, click this, click that, and that you're actually watching that piece of work being performed, like step by step. Okay, click this, click that, and then you're going to write this, going to write that. So that means that you're a visual learner. Then the second type of learner is a kinesthetic sort of learning style. So kinesthetic basically means that you only learn by actually doing the thing. So it doesn't matter how many videos you watch or how many podcasts that you listen to, you have to actually do it yourself. Now, the problem with kinesthetic learners is that you may discover mistakes later on because you find it more difficult to visualize potential

problems. And therefore, you have to maybe make the mistake yourself. Then you learn from the mistake, which probably takes a little bit more time. But there are some ways to go about it, potentially probably going for a course that kind of gives you the framework and then you kind of be able to see what's ahead. Then the third way of learning is audio. So if you're an audio learner, it means that you learn better by listening and you are able to catch a lot of the instructions, a lot of the guidance by listening. Now, audio learning, like learning through listening, is not very common for a lot of people. Actually, most people are very bad listeners and that's a separate topic on its own. But why I wanted to raise audio as the third learning style is because I just want to remind you that when you go for an

interview most people are bad listeners right as i was saying earlier like most people don't really listen very well so it actually comes across during an interview or at the workplace when you have miscommunication with people is that you may not be very clear in what you say and therefore the most people are already bad listeners to begin with. So it's actually very easy to create miscommunication. So that's how if you are an audio learner, there might be some problems there. Then the fourth way to learn actually is learning from a mentor or a coach or somebody who's a lot more senior,

somebody who's way more advanced or maybe achieved the success that you already want. So now you're actually learning from that person's experience. So four types of learning, visual, you have the kinesthetic, audio, or you can actually learn from real experiences. So anyway, that aside, the method of learning aside, I just really wanted to focus on like what constitutes learning that you can actually get results and versus what is like the illusion of learning that you're actually not really learning anything but you

feel good learning you feel like you learn something but actually you have not so let me give you all a very good example now a lot of people when they feel like they want to improve something the first thing they do is okay okay, let me go and watch a video. Let me go and maybe sign up for a workshop or like sign up from a free webinar. Now, all those are okay. But the first question that you actually need to ask yourself is, are you clear on the problem that you need to solve in your career and exactly what skill do you need. I find that a lot of people, they will just jump into learning. Maybe they sign up for a webinar or sign up for training or they sign up for something. But the problem is that they don't really know exactly what is the

root cause of their career problem. So if you don't know the root cause of your career problem, like even if you're very proactive and you go and, you know, learn something, you might not be learning the right thing to solve your problem. Does that make sense? I'll give you an example that actually happened last week. And I talked about it in one of the earlier live streams. I think it was day three when I was talking about interview mistakes. I was working with a new coaching client last week. And during the interview coaching session, I noticed that she had problems communicating. Specifically, she had problems expressing herself. So she couldn't express herself in a very clear way verbally, even though on email, she's actually really clear. So

the thing is that what she told me and I guess what this client diagnosed as her problem, she thinks that she's lacking English skills. But when I looked at her email, I looked at it and I told her that you write really well. So it's not an English problem. To me, my professional assessment is that you are lacking core communication skills, especially the structured and clear way of expressing yourself. professional assessment is that you are lacking core communication skills, especially the structured and clear way of expressing yourself. So that's actually a communication problem. And if you want to, you should go and take up a communication class.

But we also need to kind of tie back to a personality because she also kind of lacked a bit of self-awareness. So you also need to tie into like personality, self-assessment, self-reflection and so forth. So this is just an example that I wanted to share with you that even if you have the biggest heart, even if you want to improve, but the question is that are you improving the right thing? Are you improving the right skill?

Or you're just learning for the sake of learning. Now, for that particular client I was talking about, if she had gone on to take on an English class, actually she's not going to improve because that's not the real problem, right? It's very similar to one of my other clients that I was talking to. So this client has booked me for a much longer time. So he came to me telling me that oh you know maybe i feel so overwhelmed because recently i've been given a lot of projects and now i think i maybe need to um learn how to become a better project manager and like maybe take out a specific course and he

was actually going to sign up for like some project management course right so when we're having the one-on-one session i I actually asked him a lot of questions, like how everything started. I mean, I'm not going to go into detail. Obviously, the conversation is private and confidential. It's something I only do with my private clients. But basically, the outcome was that I realized that he actually had no idea what were the main goals or rather the expected outcome from all these new projects that he was given.

And therefore, he's unable to focus. He is unable to prioritize what's important versus what's urgent because he doesn't know, right? And therefore, everything seems important and he wants to do everything at the same time, which obviously doesn't make sense, right? So after ironing out in terms of like the why the objective of each and every project and which are the ones that he's

aware of which are the ones that he's not aware of then the problem became very clear that the ones that gave him the most anxiety the ones that he's stressing out the most actually are the ones that like he he had no idea what the objective is now Now, based on my client's diagnosis, assessing his own problems, he concluded that it was a project management skill gap. But actually, it's a critical thinking plus expectation management gap because he doesn't really know what the priority is and what is the main goal. And if you don't know any of that, then it's actually very difficult to move forward because you don't really know what you need to work on. So just some food for thought. And the other thing also is,

I think what I call, I call this the illusion of learning. And what does the illusion of learning mean? It means that you watch a video, you read a blog post, you go on Google, you try to find some solution to your problem. Likely, you're probably reading some motivational content or some bullet points or something, and you feel like you have learned something. But actually, you have not. So what I mean by you have not is, are those guidance, those instructions,

are those things detailed enough for you to actually implement it at your workplace? Are you actually able to take that advice, able to take those steps, and being able to apply to a day-to-day job or apply to your current job search. If none of these things can be applied, whatever they are learning that cannot be applied, actually, you've just wasted your time. You've just wasted your time because these quote-unquote advice are not implementable.

And guess what if something is not implementable? It's pointless. It's pointless. What is the point of learning something that you cannot use? Or maybe the other way to put it is you don't know how to use it, which I think is a separate problem. And I do also observe that a lot of people actually are unable to tell apart what I consider implementable advice, implementable action steps that can solve a problem versus the feel-good advice or feel-good learning that doesn't actually help you solve a problem, but it makes you feel good that you have read the thing. So I'll give you guys another example. And this is actually something that

I was talking to one of my students who recently signed up for my course. So as you all know, in case you don't know, I actually have an online course called The Corporate Survivor at www.thecorporatesurvivor.co. So in this course, basically, I teach the three-step framework on how to get clear about the corporate world culture and then get confident by developing core corporate skills as well as how to get visible. So currently for this course, I am actually giving out a free one-on-one coaching session with me for career strategy call.

So I was actually talking to one student earlier this week who had signed up and I was actually asking him, so like, what did you do before this course? Like what other, you know, what did you do before this course? Like what other, you know, what other trainings have you done and everything else? So he was actually explaining to me that he signed up for, he signed up for this communication class. Okay, I'm not going to name names as like, you know, which training he took, but he signed up for this communication class that um uh how he described it was it was a lot of theory it was a lot of framework so he went he went for this you know communications

training for like one or two days or something like a full day training right a full like 16 16 hour training and he walked out he doesn't know how to apply his job because he told me that um i i paid money i went and everything was so theoretical. I came out with a list of communication models, but I don't really know how to use any of it because all these sound so abstract, it sounds so theoretical that it doesn't look like something that I can use. And therefore, it's a waste of money because if you can't use anything, technically you haven't learned anything, correct? If something that you're learning is not solving a problem then that is like what i consider a hobby learning it's not a piece of learning that can help you improve your career even though

you may feel it is right you may feel that hey you know i maybe i invest so many hours to attend this class and something else but the real question that, are you gaining knowledge that you can use? And are you using it? And if you are not gaining anything or the steps are not clear enough for you to implement, then it's pointless. But if you learn something

and then you find that you don't know how to implement it, then that's probably another problem too, right? So I just want you to really think about what career learning actually means and are you actually getting the results that you're supposed to be getting versus being fed a lot of theory and nothing that's actually practical. Now, I want to be very careful with my words here because this is something that I hear from a lot of my clients, and I'm also not going to name names. Now, a lot of times, when you attend a workshop,

and this is something I observe, a lot of times, I think when you attend a workshop, normally there are a lot of trainers that will teach you, right? I mean, I guess you can call them like soft skills trainer or career trainer or something like that. But a lot of times, these trainers actually have never worked in the corporate world, just so you know that, right? They are trained to be trainers to train you, right?

So I'll repeat that. So these careers trainers, right, communication trainers or soft skills trainers, they are trained to be a trainer, right? Train the trainer. They are trained to be a trainer, right? Train the trainer. They are trained to be a trainer to train you. So what is actually missing in this puzzle is have they actually worked in the corporate world before, in the corporate job, dealing with executive level, manager level, director level, C-suite level?

Like, do all these trainers that whichever class that you're joining, do they have that kind of experience? Because if they don't have it, then how are they going to teach it to you? Think about it. Think about it. So the, anyway, a lot of these are actually stories that my clients come to me and, you know, most of the time, most of the time when clients come to me, they have already tried different methods. And I mentioned it before in one of my earlier live streams, like I always like to ask, I always like to ask my clients like,

okay, what have you tried before, right? I mean, before coming to me, like what have you done? And what have you done about your problems? And like, who have you been to? And like, sometimes I do ask just for me to get a sense of like the kind of effort that they have gone into, like fix their problems. So anyway, I just want to be very clear.

You can learn a bunch of theory. Sure. But if it's not practical, then I think it's really pointless. Anyway, just my opinion. I don't want to get sued by all these trainers um just my opinion and nowadays and and i also think that actually when i was designing this course my course the corporate survivor.co actually it took me a very long time to design this course even though i knew exactly what i wanted to teach i knew exactly how i wanted to um uh to lay out right

how to teach communication, goal setting, all those things. But I actually faced like two very big problems, two very big problems when I was designing this course. First thing is that how do I tie in

these so many years of like corporate experience, not just mindset, but skill set, as well as all the visibility strategies that I've been using? How do I put everything in one course? In a way that's very logical for all of you, that there is a clear roadmap versus giving

you bits and pieces here and there, and then you end up self-diagnosing, which is something that I think is bad. So I took a very long time for that to figure out what is the easiest way I can tie up everything together in a way that's very logical for you to learn then the second big problem i also encountered was how can i teach it in a way that you can actually implement what i'm teaching because you know i can give you a bunch of frameworks but like all those are actually useless and i don't teach that to my one-on-one clients and i really wanted to bring the one-on-one client experience in terms of like teaching my clients actionable steps into this course itself so that

like even in the video lessons it's so logical and it's so step by step that you can actually just follow it and actually go out there and do the damn thing. Versus maybe give me a bunch of frameworks that I do not understand. Now, that is not my policy. So, yeah, anyway, those were the two big challenges. So, took some time to kind of come up with the lessons. But, yeah, overall, I'm pretty happy with it. So, if you want to check it out further, you can always go to www.thecorporatesurvivor.co. Now, anyway, that was a bit of a rant on the learning.

And I hope that the takeaway that you get from today's live stream is, are you actually getting the ROI? Are you getting the outcome from all the hours that you're putting into learning? Now, okay, I'll just remember just a final point. And since today is Saturday, I'm just going to share this today. So anyway, for all my students who sign up to my program, thecorporatesurvivor.co, obviously, most of them are working in the 9 to 5 corporate world. So Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, everybody's working. So what I usually tell my clients is,

please dedicate some time on weekends, preferably Saturday, for your career development because if you're going to find time the time is never going to come so usually what i tell them is that like take like an hour or so on saturday or something and then actually block out if you say like 10 to 11 is my career development slot right and then please go through the program and please go through the lessons because again, there's no point like buying a program and then you don't use it. No point going to sign up for a course or sign up for a workshop if you're not going to use it, right? It's really all about making sure that you get results. And how do you get results?

You need to do it. You need to implement and do that. And that's actually the best way that you can improve week by week, month by month as well. So the challenge I have for you is, what is the one hour slot that you are going to dedicate for yourself for your career learning? And how are you going to make sure that these learnings that you are going to do actually solves a real problem in your career so i leave these two questions to you to really think about um and i really really hope that you all can move ahead in your career because honestly i'm seeing a lot of things on social media nowadays and i just feel like the amount of time that most people like the amount of time that I think many people are scrolling around, looking through motivational content or boosting content that, like, makes you feel good reading it, but you're

actually not using it. You can't implement it because, like, it's not detailed enough to be implemented. There are no clear steps, no clear roadmap and everything. Like, I really wish that for people like that, and maybe that's you who's watching this right now or listening to this right now, I really, really hope that you actually use that time and please go through a course or a program or a piece of learning that can actually give you actionable steps to apply in the next seven days. I really hope that you all think a little bit further in your career as to what is actually helpful versus what is something that kind of makes you feel good for now but it actually doesn't help okay anyway that's a bit of a rant on today's Saturday and if you miss any of the previous

live stream episodes you can always check out the replay on YouTube or on Spotify so today is day 14 of the live stream so if you missed any of the older ones, I talked about interviews. I talked about working hard, working smart. I also talked about many topics around identifying problems, motivation, and all these other things. Don't worry, everything's very practical.

I can only share from my working experience in the corporate world for more than 10 years in leadership roles. So rest assured that whatever I'm saying are actually from my real experiences. There are no nonsense theories because I don't really have any of that. So hopefully you have found a lot of value in that.

And I go live every single day in May at 9 o'clock Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong time. So if you happen to be watching live right now, say hi in the chat box and maybe let me know what have you learned from today's live stream so far. And if you have any quick questions that you want to ask me, feel free to put it in the chat box as well. So let me hopefully give you guys some perspective on what I think about learning and maybe how

you can actually improve yourself. Hello. Hello, Marco. good to see you again. All right, so Derek has a very interesting comment here. I think this is actually related to what I said earlier around teaching theory versus teaching theory versus actually doing the damn thing. Okay, I also want to be very careful what I say here because a lot of people are actually really sensitive around... Okay, now, I'm not saying that education is not good, right? In fact, I'm actually a career coach with the University of Hong Kong and I coach a lot of very highly educated master students and so forth.

100% education, super duper important. But I think if we were to compare, right, I think there's a lot of value in academics, in professors, the insights, the research. I really appreciate that. And I actually do have friends who are economics professors at like some of the top universities in the world. So 100% respect. The other part is like, one is the, what I call the academician or the researcher, and the other one is the practitioner.

Now, I am a practitioner. I don't think that I'm that highly qualified. I am not, I don't have like, you know, a bunch of never-ending certifications, certificates in my career closet. I don't have any of that. But I think that being a practitioner is very important because anybody can give a theory.

And I think, unfortunately, nowadays, the biggest problem is that everybody is giving advice out there. I mean, nothing right or wrong. I mean, if you believe in the advice, then just go for it, right? But I think that it's also very, very important to learn from a practitioner because I'll let you guys know what's the difference, right? So if you learn from somebody who's telling you theory, then when you face a problem,

this person will not be able to help you. The reason is because when you're talking about theory, right, there are no problems. It's like a perfect world, you know? So there'll be no problems. And I think that if you really want problem solving, the person who is telling you theory, I'm not saying it's professor or anyone,

basically it's anybody giving advice that they picked up from Google and then now they're like, you know, regurgitating it over LinkedIn, TikTok and everywhere else, they will not actually be able to help you solve the problem. And that is because they have not implemented

the thing themselves. So if you don't implement it or you don't actually practice what you teach or you have, you know, zero experience in what you're actually teaching, then you will never know what are the mistakes.

You would have also not gone through the process of trying to get out of those mistakes or try to fix those mistakes and come up with a solution. So that, I think, is the difference. For a person who's a practitioner, may not necessarily have the 100 models. I don't have 100 models of this model, that model. You don't need any of that.

You just need a few solid models, a few solid methods of doing something, but then you actually master those things. You actually master those things. I don't have 100 models, but the things that currently that I've been using throughout my career and actually it's something that I teach nowadays

is those few methods that I've been using over the years. But I gradually became so good at it that it actually works better for me. Personally, I think it's way better. The reason is because if I'm trying to like remember 100 things, it's going to be very confusing.

I'm probably going to be like a master of none. But if I develop 10 methods of doing something and I truly master the 10 methods, then I think I am way more powerful because I know the ins and outs of doing something this way and things that I have encountered problems before. I have learned how to not get into trouble in the the future so I think that's really the value and um you know in in the past right I actually used to run um two week uh initially it was one hour

workshops and they kind of turned into like two hour workshops they kind of turn into two week workshops before I actually designed the course and And one of the really, really consistent feedback that I have gotten is, oh, Mipin, what you teach is very practical. And Mipin, you always answer our questions live. Why is that? So why is that? How can I answer your questions live? And how come some people,

you notice that they don't do live streams or they don't do live Q&A? Because live Q&A is actually very difficult to do. If you're trying to memorize something, you can't do live Q&A. Because live Q&A is actually very difficult to do. If you're trying to memorize something, you can't do it. If you don't actually know how to solve a problem, you may not be able to do live Q&A because you're putting your reputation at risk, right?

So it's very similar as well. Like at the workplace, I highly recommend that if you actually don't know something or you're lacking a skill, please don't fake it until you make it. You will never make it. It's better to go and upskill, go and put in the effort to learn the skill, learn the

knowledge, learn the method, learn the steps, keep practicing, and then gradually you become confident because you are competent. Confidence comes from competence. I think to me, that's a much better way of looking at it versus going to this whole nonsense on finding all these quick hacks and magic secrets, magic tricks.

All of that actually is not a good thing. And I think if you truly want to build solid foundations in your career, it's actually much better to build that foundation, not try to escape and try to find some tricks and so forth.

And unfortunately, while I hope I can give you a magic pill, the reality is that you need to practice. You need to practice, you need to implement, you need to take action. Now, one other question I also consistently get from my course is people asking me, oh, so Mipin, should I follow it step by step? What if I have my own way of doing things?

Okay, I'll give you a very fair answer here. If you have been doing things your own way and it has worked out and you are achieving whatever career goals that you want, there's probably no need to come to my course. There's nothing I can teach you, right? But if you have been doing things your own way and you have not been getting results, you are stressed out, you are frustrated, you don't know what's wrong, then I think you need to open your mind, open up your mind to listen to a different perspective, listen to a different

perspective. So if you are open, then you can probably take the course. And there is a roadmap. And I teach that most of my clients complete it around three months or three to six months, generally speaking. But once you master the concept of the methods that I teach, and then as you keep implementing, you may come across certain problems that are very unique to you. Then you can start tweaking the method and personalize my method to your situation or to your personality. I'll give you an example.

It's like I teach you how to bake a cake, right? But the icing is you. But now the problem now is that because you don't really understand the corporate world in general, wrong mindset, wrong skill set, no visibility strategy, whatever. Now your problem is that you don't even know how corporate world in general, wrong mindset, wrong skill set, no visibility strategy, whatever. Now your problem is that you don't even know how to bake the cake.

And then you're worrying about, what about the icing and all these things? Wrong steps. So anyway, my main point is that get the foundation done first and whatever that you're doing right now, you're still not getting results, means that you are not building your foundation the right way.

Whatever that you're learning, it's not the still not getting results, means that you are not building your foundation the right way. Whatever that you're learning, it's not the right thing. It's not the right thing. And therefore, you should actually focus on learning the right thing. Then once you have mastered it, then you can layer it up to customize it a little bit more to your situation, to your situation, if that makes sense.

Okay? So, that's a bit of a rant today. And for those of you are watching live, I look like a mess because I underestimated the time. So I basically rushed back and then I just like literally switched on this live stream, which was already five minutes late today. So for those of you guys who are like waiting for me to go live today, thank you so much. Hopefully you guys are having a really good weekend. But anyway, just to wrap up, the question that I asked just now is, are you going to dedicate one hour of your week

to career learning? And how are we going to make sure that you are learning the right thing that can actually solve your problem? So with that, I wish you a very good weekend. And I hope that you can actually start your weekly dedicated time slot for career learning from next week. Until then, I'll see you guys tomorrow. Bye!