Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep141: How to deal with crazy toxic people.

Episode Date: May 27, 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.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. Hello, hello, hello, everyone. Welcome back to my 30-day career live stream series where we will be discussing very interesting career topics

and it will be relevant to you if you are a 9-5 working professional, basically working in a 9 to 5 job. So if you are new here, hi, my name is Mei Ping. I'm a professional career coach and former corporate leader who has led multi-million dollar projects across 43 countries. So welcome, welcome. And now we are moving into the last few days of my 30-day career livestream series. career live stream series and we have been talking about like multiple different different topics from job search to money mindset even up till you know really the difference between working hard working smart how to become more efficient effective and a plethora of topics so if you

have missed any of the earlier episodes you can easily check it out the check out the replays of my youtube channel if not on my Spotify podcast. So today's live stream, it's a bit of a special episode, I'd say. And today's topic, actually, I really wanted to talk about crazy, toxic people. Now, May is the Mental Health Awareness Month. And I know that mental health is something that we talk about a lot nowadays and it's actually getting a lot more, I guess, visibility and awareness around. And I do think that mental health is a very big word.

Now, before we go into a little bit more detail, I also want to be very clear that I am not a psychologist. I'm also not a therapist. So a lot of the topics or rather the things that I talk about around mental health is really related to my personal experiences, whether it's in my life or it's, you know, really the career path because I've obviously been in the corporate world for a very long time from junior to senior level. So I've kind of seen different peoples of different patterns and different personalities to really come out with some of my examples over here. So hi everyone and thank you so much for joining. And as I was saying that today is also a very

special day because my Confessions of a Career Coach newsletter is finally back. So for those of you guys who have been following me since the beginning of this newsletter that basically started in January this year, thank you so much to the 6,000 of you who have subscribed. So finally, the Confessions of a career coach newsletter is back every Friday. And unfortunately, I dropped off a little bit because I've been quite busy after the April launch of my online program, The Corporate Survivor. But anyway, I'm happy for it to finally be back and wanted to start off by talking about the toxic things I've been told that should have destroyed my mental health. So that is the topic for today's newsletter. And if you have actually

seen the newsletter, definitely let me know in the comments. And if there's anything that really resonated with you. But the reason why I wanted to raise this topic, especially this month, Mental Health Awareness Month, is that I think that sometimes toxic is defined very differently by different people. So I just want to be very cautious when I say toxic and when I define certain stories or certain things, that's my personal experience. But I think that it's important for you to define what toxic means to you and what you will not tolerate and what is actually not okay and what you deem as overstepping your boundary. Because actually, it's very easy to say that, you know, to listen to someone else and say that, oh yeah, I know this person is like this all the time. Oh, you're just too sensitive. You shouldn't wear your heart on your sleeve and all these things, to be honest, I have been told as well.

But I think that as I continue to mature in life and in my career, obviously over the X number of years, I've gradually realized that, hey, some of the things that I've been told early on in my career actually is not okay. And probably, if some of these comments I've been told this year, you know, 2022, probably would absolutely blow up, right? So for those of you who've actually read it, I'm going to just share a couple of quick snippets from it. And the one thing that I actually started the newsletter by talking about, this one thing that many of you actually dropped me a DM to want to find out a bit more actually, was this comment that I received when I was in a fairly senior position in corporate. So the comment says this,

Oh, you're the secretary who will take notes for today's meeting, right? So what time is the boss coming in? Now, this is unfortunately not as recent as, you know, not as old as it looks. You would think that this sort of, maybe potentially a little bit sexist, a little bit ageist comment would have been like, you know, more than 10 years ago, but unfortunately, it's actually not. I'd say that it's fairly recent

in the past few years. So, like I said, you know, you define what toxic means to you, but for me, I felt that, yes, I think sometimes people are ignorant. Sometimes people do not necessarily mean what they say. They don't mean to hurt or they don't mean to want to sound rude. But I think at the end of the day, for each and every one of us, we should have a certain level of self-awareness and also a certain level of responsibility in the things that we say and the things that we do and how it also comes across to other people and how it could potentially

be perceived. Now, I'm not saying that, you know, you need to go and baby everyone because that's obviously not the point. But my point is that you should understand that words hurt, words carry deep meaning, and sometimes, right, it can easily ruin relationships, it can easily ruin networks that you have spent a lot of time to build, especially at the workplace. Now, for this particular story, obviously, you know, it's a bit more of a long-winded one, but, you know, TLDR, too long, didn't read. The point was basically someone who mentioned this to me when I walked into a meeting, and this someone said that, oh, yeah, you're the secretary who will be taking notes for the meeting, right? And what time is the boss coming in? Now, why was this comment made? Obviously, a few things at that time or rather even now i'm fairly young

for someone who is like leading very big teams and leading very big projects at a director level number two aside from actually being fairly young i actually look young which you know it can be a double-edged sword a lot of people say looking old is not good, but looking too young at work also, if you don't really know how to manage that professional reputation, it can, you know, backfire, unfortunately. And of course, right, leading a global team, sometimes, you know, cultural things sort of like cultural perceptions and societal perceptions sort of come in as well.

So unfortunately that this one thing happened and unfortunately for that person, the boss that he was looking for was actually me and this was a fairly, I say that it's not too common but it's frequent enough for it to become a bit of a memory. Now, I can share a little bit more on other instances that has happened to me at work and some other examples. I've also been in meetings where some quote-unquote senior leaders just kind of like look past you because you're not important enough or you are someone that is deemed not important and not worth the person's time. Extremely rude, completely ridiculous, but just so you know, there are people like that.

And I've also been in situations where, you know, me walking into a meeting with my team leader, who is male, who's probably a little bit older than me, walking into a stakeholder meeting together, and immediately, my team leader was seen as the manager versus actually I am the manager. So now, the point I'm trying to make here is that I think sometimes jumping into conclusions and making assumptions is a bit of a default you know you know when we approach something but i think you should be actually really aware of how what kind of message does it also send and potentially could like i said hurt certain relationships as well i think you know it kind of goes both ways but the point i'm trying to share here is that you could be the toxic one.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. Think about it. Think about it. Because as I said, toxic is defined very differently by different people. So I think you just want to be very cautious if you are one of those people who easily jump into conclusion and jump into assumptions without actually knowing who you're talking to. So the point I'm trying to make here is really be cautious on like how, you know, how you are managing your professional reputation at work. And of course, right, not just as a colleague, as a team member, but also as a person who is empathetic and understanding. So anyway, aside from that, obviously I've been called like many, many different things,

but I think that one thing you need to realize, and I guess these are the three points that I raised in today's newsletter, amongst other things, and these are actually the three lessons that I've also learned over the years. The first lesson is your feelings are valid no matter what somebody else tells you. Now, you may hear comments maybe from your friends, family, team members or boss

telling you that, oh yeah, you're too sensitive. I mean, it's fine. These things, don't be too sensitive about it. Okay. I think that there is an element of taking things personally. And I think sometimes some people do struggle to draw that line. However, it's also important to realize that your feelings are valid. It's okay to feel a certain way about something, especially if you are receiving a really rude comment or a very insensitive comment or a comment that is passive-aggressive, that probably that one's a little bit more difficult to identify, but it's possible to also receive

those comments. So the other one that I've also been told was don't wear your heart on your sleeve and don't be too sensitive. People don't like that. You shouldn't be too sensitive. At the end of the day, it's called having feelings. And obviously, how you manage your feelings is one thing. But I think you should not try to suppress that and probably try to overcome it. It's probably a better way

because one thing is that if you're trying to suppress a certain feeling, it kind of like eats into you mentally and emotionally and that's actually really, really unhealthy and these are actually those things that creates like mental health challenges later on. So I think embrace the feelings

and if you need to talk it out, please go and talk to someone. If you feel like you need to process the feelings, you need some time alone, you can do that also. Then the second thing that I've also learned and I was basically like sick and tired of listening to this one already and that's this. That person has always been like that. You just need to tolerate this person. Just ignore this person. Now, these two, normally, you'll probably hear it hand in hand, right?

This person has always been like that. Just ignore this person or just ignore this thing and you'll be fine. I'm sorry, but I disagree. Just because the person has always been like that doesn't actually make something okay.

Just because, you know, a person has bad behavior, like how is that okay? So if we think about it, right, if you're dealing with a child and the child is rude or have very bad behavior, would you not discipline the child? Or would you not, like, you know, discipline your pet? But, I mean, if you will, then what excuses bad behavior? And I think that sometimes, like, I mean, honestly, it's based on what I've seen, sometimes it's the people who are

very senior are the ones that probably can get away with it because everybody else is tolerating because they want to keep their jobs, right? Everybody is tolerating because maybe they are afraid, they want to keep their jobs, they don't want to get called out, they want to get dinged by the management team and so forth, which I think is really unfortunate. But I think that at the end of the day, if a person has very bad behavior at work,

sometimes it's very unfair for the more junior people to get blamed and to really deal with the madness. Then I'd say that it's that person's manager's responsibility to actually let this person know to say, hey, this behavior is not okay, or this behavior is like, you know, some profession is really not coming across well, versus I personally also work with managers

who tell me that this person has always been like that, just ignore it, just ignore him, just ignore her, they are like this, just deal with it. I'm like, these managers, they may not realize that they are actually perpetuating this behavior. Now, especially if that person, you think about it, right? If that person knows that they can have bad behavior, get away with it. And the worst thing is get their boss to support their bad behavior. Like, do you think this person is going to change? I can tell you that this person

is not going to change. So unfortunately, that sometimes happens. So the point I'm trying to make to you is don't let someone guess like you, right? It still does not excuse bad behavior. It's still not okay because if these bad behaviors, right, you are dealing with it, you are just like absorbing, absorbing, absorbing, suppressing, suppressing, suppressing, what's going to happen is that it will gradually hurt your own self-esteem and your own self-confidence. So I'm going to give you guys some examples over here. You know, I do work with some of my clients who, I'd say, face some challenges at work. And I won't say to the point of like bullying, but I'd say that, you know, crazy people, you know,

difficult people to deal with, fairly toxic people, people who steal your credit. You're the one doing all the work, but then that person steals your thunder. That person steals your credit. That person gets the recognition for your work. It's actually really annoying. And I actually have worked with clients before that they got thrown under the bus because their boss or rather their manager wants to look good and basically threw the blame on them. Now, like I said, if you keep absorbing, absorbing, absorbing, you keep processing, you know, suppressing and just accepting things that, you know, this is what I call like passive-aggressive words

or passive-aggressive behavior from these toxic people. Eventually, what's going to happen is that it will definitely hurt your self-esteem and your self-belief. And that's actually something that happened to a few of my clients before. And to be honest, it takes some time to get out of it because it's like once you fall into that pithole, it's actually more difficult to get yourself out of it. And that's just the reality. It's very unfortunate, but that's the reality. So one thing that's really important that you need to recognize is that first their behavior is not okay number two it's probably not on you just focus on the actual objective thing focus on the work like the comment is on the work the comment shouldn't be on me

because if the if the person attacks you directly and actually it's not like focusing on the world which is the more objective thing the person attacks you personally then you need to be very clear that it's that is the toxic person it's not you it's like you know it's not you it's me right it's that sort of thing no it's that person it's not you because once you let that kind of like you know go into your barrier then it kind of creates a bit of a trauma. So anyway, back to the story of like the clients that I work with is, it actually took a very long time for me to work with them on like upskilling and also like really imparting some of the things that, you know, they can do well and like really that confidence to shine takes a very long time

because that imposter syndrome, that feeling of worthlessness, that feeling of they are not good enough, they are a burden, that's a very big problem. And in fact, I actually had another client that I worked with who was also fired from her job when she was a bit of a fresh graduate. And when we actually talked about it in a little bit more detail, in a bit of more of a mindset session, she revealed to me that when she was in school, she was bullied in school. She met a lot of crazy students.

She met a lot of like, you know, crazy peers, very toxic, very rude to her, passive aggressive, ridiculed her. And even though, you know, she's like 30 years old right now, like these scars and like these trauma carries along. And even though she's doing fairly well at her work right now like these these scars and like these trauma carries along and even though she's doing fairly well at her work right now and in fact I helped her to move overseas recently but like that feeling of like not good enough it's gonna take a while for it to go away right

so we did some work around it but like like what I'm saying is that it's gonna take a while for it to go away so you just need to realize that that if you're going to tolerate these crazy people, there is an impact on your mental health. And even if it doesn't blow up now, it's probably going to blow up in the future. So here are my recommendations. Basically, here are the two things that I did when faced with crazy toxic people and the time where I decided that, hey, I've had enough of this nonsense

and I don't want to listen to these people anymore. So basically, you know, you're probably at the point that I was at that time and you have two choices now. You can either let that person's judgment determine your future. You can think about it a million times and not move forward or you can choose to prove them wrong. Now, even though I say proving them

wrong, but you need to remember that you are basically doing this for yourself because we don't want to live for someone else, but you can choose to get better, you can choose to be stronger, and you can choose to be way more valuable that these people are just going to gossip behind you because that's where they belong, behind you. So here are some things that I did. I chose to upgrade myself. So from working mindset skill set personal branding all these things that people were um you know gossiping and like kind of make judgment on me i decided that i want to be like way better than all these people will ever be so i focus on what i could do so i increase my industry knowledge knowledge about the company my work improve skill set, not just the core corporate skill set, not just like learning it,

but actually mastering it, as well as expertise in the area of my work. Why? That's because I learned, and now I know, that confidence comes from competence. For somebody to be able to poke hole into your situation,

that's because to a certain extent, you actually believe them. So how are you going to get rid of this nonsense belief is you need to learn how to believe in yourself. And how do you believe in yourself? Because a lot of belief comes from confidence. And confidence comes from competence. Competence of knowing that you can do something well and you are great at it. You are proud of yourself, right? That's how you block the crazy toxic people from actually reaching your core and actually affecting you mentally as well as emotionally.

Now, I'm not saying that it's something that can be done overnight, but it's something that you can gradually work towards and you can gradually equip towards and you can gradually you know equip yourself and strengthen yourself so what i did was that i worked way harder than i ever did because i knew that at that time i was a young leader so i had to earn my respect not just demand it because if you're going to try to like try to demand it and like try to whine to everyone about it like that is going to create way more gossip and probably that's going to invite way more toxicity because people you know you are now giving someone a reason to gossip if you get what i'm saying so

i think my my main lesson is then if that's what you want is that if that's what you believe that you can do and like people are misjudging you and it's not fair to receive certain comments like instead of like fighting with them i chose to get better so i learned how to speak up in the past i was actually a very highly introverted person i never spoke um i just worked and you know i realized that it's um it's really not the secret to success secret to success actually is really learning how to speak up, expressing myself well, presenting myself well in a way that is really aligned to the career level that I was at, which was a fairly senior role,

but also keep elevating up because I know that I wanted to get better. So I think at the end of the day, you determine where do you want to be career-wise, career goals-wise, and what are you willing to do to get out there. So instead of listening to what other people have to say about your situation, rather better just take charge of your situation

and just ignore these people who are not helpful at all to help you get better with your skills and everything else. So anyway, finally, here are some of the takeaway notes that I also want to share with you. So I'm sure you may have heard of this saying before, and it's keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. So if you have heard of this saying before,

just drop a comment, maybe yes, in the chat box that I know. Now, this is a very popular saying, and of course, a lot of people agree with it. However, I actually strongly disagree with this nonsense. I'd say, heck no. And in fact, I think you should stay as far away as possible from the toxic people because these people only bring you down. And you should actually focus on surrounding yourself with people who will lift you up. Now, I also want to be very fair and say that

you also need to clearly define, like I said, what toxic means to you. Because just because you don't know how to communicate with someone and you are partially the cause of misunderstanding at work, right, then that may not necessarily be toxic. That may not necessarily be people are difficult. That is because, you know, you may not have mastered certain communication skills that allows you to actually have a much more effective communication with the other person. So just make sure that like you are very objective in assessing what toxic means, what crazy means, and not just going around blaming everyone else for your situation. And the second thing also is that I will highly actually encourage you to do what you can first before jumping into conclusion that a person

actually has a malicious intention towards you or the person actually has a very bad intention to want to destroy your mental health which may not necessarily be the case but even though your feelings are valid but the point i'm trying to make here is that we may want to be a little bit more objective as to jumping into conclusions what other people's intentions are even though it can feel very hurtful for you to read certain words or to see certain things or to listen to certain things. So really define what toxic means, what crazy means, and also be very honest with yourself if you have any particular skills gap. So for example, if you are a poor communicator, you may find that,

you know, you may find that you have difficult relationships with people. That's because you cannot express yourself well or maybe you come across very direct, very blunt, very aggressive and some people don't like that and therefore, you know, you invoke that sort of like behavior, sort of like enabling bad behavior with one another or you actually have very poor relationship building or networking skills

and therefore, people don't actually want to work with you or you are actually a person that don't actually want to work with you or you are actually a person that's maybe very difficult to work with and that may be something that you need to assess your own behaviors your own working habits as to why you are behaving a certain way and that kind of how that comes across to different people at work right so that may not necessarily be crazy or toxic but it could be potentially a skills gap like particularly your people skills gap then the other one is you need to also assess whether you have a problem with your critical thinking skills now if you go around not making a lot of

sense in what you say after a while people may be very impatient with you now you can you can see that as crazy you can see that as toxic but we really need to have more context on actually what happened and really know he said why she said what what's the context and maybe decide whether is it the environment that's toxic or maybe you're lacking some skills some expertise in terms of like to be able to deliver your job well done and you can improve on that so that could be a skill setting that you need to work on and other things as well like um you know delivering quality work right being productive and completing work on time so if you keep getting chased by your boss who's like hey have you done this have you done that how come you're making so many mistakes?

Maybe you don't like that, right? You don't like somebody to comment on you. You may label this person as crazy and toxic. But if you take a step back and really be objective and say, hey, am I actually doing my part? Am I actually delivering my work to the best quality possible in life expectations

in terms of quality and timeline? And does it make sense or is it fair for my boss to chase me on something that I supposedly should be able to deliver? Now, I'm not excusing any bad behavior. And I'll say that after trying your best and particularly upskilling on your end and really trying to engage with these people and do a job well done, and if you feel that it's still happening

and it's really not the work, it's the person, and this person is actually attacking you directly, then I think you can make a fairer conclusion that it's actually this is the person that is unhealthy. And therefore, for the sake of mental health, you can choose to go. Because at the end of the day, like no job is worth your mental health and no job is worth tolerating crazy people who wants to hurt you, who are malicious against you and really do not appreciate you.

So I hope that today's episode really wraps up or rather today's live stream really wraps up the Mental Health Awareness Month this month and I really also wanted to share just that little bit of my personal experiences and I think that sometimes these issues do happen at the workplace but I think that aside from, you know, embracing our feelings, we also want to be as objective as possible to see what you could have done potentially to trigger it. Or maybe it's like a two-way street or really coming to a conclusion that this person actually has very bad intention and these are actually crazy toxic people that you want to 100% avoid. So with that, thank you so much for joining today's very special episode. So I'm not going to take any comments today, but I hope that this

live stream has given you some food for thought. And if you have not subscribed to my Confessions of a Career Coach newsletter, I'm back this week and will be back every single Friday. So with that, I will see you all and have a good weekend. Bye.