Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep142: How to build win-win relationships with people.

Episode Date: May 28, 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 everyone and welcome back to another episode of my 30-day career live stream series where we will be talking about very, very interesting career advice that I have come across online with regards to the 9-5 corporate world.

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 at some of the biggest companies in the world. Nowadays, as a career coach, I'm also a creator of my signature program, The Corporate Survivor, where I help you, someone who is working in the 9-5 job, to get confident,, visible and grow your career in the corporate world. So welcome, welcome. And specifically today, I wanted to talk about this very interesting topic that I think is often forgotten in our very busy day-to-day lives or our very busy day-to-day work life.

And it's all about developing and building win-win relationships with people at work. So if this is the first time you are hearing about this concept, win-win relationships, and if you are watching live right now, let me know in the comments below if this is a completely new concept to you. Now, what inspired today's topic was this afternoon, I actually had a coaching session with one of my clients who is the head of department at, it's not exactly a startup, but it's a super new entity as part of a very big brand. So anyway, I was talking to this one client who's the head of department and, you know, he was telling me about how, you know, he led a presentation and he got a lot of pushback

and he got a lot of negative feedback, very defensive comments from, you know, his fellow peers and his fellow stakeholders. And he thought that this should not happen to me because, you know, I am at the head of department level. Obviously, you know, that's a pretty senior level, and he sort of expected that everything would just, you know, be okay, and he wouldn't receive that much of, probably backlash is a very big word,

but basically he expected things to be hunky-dory is basically what I'm trying to say. So I kind of like dug into a little bit more about sort of like, you know, what was discussed and what was some of the comments and so forth, and also gotten a bit about his own reflections as well. Now, for some of my clients who may be watching this right now, or any of you who may have, you know, worked with me before in a one-on-one consultation session, or you are my long-term client, or you are a student in my online course, and you have had your one-on-one bonus call with me, I'm sure that you would know that I am the kind of person that is very

strategic. But at the same time, I think it's very important that we deep dive into the root cause of problems before we try to solve them. So I am not the kind of coach that gives you the rah-rah-rah, but given that I have more than 10 years of experience in the corporate world, so basically what we are going to talk about are very practical and implementable things that will happen in your journey in the corporate world. So back to this particular client. So after doing his own self-assessment and he came up with um

two reasons two reasons as to why he think the um conversation didn't go well so the first one he told me was um i think i was a bit direct in the way that i speak and maybe some people didn't like that and the second self-assessmentessment he did was that he said that, oh, I don't think I listened enough, and I was just really rushing to get to my point, which kind of goes back to the first point, right? So that was as much of a self-assessment that he came up with, or rather a self-reflection.

And he asked me, oh, Mei-Ping, so what do you think was the problem? And do you think there was something else, or do you think there was something that I missed out on and so forth? Now, looking at the entire situation, and he kind of gave me a bit more example, exactly what he said and so forth, and I noticed a few things. Now, it's very easy to want to focus on your own performance, right? You know, we all want to do a job well done at work. You want your boss to praise you and say that everything is fine. But at the same time, you may have forgotten,

similar to, you know, my client has forgotten, is that, like, you cannot be successful alone. You know, you can't be successful alone. And, you know, at the end of the day, you are working with other people and the other people may be your team members. It may be your boss, or it may be stakeholders, or maybe clients, vendors, partners, someone else, right? So by being too focused on your own performance, what is that, you know, what's going to happen then is that it actually creates a very big blind spot of like you wanting to make your point. And when you are

fighting to make your point, you are going to sound very rude, aggressive, and somebody who doesn't listen and somebody who is insisting. And the worst thing is that somebody who is not collaborative now all these things are not positive at the workplace it's also not one of those qualities that will help you to advance in your career in the corporate world now like i said if you have this this blind spot you may not see it you may think that hey you know i'm just like making my point like what's the problem the problem is you don't exist alone at work. That is the problem. It may be very uncomfortable to hear, but like that is actually the problem. So what is then the thing that you need to focus on? It's the fact that

in every conversation that you go into and in every, you know, meeting or presentation, you know, networking session and so forth, how are you creating win-win relationships? Now, relationships is a big word, but if you want to chunk it down, deep dive it a little bit more, basically, to create relationships, it usually starts from a conversation, right? When it starts from a conversation, then guess what? Communication skills there to come in. So if you actually listen back to what my client said, right? He pointed out two things.

He said that he was a bit too direct and he also said that he think that he didn't listen enough. These two, guess what? Communication skills. Now, a lot of people think that communication skills is just the art of talking, talking confidently.

And actually, that is not the case. And when I actually teach a lot of my students in my online course, The Corporate Survivor, actually, I break down communication into understanding the process, how do we actually listen and clarify, and to be able to ask your clarification questions very politely to build that sort of two-way relationship,

then the art and the structure, the clear structure of expressing yourself in a clear way that does not create misunderstanding. And finally, how do you inject some emotional intelligence and making the other person feel like you are talking to a person and you are not like a robot that is just like pushing your way. It's like your way or the highway. Now, that may sound very logical to you if you feel like you are just doing your job, but I will tell you that most people at work don't like that. Because, you know, as much as we are employees and as much as we are workers, we are also people.

And think about it, right? If somebody behaves like that to you, you know, comes to you and insists that certain things need to be done a certain way and talks to you very assertively or aggressively, would you like that? And the analogy that I gave my client was more like, okay, even if you manage to get something done or you manage to push something through, right? Because obviously he was in a meeting, he needed certain things to get done. But the point is this, if you manage to push it through, I'm going to tell you that it's only that one time.

Because you have not created a win-win relationship, you have actually not really understood the other person's concerns. Actually listen to the intention of what is being communicated. Now, not just listen to the words, but understanding the intention, right? And this one is if you actually learn active listening skills, and it's also something that I teach, you are actually able to deep dive a little bit more on the intention before you respond. So the way I like to explain is this, you listen, process and then express, right? Listen, process and then you express. And similarly, it's actually a similar concept during interviews as well. Interviews is all about communication and conversation.

So if you have poor communication skills, you will also suffer during interviews because it's actually the same thing. But anyway, back to the story of this particular client is win-win relationships. And win-win relationships is also the basis of negotiation. Now, when I say negotiation, a lot of people also think, ah, Mei Ping, you mean salary negotiation. Yes, of course, that is a very big part. And it's also something that I teach a lot of my clients.

And in fact, one of my clients, they just texted me like an hour ago saying that she got a 10% increment just from an organization restructure because she's been like telling her boss and following my methodology on like how to get visible. But that aside, one thing you need to realize is that negotiation happens every day of our lives it happens every day at work and it doesn't necessarily mean that you know to get promoted to get an increment or to ask for a salary that's Negotiation happens in every single piece of our daily life. For example, if you want to pass on certain work to other people, you need to negotiate. And if you want,

like for the story of my client, if he wants certain things to be accepted or certain things to be done, right, then like he needs to be able to negotiate like whichever one needs to come first and like why and all those things. So the inability to look at both sides of the coin, both sides of the coin is eventually the one that the actual real reason why you are unable to advance. Because you will not be able to build any win-win relationships if number one, you are not ready to listen. Number two, you are not ready to understand, and not just understanding the issue, but understanding the person and understanding the person's position. Now, all these things, right, sounds like it's bits and pieces here and there, but

they're actually not the case. It actually all starts from understanding what is your role in the organization? What is your role in the company? How does it interact with all these other people that you're working with, right? And that's why it's one of the things that I actually teach in module one and rather phase one of my program,

which is like, okay, let's not even get into the skills yet. Let's not even talk about relationships yet. But like phase one, module one, you are going to learn where you actually sit in the organization and how you are adding value and who are the people that you need to work with for you to be able to deliver value. So before you can even create win-win relationships, before you even learn how to communicate, you should know where you stand, where do you appear in the corporate jigsaw puzzle, and then how much do you understand people?

Because at the end of the day, we can use the word relationships, and we can use fancy words to describe whatever, whatever. But at the end of the day, it's just people, right? So if you don't understand people in terms of personality, working habits, and so forth, how are you going to learn how to communicate with them? Because communication is a skill, but different people have different pattern is how I usually say it. And if you don't understand people and the position of the person that, you know, in this corporate jigsaw puzzle, plus the personality of the actual person that you are working with, you can have the best communication skill. But the problem is that you

are not going to be able to apply it correctly and effectively because you lack some of these foundational skills, if that makes sense. So if you're listening live right now and whatever I'm saying is kind of like maybe giving you a bit of a light bulb moment, definitely let me know in the comments because this is actually a topic that I'm highly passionate about because i think a lot of people talk about career advancement everybody talks about hey i want to grow my career i want to advance in my career i want to progress i want to make more money i want to get promoted i want to get an increment it's not fair this person got better than me, yada, yada, yada. But foundationally, a lot of people actually do not really understand the role that they actually play in the team, the department,

the function, the company, basically the entire corporate structure. If you do not understand that, it's actually going to be very, very difficult for you to be able to strategically plan and be able to actually advance your career. So that's why, like, even now, nowadays, like, when, I mean, as you all know, right, you know, I share tons of, like, content on LinkedIn particularly and across all my different social media. And I find that a lot of people, when they come to me,

they will directly tell me that, hey, how do I make more money? Or how do I get promoted? And how do I ask for more money? And basically, it's all money, right? I mean, I completely understand. We all work for money. That's fine.

But I find that a lot of people are actually not really willing to build a solid foundation to grow their career. So I'll give you a simple example. I mean, since we're already talking about win-win relationships, right? If you don't have a very good relationship with your boss, you are not actively managing expectations, you are not actively communicating, you're also not communicating the right thing at the right frequency and so forth do you truly truly truly think that that one conversation with you know around your performance review at the year end or the half year which is we're already almost in June do you actually think that that

one conversation that you are going to have in June or December when you are completely MIA for the entire you know rest of the work days do you really think that that for the entire, you know, rest of the workdays, do you really think that that's going to help you get that increment or get that promotion? Honestly, it's very difficult. And that's why, you know, when I tell people the real answer of like actually how do you add value and show value and how do you actually get visible, it actually starts from like understanding the role that you play in the team, in the department, in the function,

basically where you sit in the corporate world. Then the second part is that you need to understand your own personality versus somebody else's personality because it's actually going to set up a very solid foundation for you

to learn how to cultivate relationships by not pissing the other person off because personality clash or whatever. And this is actually the solid foundation. Once you have a good understanding, then you can get into, you know, building confidence with like strengthening your communication skills, right? Understanding the communication process, the listening skills. Then that's where you also learn how to sharpen your critical thinking,

clear thinking, strategic thinking, and being a lot more productive to be able to actually add value so all these things like sort of stack up and once you show that hey you actually like you can actually do the work you're not just a talker that can't do anything then once your reputation goes up the trust goes up and so forth now you can then you know talk about what know, talk about what you want, right? Whether what you want is opportunities, what you want is more money, or what you want is a promotion. Like, it's a phase process. It's a phase process. Yes, maybe you can try to do a bit of a shortcut,

but if you, you know, you have been MIA for the entire year or you don't have a very good relationship with your boss, team, you know, vendors, stakeholders, you know, clients and so forth, you can prepare like the best script if you want for like a performance review. But I'm going to tell you that it's not going to make that much of an impact. That is because the foundations that needs to have in place, they are just not there, if you understand what I'm saying. So anyway, back to the win-win relationships part is understanding the importance, but also more importantly, right, at the end of the day, you are dealing with another person, and judgment is natural, I would say. I think to think that, you know, people don't judge you,

it's a bit naive, I would think. However, it's also not for you to be a busybody and just to care so much about what other people think. Then what you need to focus on is what makes you a valued professional and how can you work with another person in a more win-win dynamic, right? Not just the ability to get along, chit-chat and friends.

I mean, like, there's one small part of that. But how are you supporting each other? And not just, like, pushing your way, but also understanding the impact of what

you are requesting, the impact of, like, what you are saying and how that is being perceived by the other person. And I can tell you right now, this is basically bonus, bonus I'm giving you guys

because this is something I actually teach my course and it's a paid program. And it actually depends on two things. The position of the person, right? Because the position determines the perspective and the priority. And the other part is the personality because it's the personality that will then determine the habits, right? And it will also determine the perception of like what the other person is perceiving you and kind of like the people dynamic around that, okay? So I want you to really think about it because I think sometimes, you know, if you have been,

I mean, the reason why I mentioned to you this story about my client who is a head of department also experiencing this issue is, I want to illustrate to you this story about my client who is a head of department also experiencing this issue is I want to illustrate to you that no matter where you are on your career ladder, like your career journey, these things happen because these are what I call the core corporate skills. And if you have been following me for some time or you've joined my, you know, my free training or anything else, you will know that I've,

I consistently talk about this top 12 skills for career success. And these top 12 skills are basically broken down into four categories. And the first category is communication. The second category is relationships. The third category is critical thinking. And the fourth category is productivity. Everything comes together if you truly want to be successful

in the corporate world. There's no woo-woo stuff. There's no magic bullet. There's no magic pill or whatever. It's all about do you actually want to grow your career strategically and sustainably for long-term success?

Or you are trying to find some shortcut, trying to find some magic tool here and there, and trying to go for that short-term, quote-unquote, success, but also jeopardizing your reputation down the road. Because if that is the approach that you are going to take, I can almost tell you that, sure may be job hopping which is not i mean job hopping is not a bad thing but if you are hoping to get referrals from your network or like recommendations for interesting opportunities in the future you are not going to get any of that because all of that the value and direct the value that you provide

and the recognition of the value by the other person the foundation is a win-win relationship at work wow so just to be clear when i say win-win relationship doesn't mean that you guys need to be best friends right we can be friendly at work but not friends. I'm not talking about best friends, but it's about how are your contributions and your value being recognized by the people that you work with. And people actually want to work with you, not because they are your friend or not because you are their friend,

it's because they know that they can trust you to do a good job, not just in this team, this department or this company, but maybe in the future as well. And I'll give you some very quick examples. It's personally for me, like one of the stories that I don't talk about a lot is how I was basically referred or rather, you know, headhunted to join Google. It's a story that I don't talk about a lot, but I just want to illustrate to you very quickly the power of developing win-win relationships as well as conveying value

by focusing on professional reputation. So how I managed to get the invitation to interview at Google is somebody senior in a senior leadership position who used to work with me in an earlier company really remembered me. Even though we only worked together for about a month or so, this person actually remembered me. And when this senior leadership person joined Google in a senior position, and when the team was setting up their offices in Asia Pacific, this senior

leader actually remembered my name. and she told the regional head to reach out to me. And that's why I highly advocate LinkedIn because that was how I received the message. And the message was very simple. Hey, you may not know who I am, but this lady thinks very highly of you. She highly recommended that I reach out to you, and I just wanted to know if you are currently open to any opportunities, would you like to come and have a chat about, you know, what we have at Google? And just to be clear, it's not a Google recruiter, somebody who's actually working in Google in a fairly senior position. And that was how I was invited to interview at Google, and that was how I managed to kind of go through

the interview process and ultimately decide that the role that is being offered is not what I wanted to do. So I just want to share this very quickly to illustrate to you the importance of focusing on your professional value, developing win-win relationships, and thinking long-term in terms of career success, in terms of your success in terms of your career journey because your career journey is not one two or three years you're talking about 10 20 or even 30 years depending on where you are in your career and aside from like going out there crazy job hunting all the time there's another method and it's a way more effective method and it's called attracting career opportunities and that is also something that i teach currently in my course at www.thecorporatesurvivor.co so i think it's just something for you guys to

think about and you know win-win relationships is one of those things that i think a lot of people talk about it conceptually but they don't actually know how to break it down and really give you like the step-by-step so specifically all the skills that you need to work on and all the personality tidbits that you need to be aware of, as well as the people dynamic and kind of like, where do you see in the overall structure? Because all those things actually need to come hand in hand to be able to develop within relationships.

It's not this whole nonsense that you see on social media that, hey, build relationships. But the question is that, but like how? How? How do I build relationships without piss the question is that, but like, how? How? How do I build relationships without pissing off the other person? Think about it. So, thank you so much for listening to this very important topic. And like, thank you so much for listening to my TED Talk.

So, my question to you is, are you truly focused on building your reputation and building win-win relationships at work or you are just someone who is just focused on your own job and whatever goes whatever goes so if you're watching live right now feel free to let me know in the comments i would love to hear from you i know it's you know a bit of a heavy topic but if you are new to my 30-day current live stream series um it's actually i'm going um live for 30 days in may and we are almost approaching the end of the live stream already with um probably a live stream tomorrow as well as on the 30th so if you have any interesting topics that you want me to maybe talk about in the last two days of the live stream

please drop me a message on linkedin and I would probably highly consider that. And I also want to thank every single person who has been joining the live stream so far. And if you want to check out the replay, you can check it out on my YouTube channel or Spotify podcast. So I've uploaded all the replays, the audio and videos over there. And if you want an episode recommendation,

drop me a message on LinkedIn. Let me know your career situation. Probably I can recommend an episode recommendation, drop me a message on LinkedIn, let me know your career situation, probably I can recommend, yeah, an episode from my podcast to you, or an episode from the live stream so far. So, I'm seeing a couple of quick comments, right, so Rana is saying, very important factor, absolutely, I think that, you know, win-win relationships is some of, is one of those things that people talk about it in a more touch and go motivational angle but nobody actually talks about like what how do you actually break down the actual skills that you need to improve on to be able to develop win-win relationships i think that you know more people need to talk

about it and maybe people don't talk about it because they don't actually know how to develop it. It's just easy to just give that whatever. Okay, next one. Hi, May. This is my favorite topic. I always try to do this, make win-win relationships. Thank you so much for picking this topic. You are welcome.

And I think that, you know, win-win relationship is one of those things that is not just at work, right? Or it's not just in the corporate world or in the corporate job. You see a lot, but even let's talk about LinkedIn, right? I mean, if you guys are like watching on LinkedIn right now and even on LinkedIn, there are many, many ways

that you can develop win-win relationships if your network, your connections, as well as your followers. Like for me, usually if somebody drops a comment on my post, I always make sure to reply because to me me if the person makes an effort to comment i definitely will reply and if a person connects with me i'll likely send a hello message and so forth so i think that is is your mindset going into it of hey how can we like kind of do something together and how can I help you or how we can support each other versus I need something and then you know when you need something then you go and push the other person and now this person suddenly like owes you something which doesn't make sense right.

So to further illustrate this point I'm going to give another quick example as well. So for example let's say at work right whether, let's just say at work, you probably need a piece of, maybe you need a document from your colleague or your boss or, you know, someone else. So if something is very urgent and you care about yourself, you will probably rush the person nonstop and you will then basically hound the person

whenever you need something. Then once you get it, you completely disappear. Now, how do you think that person will feel not that great and what if you are that person it's not that great too right so just really think about that relationship and like how you are actually cultivating that for like a longer term supporting each other at work because that actually pays way more reward than pushing pushing pushing rushing rushing rushing and yeah i mean like i said maybe you will get that one thing but you'll probably never get that help again because now that person you know whether it's your clique or it's your boss or like a stakeholder client may think that oh actually this person is you know he or she just wants

something for you know themselves and they actually don't really care or not collaborative at all. Now, your reputation gets damaged. So just think about it. And personally for me right now, as a career coach, I also get a lot of emails from people who invite me for events

and invite me to do some paid programs and paid workshops. But I also get a lot of invitations for free stuff. And what I find, and maybe this is just my experience, what I find is that a lot of times, people who come to me for paid programs or asking me to run a workshop or run an event or run a talk as a speaker, usually it's very win-win.

So it's very clear, right? This is our budget, this is what we want and this is what we can do. So let's discuss, right? What you can do for us and blah, blah, blah. However, what I find is that

the people who usually come to me like wanting the free stuff, which is like, hey, can you do it for me for free? No, I need this. These are the actual people who need it urgently. Oh, please reply me,

you know, within 24 hours or please reply me by end of today, or please, like, I need everything done ASAP. Can you just get back to me? Because everything's waiting for your reply. I'm like, but like, I never, I haven't even agreed yet, right? So, similarly, right, whether you are talking to an

internal team member within the company, internal stakeholder, or you're dealing with external stakeholder, whether it's a client, a vendor, or a partner, the same concept applies. So, if you're dealing with external stakeholder, whether it's a client, a vendor, or a partner, the same concept applies. So if you're only going to the person because you want something and you never bother to cultivate a relationship and try to understand what is in it for each other,

what's the benefit for each other, how we can support each other, then, well, I will say good luck because I have never actually seen a person that is able to have a sustainable long-term career success in which they actually maintain a strong reputation with that kind of behavior. So with that, I hope that today's live stream gives you guys a bit of a food for thought on this very important topic on building win-win relationships. And I also want to give

you some good news that no matter where you are on your career journey or no matter how bad you are, you know, in terms of you think your skills in communication, building relationships, networking and so forth, you can always improve because it's a skill. And you can always improve on the skill if you're applying the right strategies, methods, as well as steps and actually taking action and learning from the right people. So with that, I wish you all the best. And I also hope to see you in the last two days of the live stream in the next couple of days. So with that, have a good day. See you next time. Bye.