Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep155: If I could restart my career, the 4 things I'd do differently.

Episode Date: October 28, 2022

✅ Get FREE GUIDE, newsletter, join career program 👉 http://www.meiphing.com ✅ Corporate Survivor™ is the ultimate career course for 9-to-5 working professionals, just like *you*, who want to enhance corporate world mindset, skillset and strategy so you can NAVIGATE + GROW your career with clarity, confidence & opportunities... 🚀 ⚡ 📌 ABOUT THIS PODCAST: Welcome to Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing — ex-Corporate Leader turned Career Coach & Founder of The Corporate Survivor™. On this podcast, Mei Phing shares her corporate world insights, experiences and wisdom so you can grow your 9-5 career with clarity, confidence and opportunities. ✅ WEBSITE ⮕ https://www.meiphing.com ✅ FREE GUIDE ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co/freeguide ✅ NEWSLETTER ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co/mondays ✅ CAREER COURSE ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co ⚡

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. I have never met a single corporate professional who starts their career expecting to fail. In fact, each and every person that I meet are always enthusiastic, are always ambitious and willing to do what it takes to grow in their career.

As I reflect on my own career journey, here are four lessons that I wish I would do differently. And rather, if I could, I would definitely do differently to avoid the pains that I experienced in my career, particularly in my younger days, in my earlier career, that proved to be quite a bit of a challenge for me. And I wish that I had learned some of these lessons that I'm going to share with you today and I hope that you can also use these lessons to

improve your career today and right now. So one quick thing before we dive in, I've received many DMs from you guys on my LinkedIn and Instagram asking me about my signature career training and mentoring course called The Corporate Survivor and how some of the lessons, the modules and the methods and steps that I teach actually ties into some of these lessons that I'm going to be sharing with you. So in today's episode, I'll also be tying in my career lessons together with some of the modules that I also teach in my program so that you guys can better visualize how the program can help you, and basically how you can improve your career. So let's dive in.

The first thing in my career that I really wish that I had a very different mindset, or rather did things differently, was to stop comparing my own career journey with someone else's. Now, this is a very personal story for me, because when I first graduated, it was in the 2008-2009 financial crisis where there were no jobs available, you know, every headcount was frozen and there is me, just graduated, super enthusiastic and so forth. So I made a very critical error in my career planning, which is the fact that I did not plan

for, you know, a new position, I did not plan for a new career. So what happened was when I graduated and when I was ready to, you know, start my career, what happened was a lot of my peers had already landed a job. They had already signed job offers and there's me who didn't do a single thing. So what eventually happened was I joined a very small company earning a very low salary. And if you've been following my story you would know that you know I my first job paid me like 350 US dollars per month right which is barely anything so I joined this small company and really you know took the opportunity to learn something but I would say that like during the initial days of you know of being in this very small company, I felt very embarrassed for a long time.

And I also didn't meet up with my friends or my peers because I was really afraid that they would ask me like, Mei Ping, where are you working right now? Mei Ping, why are you not working in a better company? Why are you working in this random small company earning such a low pay? So I was embarrassed for a very long time. And actually looking back, I wish that I didn't have that sort of mindset

because I think it would have like sped up my learning curve a little bit more rather than wellowing in my own sadness for the first few months, feeling, you know, pity party for myself. Because if I were to think back, actually that working experience gave me a lot of opportunities. And I met the manager who referred me to my next job and from there on my career really flourished so I think the first thing is if I were to redo my career I would have a much more positive mindset and really stop comparing my own journey with someone else's because there is really no point

and the only person you should be comparing yourself against is yourself now on to the second lesson and the second thing that I wish I had done differently at the beginning of my career was to really take the time to learn the foundation of doing something really well and not just focus on speed. So I noticed that in a lot of like younger professionals or people who are really new in the working world, speed is like the only thing they care about, right? Being efficient, doing work fast and, you know, trying to impress people and so forth. So that was the trap I fell into at the beginning of my career

as well. When I first joined the company, I thought I had to finish things like really quickly. I thought, you know, I would get scolded if I was too slow and, you know, that happened. But actually what was worse was, you know, because I didn't truly learn like the nitty gritty and the step by step. Because, you know, in favor of doing things quickly, I ignored those things. But what then happened is they kind of came and bite me back later on. Because I couldn't really be fast at my work because there were multiple things that I had to redo and correct and rework. And all these things actually take up more time in the end. So if there's one thing that I could have done better is really slow down and learn the steps, learn the exact process, follow the guidelines and learning how things are supposed to be done so that I can kind of like produce quality work and gradually work on my efficiency and effectiveness rather than just

rushing rushing rushing and in the end potentially destroying my reputation because it was not a job well done so that was a lesson I learned earlier in my career and once I learned that lesson in the later path of my career, it really helped a lot. And that's why even in my current course right now, the Corporate Survivor, one of the things that I really care about and I emphasize to every single student in every single module is the importance of having the right mindset and also developing the right skill set. Going through the exact steps of developing your critical thinking, outlining your stakeholder circle, learning exactly how to communicate, being productive and so forth. All these skills, and I call it the top 12 skills, tie in together. You can't have one without the other. You can't learn to communicate,

but don't know what you're communicating about. You can't work fast, but don't know what the objective of the work is. So I will not go into a lot more detail about the program. And if you want to find out more, you can always go to www.thecorporatesurvivor.co to learn more about the framework and so forth. But the key point is that if you want to do something well, learn the exact steps and get to the groundwork. It's so, so, so important to make sure that you have a solid foundation. And that's really something that I wish I would have learned

at the beginning of my career. And if I were to redo my career, you can bet that that's one of the first things I would focus on. Moving on to the third thing I would do differently or rather the perspective that I would have differently is to treat my colleagues friendly, I guess in a friendly manner but not necessarily expecting to become friends or even best friends. Now, this is probably a lesson that I learned a little bit later in my career because I remember the first job that I was in the small company and even my second role in a global multinational company, my focus as a young professional was basically trying to be friends with everyone and feeling very disappointed if I feel like people were not,

you know, including me in conversations, were not, you know, asking me for lunch or dinner, like basically wanting to feel included because I thought that we had to be friends. And that was what a lot of conventional advice out there told me I was supposed to be doing. But it's totally not true. You don't have to become friends or like best friends with your colleagues. You should be friendly, you should be polite and respectful but not exactly expecting to be friends. In fact, this is a very big gray area that I find a lot of corporate professionals struggle with and even in my program on a monthly basis, I do run group mentoring sessions where students are able to ask questions to really get my advice on how to

navigate their career and really how to deal with people at work. And one of the common questions that I do see is, you know, how to tackle the people dynamics and how comfortable should I become with my colleagues? And like, you know, how do I, you know, communicate in a friendly way with my boss and so forth? So rest assured that if this is a question that's on your mind, it's normal. A lot of my students in my program, The Corporate Survivor, do feel the same. So rest assured that if this is a question that's on your mind, it's normal. A lot of my students in my program, The Corporate Survivor, do feel the same. So what I usually do is in the mentoring program, I do give them a bit of advice on how to navigate that situation. But having said that, what's very important is in module two, which I go into a lot more detail in

the course on the people and personality types modules to really try to understand each person's personality and how to actually interact with different people. So module two is one of those foundational module in phase one, which is get clear on the corporate world. And this is something that will continue to be applied as students go through the program, phase two and phase three, even from getting confident with their skills and later on getting visible personal branding having that core foundation of like understanding different people from how they think how they feel and how they act it's really going to help you a lot in your career so that's something that i wish i would have done differently and i'm really happy that at this moment at least you know in my role as a career coach and career mentor i'm able to

also share this knowledge and these experiences with corporate professionals who are currently enrolled in my program, the Corporate Survivor. So I hope that this tip also helps you to see a very different perspective on how you can behave, not necessarily trying to become best friends. Now, moving on to the fourth thing that I would do differently if I were to restart my career is to be more empathetic and be more understanding of my boss. Now, before you say no and before you completely disagree, just hear me out. So one of the complaints I hear from a lot of corporate professionals,

you know, as usual, is complaining about their boss, right? Complaining about their line manager, their head of department, basically complaining about their bosses. And I was the same at the beginning of my career or during, I guess, my younger days as well. As I climbed the career ladder, you know, from fresh graduate to executive to manager to director, senior director and so forth, one thing I realized also is that, guess what, your boss also has a boss, right? Your boss has his boss or her boss. And basically, we are all there to manage expectations, to do a good job, to show our value and to contribute.

So once I had that realization, I realized that, you know, there is no need to take things very personally. Honestly, it doesn't help you, doesn't help me, doesn't help your boss, doesn't help the team to take everything personally. Because at the end of the day, if that's what you're going to do, you are only going to hurt yourself. So once I had the bit of that perspective that, oh, actually my boss also has a boss, like my boss is also in a pretty difficult situation.

He or she is also actively managing expectations, actively trying to do a good job. I felt like I was a little bit more understanding and as well as trying to be a little bit more supportive on how I could help him or her out in delivering the department's goals or delivering the team's KPIs, which I think is really how I can best add value and best contribute. So that mindset shift truly is quite big for me. And I think that it was something that I learned probably a little bit later in my career once I became manager and director. And I fully recognize that if you are listening to this, you may not immediately

relate and that's okay. The reason is because you may not have managerial experience. You may not have leadership experience. And as I said you know once I became a manager once I became a director and a leader I started getting a lot of these perspectives which I think help a lot and I hope that by you tuning into this podcast as well as you know all the corporate professionals enrolled in my program and my course the corporate survivor I'm able to give you if you're listening to this podcast, something a little bit of a high level behind the scenes, but also for my core students, really able to deep dive with them in our mentoring calls or in our bonus one-on-one career strategy sessions

to give them that perspective that honestly is not very easy to get, you know, unless you've kind of been there, done that. So I think these are the four things that I would definitely do differently if I were to restart my career and give myself the best chance of success. Because at the end of the day, you are the most important person in your career. And therefore, if you don't care about your career, then you should not expect that anyone else is going to care. Because if you're not bothered, then why should someone else be bothered? So my wish for you in this episode is really see it as an opportunity to get better, see it as an opportunity to improve your mindset, an opportunity to improve your skill set, and also

realizing that you are the most important person. Basically, you are the superhero in your own career story. And if I can help you a little bit more along your, to make your career journey a bit smoother, you can always check out www.thecorporatesurvivor.co, where I share the three-step framework, as well as some of the features and how I help corporate professionals in my career course, The Corporate Survivor, to better navigate the corporate world. So if that's something that you find helpful, you can always go to www.thecorporatesurvivor.co.

You can find the link somewhere in the description section. And if you have learned something really interesting from today's episode, make sure that you drop me a DM on LinkedIn or Instagram. So in the meantime, I hope that you take your career seriously and i'll see you in the next episode