Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep156: I was confused and lost in my career.

Starting point is 00:00:00 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. When I first started my career, I was young and lost. And today I want to share with you three lessons that I learned along my career journey that if I had known earlier, it would have changed the way that I approach certain things in my career

Starting point is 00:00:43 and approach certain things at the workplace. So this is part two of if I were to restart my career series and if you missed the first part, you can check out last week's episode. So let's dive into the three things that I wish I had known earlier which would completely change the way that I approach my career for it to become better. So let's dive in. The first thing I wish I would have done differently or rather think differently was to stop trying to become perfect and try to achieve perfection in every single thing that I do. Why this became eventually a very big problem was because I thought every single piece of my work had to be perfect. I thought every single thing I did, every activity, every small piece of document had to be perfect.

Starting point is 00:01:26 As a result of that, what happened was I spent a lot of time checking and rechecking and rechecking and rechecking and rechecking, or rather trying to beautify something that eventually I became unproductive because I was spending too much time on this one thing that may not be as important and I was also really ineffective because if I couldn't deliver something on time then that piece of work that I've been putting a lot of effort on like you know my boss or my team member couldn't actually use it so as a you know unexpected outcome of perfection was I became really slow, ineffective and unproductive, which was not great. So this was something that I noticed that even happens to a lot of corporate professionals nowadays, because when students first enroll in my programs, and these are all corporate professionals, when they first enroll in my online course, The Corporate Survivor, I actually give them a one-time, one-on-one career strategy call with me. And out of the many conversations I've had with new students,

Starting point is 00:02:27 I noticed there is this big trend of them wanting to achieve perfection and spending a lot of time, but at the same time, feeling disappointed in their effort of not being able to work faster and deliver faster results. So this is really the exact lesson that I share with them, which is like stop achieving perfection. What's even more important is understand your roles and responsibilities, which is taught in module one of my course, and understanding personalities, which is taught in module two. And then when we go into module three, four, five and six is really then developing the skills and holistically uplifting your entire skill set to hit your KPIs in the fastest way possible

Starting point is 00:03:06 and the least obstacles possible. So that was the lesson that I learned not too early in my career, unfortunately. And I think that if I had learned to get rid of perfection and not, I guess, to be too obsessed with perfection, I think I would have achieved way better results at work with a lot less anxiety and stress if I had only learned that perfection does not exist. Now on to the second career lesson that I wish I had learned earlier and it would have probably affected the way that I approach my work was to start speaking up sooner. So if you know my career story and you've been following me for some time, you know that I'm a highly introverted person although you may not look like it but I'm a highly introverted person

Starting point is 00:03:50 I was a very quiet person shy I didn't talk a lot at the beginning of my career I would say even up to like the time I became manager I was still quite quiet in general and what I realized is I guess whether you like it or not you you know, being visible, speaking up, getting yourself seen will bring you more opportunities and I felt that at the, maybe the first five years of my career, the opportunities were always limited because I was always doing the hard work but no one is noticing me because I was hopeful, which is the wrong thing, I was so hopeful that my boss would like magically give me the opportunity or like magically promote me or magically give me the increment without asking

Starting point is 00:04:31 for it. Reality check, it does not work like that. So one thing I wish I had done sooner was to speak up and I don't mean speaking up in a very rude way or very noisy way. That's really not the method that I teach to, you know, students course the corporate survivor we actually go in to a little bit more of a i think i will call it a win-win networking method that has worked really well for me even as an introvert and also works really well for my students who are extroverts as well so speaking up is really important if you want more opportunities you want more opportunities, you want to be seen, you want to do the fun stuff, you want to do the cool stuff, you need to speak up and you need to speak up right now. And moving on to the third important lesson that I wish I would have had this mindset

Starting point is 00:05:16 earlier on in my career because I think it will help me find peace a lot more and that's all about defining what growth means to me, defining what career growth means to me, what career success means to me. So while I have been extremely fortunate to be able to climb the career ladder, moving from fresh grad, executive, manager, director, senior director, head of department, within a pretty short period of time, I felt that there was certain kind of expectation, maybe at the beginning of my career, of what success looks like. And for me, maybe for a while, I thought that climbing the career ladder was the true measure of success. However, as I progressed in my career, as I spent more time, talked to different people, you know, move industries, change companies and roles, I gradually learned that

Starting point is 00:06:06 at the end of the day, you can define what growth means to you. Growth can just be as simple as avoiding drama at the workplace. It could be as simple as learning one skill. It could be as simple as understanding your teammate better. It can basically mean that one thing that you want to improve on. And I think that is maybe a better definition of growth versus looking around at other people's achievement and feeling bad about yourself, which I will tell you right now, it is not the way to go if you want to have a long-term career because that is not sustainable. And in fact, if you are trapped with the traditional definition of what career growth or career success is, eventually you may feel extremely stressed out and burnout. And I have never met a person who really wanted to be burnout in their career. Everybody is there to do their

Starting point is 00:07:02 best. And just like how I did my best, just like now, nowadays, I mentor students in my program to do their best in their careers and I also hope that for you to define what career growth means to you and to really focus on that. And there is no shame to say that the way that I'm going to grow my career is to just learn that one skill. The way I'm going to grow my career is just learn that like one method to be able to work a little bit faster, to be able to work a little bit more effective, to work a little bit more, a little bit more, because any growth and any progress is still progress. And you need to make sure that you have that kind of mindset so that you can go on this

Starting point is 00:07:41 career journey and career learning journey for a long period of time versus like going on a crazy sprint that you will immediately burn out, which I learned that is definitely not sustainable. And this is the exact advice and method that I teach to students in my career training and mentoring course, The Corporate Survivor, specifically diving into the three-step framework,

Starting point is 00:08:03 get clear on the corporate world, get confident with corporate skills and get visible with personal branding. This is the three-step framework I teach my students who are corporate professionals like you to grow their career confidence in the corporate world. So as I said, define what growth means to you. It's okay as long as you think that that's the definition.

Starting point is 00:08:22 Perfect. And growth can just be one new skill, one small thing. And as long as it makes sense to you, it makes sense to you. Just like how it made sense to me for maybe over a certain period of time, I just wanted to maybe improve my understanding of people. And I worked on that. Maybe for a period of time, I wanted to learn how to communicate better. I focused on that. And I managed to grow my career as well. I managed to climb the career ladder as well, if that's what you want, of course. If you have chosen that that's what you want,

Starting point is 00:08:53 I would still highly encourage you to learn how to work a little bit more effectively and efficiently so that you can go home on time and spend time with your family. And you can only do that if you know the methods to how to work better so that you don't spend too many hours in the office. So these were the lessons that I wish I had learned earlier in my career. I think it would have made a big difference if I had learned it earlier and I would definitely do it differently if I have the chance to restart my career. So whether you are listening to this episode right now as a fresh graduate, an executive, manager, director, and so forth,

Starting point is 00:09:28 I hope that you found some nuggets of wisdom that you can also apply in your career. If you want to work with me more directly, you can definitely check out www.thecorporatesurvivor.co. The link is in the description to learn more about my career training and mentoring course. And of course, if you learn something and you feel so excited to share with me, then make sure that you drop me a DM on LinkedIn and Instagram. I'd love to hear from you. Until then, I'll see you in next episode.

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep156: I was confused and lost in my career.

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