Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep185: Should I resign from my job?

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

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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. Should I change jobs this year? Is this the best time for me to quit my job and look out for a new opportunity out there? In this episode, I want to share with you the two main reasons why people quit their jobs

and decide that they want to take the next step. As a career coach and a former corporate leader who has worked on multi-million dollar projects with people from across 43 countries, I can say that I'm fairly familiar with the motivations and actually what's kind of going through your mind in terms of making career decisions. Now, one of the most common questions that I get asked nowadays is, hey, Mei Ping, it's not the right time for me to change jobs, right? I want to climb the career ladder. I want to grow my career. I want to grow my income, but I'm not sure whether now is the right time. So what I have found really helpful personally for me, as I was in the working world for more than 10 years, really climbing up the career ladder

in every single career move I've made. And I found this formula super duper helpful for me. So let me share with you. So my formula is called the push versus pull formula. So what is this push versus pull formula and how can it help you to make a better career decision for you on whether you should stay or you should go? Now, the push and pull formula, it really comes down to motivations, right? So what do I mean by motivation? It's really thinking about it in a way of like, hey, if I want to change jobs right now, like what is motivating me to make that change, right? So what's motivating me? So there are two ways that you can get motivated. So one way I call it in a more negative tone and the other one is a

more positive tone. So the more negative tone is really all about feeling like you are being pushed out of this job, meaning that everything is just not going well in this job and therefore you feel like you really need to quit. You need to leave this situation because it's not working out for you. And the positive tone is really more, I consider it like the feeling of pulling, meaning that the next opportunity may be a lot better for you in terms of your career growth, and therefore you feel pulled towards the new opportunity. Now, so the easiest way to think about this push and pull

factor is kind of like a positive feeling versus a negative feeling, right? And this is something that I have discussed in so much more detail in my career program, The Corporate Survivor, and we actually talk about that a lot with my students during our monthly mentoring calls to help them to make a decision. So in this episode, I want you to get a bit of an idea of like how you can use this push and pull method to help you make the right, the best decision for your next career move. So now let's dive into the push factor a little bit more. So as I said, the push factor is really a lot of the negative feelings like making you feel like you need to quit right now because you just cannot take it anymore.

So what that entails is that from a work perspective, you might be struggling with your day-to-day tasks. You might be struggling with expectations or maybe you have received some negative feedback that your boss or your seniors, your supervisors may not be very happy with your job. Or maybe you, if you are someone who's more senior, maybe you got reprimanded by the head of department or the C-suite that you're not doing something the right way. The other thing could be just feelings of stress, overwhelm and frustration

because you feel like there's a lot of work on your plate and you cannot handle it and therefore it's very frustrating and feeling like wanting to move away from this situation because you can't see like what is the end goal, right? You've been taking on more and more and more work and it just doesn't seem feasible. The other thing could be you may have a poor relationship with other people. Maybe it's with the stakeholders in the company.

Maybe you don't really get along with your team members or your bosses. That can be something that is really, really frustrating, right? And the other category could be you may be passed on for promotion. Maybe you didn't get a salary increment for a couple of years already. So just thinking about these scenarios, isn't it really frustrating? And I can completely understand that as well. So if you're currently encountering any of these situations or feelings, I think it's very normal to think that,

oh, maybe I want to move on because this is pretty crazy. I don't feel that it's sustainable for me to continue to be in this environment. And therefore, as I said, you know, back to the terminology that I use, which is push, right? So if you are thinking of quitting your job and looking for new opportunities due to all these factors, meaning that you're in the push factor, the job is pushing you, right? Or rather your current situation right now is pushing you to look for the next opportunity. Now I'm going to talk about the cons later,

but let's just get into the pull factor first. Now, on the opposite side, right, you have what I consider a more positive feeling, which is the pull factor. Now, the pull factor is really more focused on what the new opportunity could be giving you. So this could tie in more with your long-term career goal. So for example, maybe for your career goal, you are looking at the next career level. Maybe you're looking for a higher salary. Maybe you're looking to change industries. Maybe you want to work on a bigger portfolio. Maybe you are working in a small company right now. You want to work in a bigger company or maybe you want to work in a

bigger team. So a lot of the things in the pull factor are future aspirations. What are some of the things that you want to do, but maybe the current company just doesn't have that kind of opportunity for you. Maybe it's due to the company structure or maybe you don't have the right bosses, whatever it is, right? There could be the next thing that we want to do, like you want to do, but it's not possible

in the current company. So therefore, when you get headhunted on LinkedIn, for example, or you start exploring new opportunities out there, those things, the moment you see it,

you're very excited. You're like, whoa, actually that's really the next thing that I want. So for example, maybe you're a senior executive and you're looking to advance in your career and you're looking out for an assistant manager role or even a manager role. Maybe the next role that you see is very exciting and therefore the motivations behind you wanting to seek out the opportunity

actually is the pull factor, right? Because it's the new opportunity that's actually pulling your interest and like moving you forward in the next direction. Now, it's really, really, really important that you get clear on whether you are looking to change jobs because of the push factor, which is the negative part, or the pull factor, which is the positive part. Now, why this is so, so, so, so, so important is to make sure that you do not pick the wrong job when you make the career change. Now, one of the biggest problems with, I think, a lot of nine-to-five professionals is choosing the wrong job. Now, you can be successful at any job, for sure, but what will hurt your success is not knowing yourself and not knowing what is more suitable for you based on your personality, your interests and your skill set.

Okay, so let's talk about quitting your job solely because of the push factor, which means that you hate everything that's going on in your company right now and you just want to look for the next opportunity. Now, the big danger here is that you may end up job hopping and ending in the exact same situation that you are in right now. So, let me give you an example. Now, most of the time, if you are struggling in your job, it could be due to lack of clarity, work confidence, work competence and skills, and visibility strategy. Now, all these strategies definitely can be learned. And if you are not doing that properly,

you could end up with, you know, getting caught in the push factor. Now, what I think is really, really important is to recognize, are there any areas that you could still improve? Because if you don't look within and really reflect on your mindset and your skill set, what's going to happen is that you may be able to land the next job. But these problems will likely pop up again because the underlying issues are still not fixed. So for example, if you are struggling to handle your workload,

that tells me that you have a time management issue, you have a priorities issue, and you may struggle to actually manage expectations and to network correctly with your stakeholders. Now, these are skill problems, right? So if you rely 100% and, you know, 100%, the push factor is the only factor that you are making, you know, you are thinking of to change your job, then the next job, the skills gap is not going to go away unless you focus on it, right? So the next job, you may eventually come to this same point as well. So that could be the danger also. And it's exactly due to this reason,

I always advise my clients in my career program, The Corporate Survivor, to always make sure that when you are looking for a career growth opportunity, meaning when you're making the next move, it's not caused by frustrations, it's not caused by negativity. You need to improve yourself and really take some time to self-reflect and really try to understand, hey, actually what went wrong in this job? Like how come, right?

100% of the reason why I want to quit is due to all these bad things that are happening and I'm actually not thinking about the skill set that I might be missing, the clarity that I might be missing. Now, there could be a combination of both. So, for example, you may have certain level of frustrations but at the same time, if you really want to be successful, right, the move that you eventually make needs to be more pull-focused focused meaning that you are actually making that career move for something that can actually help build up your professional value more so for example it helps you to maybe enter a new industry or move up a career level or maybe increase your income if that's what you want to do but what I'm trying to say is it has to be some positive momentum when you make a change because if your decisions are fully filled by negativity, you will always be trapped in negativity and

that's not going to be okay. So I challenge you to think about whether you are truly making that career move because it's helpful for your career or you're making that career move because it's helpful for your career, or you're making that career move because you want to escape your current situation, which is a completely different thought process, and it could definitely determine the success for you at your next job as well. So if you're currently making your career decision, then think about Mayping's push versus pull factor, positivity versus negativity, and really ask yourself and be honest.

Because self-reflection is one of the most important things that you can have in terms of making sure that you are building your career strategically as well as sustainably and if you're currently a client in my career program Be Corporate Survive then make sure that you utilize the monthly mentoring calls that we have every single month to get my guidance and advice on your career situations and also book your free one-on-one career coaching call with me so that we can actually strategize your career a little bit more and help you make the best career decision that you can have for the next phase of your career.

And if you're not yet a student, then definitely check out The Corporate Survivor at www.mayping.com. And lastly, if you are new to me, you don't know who Mayping is and you just want to learn a little bit more about what I teach and what I do, you can definitely download my 5-Day Career you just want to learn a little bit more about what I teach and what I do, you can definitely download my 5-Day Career Growth Guide

and it includes a bonus training as well at www.mayping.com. I wish you all the best in making the best career decision for the next phase of your career. See you next time.