Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep189: Where do you see yourself in 3 years?

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

✅ 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. If you could wave a magic wand, what is the one big career transformation that you want? And what do you think you need to do to make it happen? In my own career, whenever I face a struggle where I actually wanted to do something,

but I ended up not doing it or I would procrastinate and I would overthink, what about this? What about that? What about everything? What I have found super duper helpful is to ask myself, okay, I say I wanted all these things, right? And it's very scary to change jobs, change company, change environment, change whatever. Now it's very scary. But the question I found very helpful is to ask myself, if I were to stay in this situation right now for another three years, and I don't even tell myself like 10 years, I mean, honestly, that's too long. So I just ask myself, if I have to stay in this place for the next three years or this situation for the next three years, am I okay with that? And most of the time, the answer is obviously no, right? You know inside you that this is not the right situation. I don't want to be here. I'm not surrounded by the right

people and I can probably do more. And I'm disappointed in myself because of whatever situation that's happening in your career right now. Maybe, you know, you made certain wrong decisions or moves at some point, but really ask yourself whether if you don't do anything, three more years in this situation, because it's not going to immediately get better tomorrow unless we do something about it. And when I say do something about it, it doesn't mean that you end up changing a job immediately. Sometimes there is a preparation time

to really improve your mindset, to really look into some of the skills that they are having and then really start practicing and see how you can make your current situation better than to move on. So that's the question that personally, I found super duper helpful because most of the time when I ask myself this question, I get this determination and also I get this conviction to say, yeah, no way I want to be here anymore. But as I said, it's not that I'm going to resign tomorrow.

It just means that I got a lot clearer on what I wanted because I knew what I didn't want. Maybe the thing that I wanted was like a 50-50 or maybe 50-60. It's like, oh, maybe this, maybe that. But what I didn't want was this current situation. That's something I didn't want anymore. So let me share with you some of my personal career journey stories. And these were actually some really, really pivotal points in my career that it's the what I didn't want actually trump or manage to lead me in

the right direction to really take the courage and to go for what I want. If you have been following me, my story for some time, you would know that I'm someone who started as a very, very retired introvert in a very small company. I was underpaid and eventually moving up the corporate career ladder to a corporate leader in my 20s. Now, there were many career moves that I've made throughout my career that a little bit stemmed from fear, but I made that decision anyway. So I'm going to give you sort of like the entire journey and I'm going to give you the logic that I had every single time when I changed jobs, every time I changed career or seek out for a new opportunity.

There's always that driver and that motivation that pushed me to make that move. As you know, I started in a very, very small company during the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. So I was stuck in this small company that honestly, it was just not right for me. Culturally, the people there, you know, everybody's just like status quo, right? They just want to work, go home and and then gossip, which I didn't like. Now, the problem was that I didn't have any other choice because it was during the financial crisis. So I knew that, okay, the plan is, right? Maybe I didn't have a clear plan then,

but at that time, I just knew that this was not the future. I knew that it was not the future, but I didn't know exactly what I needed to do because obviously the economic situation is not agreeing with me. So what happened was I really asked myself whether am I even doing well in this job? Yes. I mean, maybe I don't like the company. I don't like the environment. It is kind of like not for me, but I really had to be honest and ask myself whether, hey, actually, am I kind of like a bit of the problem as well? Because at that time, right, I was a fresh graduate. There were actually a lot of things i didn't know about you know how to work

more efficiently how do i align expectations you know how do i communicate well you know how do i feel brave and actually talk to people and even clients and so forth so what i did was like okay the ultimate goal i know i wanted to move out of this company. However, during this time, I remember if I gave myself like a six-month sort of like period, and I told myself, okay, this next six months, I'm going to learn how to work properly. When I say work properly,

basically it's skill set, right? How do you communicate with people? How do I make sure I don't work late, right? What can I do to gain clarity on what the goals are, right? How can I schedule more meetings with my manager? All these things I actually taught in the Corporate Survivor 3-Step Framework that actually came from the many years I've been working. But anyway, back to the story. I sort of like worked on my own work skills first. Then when the opportunity

came, I started applying and I got an interview. Even though I got the interview, there was also that part of me that said that, I'm starting to do better in this job. I think my boss likes me and he always tells me that he appreciates my effort. Should I even go for it? Because it's a new environment and also a much bigger company. So I kind of had that internal struggle of,

this current place suddenly doesn't look that bad, right? But eventually, I asked myself that three-year question. Say, hey, if I were to stay in this company in the next three years, is that really what I want? And then that actually gave me a lot of clarity on my situation, which is like, I don't want to stay in a small company. I don't want to be underpaid for the next three years. Like, that's not cool. Once I asked myself that question, I was like, yeah, we're just going to go for it, right? Because even though it's risky, it feels scary. It feels like, you know, high anxiety to go for the right because even though it's risky it feels scary it feels like you know

high anxiety to go for the next thing but i knew that like hey if i were to stay here in the next three years right i don't think anything good is going to come out from it and eventually i think day by day i'll be even i'll feel even angrier and more frustrated at every single thing at every single person and more importantly angry at myself so i I was like, yeah, let's just try. So I went for it and I started a new role and obviously, when I first started, I was also lost.

That's obviously the other things around, you know, the step-by-step, the strategy can actually fix. Eventually, when in this next role, right,

that time I was with En Siam Yang Singapore. So when I wanted to leave EY, right, I started like looking around because many people, if you started your first one or two jobs,

sometimes it can feel like, yeah, maybe we should just continue because you're still young, right? I mean, obviously, I was still really young at that time. It kind of feels like maybe I want to be in an environment where I already know my team members. I already know the people working with me. We get along, we go out for drinks and stuff. Why is there a need to do something else? But I asked myself the three-year question and I asked myself,

if I were to stay in this audit position for the next three years, actually, what's going to happen? So what I had on my list was, well, maybe the next two years, I'll likely be a manager. But an audit manager,

do I really want that? I don't think so. Then what's going to happen again in the next three years? Probably, I would have to manage a team because as a manager, I need to manage a team.

And then I looked at it, I'm like, well, everyone is working late. Like, do I foresee myself continue to work late all the time? And now I need to take care of other people

in this industry or in this like area that i'm actually not that interested in and then more important question is that it's beyond the three years i actually looked at all the successful people in the in that current company and obviously those are the partners right or the managing directors or the you know senior vice presidents depending on which company you're in, right? But at that time for me, it was all the audit partners. And I looked at them and I was like, yeah, I don't think I want to be them.

I cannot imagine, maybe not even three years, maybe you're talking about like 10 years. I'm like, I don't want to be them. So that actually gave me a lot of clarity to make the move. And I can tell you that when I chose to go to Visa

at that time in 2013, right? There's no such thing as FinTech. Everybody told meech everybody told me everybody told me mei ping this is so stupid why would you go and join visa what's the plan after that like mastercard like what are you going to do after that it's really dumb decision and i remember that very clearly because obviously i had some doubts as well i was like huh yeah actually that's a really really really good point but again i have to ask myself back the three year question and honestly if you're someone

who is like flip-flop all the time, it's actually really, really good to take out a white piece of paper and just write down what's going to happen in three years

if you stay in this current place and you don't do anything differently just because you're scared. Because when you write it down in your own handwriting, it gives, I feel like psychologically it's like a different thing.

It's like, oh, okay. So it's like every time you feel the fear, I find that writing it down helps a lot. That was actually the push for me to move on. And yeah, I mean, obviously it's very different. Like it was my first sort of like MNC, it was my first commercial company,

it was something quite different as to what I did before. So it's like a change, not just in role, but in industry and even expectations. I also had to work with a lot of people overseas, which was still very new for me. I was still really, really glad that I made that decision because I knew that if I were to stay on, right, I was not going to be happy. And you don't want to reach a situation where you're already very frustrated. Then you try to move on because your headspace, right, your headspace at that time is not in a good space. Okay. What i have found is like that constant reflection on do i still want to be here and what do i hope

to improve i think it's okay to allocate some time to improve your skills like either you improve your knowledge build your network improve your skills but give yourself a timeline if that's not really what you want obviously you know i'm not saying that like let's say maybe he wants to climb Mount Everest. Like it's not like right now I can take a backpack and just like, let's go. It doesn't work like that, right? It's kind of like the same as well. So I kind of saw as to like, okay, this is just preparation time, right? I just need to like improve my skills. Maybe I can learn a bit about how I can write my resume better. Maybe I can play around LinkedIn. So I kind of like gave myself that six month time to really improve myself. And when I was ready, I was ready.

And even though I had nervousness and anxiety, but I think the excitement and knowing that, yeah, I did spend six months preparing for this. I didn't feel like I just started because, hey, let's just go do something, right? That's when the motivation goes down. Then the whole thing also dies off. Then after visa, I decided that visa wasn't the one for me because the point i left visa actually had a lot of sort of like challenges because i i didn't get promoted even though i was the top performer i really only go back usually go back to my the three-year question right and i asked myself

whether okay if i were to stay here for three years can i really get a promotion because clearly this time there's so much resistance and even as a top performer, I didn't get promoted. So like, what the heck does it mean, right? For me, it's a matter of whether do I want to invest another three years to again get a question mark at the end? Is it something I was willing to do? And in terms of skill set, is there really anything else I can learn? Am I seeing myself improving in the last six months? Or I was just doing what I was supposed to do, right? And if you're someone who just like keep doing what you're supposed to do,

after a while, it's like, I can't do this anymore because it's so boring, right? And I think as humans, like we need some kind of stimulation, but I think you do still need a little bit of like stimulation, a little bit of challenge

and you feel like, huh, actually maybe I can work faster or maybe I can like, you know, build this simple process and stuff like that, like the small maybe I can work faster or maybe I can like, you know, build this simple process and stuff like that, like the small stuff. But I didn't feel I had any of that.

So I took the leap and I applied for Standard Chartered and I got the job. Now that job was actually really, really different from what I have done and it was also

a very new team. So meaning that new team, meaning no policy, no procedure, the organization chart was actually not non-existent at that time.

And I think over the years, I've actually taken a lot of inspiration from that job to actually design the corporate survivor. And that's why you see in module one and two, we go like really specific

into like, you know, outlining structure and stuff like that. That's because when I started that job, there was nothing. So my boss basically told me, like, yeah, you know, just do something.

I'm like, huh, do something? But I think rather than seeing it as something negative i thought that okay maybe there's really nothing meaning that whatever that i do actually is is a success right so if there's like nothing at all like there's no expectation like maybe the role is completely new or maybe you just join a startup or maybe it's like a new department in an mnc and there's like really nothing there. And I think that, oh, okay. So there's a chance for me to reset

what is the expectation I could potentially deliver. So I kind of saw it as something a bit positive, even though things were very fast-paced. But I always ask myself every six months or every one year, particularly during the mid-year performance review and year-end performance review, as you know that I focus on those timings a lot,

particularly in June and November, December, I think it's a really, really good time to always ask yourself whether what is the plan for the next three years? What is the plan for this job in the next 12 months? In the next three years, do I still see that

yeah, I maybe want to stay here? I think sometimes the reflection question is not done enough. And in today's very busy world, many of us don't really spend time to really think about, is that really important? And is that really what I want?

Is that, how does that make me feel?