Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep215: How to be successful at your new job (Should I quit?)

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

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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. You have just started a new job. It feels challenging. So should you quit?

Welcome back to the Corporate Survivor Podcast with me, Mei Ping, ex-corporate leader turned career coach and founder of the Corporate Survivor, the ultimate career course for 9-5 professionals just like you. So in today's podcast episode, I want to share with you a story of my corporate survivor member who recently started her new job at a commercial company and felt like she couldn't quite get along with her boss. So she asked me this question, maybe do you think I should quit? I don't want to quit because it's a great opportunity for me, but this is something that was a bit unexpected. I expected everything to go well. I expected myself to adapt very quickly, but I just don't quite feel like I

can work with this boss. So what should I do? So this was what she said during our bonus one-on-one coaching call. So if you don't know, when you join the Corporate Survivor, you get a bonus one-on-one coaching call with me for personalized guidance and advice. So she decided to use this call to ask me this very important question. Now, I think this is a very fair question. And the first thing is that when you're starting a new company, it's very normal to feel uncertain, a little bit confused, but also quite excited at the same time. So it's one of the things that she told me

in the sense of like, she couldn't quite identify whether she's excited or she's getting very nervous about this. So I think first things first, right? If you're feeling that way, that feeling is extremely normal. Now, I'll tell you what I told her. Now, the first question I asked her is that,

okay, so how much have you gone through the corporate survival lessons? So she said, well, I kind of went through module one, which is about getting clear about the corporate world and KPIs, but you know, I got a bit distracted. Now, I think she's very honest and for sure, but what I told her is, okay, the lessons, the get clear on the corporate world, right? Understanding the corporate jigsaw puzzle, understanding your KPIs, understanding the mindset switch that you need to make. These are really, really important lessons that I recommend that for her to actually go back and review the lessons, which could be the initial reason why she was feeling a little bit uncertain because she's

pretty much going in with a happy-go-lucky attitude without having any structure, any right mindset of starting a new job, not following the step-by-step structure and process that I teach. So that was definitely the first mistake that I noticed that she made. Then the second question I asked her was, okay, you said that it's quite challenging to work with your boss. You find it very difficult. So give me some examples of what do you mean? Like what did your boss do? What did you do? What was said? Give me a little bit more example. Now, this is really, really important because it can feel challenging. It can feel difficult. It can feel like you're struggling. But at the end of the day, like what is the reality? The reality is that the actual situations that actually happen, right? So she started telling me that, oh, I feel like my boss is a micromanager because whenever I submit

work to her, right, she will ask me very detailed questions. She'll come and ask me about my progress updates often. And I feel like I'm independent. I can do a lot of things on my own. So that is pretty micromanaging behavior and I don't like it. So when I heard her examples, the first thing that popped to my mind was, okay, this client, this student is lacking a little bit of perspective because she's expecting to have the same level of trust going into a new company where she's new to the company, she's new to the boss, she's new to the team, for everyone to immediately trust her and to understand her working style immediately, to accept that she's

independent immediately. Now, I think that's a little bit naive because when you're starting a new job, right, it's your role to try to adapt to the culture, to adapt to the different working styles. So definitely there's a little bit of an incorrect mindset here. And then as I dig deeper, as she shared a little bit more about her situation, I realized that she made a very, very critical mistake. She made the mistake of giving new ideas, wanting to share new suggestions, but she is so, so new at the job that she doesn't even know the existing process, right? Because she came from a background of consultancy, meaning that, okay, I'm just going to give a bunch of recommendations and that's my job done. But she didn't understand that in a corporate job, right? Your job is to first understand what's

required of you to execute the existing processes. And once you have developed trust, reputation, then you can give suggestions. So this is something that is taught in the corporate survivor three-step framework, right? Is get clear on the corporate world, get confident in corporate skills, and then get visible personal branding. She's trying to do the get visible at the initial stage, which what actually she's supposed to be doing is to get clear. And this clearly explains why her boss is checking up on her so often because she is not completing what she's supposed to be doing, which is the baseline of the job, her existing KPI, but she is busy bodying, giving up new suggestions, which is kind of not part of the initial role that

she was hired for. So that is why her boss is checking up on her, following up on her, and giving her some guidance and asking her probably a lot of questions that she felt that her boss is micromanaging her. And all this also wraps up to a much bigger issue, which is she doesn't understand people, personalities, priorities, and working styles. Now, this is a very, very significant problem because if you don't know what the priorities are, the working styles of your boss, then how are you going to work together? So one of the lessons I recommended for her to go through, which is part of the module one of the Corporate Survivor Guide Clear on the Corporate World, which is module two, people at personality types,

to actually really understand how to communicate with different people, different people's personality, particularly her boss in which she has concluded that her boss doesn't get along with her. But actually, what is missing is really the difference in personality. And this is something that you really, really need to nail. And fortunately for her, when she had the one-on-one coaching call with me during that week itself, I had the bonus mindset masterclass around understanding your own

personality and then a people and politics workshop, which is an exclusive mentoring workshop in the corporate survivor, helping you to understand different people's priorities across different levels, how to work with different people and to really reframe your mindset around working with different people. So she joined both of the live sessions and she said that she learned so much and she realized that she is projecting her own mindset, her own personality, her own preferences onto different people. And this clearly worked in her previous job because she's been there for a very long time. So everybody kind of knew her, but in this new job, she's starting afresh and she did not adopt that mindset.

So after going through the Corporate Survivor's core lessons around understand people and personality types, going through the bonus mindset masterclass around understanding herself, and then the people and office politics workshop, after she had gone through all of that, now all of that you can get access the moment you join the Corporate Survivor.

So you'll be able to learn all of that as well. So the moment she had gone through all of that the next thing she did was she followed the step-by-step and she went to have a one-on-one conversation with her boss exactly in the structure that i teach and then she dropped me a message on instagram just a couple of days ago telling me that maybe i really want to thank you for the one-on-one call that we had together i had a one-on-one catch up with my boss and i got very good feedback from my boss around the pace that I was in. My boss is pretty happy

with my progress. I'm progressing well. And my boss said that she likes that I'm extremely proactive. And we also talked about some of the things that I'm going to focus on

for the next couple of months. Overall, it was such a big change and big turnaround just over a period of one to two weeks. And she told me that she had a refreshed mindset. She had a new thinking. She felt so much more positive right now. And I'm so

happy for her. I'm so excited for her. And I just want to use this example of this client success story to show you that change can happen very quickly. From the point that she was complaining to me about how she didn't get along with her boss, her boss doesn't like her, all this job, should I quit? Just within a period of 10 days, 10 days, right? She had a completely new mindset. She got positive feedback from her boss and now they have actually worked out some of the things that she's going to focus on

for the next couple of months. And I think this is a huge win. If you're ever in doubt that this new job, whether it's right for you or not, I want you to really ask yourself, did you go in with the right mindset? Did you go in with the right strategy? And are you actively working on your skill set, understanding people, understanding different working preferences? Because these are such

important skills and elements that you need to master, which is also why I've designed my career course, Corporate Survivor, in the exact same way, right? You get access to the core modules, the three-step framework, get clear, get confident, and get visible. And what she really needed when she started her new job was step one, get clear on the corporate world so that she can move on to step two, which is get confident with her corporate skills.

And ultimately, to get recognized by implementing step three, which is get visible with personal branding. So everything needs to be in step-by-step. And the moment that you skip it

or you go through the lessons and you don't implement it, then this will all stop your progress. And like I said, change can happen really quickly. For this particular client, it took 10 days, 10 days from maybe I want to quit to maybe I'm so excited at this job and I really, really want to continue on. That's just in 10 days through one bonus coaching call and going through the course lessons, attending the workshop, the bonus mindset masterclass, and everything of that is included in the mentoring sessions. So the final piece of

advice I gave to her is that the excitement is good, but I want to make sure that you stay motivated, you stay inspired, and you stay accountable to all the actions that you say that you are going to do, all the lessons that you say that you're going to implement at your job. So I recommended that she attend our monthly mentoring sessions, which is a Q&A call I organized for all active corporate survivor members so that they can learn from one another's careers so that you avoid future mistakes, you avoid reputation damaging mistakes, you avoid pitfalls, you avoid future career damaging mistakes. And this is really the value of having ongoing mentoring sessions to commit to be accountable to yourself so that you don't get distracted and you stay focused because excitement is just one feeling.

But staying motivated, staying inspired and staying empowered and believing in yourself along your career journey is so, so, so important. And that's really the most important thing. So if you're someone who's feeling like, hey, I think this new job

is not working out for me. I think this new boss is not working out for me. I think this new company is not working out for me. Maybe what you need is a much better strategy. With that, I wish you all the best

and I'll see you on the podcast next week. And if you're a Corporate Survivor member, I'll see you in the course. All the best. Bye.