Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep216: How to avoid feeling incompetent. Here's what I did.

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 you're starting a new role, right? First one to two months when you're adapting phase, how much of it, right?

Starting point is 00:00:31 It's really because work is really intense and how much of it is really because you still don't understand the company, you don't understand the structure, you don't understand the nature of your work. So half of that could be learning time. When I first transitioned into banking, I've never worked in banking before. It was very, very challenging for me because first thing is I was still trying to figure out my actual job. That's the clarity part. But the other half of it is more like, well, how does the bank actually work? How do they

Starting point is 00:00:57 structure things? It's very, very confusing. So even though I worked hard, but I never once felt that, oh, it's not fair. This job sucks. You know, I just came in first month. I'm really working so many hours. I didn't really think that. I kind of like sort of decided that, oh, okay. There are two problems here.

Starting point is 00:01:16 The first thing is how do I make sure that I understand my actual job, right? And that, you know, requires conversations with my boss, my peers, and like all the other team members. So I was like, okay, that's my job, right? How do I use this my boss my peers and like all the other team members so i was like okay that's my job right how do i use this template how do i do all the due diligence who which stakeholder that i need to talk to that's like literally phase one and phase two of the corporate survivor so i was like okay that's my day-to-day job right which i'm like trying to figure out what's going on then the other half is me telling myself that hey maybe it's your first time in banking right you don't know what the heck is going on and if you continue to ignore it it's going to be worse so the other half of the time is like i also tried to write down okay actually what do i not understand so what i found personally very helpful because you see right if you don't tackle what you don't know or you

Starting point is 00:01:59 at least start by identifying what you don't know eventually what is going to happen is that the busy days is just going to continue what i started doing is more like as and when i go through my work right if someone is if someone is commenting or maybe like a specific terminology or they're mentioning this specific department basically i'm hearing things that i've never heard before i will actually write it down then you know i have a list of like terminologies that maybe maybe has no idea what these are but i'm like okay this is gonna be my research right research could be maybe after office hours or i could also dedicate i also had dedicated time during the weekends as well so i

Starting point is 00:02:35 was like okay right i pull out this sheet of paper i'm like okay this week right these were the terms that you know i heard for the first time which i have no idea what these things are that's what i did during the weekend and you can actually think of it as like hey maybe you know, I heard for the first time, which I have no idea what these things are. That's what I did during the weekend. And you can actually think of it as like, hey, maybe, you know, you have no work-life balance, but I kind of saw it differently. I was like, well, if I want to succeed in this place, and I've already gone through a proper thought process before accepting this job. And I know that this job allows me to grow, but right now it's growing pains. Why do we use the term growing pains? It's because the learning curve, right, is usually the steepest the first one to two months that you join the job.

Starting point is 00:03:09 So it's like you can give up and decide that it's not for you. And there are certain circumstances in which it's really not for you. It's fine. But I think how I kind of looked at it is like, I use it as an information gathering process and it may feel frustrating.

Starting point is 00:03:21 And I think maybe, you know, when I was like a lot younger, meaning like, you know, the first five years of my career career that's what i always say right if like if you have for less than five years everything feels like it feels confusing so first five years probably i was still kind of lost but you know during that time it was really like you know past five years where i had more realization of like okay it's an information gathering process i cannot you know magically speed up things because i'm going to miss stuff. So I kind of went through that piece by piece of like piecing that jigsaw,

Starting point is 00:03:49 the corporate jigsaw puzzle together. So if you have already gone through module one, right, you know, I talk about the jigsaw puzzle, right? So the thing is that like when you join a new company, particularly you're joining a big company or you join like a regional global team, that's more pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. It's not like your first job

Starting point is 00:04:03 where everything's very simple, right? And then you have like three pieces of jigsaw puzzle patched together. Oh, okay, that's that's more pieces of the jigsaw puzzle it's not like your first job where everything's very simple right and then you have like three pieces of jigsaw puzzle patched together oh okay that's great but you know when you join a bigger company like things became complicated you know you become more senior or the fact that you have more experiences like there are more pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that appear so i always looked at it as to like oh every time i hear a word that i don't know i'm like okay that's a new piece of the jigsaw puzzle. I'm like, where does this sit? I don't know yet. I'm going to write down my piece of paper. So it's like now, right?

Starting point is 00:04:28 You can imagine like, Mipin has a bunch of like small pieces of jigsaw puzzle that I don't know where it fits. Okay, nevermind. I keep like, this is the stack of the jigsaw puzzle. Okay.

Starting point is 00:04:38 Then, you know, as I talk to my stakeholders, I talk to my managers, right? I try to understand, oh, actually this piece of jigsaw puzzle, I'm like, do you have any information? Like, where does it fit? talk to my managers, right? I try to understand, oh, actually this piece of jigsaw puzzle, I'm like, do you have any information?

Starting point is 00:04:47 Like, where does it fit? So that's how, right? It's like, eventually I piece all the jigsaw puzzle together. It's not like over a period of a month I did it.

Starting point is 00:04:55 Sometimes it's over a period of some time. But it's like, once you know the mindset of like, okay, you know what? It's just that every time you find something new,

Starting point is 00:05:04 it's just that you found a new piece of jigsaw puzzle that fits into the big picture that you're trying to build you may not really know what the full picture looks like you have an idea but that's where that's where curiosity comes in right something's interesting you can find out more find out more find out more so i think that kind of drives the natural motivation for me because personally i don't believe in this idea of like, if I join the company, right, someone else is responsible to tell me all the answers.

Starting point is 00:05:28 I'm like, no one knows all the answers. Like, I mean, have you guys looked at the people around in the office? Like, no one knows the answer. You don't know. The other people also don't know. So everyone's like kind of trying to figure it out.

Starting point is 00:05:37 So the way that I deal with it is not so much looking at it. I'm like, oh my God, all these people don't know. They are so stupid. Like, why am I here? If you think like that, right? I think that's a difficult way forward.

Starting point is 00:05:48 So Mei Ping's way of thinking is these are pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. And that's why in Corporate Survivor, like where we start the program, you notice that I like to use the word like jigsaw puzzle to describe things. That's because like how,

Starting point is 00:06:01 that's how I visualize it.

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep216: How to avoid feeling incompetent. Here's what I did.

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