Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep224: How to upskill so you feel confident at work. Jade’s Story Part 2.

Episode Date: September 7, 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. If you're thinking to yourself, I am already trying my best at my job, but somehow I don't feel as confident. And I have an intention to improve my career, improve my skills,

but I don't know where to start. Then welcome and welcome back to the Corporate Survivor Podcast with me, Mei Ping, ex-corporate leader turned career coach and founder of the Corporate Survivor Career Course. Now, this is part two of a three-part career series where I share the career journey of Jade, which is not her real name, but she's the first ever client that I worked with back in 2019. And she's a client still in my world today. So she's still someone that I'm working with. Now, this is a story of my client Jade, who went from someone who was totally lost, got fired,

asked to leave from her company due to poor performance issues to becoming a confident professional who is currently a manager leading a small team today. So in the last episode, we talked about the year 2019 and 2020 where we dealt with her recovery from setback of getting fired and also regaining a little bit of confidence by successfully landing her new role at an MNC. It's a specialized position, so mainly focused on execution. And the thing that we actually focused on in the year 2020 was really around understanding the corporate world as well as gaining clarity. So if you want to check out the previous episode, you can. But if you're a corporate surround member listening to this, then I want you to

actually dive into the course lessons. The-step career growth framework which is lifetime access you can go into phase one which is get clear on the corporate world you can get all the lessons to that if you really want to upskill okay so let's get into the part two of this client story and we are going to focus on the year 2021 and 2022 now high level what we worked on for these two years is to actually continue upskilling her corporate skills. Now, the thing is that like she has the intention of wanting to improve, but there are actually a lot of skills gap and specifically the corporate world skills gap that are actually a little bit different from maybe what you have heard before. So my aim today is to share with you the four groups of like core corporate skills that you

need to improve. And that was skills that you need to improve and that was something that i taught to jade and all this actually happened in year 2021 way before i created the corporate survivor career course so these are the um i would say four skills groups that i taught to her and then we're also going to talk about how in 2022 right i'll say late 2021 2022 she finally regained that confidence to actually ask her boss for a promotion which is something that she has never ever imagined that she could do because she has always felt very low confidence she didn't believe that she could actually get any even good feedback at her job so let's talk about let's actually dive right in to the year 2021, where we're going to talk

about the upskilling part. Now, when this client came to me at the end of 2020, early 2021, she said that, you know, Mei Ping, I feel like I still want to work on my skills and I don't think I'm ready for a promotion yet and I'm okay to invest another one year to upskill myself. Now, during that time, right, she had a much better clarity on what her KPIs are, what is she actually supposed to do, but there were a couple of issues that I noticed with her. Now, first thing is that she is still very introverted, very quiet, and she prefers to do things on her own, which is an issue because what happened is that she could not really get her work done on time because she doesn't go out there to

clarify she doesn't go out and communicate and there's very very limited collaboration so she's just trying to like do things on her own figuring out on her own and maybe there's one part of her feeling scared uncomfortable but the other part that's missing actually is a skills gap because communication relationship building, critical thinking, productivity, all these are skills. And, you know, hard work is not a skill, okay? Hard work is just like enthusiasm, it's an attitude that's great, but that is not a skill.

So what I taught her in early 2021 is that, you know, we have to actually break down very clearly the four skills group that she needed to upskill so that we can get her ball the ball rolling for her like really able to make that progression so here are the four groups i'm going to share with you that i'm going to share with you how i help her to apply all these skills now the first skills group like the core skill that you need to learn is communication now doesn't matter how good you think that you are at your job, but if you cannot communicate with people,

you cannot express your ideas well, you cannot listen well, you don't understand things clearly, what's going to happen is that whatever pieces of work,

whatever guidance or instruction that your boss gave to you, you will not be able to understand that correctly. And even if you wanted to clarify, you don't even know

what to ask, right? And even if you have done a good job, you may not be able to communicate and say, hey boss, I've done all these things, and these are things I want to clarify, you don't even know what to ask, right? And even if you have done a good job, you may not be able to communicate. You say, hey, boss, I've done all these, these, these things. And then these are things I want to clarify if you like. Even this simple sentence that I've just said is going to be very difficult if you're someone who totally have no idea and how to communicate in like a structured, like I would consider like a corporate way. But worst thing is that if you have the mindset and the inner fear of like i can't do it i can't do it so the first skills group is i would say

communication so the listening skill interpreting the messages and guidance and the instructions at work clearly but the other part is actually expressing yourself to avoid misunderstanding now that's actually two part of it now i think after you have skill communication the next thing is that you need to start building relationships so one thing i noticed for this client jade is that like i said she likes to do things on her own and whenever she faces a roadblock she doesn't know what to do so she would just sit there and then wait so what is she waiting for she couldn't even explain it to me so eventually what happens is that when her boss asks her, okay, what's the progress with this and that?

She's able to explain a little bit, but I still think it's a little bit insufficient. And when she doesn't know something, the only person that she could go to was her boss. And this is also not really a good thing because bosses generally want team members to be fairly independent. But if your boss is the only person that you go to because you have not built any relationships,

you don't communicate with anyone else at work, you don't collaborate with anyone else, after some time, you may become quite annoying to your boss because you will come across as someone who is not independent, someone who needs a lot of hand-holding. And that, overall, is not really a very good perception to have. So why the second skill that you really need to build this relationship building is because you are going to be able to get the support and get the help from people who are working with you whether it's in your team or

different departments different functions it's going to be able to help you to move forward so this was the second thing that i noticed with this client then the third thing is i'll say critical thinking now why critical thinking is because with this client. Then the third thing is, I'll say critical thinking. Now, why critical thinking is because for this client, hard work, like I said, you know, hard work is a quality, but it's not a skill, right? So what happens is that, you know, she would spend a lot of time working hard, right?

So she would stare at the same checklist, stare at the same reporting, and spending a lot of hours like looking at the thing. But what exactly are we looking for? And like, what is the next step? And that's not very clear. And all this actually comes out to the third core skill

and that's actually critical thinking. So critical thinking is not so some kind of woo-woo stuff. It's like, oh, you know, strategy thinking, I don't understand. No, no. It's just basically process, right? The step by step.

So it's like, okay, what is the clear goal, right? Which is the clarity part we already talked about in the previous episode. But more importantly, how am I going to get to the goal, right? What are which one comes first which one comes next right it's like in a sequence of like five steps right understanding each step and how once that leads to the other and then which one comes first sequencing it correctly

all these are very very important things and for this particular client she is very ad hoc meaning that like oh okay i come out i came to this task list now i need to do this one client, she is very ad hoc, meaning that like, oh, okay, I came to this task list. Now I need to do this one thing. Then she will rush to go and do it, right? Or, you know, her boss calls her and like, okay, she panicked. She doesn't know where all the information are. And then she will rush, she will drop everything and then just like rush. So this kind of like rushing all the time, right, actually creates a lot of anxiety.

It basically comes from slightly lack of planning, but I think more importantly, the lack of like critical thinking of the processes that is actually tied to your KPI. Now, I know this sounds a little bit complicated, but it's really not that complicated, okay? It just means that if you want to get a certain task done, you want to get results, you want to achieve a certain key performance goals, there must be steps, steps that you can repeat so that you can become more efficient and more effective then this is actually to help you avoid being chaotic which is what this particular client experience now there is a fourth

skill that you need to wrap up all these things so at the end of the day like yes you can communicate with people you can build a good network at your job right you can have like the best critical thinking well everything is like great planning and so forth but all this will mean nothing if you're not meeting the deadlines okay so productivity which is the fourth core skill is actually meeting the deadlines and delivering quality work at the same time so back to this client jade is that yes she is able to put in the work but again right without communicating without communication skills she couldn't really clarify what she needed so certain pieces of work probably took a much longer time than what it needed to be so for example if she step out of comfort zone and maybe go and ask the it team right how to look into like this particular checklist or

complete a certain task, then probably she didn't have to spend the whole week trying to figure it out on her own because she doesn't understand maybe a technical terminology or, you know, it's not really something that she's supposed to be doing, but she didn't know that because she didn't clarify or confirm with someone else in the department. So all these have like very significant impact. It sounds like, oh oh it's just so easy right you know if i don't want to do it then i don't want to do it or if i work hard i'll you know i put in more hours i'll be able to figure it out actually most of the time it will not so like i said this for this for skills group it's not like one thing is better than the other is that everything

needs to go together right so once you upskill your communication right you can express yourself clearly you can also understand clearly what other people are saying. It makes it easier for you to build relationships. Then after that, you know, people feel like you're someone who is very easy to talk to, understand what your needs are. Then basically you will get more help, right? You'll get a better relationship, not just that, but I think better support and guidance. So people are more willing to share with you and give you the answers that you need

because you're able to communicate well with them. guidance so people are more willing to share with you and give you the answers that you need because you're able to communicate well with them now after getting the answers it's also really really important that you know where it fits into your performance scope because there's no point like going around asking people a bunch of questions but you don't really know where it fits into anything so that's why the critical thinking is kind of like the third part so once she has been she's able to kind of get additional information after she has improved her communication so get additional information then what she could do is then okay look at her work plan and then see okay this is kind of how it fits so this is like not a immediate thing that you can um like magically you know upskill but it's a step-by-step process

right and ultimately right once she's able to get all these things she gets the information you get the support and then you get like all these things that fits into like the bigger picture that ties into the performance goals then you know productivity actually is the easiest part right a lot of people i think make the mistake of like wanting to be productive right taking like productivity courses all these are actually useless right so if you don't understand the corporate world you don't understand key performance goals you don't master like the four key corporate skills that i talked about then it wouldn't move so actually productivity like i said it's easy part if you do the first three right then it's just a matter of like make sure that you're tracking the deadlines that's it

so these four corporate skills were things that jade really focused on in year 2021 and that actually significantly improved her confidence because confidence comes from competence. There's no point looking at rah-rah-rah stuff and then she used to actually look at a lot of social media content to feel hyped up. But every day, at eight o'clock, nine o'clock, when she gets into the office, she feels terrible again. And I told her that we need to stop this. We need to stop getting the high from motivational content. What we need to do is to turn this like rah-rah-rah feeling into something that's more objective where you can actually take action.

So I'll say that the entire year of 2021 is for her to upskill these four corporate skills. And interestingly, and the good news is that, you know, but at the end of the year, right, during the performance review, she told me that, you know, she felt so much more confident and she was actually going to ask her boss for a promotion.

So I helped her to prepare what to communicate during performance reviews and so forth. And like I said, during that time, I didn't have corporate survivor yet, but now you can actually find it in the corporate survivor course. In the three-step framework, under the phase three, get visible, there is basically a template and I teach you how i tackle performance reviews to increase your chances for a promotion and so forth so she confidently raised to her boss that she's looking for a promotion and you know what's like the career growth opportunity at the company so whether the boss her boss said yes or no like that's the the secondary part but the most important

part is that she had the confidence to believe in her value and knowing that she has contributed she has put in the effort to actually ask for it like the promotion is the second part like i said the first part is that you i do you even have the confidence to to know to realize that hey i did a good job right i can clearly articulate this you know using mapping template and get the feedback from my boss like basically get my boss to agree that i did a good job now that's the first step right if you can't even get your boss to agree that you did a good job then like there will be no promotions because your boss like what are you talking about so jade basically did that and for the first time in her career she got good feedback her boss said she did a really really good job and you know she could

see that my client was putting in a lot of effort she demonstrated a really really good job and you know she could see that my client was putting in a lot of effort she demonstrated a lot of progress since she joined the team and her boss is very really happy with her now this is something that i think really really boosted jade's self esteem and self-confidence because as i said as someone who got fired from her job right it's not easy and if you can relate right there is a lot of like emotional turmoil and also I would say imposter syndrome of constantly asking yourself, am I good enough?

Am I good enough? Am I good enough? So that kind of like, you know, allowed her to have that kind of like transformation and breakthrough immediately and say, whoa, like I can really improve. I can really become better and to actually get my boss to agree that I did a good job,

it feels like a complete turnaround than what she had experienced before in the previous company, which was pretty traumatizing. So I think that kind of gave her an immediate indicator that like, you know what, as long as I put in the effort, I'm consistent, I'm focused on what I'm supposed to be doing, then I can always improve. And I think that gave me a huge boost of confidence to say, well, actually, for someone who's like

literally down in the dumps, you can always get better. Like things can always, always get better, right? So after that, I launched Corporate Survivor. And as you know, right, Corporate Survivor is my career course for 9-5 professionals where I went through a three-step framework, right? Get clear, get confident, get visible, basically is by Jade's story. So I'm going to is my career course for 95 professionals where i went through a three-step framework right get clear confident get visible basically is inspired by jade's story so i'm gonna share a little bit more about the next part of the story and unfortunately for jade that particular year like she did not get the promotion the reason is because the team is very small so there's no additional budget for a manager position. And there's also very limited

budget for salary increment. So her boss actually was very honest with her and said that like, you know, I really, really appreciate you. I think you did a great job, but there's no space. Now, the thing is that like, you can wait for the space to open up or you can move. So this was something that's actually very new to Jade. So she told me that she said that you know I don't feel like I don't feel I'm good enough to apply for the next job so I kind of feel like staying but I also know that it's wrong to stay so you may experience this kind of like feeling whenever you feel like okay maybe you know this is kind of like a dead-end job and it doesn't align my future career goals but I'm scared so that's actually quite normal but I think for you it's also important to just follow your own pace so that's kind of what i told jade as well i said okay you can follow your own pace but what i would definitely recommend is

to start building up your resume and linkedin because at the end of the day like you don't want to be in a desperate situation to look for a job when you're really frustrated then you start looking into your resume and LinkedIn, right? It's not really the right mindset and energy to have. So I told her that, you know what, let's start 2022, year 2022, just like increasing your chances and basically start preparing for a new opportunity. And that's what we did as well. And a bit part of Jade was also like, well,

maybe my boss will change her mind. Obviously, you know, these things don't happen, but I can understand that like you go through your own process. And I think that understanding of the corporate world, it takes time. Like you don't get it immediately. And that's fine, right?

Even for Jade, she took a little bit of time and each month, each year, she improves her understanding of the corporate world bit by bit, bit by bit, bit by bit so that it becomes like a full picture, a big picture so in early 2022 i think she was quite hopeful so she was still doing well at her job still hopeful that her boss gonna give her a promotion but came like may or june i think she kind of came to a realization of like okay actually right this promotion is definitely not happening and i should stop being hopeful and i should start

doing something about it and that was really the time that we really looked into her value positioning so currently in my career course you bring time for the corporate value you get my 30 jobs as bonus lessons and this is basically helping you step by step on how to sell your value how to package your value so that you can land the next role that you want so at that time she has already been working for about 10 years and she really wanted to change industries from you know finance accounting all that stuff to regulatory compliance now this is going to be a totally new zone for her so she's not really as familiar but she has done a lot of i would say skills and achievements that will be very relevant for the job but it's not exactly

compliance but it's really really relevant so changing careers you know changing industries actually is really possible it's just learning like how to leverage your skills to convince the hiring manager so i taught her everything that i've personally done to change careers across multiple industries so i've been like in audit consulting and i've moved to internal controls fintech and then ultimately to banking as well so i taught her the format so it's kind of like a strategy it's not necessarily say okay you know right this not that but it's an overall strategy and once you get the concept of how i teach value positioning in your resume summary then she was actually able to get

multiple interviews then after that what really needed to work on was how to convince the hiring manager that she is competent she can do a good job and she can be trusted for a managerial position so we kind of went through all of that you know she also didn't give up she applied for quite a few jobs as long as it is a managerial position and she really knew that she wanted to become a manager she really really focused and have a targeted job strategy and after about two months of application and going for multiple interviews she ended up in i would say an ideal role for her so she took up an audit and compliance manager at an insurance company so manager position check salary increment 25 percent check room for

improvement check because there's a lot more exposure new industry the company is growing and the fourth thing is that she also has direct reports, meaning there are junior team members reporting to her, meaning now that this is officially a people manager position, which will then open more doors

because as a people manager position, you can start improving your management leadership skills. And this role also, right, 0.5, gave her exposure to C-suite management, including the CEO, because the company is growing and right now is kind of considered like a SME sort of size. So overall, I'll say that like it's the perfect end to the year 2022 because she has got everything that she wanted, right? Learning how to get visible, to get the recognition at her job, to get good feedback that's internal and then once she realized that there's like limited growth she actually took charge of her career to then explore new opportunities

successfully made a career change and not just any career change to it to her dream industry that she actually wanted which is a different industry a managerial position which is an upgrade from her previous specialist position and the third thing is that actually becoming a people manager which a lot of people actually don't have the opportunity to do so and fourth thing is actually setting herself up for success because she's now getting a lot more exposure and it's a kind of a leadership role as well because she is going to be the main person who is leading the audit and compliance department so overall a perfect end i would say to year 2022 but i don't want you to just look at the year 2022 i want you to look at how far she has come because starting in like 2019 she was asked to leave from her job like she was really

really down low and then gradually picking up bit by bit bit by bit so as you can see there are many many elements here that's the understanding of the corporate world that's the mastering the job clarity key performance goals that's actually upskilling the core corporate skills the four skills groups that i talked about and fourth thing is to actually gain visibility internally and to be able to have the courage to move on and to be aligned to focus on your own career goals and career growth opportunities when the time is right and to actually have the courage and confidence to actually go for it so for this second episode i will end here and for the third episode, I will end here. And for the third episode, we're actually going to talk about the year 2023 and 2024.

So we're going to pretty much come to like the present day where I'm going to share with you in her current job right now as a people manager, right? What are some of the, you know, the mindset and the skill set level up that she actually needed to focus on

to be successful at her current job? So one thing is that I think people don't realize is that at every career level, it requires a new version of you. We need to upskill, yes. But the foundation of the skill really matters. And that's going to show a lot

in the next episode when I share with you how she leveraged a lot of the fundamentals of the corporate world, corporate mindset, corporate skills that we talked about today to be able to leverage that

and bring it to the next level to be able to leverage that and bring it to the next level, to be able to deliver as a manager, basically at the next level. So I hope that you look forward to the episode that will be released tomorrow. And again, if you want to check out the first part of the episode where I talk about the first two years of who gave this client, then you can definitely check out the playlist, or you can just go to www.maping.com. There's a podcast library in there that you can access, not just the previous episode, but more than 200 episodes, everything about the corporate world, career, work, job search tips.

You can definitely do that. So with that, I'll see you in the next episode for the final part of this series. Bye.