Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep226: How to stop worrying about what could go wrong?

Episode Date: September 13, 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. Hey, welcome, welcome back to the Corporate Survivor Podcast with me, Mei Ping, ex-Corporate Leader turned Career Coach and founder of the Corporate Survivor Ultimate Career Program for 9-5 professionals just like you.

So, last weekend, I was having a conversation with a client and she told me that she's thinking about asking for a job promotion this year, but she's afraid that it's not going to work out. And at the same time, she's thinking about seeking new career opportunities out there. And again, she's also afraid that it's not going to work out. And at the same time, she's thinking about seeking new career opportunities out there. And again, she's also afraid that it is not going to work out. So the advice that she wanted from me was, Piping, what do you think I should do? What if it doesn't work out?

Does it mean that I'll regret it? Now, this actually reminded me of my second job that I've ever worked in. And at that time, I was working in a global accounting firm. And as part of my work, I had to go through a process and a review checklist. And one of the questions work i had to go through a process and a review checklist and one of the questions that i had to go through was this question called what could go wrong right so

this probably made sense in terms of like doing process reviews and so forth but this conversation i had this client actually reminded me of the time of when i was working at that company and the reason is because this question or rather this statement, what could go wrong, is probably the thing that is actually stopping you from having the courage to level up, to go for the next thing,

to ask for a promotion, to ask for new opportunities. It's such a simple sentence, a simple word, but you'll notice that it's actually stopping you so much in your career. So I'm going to give you a very simple sort of like mindset reframe that I found extremely helpful in my career. So every time I think about what could go wrong,

I ask myself quickly, what could go right? Yes, what could go wrong, right? That's a very default way of worrying about it's not going to work out. Oh, this thing's a failure. It's going to be this and that, la, la, la. But the sooner you can turn it into what could go right yes i asked for the promotion what could go right well what could go right is that i actually do get promoted right i get a better job title which increases my value positioning for the next opportunity that's something that could go right what could go right well Maybe I get the promotion and I get a salary increment.

Perfect. What could go right? Maybe I get level up to a people leader with new opportunities that I can put into my resume in the future. Yeah, that's something

that could go right. But if you are fixated on what could go wrong, then you notice that your whole mind is coming up with more and more and more scenarios and most of the scenarios

might not even be a real thing and it's a very hypothetical or maybe you're imagining it or like you're projecting forward down the rabbit hole and you know down the black hole and that's not a good thing so every time you think about what could go wrong then quickly ask yourself okay what could go right then the other question i found very helpful is that and i think it's quite similar as well is the point around what if this fails? Then the other question then is, what if this succeeds? What if you are successful in seeking that new career opportunity? That would mean career growth, that would mean more opportunities, more exposure, different kind of experience, promotions, again, more salary, and maybe like the next phase of your career, the new adventure,

the new level up, the new exposure, which could be very interesting as well. So the what if I fail comes up a lot. And this is something like I would say that in my earlier career, it pops up a lot like, oh, making that move, you know, stepping up at work. Oh, what if I fail? Right. But at the same time, it's like is like okay but what if you succeed like i'll give you a specific example like in early 2016 when i was working at standard charter right the bank the bank was actually going through like a huge remediation project and at that time i was asked to present right a specialist training together with a couple of like key stakeholders in the portfolio like basically around going around the world. And the first thing I said was, no, I told my boss, no, thank you. I don't want

to do that. Cause in my mind, I was thinking that, oh, I'm surely going to fail. It's not even a situation of like, what if I feel it's like, I know I'm going to fail because I'm an introvert. I feel very stressed out, right. Doing public speaking. And I don't feel confident in myself. So that's the thing that I kept, I kept telling myself, kept telling myself. Then I found the conversation with my boss very helpful because my boss basically said that maybe you work so hard on this portfolio, if you don't present, then you're literally passing on your work to someone else. And, you know, what you can do is to prepare. You already know the thing, it's just lack of preparation. And maybe that's something that you need to work on

ahead of, you know, that global presentation. And I kind of like thought about it for a while and I gradually concluded and kind of like came to a more objective point of view, like, you know, from negative feelings into I would say like a more positive, objective point of view by asking myself that, okay, what if I'm successful, right?

Meaning that more people would'm successful, right? Meaning that more people would know me, right? I would increase my visibility significantly. And I would say that luckily, I decided to just go for it because after that huge presentation over a period of three months and really engaging with the entire portfolio of like 2,000 people actually working on the correspondent banking FI portfolio, my really blew up and during that time i knew everybody i was i knew everybody but i think everybody knew me and more importantly i had the chance to connect with the c-suite level across all the countries in which then chart actually has footprint in and i'm talking to people who are at the c-suite level right right? Senior directors, executive directors, managing directors,

people that normally maybe as a junior director at that time would not actually have access to. So I would say that this is probably the biggest, biggest example in my personal career that actually has been a positive outcome. And I think it actually started from me kind of like shifting that mindset of like what could go wrong to what could go right what if i fail into what if i'm actually successful and i think the other point here is really around preparation because if you keep thinking that oh it's going to fail if i'm going to fail i'm going

to fail i'm going to fail then maybe the question is how can i make sure that i don't fail right so if you want to make something go right then what can i do to increase my chances of this thing going right so for example if you are scared for a performance review well you can prepare that and this is something that is also taught in my career program the corporate survivor and recently we also had multiple students who initially told me maybe i'm scared i'm scared i'm scared but after they go they went through the program and specifically the lessons and the templates around how to prepare for their performance reviews they went through the program and specifically the lessons and the templates around how to prepare for their performance reviews. They went through all of that and they had a very good conversation

with their boss. Their boss agreed that they did really well. And for the first time ever for this one particular client, she even rated herself exceeded expectations. For the first time in her 20-year career,

she told me that maybe it's the first time that I actually rated myself well because now I feel confident that I actually deserve the promotion and I deserve the salary increment so it's really that courage of asking right then pushing for it obviously advocating for yourself and if it's not going well right your company can't give it to you then move on to somewhere else so I think the concept is also the same if you're looking for a new opportunity instead of asking yourself telling

yourself oh what if I feel you know job market is competitive there are too many people blah blah blah then maybe the question the better question is okay how can i make sure that i'm successful right how can i get clearer on the job options that i want right what would be the most suitable for me in terms of the next phase of my career how can i better understand what hiring managers are looking for how to better present myself and structure my interview answers, how to better sell myself in a resume. And all these are taught in my career program as well. I mean, currently in the Corporate Survivor, if you sign up, you get a bonus course, which is the Jobs and Strategy course in which I teach you basically what

hiring managers are looking for so you can better communicate your value to hiring managers. So anyway, not so much about my program, but the point I'm trying to make here is that, OK, if you feel scared, right, first thing is that you need to change that script, right, that question and that thought in your mind from negative into something positive. And then after that, we're going to layer in

with the actions that you can actually take. And I think that's really, really the biggest shift. So I wanted to end today's podcast here by asking you, and basically giving you a very quick exercise of analyzing and sort of like evaluating and reflecting and thinking back at which point in your career or maybe like in your day-to-day like work life that you're actually always having that negative thought and I want you to actively change it to the positive connotation so every time you say that I don't know how to do this

work I'm probably going to fail at it I want you to turn it around to say, okay, it's my first time looking at this piece of work. Then what can I do to make sure I succeed at it? How can I prepare? How can I go and look for the resources? And whether you're getting the resources and the framework from my career program or somewhere else,

then I just need to make sure that like you are actually going through that initial thought process because I can teach you the best strategies, but eventually if you cannot change that thought in your mind like flipping that switch right the mindset switch and actually the thought of like what if i fail into what if i succeed what could go wrong into what could actually go right how can i be successful then that's how you're going to have the natural motivation to want to learn the strategy take the action improve your skill set and i think that flow is super, super, super important. So I'm going to leave you with this exercise.

And if you're watching this on YouTube, drop a comment. Which negative thought and script do you have in your mind? And what is your intention to change it in the next couple of days? So look forward to hearing from you and I'll see you in the next episode.