Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep24: Is coaching a scam? Avoid FAKE gurus!

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. In today's podcast, I want to talk about coaching. What is this coaching thing all about? Is it legit?

Starting point is 00:00:39 Why do I have to pay to work with a coach? And really, what do I get out of it? And as for myself, like how did I get into coaching in the first place? How did I end up becoming a coach? So these are the very common questions that I get asked a lot. So I thought, why not let's just tackle it one by one so that everybody will get a better understanding of what coaching is all about. And if you choose to get coached, then I guess what you should expect. Right. So coaching to me, right. I mean, different people will have obviously different definitions, of course, but to me, it's really partnering with a person with

Starting point is 00:01:26 more insights and experience that can guide you towards achieving your goals in pretty much the most minimum time possible. Because I've been hearing from a lot of people, I'm sure you guys experienced it yourself. How painful is it to really try to go and figure it out yourself how useful are all these youtubes right the udemy courses the various you know learning courses and whatnot they spend hours and hours trying to figure it out but to no avail like how many of you have actually experienced that? How many of you have tried it? And you know what? How's that working out?

Starting point is 00:02:12 I hear 99% of the time that it doesn't work out. And speaking from my own experience, I think it's the same because when we are trying to do something ourselves, I mean, to be honest, like most of us are not that disciplined anyway. And even if we are trying to do something ourselves, I mean, to be honest, like most of us are not that disciplined anyway. And even if we are disciplined, it's not the easiest to monitor your own activities. It's a lot easier to have that perspective when you're talking to your

Starting point is 00:02:39 friends or to your colleagues. And then it's so much easier for someone to point it out to you or mirror it back to say, hey, do you know that, you know, I thought you wanted to do colleagues and then it's so much easier for someone to point it out to you or mirror it back to say hey do you know like you know i thought you wanted to do this and that and what happened right so coach is essentially that and there are various coaches out there you know career coaching and leadership you have millennial coaches you have have business coaches, blah, blah, blah, the whole nine yards, right? But for me, it's really very simple. It's about transferring insights, skills, and experience. So, you know, right now, anybody can be a coach, and I'll be totally honest, I see a lot of coaches out there, a lot of coaches want to connect with me, want to chat with me and all sorts, right? But ultimately, I guess for you, if you choose to work with a coach, then pick someone that you feel comfortable with. Because

Starting point is 00:03:34 if you can't even talk to the coach, right, then how are you going to really express yourself clearly and how are you really going to get the kind of support that you need because I believe that fundamentally you know it's really down to trust and rapport like for me right now my focus is really young executives and entrepreneurs so pretty much the generation z as well as millennials so anybody pretty much in the age of maybe 35 36 and younger i work with because i'm a millennial myself so i i really understand i resonate with the challenges that my clients are facing so i think i get like i understand it at a much deeper level rather than just kind of giving you a bunch of rara and say okay you know what good luck because I kind of hear you but I don't really understand you like if you get what I mean so the other question I get asked a lot is how did I

Starting point is 00:04:34 become a coach and what really inspired me and you know what are some of my goals and so forth. So what got me, how do I become a coach? Okay, anybody can choose to become a coach. You can go to your LinkedIn and Facebook and then announce it to the world. Say, hey, you know what, I'm a career coach tomorrow and this is what I'm going to do, blah, blah, blah, right? Of course, you can take a certification if you feel more comfortable to get the certain baseline skills. But I found that a lot of it, you know, I pretty much picked up when I was running like massive teams in the past decade at global multinational companies.

Starting point is 00:05:16 So I was mentoring my team members. I also coached them on both personal and professional development. So those skills pretty much was something that I already had. It's just that when I established my own coaching business, right, my company got a ping, I pretty much just transitioned from coaching in a corporate setting to coaching with like actual direct clients who want to work with me. So, you know, for me, I didn't really see that as like a massive transition. And I would say that, you know, in some of the coaching classes that I attend with my fellow peers, I definitely have moved on way quicker than everyone else. Because honestly, if you think that a class is going to help you become a coach,

Starting point is 00:06:02 it's going to help in a massive way without doing your own homework and without really prioritizing and really recognizing the value that you bring with your experience, then that is a massive mistake. And I would say that like the 95% of clients that work with me, they really like what I have in my portfolio, the companies

Starting point is 00:06:27 that I've worked with, the roles that I've undertaken, the kind of people I've worked with, the countries and so forth, because it adds a layer of depth and breadth in terms of like what I'm able to share and able to guide them towards. So just a quick example, I have one client who is a regional branding manager for ASEAN. So she's in charge of pretty much 10 countries to run all their marketing projects and budgets and whatnot. So when she came to me, she pretty much said, you know what, I have reached out to other coaches. They asked me a bunch of questions, but they don't really understand the challenges that I'm in. I am dealing with 50 people and it's not so easy. I don't know what skills I don't have.

Starting point is 00:07:14 And I've tried this and that, but it doesn't work. My boss is angry at me. My colleagues are not cooperating. What do I do? Right. So it's very easy for me because, you know, I used to run like massive multi-million dollar projects with 43 countries. So to me, like 10 countries is really not the biggest problem. The biggest problem, a lot of it is obviously moving towards a more collaborative mindset and really talking about the, some of the details and strategies to navigate these challenges so for

Starting point is 00:07:46 me it was a lot easier to to resonate because I've pretty much been there done that and at a much bigger scale as well so um so in that sense you know I feel like I'm really able to support without just you know asking a bunch of ridiculous questions but the client you know pretty much walks away but don't yeah they don't get anything so I you know that's kind of not how I do things um yeah then what what inspires me to work with um young people in general I feel that young people has have a lot of enthusiasm there there is a lot of motivation and there's a lot of ambition. But I feel like they're not getting the right level of insights that they require to really do well in their career and business. Because it is way beyond the certification and how awesome your lecturers told

Starting point is 00:08:45 you that you are but when you're out there in the real world like in the real business or corporate world you need to learn how to deal with people you know get create win-win relationships you need to learn how to process problems situations make, organize your time. And these are skills that people don't really teach you. And even one of my clients told me, how come I was never taught how to become a manager? Only when I'm a manager, I have to figure it out myself. And I said, unfortunately, that's the way the promotion system works because these people, the very junior staff, they are very good at execution and then when they move to become a manager then all hell breaks loose right because they're like i've never

Starting point is 00:09:30 managed people in my life and i can barely manage myself how am i going to manage like three people 10 people 20 people and whatnot that's why i always say you know what um leadership is self-management and this is something that all my clients know so I think that that really inspires me I feel like there is a lot of potential to tap it's just that they need a little bit of kind of a support and from someone who has pretty much been there done that and for me I do use like a simple coaching method which i call it my ping method p-h-i-n-g p for personality because if you don't know yourself right no self-awareness then like you cannot really do anything well because you don't know naturally what are you good at and why you're not that good or great at

Starting point is 00:10:17 the second thing which is the h part which is the hacker my um hacking of mindset, because all starts in the mind, isn't it? And the I is where we really explore ideas on the areas that you would feel comfortable trying out different things and really be open to possibilities. Then the N section is where we learn how to navigate. So normally this is the part that I think i'm extremely strong at um having seen various um various situations and drama let's let's put it this way um in my in my career so we kind of understand the dynamics people dynamics situational dynamics and impact analysis and whatnot so really learn how to navigate um so that ultimately you know it's still going to be a win-win situation

Starting point is 00:11:05 for them and finally it's what i call the go-getter stage where at the end of the day it's about taking consistent actions so i'll share a little bit more um on my ping phing method um in the next series but yeah so really if you want to work with a coach the first question you should ask is like what um what approach do you use and otherwise you know it's just going to be free flow and then you're going to have a long conversation but you kind of get nothing out of it um the other advice would be try to understand your coach's background right and if you feel like that they have the kind of background either you know in terms of like personality communication style they are practical experience and that's something that really resonates with you because if it's not that it doesn't really matter how i guess you

Starting point is 00:11:59 know competent or professionally established that coach is because you know you will not be able to resonate with them that they don't understand you you don't understand them right so it's going to be like two strangers looking at each other and say like what what is going on yeah so i guess that's just a very short episode on what exactly is coaching and really, you know, how do you pick a coach and really what can you get out of it, which is really for you to define, right? And the final advice is to go to a coach when you're ready. Don't expect the coach to save you, but really have an idea of what you want and then work with a coach that will help you get there a lot faster than you would normally get there yourself so so yeah so i look forward to speaking

Starting point is 00:12:54 to you guys in another series where i'll be sharing a little bit more about my ping coaching method so see ya

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep24: Is coaching a scam? Avoid FAKE gurus!

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