Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep242: I asked 100 people what "career success" means.

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

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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 back to the Corporate Survivor Podcast with me, Mei Ping. So last weekend, I organized a 2025 career strategy and work planning session for my corporate survivor members.

So in this super jam-packed session, we talked about a lot of things, particularly how to turn your fantasy career goals into a reality. We also talked about overcoming imposter syndrome, the multiple stages of upskilling, as well as the lessons learned from the past 12 months and more importantly, what my students are planning to do to make the next 12 months even better in their career. So one of these specific segments that really stood out to me was a question that I asked my members, which is what went right in your career in the last 12 months? So what are you proud of? What are the things that you feel really, really

did you did well, you are proud of and you want to do more of and you feel like, hey, I did good, regardless of what happened. I think these are what I could consider my achievements for the new year. So I want to share with you some of the comments that I received from my members and more importantly, a huge realization and a huge perspective that I think you can learn and I'll aim to share that at the later part of this episode. So let me share with you

what my members talked about. So there are a couple of members sharing, so I'm just going to go through student by student. So student number one, the question is, right, what went right in my career in the last 12 months? So student number one said, understand and explore more communication styles while working with people from diverse backgrounds, especially when dealing with deliverables under tight deadlines, improved my decision-making skills, and able to express myself and intention more clearly with preparation and communication, learned ways to overcome mindset blocks related to imposter syndrome and self-doubt, I re-watched and revised my notes from the mindset masterclasses in the course.

Now, the second student said, completed a multi-stakeholder and multi-geographical project, stepped up to lead the team's year-end review, more confident to clarify and manage expectations with stakeholders. Now, moving on to the third student. So he said, mindset shifted from negative to positive, expectations alignment with bosses, weekly status updates with bosses. Now, that's just the first three, but moving on.

Default student then said, emotional support from family to redirect myself to a positive mindset to focus on learning despite the perils and harsh criticism from my supervisor. I put in a lot of effort to manage to close out 2024 in a more positive note with my supervisor and currently working on improving communications with supervisor. Okay, then the next student, student number five said, although felt overwhelmed at times, still delivered and completed majority of tasks. I believe I did fairly well in leading my first team. It's my first experience. I had the opportunity to be part of a project with higher visibility. And finally, the last student said, finally taking the leap of finding new job opportunities, securing a new job and joining the corporate survivor.

Now, all these are amazing achievements, amazing wins by my Corporate Survivor members. But here are some things that I have actually noticed, which are actually really, really interesting, from just some of these experiences and sharings that I pulled out from these members. Now, first thing is that these sharings from these six students, my clients, my corporate support members, are actually across all career levels. So the thing is that if you listen to the achievements,

the success that the students have they themselves mentioned, you can't really tell what career level that they are at. And I think this is really the beauty of learning how to survive, navigate and grow your career in the corporate world, in which you notice that everybody is kind of like going through their own phase of adapting, performing, and growing in their roles. So therefore, the fact that you can't tell what career level these students are, and I can tell you that it is actually ranging from fresh graduate, junior executive, senior executive, manager, and even up to director as well. But you likely can't tell from just the sharings that I've just shared with you, meaning that everything that I teach, everything that I teach in the Corporate Survivor and everything that we

discuss in our monthly members call is applicable for every level. And it's also a reminder to you that everybody goes through the same things that you are likely going through right now. Now, the second thing I found really interesting as well is that out of the sharings that members submitted, right, in terms of the achievement, I would say that out of the six sharing just now, most of the students actually managed to find a new job in the last 12 months. But interestingly, out of the six that I've just shared with you, only one student mentioned she found a new job. And I'll tell you that actually more than half of them

did manage to land a new job. And for many of it, it was a dream job with salary increment, career growth, level up, and more opportunities. So what I found this is so interesting is because so many of them,

even though finding a new job, level up, it was a great thing, but very few of them mentioned that it was a big achievement of something they felt went right. In fact, you'll notice that many of them described the challenges that they have managed to overcome as the thing that they are really the most proud of in the last 12 months, right? It's actually overcoming challenges, overcoming things that they are not so familiar with. And they also specifically describe how upskilling, how learning how to work with different people, learning how to communicate with different people and making progress on that was something that they felt really proud of. And many of them have also said that going through and being able to deliver challenging projects was something that they were

really really proud of as well and i found this to be such an interesting takeaway such an interesting takeaway of like what success truly means if you really really drill it down now i'm sure everybody would want a new job everybody would want like a new job a new new company, you know, get to get paid better. But the time is like the season of you, like the, I'd rather not season, but I would say the event of you getting that new job is just that one day, right, of the year. But guess what are you doing? Like most of the year, you are at work eight hours a day or maybe even more. So in fact, when I asked my members, and this is something that maybe you can relate as well, as you think back of your entire year, your entire work performance year, the last

12 months, you'll notice that the thing that really pops up, the thing that you remember the most, and the thing that makes you feel calm, confident, you know, enjoy work-life balance, like no stress after office hours, is actually how you feel day-to-day at work. The things that you feel proud of, the things that you manage to overcome, the upskilling, the level up that you focus on, those are the things that really stay with you. And that's why so many students mention these things as their biggest success and the thing that they are most proud of in the last 12 months. So I think it's just a good realization that like, yeah, we all want like big career success. We all want a job promotion. We want more money. We want more

opportunities. We want a new company, blah, blah, blah. But when it comes down to it, it's really how you feel at work every day. Do you feel confident? Do you have clarity? Do you feel in control? Do you feel like you know what to do? Do you feel like you can stress less? Do you feel in control? Do you feel like you know what to do? Do you feel like you can stress less? Do you feel that you can panic less? Do you feel that you are delivering your performance goals? Do you feel that you can get along with people? Do you feel that it's a good environment that you can learn how to adapt with different people

and meet expectations and feel confident to speak up, to get recognized for your hard work? All these things is the daily feelings that just finding another new job is not going to resolve. If you feel this way in your current job right now, I can tell you that even if you go and job hop the next couple of jobs, it's still going to happen because the issue is not with the new job.

The issue is actually adapting in a corporate environment, knowing the rules and learning how to navigate that and learning how to find opportunities of growth within your current role. Find areas of upskilling, level up, value adding in your current role. And that's really the thing

that interestingly, which many of my students have demonstrated and very honestly shared is the thing that they felt proudest. They felt that that's how their year went in a more positive way. And I hope that this is something that you can take on as well. So while you may

be very focused on the big wins, right? The promotions, the salary increment, the new job, but never ever forget 99.99% of the time you are working and you want to make sure that you work smarter you have clarity you can get along with people you can deliver your job well so that you feel confident in control

and proud of the past 12 months proud of your work performance proud of everything that you have done and you have achieved and more importantly proud of the person that you have become because once you level up your inner mindset, then the external corporate mindset, you become someone that you know can become successful at any job, not because it's the job,

not because it's your boss, not because it's the environment, but because it's you. So I hope that this sharing from my corporate survival members have inspired you and further reminded you that yes, focus on the small wins because it's the daily wins, it's the small wins that eventually create the big career results. It's a step-by-step process. So focus on the small wins, focus on the small skills, focus on doing well, feeling confident, have clarity in control day-to at work. And ultimately it will lead to the big career growth, career opportunities and the big career results

that you truly want. So with that, I wish you all the best. And if you want to have a look at the Corporate Survivors three-step framework that I teach my members, you can go to www.miping.com. So in there,

there is also a sample members mentoring Q&A call that I share more practical feedback on how to overcome your career, workplace or job search situation that I think you'll find super duper helpful as well. So if you find that useful, you can go to www.maping.com to access

the links and learn from there directly. So with that, I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.