Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep247: How to work with anyone, at any job, across all career levels.

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

✅ Watch FREE WORKSHOP, newsletter, work with me ⮕ http://www.meiphing.com ✅ Corporate Survivor™ is the BEST career program on how to navigate the 9-to-5 corporate world, work smarter, earn more and stress less using Mei Phing's 3-Step Framework [Get Clear, Get Confident, Get Visible] so you can grow your career & salary without sacrificing work-life balance... 🚀⚡📌 ABOUT THIS PODCAST:Welcome to Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing — ex-Corporate Leader turned Career Coach & Founder of The Corporate Survivor™. On this podcast, Mei Phing shares her 10+ years of corporate world insights, experiences and wisdom so you can grow your 9-5 career with clarity, confidence and opportunities. ✅ WEBSITE ⮕ https://www.meiphing.com✅ NEWSLETTER ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co/newsletter✅ FREE WORKSHOP ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co/workshop✅ CAREER PROGRAM ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co⚡

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. You don't have to like every single person at your job, but you must learn how to work with anyone and everyone if you want to have a successful career for the long term

without feeling like there is people drama at every single job that you're in. 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, the ultimate career program for 9 to 5 professionals just like you. Now, today's topic is going to be so important because when I speak to my students in my career program or even people in my community, when I ask them, hey, you know, actually, what do you find very challenging about your work? 50% of people say, I don't know how to work with my boss. I cannot deal with my boss. The other 50% of people say, I have stakeholders.

I have colleagues. I have coworkers. I have people that I find very difficult to work with. I don't know how to work with them. They really make me very emotional, very negative, and how do I deal with them? So this is so important because if you struggle to work with people, you will struggle at every single job. And guess why?

Because it's people. Every single job, every single company, every single department, function, team, the constant is people. So you should expect that you will be working with someone at some point that's going to be quite different from you. Maybe some of them you can get along. Probably most of them are going to be very different from you. Different communication styles, different working styles, different priorities and so forth. So if you don't learn how to handle and understand people, I would say frustration is almost guaranteed. I would say 95% guaranteed. So I'm going to give you a TLDR version in terms of how to really understand how to work with people at any job

and specifically across every career level. Now, we can't go into detail in today's episode because it's going to go on and on and on for a long time. But I have recorded a free workshop for you. The workshop is one hour long where I'll go through step by step in terms of every single career level on and on and on for a long time but i have recorded a free workshop for you the workshop is one hour long where i'll go through step by step in terms of every single career level from executive manager director as well as c-suite management what do they care about then you can understand their priorities across every different level whether it's your boss your stakeholder

your client your colleague and so, there is always something that they will be focusing on depending on their career level. So once you understand that, it's going to be so much easier to communicate with them and you will feel like you are talking at the same wavelength with them. So work is going to get a lot easier as well. So you can sign up for the free workshop at www.maping.com. Once you understand this, it's going to be so much easier to work with any single person. It's a knowledge and skill that you can bring on to any job. And more importantly, you will definitely strengthen your communication and collaboration skills. So I think I'm going to only put it up for a limited time. So if you want to watch it now, you can go to www.maping.com and

register for free. So in there, I'm also going to throw in another bonus training to help you deal with any career, workplace, and job search challenges. So there's another one-hour training that's actually a paid training, but you can watch it for free when you sign up for the free workshop. So you can check it out at www.maping.com. Now, this episode, I'm going to give you a TLDR version to really help you understand that aside from just being emotional, which is not going to be very helpful,

instead of just thinking that, oh, actually, this is just going to be a difficult person. We just don't get along and I don't care. I've given up. So that is actually not a very, very good mindset. And I think the mistake that many people make is to assume that, oh, this other person is very difficult. This other person is always negative. This other person is always bringing me trouble. So this is not a good mindset to have it because you are layering and you are kind of like judging your let's just use your co-worker you are judging your co-worker based on the personality so basically you're looking at their work habits and their work priorities and you're just labeling that oh this is a bad person this is a difficult

person which is gonna be even more challenging in terms of relationship. So the mindset I want you to take on is that, hey, every single person has a job to do, right? I have a job to do. My colleague has a job to do. And every single person has a priority. Just like you have priorities, you have KPIs, you have performance goals that you need to meet. That other colleague also has their own thing that they need to do. And sometimes your goals, right, your priorities may align with the colleague and then you have

like a very good working relationship. Sometimes there's misalignment, right? Whether maybe your work is not a priority, maybe they think their work is a more priority and therefore there's some miscommunication along the way and therefore with lack of alignment what you get is then you know the attitude for lack of better word right so what you see is maybe lack of support what you see is lack of help then you label it as in oh this is a difficult person so change your mindset to looking at the priorities so if the priorities are misaligned then definitely you will not get the help that you need and therefore the relationship may feel a little bit challenging if you feel like you really need support,

but the other colleague or your boss or the other stakeholder is not giving to you. Now, a quick TLDR version on every single career level. So we're going to start with executive. Now, when you work with an executive or if you're an executive level right now, so executive, analyst, associate is all the same level, right? You need to understand that every single junior person that you know is focused on completing their task on time, right? That is actually their goal. Like they want to make sure

that they finish their work on time. So therefore, if you give them new work or you ask them to do something new, they may not necessarily want to do that because their job scope, usually for someone that's more junior, their job scope is actually very, very specific. So when you come along and say that, like, hey, can you go and do something extra? They may be thinking like, who are you to ask me to do something new? At the same time, this is kind of like not part of my checklist and i'm not gonna do it but on your side you may be thinking what the heck like this junior is so difficult this junior is so lazy so can you just see the very quick perspective just by this one example i'm sharing with you is because you want to understand but at different career levels like they have different focus your stakeholder right your colleague your team member they have a slightly different focus so you want to really appreciate at the career level right what do they care about and therefore it's going to be a lot easier when you want to align work you want to reallocate work you want to really appreciate at the career level, right? What do they care about? And therefore it's going to be a lot easier when you want to align work, you want to reallocate work, you want to communicate with them. Then you will always sound very empathetic. You always sound like you want to collaborate with them. That's really, really important. So as I said, someone

who is very junior, they have a checklist and they have a very specific task that they need to go through and they want to go through it very fast. So anything that you want to get them to do, probably they're not going to be very keen because they just want to go bam, bam, bam to finish up their checklist. Now, moving on to the next career level. So next career level is going to be a manager. So if you have already watched

or checked out last episode, I talked about the role of a manager, the role of your boss. So a manager's job is to manage. And to manage what? To manage the projects, right, which is the workload, and to manage people. So the manager's priority then is all going to be about completing the work of high quality and on time. So therefore, a manager is usually very busy. They have a lot of things to do, right? Some managers are organized, disorganized. That's another working habit, but generally they have a lot of things to do, right? Some managers are organized, disorganized.

That's another working habit. But generally, they have a lot of things to do. It's always about timelines, right? It's always about chasing. It's all about progress. So therefore, when you work with a manager, if you're someone, again, asking the manager to do more work or to prioritize your work, for sure you will face resistance because the manager is already very busy

or someone at the manager level is probably very busy with their own work. So when you ask them to do new work, probably they will push back. And from your perspective, you might be thinking, oh, this person is so difficult. This person doesn't understand me. May not really be the case. It may just be like, maybe they just have a lot on their plate. So therefore, again, the solution always is alignment. There's always communication, understanding, you know, what's important to them

so that then you can, you know, work around the projects and making sure that your work gets prioritized too. So the lesson here is to not label, not label that

this person is difficult, this person is lazy, this person is not understanding. It's not really the case. Maybe you need to, you know, try to understand, communicate more, to align with the other person's perspective. Now, let's move on to the next career level. So next career level is going to be a director.

So now we're talking about leadership and management, who is someone who is a lot more senior. So when you talk to a director, you need to understand that the director is usually very strategic and focused on the big picture. So therefore, if you go and talk to a director, a director comes and talks to you, and what you're going to share is all this nitty-gritty stuff. And from a director's perspective, they'll be like, what the heck is Mayping talking about? Does she not understand that I'm looking for something that's big picture? I want to listen to the strategic part.

So just by this very simple example, and actually happens like more often than you think so it may feel like a miscommunication misalignment and you may also find that this person is very difficult to work with so let's say if the director comes to you and ask about something very big picture they want to know the strategy like the the bigger step by step right but what you share is all this nitty-gritty around like you know how to click this button right this one or two items here and there. So it may feel like the director doesn't understand you and you also feel that you don't understand the director, but basically it's really an issue around focus. It's an issue around priority and it's an issue around understanding their point of view, which maybe you are not as experienced because you have

never reached that level yet. So you don't really know how to communicate with them. But that's actually definitely something that can be learned. And usually that is the cause of miscommunication with a director and finding a director or even a C-suite very difficult to work with. Now, moving on to the next level and the final level actually is C-suite management.

So CEO, C-suite, or even leadership and management, someone who is really, really senior, usually they are very, very focused on vision, right? They are also very focused on growth as well as profit. So therefore, again, very, very similar to how you are working for a director as well.

So if you're going with all this integrity stuff, right, you'll find that from a C-suite CEO standpoint, they may not really understand you. And you may feel like you didn't impress them. You may feel that they can be very difficult asking a bunch of things that you may not really understand you and you may feel like you didn't impress them. You may feel that they can be very difficult asking a bunch of things that you don't really understand or even if you've given your answer, you feel like they are not listening to you.

But sometimes it could be a two-way street as well. It's because they are looking for something that is very high level, very big picture, very strategic, but maybe you're talking at something that is a little bit more execution and it's not for the lack of effort. It's just maybe you're not really focused on the right thing because you don't really understand what they prioritize and how they think, right? So understanding the management point of view and specifically the point of view across all career levels will really help you a lot. So this is just a very, very quick TLDR version because understanding how to work with different people across the corporate career ladder

is going to be very, very important. And I definitely need more time beyond a very short podcast episode to share with you. So if you want to learn more how to work with anyone and everyone at any job across all career levels so that you'll be successful, not only at this company,

for every single future jobs that you're going to be in, then make sure that you check out the free workshops at www.maping.com. You can sign up for free. I'll walk you through in the one-hour training exactly how to understand the corporate world,

how to understand, how to work with the people within the corporate world across every single career level that you can definitely take on for any of your future jobs, any of your future career. I think it's going to be

a very, very valuable knowledge to learn because this is something that I think only I can teach you because I have gone up the entire career ladder and I've also worked very closely with leadership and management.

I've been in all the positions that we're going to cover across the corporate career ladder. So once you have this knowledge, it's something that once you see it, you cannot unsee it. And I think this is going to be

super duper valuable for you so you can definitely check it out at www.mipin.com and I'll see you in the next episode bye