Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep40: What you need to know about career growth.

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 what you need to know about career growth. So is career growth really about job hunting? Is it your first job? Is it the performance review that you're doing every year

Starting point is 00:00:49 in your current job, right? So career growth is a very, very big word and I do think that recently different people have very different interpretations of what that means. Personally for me, I have spent 11 years in the corporate world climbing higher and higher year by year. So this is a very, very common question that I get asked by my community and my clients and a lot of people is how did you move up the corporate ladder so quickly so that I shared episode 30 so if you're interested in the nitty-gritty of it you can check that out but what I want to share in this episode is how you can take charge of your career growth and this is something really important to take note, right? I said, you need to take charge.

Starting point is 00:01:48 Exactly. So it's really in your hands. And the big message I want to share before really getting into it is wanting you to realize that your career growth is really in your hands. It's not just relying on your manager or your boss to think of, you know, and a good role for you, a good job for you to think about your progression. It is really you needing to decide, right, where do you see yourself in the next five years, you know, three to five years and really take steps to move towards that. I do know that the standard question of, you know, when you go for interviews and people ask you, so where do you see yourself in three to five years?

Starting point is 00:02:38 And sometimes, you know, we give ourselves fluffy answers or very rehearsed interview answers, right? And that's probably fine for just the interview stage, but this is actually a very important question that you need to ask yourself every year. So where do you really want to be and what can you still get out of the current role? So at the end of the day, career growth, career development, career management, whatever term you want to call it, it is an absolute must. Because without direction, you will get nowhere. Nowhere. Because what will happen is, and this is really a really real thing, because when clients come to me nowadays, a lot of them I found are stuck in their career. So they are really experienced, highly skilled, but stuck.

Starting point is 00:03:34 Stuck because many reasons, some of them they got too comfortable with their current role and then just kind of cruise along until one day they realized that oh okay i i can't do anything else um some of them they they forgot to continue to upgrade their skills so they were kind of they got again too comfortable they they were comfortable in the skill set that they have, so they never bothered to move along with digitization, learning new skills, and people skills as well. I'm not talking about just certification or technical skills. They didn't really bother to get involved in new projects

Starting point is 00:04:21 that could give them more exposure, that could definitely help in exposure that could have definitely helped in their career down the road so it's really you know thinking through end to end kind of where you see yourself right at the end of the day it's about career clarity and career direction so one advice that I like to share and that's really true for me, because some people ask me, how do you know what you want? Because I don't know what I want in five years. Yeah, that is really true, right? You can work with a lot of coaches, mentors asking for advice, but honestly, only you can decide what you want.

Starting point is 00:05:03 But the big tip here is this, right? Think about the things that you don't want, the things that you don't want in a job. So those were like painful moments or it requires certain skills that you don't enjoy. Like personally for me, I don't really like to deal with numbers. I like to deal with like strategy and kind of like thinking through holistically what's the end-to-end impact gaps and so forth so that was something that I knew from early on so what is it for you what is it for you that it's just it's just painful it's it's not natural it's painful you don't enjoy it and you wish that it's not something that you want in your next job. So identify that because that's really the first step. You need to know what you don't want first

Starting point is 00:05:53 because if you keep getting into roles that requires you to use up skills or be in areas that you don't enjoy, then you will never, never truly achieve success because you will never be happy doing what you're doing, even though you may be really good at it. So don't confuse something that you like doing versus something that you're good at. Just like, you know, some people may not enjoy driving even though they may be a good driver.

Starting point is 00:06:25 So it's pretty much the same thing. So make sure you know and identify for yourself what you don't like about, you know, certain roles, certain skills, certain, yeah, I guess certain competence that you may be really good at it, but you don't like it so identify that and make sure that as you move along in your path right as you go on to your next job explore the next opportunity that is not an area that you keep getting stuck in so try to move to other areas that allow you to move towards maybe not exactly what you enjoy because you may not know yet but move away from the things that you don't like so it definitely helps a lot because over time, your enjoyment or your fulfillment at work increases and you'll be more motivated to perform.

Starting point is 00:07:14 So just a couple of tips for career growth and development. Number one, you need to have a direction. You need to have a direction and you need to be, like I said, you need to know what you don't need to be like i said you need to know what you don't want so they can move to closer or scope in on what you want so this is something that so important um also equally important is to always think about on an annual annual basis so

Starting point is 00:07:43 the time i recommend is the annual performance review. Think about, you know, can I still grow in this company? You know, can I still get promoted? Will I still be open to, you know, given opportunities to be on new projects and so forth? Because if not, then you need to ask yourself whatever role that you're in right now are you going to be happy being there for the next 10 years because that's likely what is going to happen because if you're not improving there are no opportunities then definitely you

Starting point is 00:08:19 will be stuck and i have clients in their 20s i have have clients in their 40s, and it's pretty similar as well, because they rely on their boss to decide for them, and at the end of the day, pretty much nothing happens. So you need to take charge of this, right? Own it. And give yourself a timeline. So if you say you want to learn something, you want to pick up some skills, give yourself a timeline and just say, okay, I'm not that great at speaking up in meetings, ladder really helped my career grow exponentially and it covers things like communication listening skills EQ leadership creating win-win relationships critical thinking

Starting point is 00:09:21 decision making time management and so forth there are definitely more and you can check out my website if you want to learn a little bit more or listen to the earlier episodes of my podcast as well. But what I'm saying is that if you don't want to get stuck, then you need to take action. You need to take action towards building those skills, developing those skills that allow you to move forward. So sometimes like when you watch all these videos online and learn from all these gurus, they will always try to give you the shortcut. So I'm here to tell you that you will only be confident

Starting point is 00:09:54 and sure of your career growth once you have the real competence, right? I always tell my clients confidence comes from competence. If not forever, you will feel like an imposter. So that's where the imposter syndrome comes in, especially you guys who are younger, but already high performing in your company. So that's very critical to remember. Yes, you can maybe go for learning programs and so forth,

Starting point is 00:10:22 but don't forget that at the end of the day, it's all about practice it's all about execution and keep improving from there you can read a hundred books on how to play tennis but until you have lifted the record then it's zero right there's there are no skills transferred even though you may have read like 100 books so So it's the same thing. So you can listen to a podcast, you can watch a video, you can attend, you know, seminars by all these gurus, but if you don't take any action and you don't get constant feedback and constantly reflect, then it's personally, it's really not going to help. Um, yeah. So the, the road to the road to career growth,

Starting point is 00:11:03 you know, the road to career success, it's something that you really need to put in effort and invest your time, energy to make that work. It's not about the fact that you go and buy a book, you attend a rah-rah three-day seminar, three-day workshop, and everything is magically going to happen. So that's basically what I do with my clients because a lot of times direction is the biggest thing, right? The what, what they want to achieve, why they want to achieve, that's normally we do that upfront. But the bigger thing is really about the how, right? The how is pretty much my expert area because I have been there, done that. Yeah, if you want to learn a little bit more, feel free to check out the content that I have,

Starting point is 00:11:48 videos, podcasts, I have lots of episodes. In fact, this is episode 40, which I'm extremely proud of. So feel free to check out the rest of the episodes. And if you feel like you need personal help, you want to have a one-on-one conversation on how I can help you, you know, plan your career growth and thinking through some of the strategies that you want to have in your career, think about it three to five years, maybe even 10 years down the road, feel free to reach out and let's have that conversation. So in the meantime, all the best and don't forget to reflect don't forget to

Starting point is 00:12:25 have a plan and take action so wish you guys good luck and see you soon

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep40: What you need to know about career growth.

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