Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep45: Are you an arrogant person or just confident?

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 explore when does confidence turn into arrogance? As you guys know, I am very active on LinkedIn where I connect with a lot of students, fresh graduates, working professionals from junior staff, all the way to managing director level.

Starting point is 00:00:51 So recently, one person asked me, how do I know when I'm being confident and when I'm being perceived as arrogant? Is there a difference? Is it good or bad? What should I do? I thought that was a very interesting question and it was something that will continue to be very relevant whether you are a student presenting a, I guess, a presentation at school or a fresh graduate looking for a job or even an experienced professional who attends an interview in hopes of advancing your career. So I live in Asia and especially in Asia, we need to be more cautious of how we are being perceived because respect is a really big thing here culturally. So it's a very interesting question. So I guess what I ask you is, what do you define

Starting point is 00:01:56 as confident? So when you see someone that you define as confident, what kind of qualities do that person have? Is it friendly? They're pretty modest. They have humility. You know, they're pretty joyful, open to support. So first is to really understand what does confidence mean to you? What would that actually look like? And how do you know if you're meeting a confident person? Right? Because a lot of times we see the world through our own perspective. So a person that is confident or if you see someone as confident, someone else might see it differently, right? So I think firstly, understand what's your internal compass and what's your internal view of what is good, right? Which is a confident person. And alternatively, also do the same, right? So when you meet people, how do you define an attitude? How do you define a quality or a person

Starting point is 00:02:53 that is arrogant? So write down all those qualities and all those telltale signs that gives you the impression that this person is arrogant. So just take a couple of minutes to actually write that down. And this is very important because it's very easy to comment, but if you don't know what good looks like and what bad looks like, it's going to be very difficult to move forward. So put down those couple of notes, right? So this is your impression of the world. And then I'll give you this tip at the end of the day confidence is it comes from a lot of it comes from within right and what what kind of um of a quality do you want to project i think you need to start there what kind of quality do you want to project? I think you need to start there. What kind of quality do you want to project and how important is it for you to be the master of a subject or even get along with people?

Starting point is 00:03:54 I also work with a lot of people from technical backgrounds like accountants, engineers, lawyers, doctors and the guys from the IT field field the technology field and one thing i definitely notice is sometimes the way they communicate even though they think that they are very confident right they are um i mean if you're from a technology a technical background you will likely have a very logical sort of mindset and the way you express yourself right it's very methodical and you may find yourself also insisting on various points so just some simple examples like that you may see yourself as oh yeah you know what i'm just being very confident i'm expressing what i know and i'm sharing what i know and that's a good thing, right? At least in your mind.

Starting point is 00:04:53 However, what you say, it is then, you know, overlaid by how you say it because a lot of my clients and people reach out to me on LinkedIn and tell me that, okay, I got into trouble with my boss. I got into trouble with my team and my clients because I told them what I knew. I told them that what I did and what I know, but they didn't seem to take it well. Then the content really is, you know, the point really is how did you deliver that? Like, how did you express yourself? Because it's a fine line between confidence and arrogance, right? And this really goes back to what is the kind of relationship and trust that you have with the other person? So understanding who you're talking to,

Starting point is 00:05:31 how close you are to that person, like, you know, how long you've known that person, how close you guys have been working together, that really, really helps. Because someone who knows you very well, you've worked with you for a very long time may be able to take that joke that's a little bit too far they might be able to take that extra bit of assertive behavior and they think that oh yeah it's all right you know but for someone that don't

Starting point is 00:05:59 know you very well or you may not have established the kind of trust and relationship that it doesn't quite work out, right? So at the end of the day, when either you're a corporate professional or you're listening to me as an entrepreneur, it's really important to develop self-awareness. So really understanding kind of what you are, what you're good at, but more importantly, how do you come across to the other person? And if you are you, right, if you're going to hire you and you're going to work with yourself,

Starting point is 00:06:32 would that be a pleasant experience? And really be honest with that answer because for most people, it's probably not a very pleasant experience, right? So if you kind of put yourself kind of in someone else's shoes and looking from the outside in, if you find yourself, yep, you know what? Actually, I'm a pretty difficult person to work with or talk to.

Starting point is 00:06:56 Yeah, somebody else probably feels the same, right? In fact, it's not, I mean, I wouldn't recommend you start judging if someone else is like, you know, confident or arrogant until you really know that person and how that person thinks and how they function. But what we can do is just really understand ourselves, right? And how we come across to other people. So I do have other episodes on how to upgrade your workplace soft skills as well as how to develop self-awareness and how that's important. So you can feel free to check out those episodes after this one.

Starting point is 00:07:31 But the main point is this, right? You can be confident, but you can also be friendly. You can also get along with people. You can also create win-win relationships, right? So these are concepts that I highly, highly recommend because I've spent 11 years as a top performer in corporate across various multinational companies. And these are the real qualities that I see the high performers really able to advance while everybody else, you know, feels, start feeling a little bit stuck in their career

Starting point is 00:08:05 and starts to, I mean, does start to impact their motivation as well. So you want to make sure that you're not in that spot because it's not a very comfortable space to be in. So before you start judging other people, I would highly recommend, right, take a good look at your current qualities, your characteristics, and always put yourself in someone else's shoes, right? Looking from outside in. If you're your boss, your team manager, your client, and you are dealing with yourself, really ask yourself, like, how likely and how often do you want to deal with you if the answer is yes yeah i mean yeah it makes sense and so forth then good however if you start looking from the outside in and then you start justifying like well you know it's fine but he's only saying this and she's only saying this because of this.

Starting point is 00:09:05 That's where logic is fighting you, right? So once you have to put a bunch of justifications and, you know, by that kind of crazy logical reasoning and justification, you would actually sound defensive. And a defensive person is not the nicest person you want to deal with. And a defensive person normally comes across as being slightly arrogant, immature. And these are not good skills that you want tagged to you with, you know, whether, I mean, you want to call it your personal brand, right? Executive presence, leadership qualities, whatever term you want to use um being perceived as um arrogant and you know and annoy all and you know really insisting that you're right a difficult person to work is uh work with

Starting point is 00:09:52 is definitely not going to help in your career um so hopefully i've given you some perspective on how um confidence can easily turn into arrogance a bit of sharing on how you can identify those kind of qualities in other people as well as yourself and i wish you all the best in your workplace and career journey if you have not yet connected do connect with me on linkedin that's the platform where i am most active and if i can be of any help to you in your career journey your career growth and even your job search and networking strategies always feel free to reach out and i wish you all all the best till next time see ya

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep45: Are you an arrogant person or just confident?

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