Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep54: Why you should get along with your boss.

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.meiping.com. This is Mei Ping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. Hello everyone, this is Mei Ping and welcome back to another episode of my Got a Ping podcast, a podcast that you should listen to if you're really serious about your corporate career. So today I have a very interesting topic I want to talk about and that is really about managing the most important person in your career.

Starting point is 00:00:50 So there's been a lot of talk around, you know, building relationships, networking, personal branding and whatever not. sometimes working professionals tend to forget that the most important person that has a really direct impact on their working performance and future career opportunities actually is their boss. So your boss could be your team leader, it could be your manager, it could be a director, or it could be even a head of department as well but always remember that the person who really has the direct viewpoint on your performance or whether you're doing well or there's some development points that you need to work on is actually your direct boss so one thing that i've been hearing from a lot of people be it my connections or clients, is that it's very good to do networking. So people ask me, oh, how do I network? You know, who do I need to engage? This and that. All those are good things.

Starting point is 00:01:56 But I just want to remind everybody that at the end of the day, the person who has worked with you before, have actually experienced you as a professional, will be the best person to actually vouch for your quality, your performance, and likely will be the one who will give you referrals in the future. So sometimes when I talk to a lot of my clients and also connections, one of the issues that they tend to share with me when they say that they are unhappy at their job um i could really boil it down to the one of the main causes which is the lack of understanding and lack of alignment of being able to work with their boss really well so think about about it, right? Your boss is the most important person

Starting point is 00:02:47 in your job, in your current job definitely, because that is the person that will be evaluating your performance, that will be the person who is likely going to review all your work and provide feedback. So if you are unhappy at your job, the first question that you should really ask yourself is, how well do I get along with my boss? Do I understand my boss's personality? Do I understand my boss's preferred communication style? Do I know what is my boss's preferred working style right what are my boss's priorities what does my boss care about what is on my boss's portfolio so that's just really a list of like really i would say baseline and fundamental questions that you should definitely ask when you find yourself struggling at your job and you are really lost as to why is that happening to you and you feel that you've really put in a lot of effort but you're not maybe seeing the kind

Starting point is 00:03:55 of results or getting that kind of positive feedback that you're hoping on the quality of your work. So a lot of times it actually boils down to maybe the lack of understanding um yeah i mean on really is you know the under lack of understanding on your boss's personality working preferences and communication and thinking process as well so i've worked with a lot of clients and some of them are actually fairly in fairly senior positions as well as senior managers and directors and you would be surprised that even people at that level they also struggle with their bosses so their bosses right now obviously are like a lot more senior likely head of department if not head of businesses and

Starting point is 00:04:36 there is always a need to level up wherever you are in your career so that you can be on the same wavelength with your boss who is at the next level so depending on how ambitious you are in your career the need to kind of like level up your skills in terms of like understanding personalities EQ and alignment of priorities I think that is absolutely fundamental if you see yourself going really far in your career. So earlier I was talking about how you know if you are able to perform well your boss will be one of those people who potentially can give you referrals for job opportunities in the future and I found my I found that to be very true for me and along my career journey of more than 10 years in the corporate world, I have actually gotten opportunities.

Starting point is 00:05:33 I would say almost every job that I have actually landed, it was actually really smooth. And the recommendations came from my ex managers and bosses so I give you a couple of examples so when I was working in a very small audit firm in Penang so that was my first I guess real corporate job and after about a year I decided that I want to apply for a big four and I had a pretty good relationship with my manager at that time and i let him know that i wanted to you know give it you know try different different things right give myself a shot at a

Starting point is 00:06:15 global multinational company and he understood it and basically he told me that oh i really enjoyed working with you i think your work quality and ethic is really good and i have some peers and friends in the big four and i'll be happy to share your resume with them and that was how i got the interview with um in senyang singapore and i got the job in just like one interview so you can only do that if your manager or your boss have a very direct working experience with you and he or she can say, OK, I really think that you are really good and I will not even hesitate at all to recommend you or to pass on a referral for you. So I think that can be the power of that um another example as well when i was with um standard chartered i took a i took a six month break and during that time

Starting point is 00:07:14 i actually got a lot of career opportunities not because i not because i applied for any of them but because people who have worked with me in the past gradually referred me on. So I can give you an example. When I was with Visa, I worked with one of the vice presidents and she had a really good impression of me and we got along pretty well from a working standpoint. And later on, she moved to Google. So when Google Singapore started their Asia Pacific operations in Singapore, she basically passed on my name to one of her regional leads in Asia and he reached out to me on LinkedIn asking me what I was doing at the time and if I would be open to explore opportunities and really explore the role with Google. So that was how I got invited to an interview with Google.

Starting point is 00:08:05 So that was how I got invited to an interview with Google. And separately during that time also, I also had a lot of ex-colleagues from Standard Chartered who reached out to me asking me how was I doing during the break because it was a personal issue that I took a break. So a lot of them reached out to me and asked me if I was ready to return to the bank. And there were also various opportunities that were presented to me.

Starting point is 00:08:33 And these were pretty much stakeholders whom I have worked with in the past, some closer, some not as close, but they had an awareness of who I was. And we have worked together either directly or indirectly as well. So that was how I managed to get offered various opportunities. And like I said, I didn't really apply for any of them. And you can really only do this if your work speaks for itself. Right. So I would say that if you want to be open to more opportunities, right?

Starting point is 00:09:09 You want to grow your career, definitely one of the really good strategies is to make sure that your boss truly validates your work, right? Your boss is able to vouch for your quality because don't forget, right? Bosses are friends with other bosses at their level level so even if like your direct boss at the moment may not have career opportunities for you maybe his or her other peers may have other relevant opportunities for you as well so I just want to finally end it very clearly to say that when I say building a strong working relationship with your boss and learning how to manage your boss, I do not necessarily mean that

Starting point is 00:09:51 you will become your boss's best friend. Please don't do that. I have clients who have done that and that has massively backfired because in corporate, most of the times we are actually pretty focused on delivering the outcomes and the result. And sometimes being too friendly-friendly does skew certain perceptions. And in certain industries and certain companies, that is probably not really seen as something particularly positive. So I'd say that steer away from trying

Starting point is 00:10:18 to be best friends with your boss. But it's even more productive to learn how to work with your boss more productively by understanding his or her personality, communication, working style, working preferences, and thought process. And I think that is really the parting word for all of you. So question to really ask yourself, how well do you get along with your boss and how well do you get along with your boss and how well do you think you understand

Starting point is 00:10:45 your boss so with that i will leave you guys in this episode for something to really ponder on and i'll see you guys in the next episode cheers

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep54: Why you should get along with your boss.

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