Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep82: Tough working environment? How to DEAL.

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. Hi everyone and welcome back to another episode of my Grow Your Career online and offline podcast. So today I have a very interesting topic to talk about and it's really about how do you deal with a tough working environment?

Starting point is 00:00:42 So this is a constant complaint i hear from my linkedin connections my peers my friends and pretty much most of the people i come in contact with there is some sort of complaint about how difficult their job is how painful their working environment is and they either want to look for a job or they just want some sort of solution so that they can either escape this tough working environment or learn how to deal with the tough working environment. So let's talk about this today and I really want to share two perspectives with all of you, right? So the first thing is really about,'s talk definition so what do you define as a tough working environment because the word tough and like difficult working environment

Starting point is 00:01:32 means very different things to different people and i'll give you guys a really quick example so a couple of months ago somebody on my linkedin connection reached out to me asking me if i can help her to get new career opportunities. So when I asked her, okay, you know, what is your career situation right now? What kind of opportunities you're looking for? And so forth. She started telling me that, oh, I feel that in this current job, I am not learning anything new. But what was very interesting is that she has actually only worked in this job for 30 days. So let's be realistic here, right? 30 calendar days, that means about 20 or 22 actual working days.

Starting point is 00:02:17 And if you've just started with the company, probably in the first one or two weeks, you're pretty much given training anyway so really what is left for this particular connection who reached out to me is how did she conclude in two and a half weeks that this job is not for her and she has nothing else to learn so the only thing i can conclude right it's really down to number one there is an expectation versus reality gap that is very very prevalent and it's a really big problem here so it's really down to what did she expect what did she even expect right when she signed the job offer and took on the job did she know what she was getting into or did she had an unrealistic expectation of what she is going to do or learn which i think is something else right so actually this is something that i see and hear a lot from younger

Starting point is 00:03:12 professionals particularly those who work for less than a year or probably less than 18 months in general i see this problem it's actually becoming a pretty big problem i'm actually seeing and hearing it a lot more often nowadays um then the second thing also is um i have also been hearing from younger professionals who have worked about average six months which is not bad right six months is a really good indicator rather timeline for you to you know kind of figure out what you're good at what you're not so good at maybe there are some gaps that you have to fix or you know basically re-strategize on some of the um i guess development that you need in order to succeed in a particular role if you happen to be struggling i think six months is a pretty good timeline to assess your real

Starting point is 00:04:01 capabilities and performance at a particular role. So back to this six-month assessment or indicator that I like to call it, I have noticed that for a lot of younger professionals, they tend to come to me and tell me that, oh, Mei-Ping, I think this job is not suitable for me. I think it doesn't fit me. I am struggling. I'm working long hours and I think that, you know, this is just not for me. However, let me share another perspective with all of you, right? It's sometimes too easy to quickly jump into a conclusion that a job is not suitable for you. But the question I have for you is that, have you gone through a proper objective and realistic assessment on why the job is not suitable for you? So let's talk about it a little bit, right? Personally, for me, there are actually two things in a job. And I think that's

Starting point is 00:04:58 something that we all need to recognize that there are two parts to a job. There's this one part of a job that you enjoy doing. You're pretty good at it, right? You know, delivering the work, right? Delivering quality work gives you that sense of achievement. And that is great, right? That is all what we are looking for in a job. However, there is also an element of a job where you need to learn something, right? If, let's say, you are starting out in your career

Starting point is 00:05:28 particularly for younger professionals if you already know everything then why are you working for somebody else that is a completely different question in itself so like i said in a job there are basically two two portions that two parts? First is the part that you are passionate about, you enjoy, you're pretty good at it, you are keen to learn, da, da, da, da, yada, yada, yada. However, in every single job,

Starting point is 00:05:54 and I'll be very honest with you, for somebody who has worked in the corporate world for a very long time, I've dealt with many different people, there is always a second part of the job that is not sexy, it is unsexy it is unglamorous it is painful it is the day-to-day boring stuff that nobody talks about but

Starting point is 00:06:13 it is actually very important as part of like your kpis as part of your delivery and normally that's about average about 30 so there will be some parts of your job that you don't like to do either you don't like to do or you are disillusioned or you don't like it because you lack competence right meaning you actually lack the foundational skill set required to deliver that piece of work and this lack of skills right lack of competence is actually quite different from just disliking it because of your personality. And I think that is a conclusion that most people tend to jump into directly. When something doesn't work out, they will just say that, oh, I think this is not suitable for me.

Starting point is 00:06:56 I am suffering. Hence, I need to go and look for a new job. But they don't realize that if they keep job hopping every six months guess what the same root cause problem is going to happen again and again because they have not addressed the real problem they have just escaped from one company to the other so this is me if this is happening to you it's probably something that you don't realize but actually it's something pretty serious that you really want to really want to get honest with yourself and really ask yourself right if let's say you are not performing in a job right it's the question really about you really really don't like it because it doesn't you know align with

Starting point is 00:07:37 your values or like you know doesn't align for purpose or whatever or you just lack the foundational skill set right there's something missing in your skill set. It could be industry knowledge. It could be technical skills. It could be soft skills, right? It could just be, you know, your lack of ability to deal with people in the corporate world, to actually adapt in the corporate world,

Starting point is 00:07:56 which let me tell you, honestly, it is very different from what you are taught in the universities. And even if you're from an old job moving to a new job, there will always be culture shock. And that is just the reality of things right so um be objective if you're missed if you're like lacking a skill set you need to actually go and upskill because you can jump around one job to the other but let me tell you right now it's actually not going to resolve your problem because like i said the root cause of the issue is not addressed so if the root cause of

Starting point is 00:08:25 issue is not addressed then you'll probably be even more frustrated moving from one job to the other and eventually it may result into you going moving downhill which is not very good so i would say that in most instances like 90 of instances based on what I've seen personally in the corporate world, right, I used to work with people from 43 countries, junior to senior level. So based on the thousands of people I've worked with in the corporate world, as well as coaching clients right now, I can tell you that 90 that you have a skill gap problem but most of the time it's either a skill gap problem or you just have a you just have an incorrect mindset when you took up the job right so if number one you have an incorrect mindset right then you will definitely face the expectation versus reality problem because you might think that this job is hunky-dory you get to have fun every day and then when when you join, you realize that, hey, you actually need to do some real work,

Starting point is 00:09:27 and you're not ready for that. Okay, expectation versus reality. Either you fix your mindset and learn the foundation. Like I said, it's not very sexy, but it's really critical for your career success, or you just be hopeful, be idealistic, and try to look for something else, right? Or you are facing, you know, the second issue, which is you actually lack the foundational skills or knowledge required to perform at this job, right? But you don't realize it. So if you are facing the second issue, right, then what you need to do is do an honest assessment of your skills gap what is missing what do you actually need to upskill specifically what you need to upskill right i think that's very important and normally for my one-on-one clients and even in like my corporate

Starting point is 00:10:15 survivor to achiever training we actually go a lot into self-reflection self-awareness and self-assessment which sounds so foundational but i can tell you right now most people don't even know what they're bad at and they just jump from one job to the other but not solving the real problem so like i said a lot of times right looking at your own capabilities might be a little bit uncomfortable but it is a barrier that you need to overcome if you really want to excel because i can tell tell right now there is no one job that you will 100 enjoy there will be some things that will be challenging there will be some things that are boring there will be some things that are so administrative that you don't feel like doing

Starting point is 00:10:58 but all in all it is part and parcel of career success it's like you can't have just all the fun without doing some of the hard work like honestly a lot of career growth happens you know from building real foundations which like i said it's not sexy it is nothing that you can talk about on social media but it's really building solid foundation that can really you know pave the way for you to succeed in the long term and if this is you know you know if long the way for you to succeed in the long term. And if this is, you know, you know, if long term career success is what you're aiming for, and you're very ambitious, then definitely work around upskilling yourself. And you will actually be surprised that after upskilling yourself, actually things don't, the tough working environment might

Starting point is 00:11:41 not appear so tough anymore. So just really some food for thought for all of you um really to align your expectations is one thing but also to eliminate this um this um i don't want to say crazy but i would say that illogical slightly illogical or rather a mindset that doesn't quite make sense that hey you know you you should only be like doing the fun stuff at every job and you want to just avoid the things that you don't do well right so yeah upskilling is really the answer self-awareness is my first part self-awareness then self-assessment on you know skills gap and make sure that you're upskill upskill upskill that is really the the the boring and unsexy unglamorous secret secret to long-term career success so with that i wish you all the best in navigating surviving and thriving in the corporate world

Starting point is 00:12:39 so just start with like these two objective, honest assessment and realization. And like I said, you will find that the tough working environment, you are not completely helpless. There is something that you can do and you can start by taking the first step today. So with that, I'll see you in the next episode. Bye!

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep82: Tough working environment? How to DEAL.

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