Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep85: Do THIS every quarter for 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. Hello everyone and welcome back to a brand new episode of the Grow Your Career Online and Offline podcast. I'm Mei Ping and if you are listening to this episode on the official release day, you might be wondering, Mei Ping, how come you're releasing this episode on a Friday?

Starting point is 00:00:46 But normally your episodes come out on thursdays so there's actually a very special reason for that and that is because today is the first of october it is the last quarter of this year the last 90 days of this year and um i'm a huge believer of um setting goals for every quarter and I think more importantly right slowing down just a little bit to reflect on the achievements that you have or rather the things that you have done for the past 90 days and really re-strategize and decide where to move forward if there's some things that you need to reset this is the perfect time if there's some things that you need to reset this is the perfect time if there's some things that you need to tweak again perfect time if there's something that you really want to achieve and really go for just to end the year with a bang whatever that whatever you define that is then again this is the perfect time so normally with my clients i always tell them that we need to do a quarterly if not half yearly

Starting point is 00:01:47 review just to see where they are and then make sure that they don't get lost and rather they don't get they don't detour you know along their journey towards their career goals so that's why i decided to actually release this episode today which which is Friday, 1st of October 2021, just for a bit of a motivation or rather inspiration for you to reflect, reset, and re-strategize where do you want to be. So what do you actually want to achieve by this year end? How are you going to plan that out?

Starting point is 00:02:26 Because we only have three more months to go. So if you feel like for the whole year, you didn't really achieve much, then this is the perfect time to actually reflect on what happened, right? What happened? Were you too enthusiastic about the bigger goal but you didn't actually have like a tangible or a step-by-step rather action plan that can get you there and that that is actually quite common to a lot of people i speak to like hundreds and hundreds of people um all the time right via linkedin and you know my connections other people as well and there is definitely a pattern that i noticed and that is being overly

Starting point is 00:03:06 ambitious which is fine but i think the other part is being um overly enthusiastic so i've noticed people having this um i guess rather habit and rather watch especially if you're on social media a lot you notice that a lot of people tend to share a lot of their achievements. So if you go around seeing these sort of posts all the time, then it's very easy to have that dream for yourself. And that's a good thing, right? I don't mean that as a bad thing. But having a dream and having a big goal without actually taking or rather planning any action steps to get there, then there is a bit of a disconnect here. It's almost like you telling me, hey, Mei Ping, you know, I'm going to reach the peak of Mount Everest.

Starting point is 00:03:51 Okay, kudos to you, right? Big dream, big goals. I like that. But you don't care what tools you need. You don't know what kind of like prep work you need to do. You don't know what kind of exercises, what kind of physical condition you need to be in what needs to be your tool bag how you're gonna pack right do you need sure pass yada yada yada so it's almost like it's almost

Starting point is 00:04:14 confusing to me because it's like i get the goal and if you talk to some of these people you notice that they will consistently tell me ping i want this may I want that. Oh my God, it's not fair. Other people have this. How come I don't have this? Blah, blah, blah. Okay, I completely get that. But the still confusing part to me is still the part what I mentioned earlier about when I asked them,

Starting point is 00:04:35 okay, but basically, what have you done about it? Actually, they haven't done anything. So it's super confusing and there's a massive disconnect because from my point of view, it's super confusing and like there's a massive disconnect because from my point of view it's very difficult to understand how you're actually going to get that it's almost like saying oh i want to reach the top of like this the staircase but i don't i don't want to take the first step because

Starting point is 00:04:57 the first step is too hard okay so uh like i said that's kind of confusing and if this is a situation you find yourself yourself in right now then like i said you know the start of every single quarter is a perfect time for you to reflect on um not just mindset but really the attitude behind that mindset like the attitude behind your behaviors of doing something or rather not doing something which also happens to a lot of corporate professionals who tell me that they want to end the year top performer they want to get a good increment they want to get a promotion great goals like i said but when i ask them what had what they have done and they have they indicated to their boss right do they have they gotten any

Starting point is 00:05:40 of their bosses feedback they have no clue so it doesn't work like that guys like i can tell you that as a former business leader former corporate leader where i was also in charge of promotion not just for my team but also overseeing some of the promotions for the department and um you don't want to wait till last minute to get like advice and feedback because it's definitely too late so if you think that your final year performance review, that sit down with your boss or manager is going to be like the only time they're going to consider whether it's you're going to get promoted or not, that is not true. Your entire work performance is always reviewed the entire year. So for example,

Starting point is 00:06:23 January to December, by October or even early November, I have a pretty clear idea on who I'm going to promote, who are some of the good performers. And within the management leadership team, we consistently discuss performance of our team members within our department as well. So that's something you just have to realize so that you're actually planning and achieving your goals or you are delivering whatever you have promised to deliver at work. Every single quarter, if there are any skills that you feel that you're not good at, maybe you're really bad at communication. Maybe you are disorganized. Maybe you have poor presentation skills. Maybe you don't know how to build relationships these are

Starting point is 00:07:05 skills that you need to consistently build and you can give yourself sort of like three months or even six months goals to get that don't wait until the year end to then discover that oh you're not going to get a promotion because you are lacking in all these areas which if if you have done that skills gap assessment much earlier you would have at least taken some steps to fix it and you could actually demonstrate progress to your boss. And that's always very exciting because we like people who are consistently improving because, you know, that's part of professional development.

Starting point is 00:07:36 And it also shows a lot about you being proactive and taking charge of your career. And that's always a good thing as well. So like I said, every quarter, beginning of every quarter is the perfect time to reflect. And normally I also have sessions with my clients every month to improve their soft skills. But at the end of every quarter,

Starting point is 00:07:56 we always do a bit of a reflection on how they have improved so that they can also track their progress and feel proud that they have taken action. So I think these are really important. And the second part really is about resetting. So after you have reflected for the past three months or maybe for the past nine months, right,

Starting point is 00:08:15 for the beginning of 2021 until now, then, okay, take a deep breath and reset. Because that is also one of my personal issues as well. Like I want to go towards my goals. And sometimes I feel like I am not resting enough or I'm rather not taking a break. And I think taking a break is super duper important. And I think a lot of people are actually not taking enough breaks.

Starting point is 00:08:40 And I can share a very interesting poll with you. So if you haven't followed me on LinkedIn yet make sure you follow me on LinkedIn at Mayping Lim so I just want to share with you all that I ran a poll about two weeks ago and the question is this right I asked do you take a break when feeling exhausted at work so there are only a couple of options. Number one is, yes, I go on paid leave, meaning that you take your annual leave, that your company is part of your contract, right? You go on annual leave.

Starting point is 00:09:14 Second option is that, yep, but I only take a coffee or tea break. And number three is, nope, I hustle and deliver. Interestingly, let me share with you the result of that survey. 26% said that they will take the formal official pay annually, right, 26%. Interestingly, 59% have decided to only take a coffee and tea break, right, just a really short break, then they can just go back and hustle on. Then about 12% say that they're just going to hustle on and deliver and let me tell you that I completely resonate with

Starting point is 00:09:50 all these like in the past I was so stressed out and I'd rather not take the leave because I felt that things are just going to fall apart and you know it's not fair to my team members and everything but I think gradually I realized that even taking the short breaks like a coffee and tea break that is just temporary because you're not really getting the real mental and physical rest that you need because some of us that we are really in really stressful jobs and I used to be in a very stressful job I used to work with like so many countries and I was also in the leadership position there were a lot lot of decision-making meetings every single day. So I think the lesson that I really learned from,

Starting point is 00:10:31 I think the many years in corporate is, yes, we want to give our 200%, but at the end of the day, we are not superheroes, right? We're not a Marvel character. We are human and it's tiring. It's really tiring and you know find find that balance and remember to focus on yourself because the more that you the more that you are well physically mentally emotionally sharp that's how you can really add the most value because um being a zombie at work is not going to help anybody. So I think that was really

Starting point is 00:11:06 my lesson, hustling, hustling, hustling, hustling on for the past decade like a crazy person to then realize that, wow, I can't deal with this or rather I can't deal with this sustainably and really towards a later part of my career, really finding some areas where I could really rest. And at that point, I was like, no, I didn't feel any guilt whatsoever because I felt that, hey, this is really important. If I don't get this break right now, I don't get this, I don't get to reset, re-strategize and just like rest, that it's not going to be good for anybody. So yeah, with that, I managed to overcome some of, I guess, the mental blocks of like feeling guilty and all those things. I think that's really important as well.

Starting point is 00:11:49 So that is the message for today's episode. If you resonated with any of these things that I'm sharing, definitely drop me a message on LinkedIn where I'm most active. Definitely interested to hear about your experiences as well. And with that, I will see you in the next episode. And in the meantime remember to reflect reset and re-strategize and please take some rest if you need cheers and i'll see you next episode bye

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep85: Do THIS every quarter for career growth.

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