Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep96: How to LEARN. The 4 best ways.

Episode Date: December 15, 2021

✅ Get My FREE '5-Day Career Growth' Guide + Training 👉 http://www.meiphing.com ✅ Grow your career in the 9-5 corporate world with clarity, confidence and opportunities! ⚡ 👋 Welcome to the Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing — corporate career coach, ex-corporate leader who has led multimillion-dollar projects across 43 countries and creator of the ultimate career course for 9-5 professionals, The Corporate Survivor™. On this podcast, you'll learn how to grow your career in the corporate world without getting stuck with Mei Phing's 3-step framework to gain career clarity, improve work confidence and attract new job opportunities. ✅ WEBSITE ⮕ https://www.meiphing.com ✅ FREE GUIDE ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co/5days ✅ COURSE & COACHING ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co ⚡ 📌 ABOUT MEI PHING: Mei Phing Lim is a Professional Career Coach and former Corporate Leader in the financial services and consulting industries. Mei Phing went from a shy quiet introvert to leading multimillion-dollar projects with teams from over 43 countries as the Senior Director and Head of Governance at Standard Chartered, and now teaching 9-5 professionals how to navigate the corporate world and grow their careers with her career coaching course, The Corporate Survivor™. Mei Phing has been featured as a LinkedIn Top Voice 2023, sharing expert career advice in guiding young professionals to plan, navigate and grow their careers. Mei Phing is a keynote speaker on corporate culture, work performance and career growth, and sharing perspectives on what truly takes to build a strategic and successful career without getting stuck. ✅ LEARN MORE: https://www.meiphing.com

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 and welcome to another episode of the Grow Your Career Online and Offline podcast. This is Mei Ping and in today's episode, I want to talk about some of the best ways for you to learn. So learning could be something that is related to your personal growth.

It could be something that you are just interested in, or it's something that's really going to be helpful to help you solve a lot of problems in your career, which is really one of the biggest areas, I guess, of our lives. The amount of hours that we spend focused at our jobs, right, focused on our careers is a really pretty big portion of our life so why not get that sorted so now i've been talking to a lot of people who have been focused on various learning efforts and one of the complaints i hear very often from people is that they feel like they have been exploring different options of learning but not exactly getting real results. So one of the questions I get asked often is,

Mei-Ping, so what is the problem? How come I'm investing a lot of time learning, but I feel like I'm not really picking up maybe the information, the knowledge or the skill that I thought I would have picked up by now? So that's a very fair question and I sort of reflected on it a little bit and today I really want to share with you the four best ways that you can learn really to maximize the results, the knowledge, the skills that you are actually aiming

to pick up when you first took up the learning course or yeah, took up the first learning program. So now method number one, the way number one is really identifying if you are a visual learner. So what I mean by a visual learner is that you are a person who learns by, you like to see pictures, you like to see images and visuals. So this, for a person who is a very visual learner, it means that you appreciate if somebody shares a concept with you in drawing, or you want to be able to basically see it. So for example, for this particular podcast episode, you may enjoy this episode more if you are watching it on video, basically watching it via my YouTube channel. So probably that is the best way if you're a visual learner

to be able to absorb the sharing that I have for you today. So at the workplace, how this can actually translate is potentially you may enjoy PowerPoint slides. You may enjoy a more visual presentation where you can see images, you can see basically pictures, bar graphs, pie charts, and all those things. You are able to absorb that information a lot easier. So I'm a visual learner. I'm a highly visual learner, and that is the reason why I enjoy reading things, I enjoy watching videos, and I think that personally for me is the best way to learn.

So first step always, right, is to really identify what kind of learner are you? So if you're a visual learner, just like me, you may enjoy the video version of this podcast, or you may enjoy the blog version of the podcast, which is also something that I've recently started putting up the blogs on my website at www.mayping.com because I realized that, hey, I may not really have the patience to listen. If I want to re-listen to an episode, I find that it takes a bit of time, but I think blog is something that I could just read in like one

or two minutes. So that's something that I started doing as well. Now, if you're a visual learner, as I said earlier, videos and blogs probably would be like the best bet for you. Then the second way of learning is if you are an audio-based learner. So for example, you are a person who likes to listen more than watching something. So one of the best ways for you to pick up new information or skills is actually to have a conversation with another person. Because a lot of times in conversations, you need a lot of listening skills. pick up new information or skills is actually to have a conversation with another person, right? Because a lot of times, like in conversations, you need a lot of listening skills.

And if you're an auditory or, you know, audio-based learner, you will actually enjoy that. You'll find that listening to people comes a little bit more naturally for you and you're actually able to absorb the points. That's a good thing. The other method, I guess the other medium definitely is listening to maybe this podcast episode on the podcast platform such as like spotify apple podcast google podcast listen notes or stitcher all these other platforms you may find that listening allows you to really zone in on what is being said and your mind sort of like blocks it from a lot of other

disturbances out there because there's nothing visual right so that means that you are not distracted by the you know the color of the shirt that i'm wearing or the background the lighting and all those other things which can be particularly distracting if you're trying to focus on maybe a specific point that you're trying to pick up, like a specific learning or a specific skill. So if you're an audio-based learner, for sure, continue using podcasts. Or you could even watch videos, but maybe not watch the actual video, but just switch it on and just listen to it. So the point I'm trying to make here is that, yeah, sure,

of course you can consume different mediums, but you should consume the information and learn it in a way that works for you. So, for example, as I was saying earlier, if you're an audio-based learner, video is not your best choice, then switch on the video, but not watch the video. Just listen to the audio from the video itself, if I'm making sense right now. So that's something that possibly will be a little bit more helpful for you to learn better in accordance to the style that works for you. So if you're an audio-based learner, don't discount all the videos

because you don't like to see a lot of movement, but just listen to the audio. It does help a lot. Now, let's move on to the third way of learning. And the third way actually is if you're a kinesthetic learner. So kinesthetic learner, meaning a person who needs to learn from experience and ideally hands-on experience, meaning you have to do it, experience it, and then you learn it.

So this is a slightly more time-consuming process because it means that you really need to put in the time effort and energy to do the thing first then you learn from that so one of the challenges with kinesthetic learners is that maybe it's a little bit difficult for you to project forward on what to expect because you learn by doing right so until the thing is like done you don't really see what is next which can be a little bit challenging depending on i guess where you are in your career and how fast you want to pick up something without having maybe the time effort or energy to do every single thing so if you're a kinesthetic learner video i find that step-by-step

videos are really really helpful if you're a kinesthetic learner because it kind of gives you like a roadmap or a framework that you know what to expect, step one, step two, step three, and that kind of helps the learning process a little bit faster. But I think for kinesthetic learners, it's really important for you to really identify what is the end goal that you're trying to achieve, not putting in the hours like you know learning different things learning different skills but not getting anywhere

at the end because you weren't sure it's like basically you don't even know where you're getting to so you know as i always say right if you're taking action in the wrong direction or worse still no direction then you're definitely not going to end up anywhere so for kinesthetic learners so so so so important that you identify what is the end goal of this learning that you're doing before you put in the effort to really learn from experience, because that can take a little bit more time. So personally for me, how I've translated this method of learning for kinesthetic learners is in my trainings and in my courses, I always make sure that it is highly step-by-step because I do know a lot of people out there are actually kinesthetic

learners. They want to know the step-by-step. They want to know, you know, what comes next, nitty-gritty of what they need to do, which is fair. And I think that's really the best way you can learn in depth, not just at a high level, but really in the knowledge that you are gaining, and that's a good thing. So these are the three main, I guess, learning methods or learners out there, which is the visual learner, the audio-based learner, as well as the kinesthetic learner. So this is probably what you can find out there in various resources, in videos, blogs, Spotify, I mean, podcasts, and multiple other things. But I do want to share a fourth way of learning which personally i found the most helpful and that is really

talking to somebody who already has either the success that you're looking for or the kind of experience that you want to have at the end of the day. Because what these people, I mean, you can call them mentors, you can call them advisors, basically thought leaders out there, you know, maybe some business people that you really admire or a public figure that you admire, it doesn't really matter like, you know, what is their background. But as long as they have the success that you're looking for, no matter that success that success looks like for you or they kind of have the experience that you're hoping to gain also so when you talk to these people let's just call the mentors or advisors what you're actually able to gain out of it is their perspectives from having been there done

that that possibly and probably 99% of the time it's going to be a little bit difficult for you to pick up from the blogs videos or even podcasts because those things are slightly more theory-based but what you're actually learning from these mentors and advisors are likely practical based so you find that it's probably a little bit easier to resonate with what they are saying because basically they have been there done that right they've already been on the road that you want to get on so whatever that they share with you it's going to make a lot more sense because likely it's going to be really related to where you are on your career journey right now and that's really something that i help a lot of my clients with because a lot of my clients when they come to me they will always

ask me oh maybe you know in your, you have done this and that. So like, can you share a little bit more? Like, how do I do that? Or these are some of the things that maybe I want to do as well. Like, for example, one of the, I think it was the second client I ever worked with. It's very ambitious. She wanted to, she was already managing about 10 countries

as a senior brand manager, and she was more ambitious. She wanted to do more than that. So she came to me and said that, oh, Mayping oh maybe i knew that i know that you used to work with teams and lead teams from 43 countries like how do i get there how do i get from like 10 countries to 43 countries because even the 10 countries are driving me crazy already so there's really like the skills gap that are required but i guess um i guess when you talk to somebody who has sort of like been there done there gives you a much clearer roadmap on what you should expect. And that's when you can use the first three methods,

which is the visual, audio, or kinesthetic, to be able to refocus, right? Use all these three methods, these three learning styles, to be able to learn the things that you need based on, I guess, the guidance from your mentor, your advisor, or whoever that is to help you better achieve your career goals. So that's something that I personally found helpful as well. And I've always had mentors in my career, and a lot of them are actually very highly successful people that I've really learned a lot from them also. So like

I said, it really depends on who you speak to. It doesn't really have to be a mentor. It could just be somebody that, you know that you want to learn from or somebody that you really respect or maybe it's a public figure that has multiple accomplishments that you find very inspiring or very empowering. It can be any one of those people as well. So it's not specifically on who's who.

But I'd say that if you want to really test yourself as to which method works best, you really need to try it out. Sometimes it's just a trial and error thing just to find the learning style or a combination of the learning styles that works best for you. So just remember to take action in the right direction and that's really the way that you can really maximize it. And if you just want to go a little bit more in depth on growing your corporate career i have recently recently recently and i'm

so excited to share this i've just very recently launched a free training where i will be sharing three things how do you get clear on why you're struggling at your job so that you can really focus your learning and mindset and the second thing is really how do you get confident by identifying the skills that you really need to be successful so it's not it's not that you need to develop every skill or learn every single thing but it's just really focusing on the most important things that you need to focus on to really get results and finally how to really gain visibility because if nobody knows who you are it doesn't matter how much you learn right if nobody knows who you are you're sitting at matter how much you learn, right? If nobody knows who you are,

you're sitting at the corner, it's not going to be a good thing for you or your career also. So if you want to learn how to get clear, get confident, get visible, and finally grow your career in the corporate world, if that is your goal as a 9 to 5 working professional,

then make sure that you check out my free training. I'm so excited about it. I've been working on it for quite some time. And yeah, super excited to get it launched by the end of the year. And hopefully this is a Christmas present that I want to share with all my listeners, all my followers,

and every single person in my community. I just want to say thank you so much for your support. And if you're listening to this episode in the live version, like the first release on the release listening to this episode in you know the live version like the first release of um on the release date of this episode i just want to say thank you so much i hope you guys have an amazing year end and just make sure that you plan your career for growth in the new year so with that i'll see you in the next episode and happy learning. Cheers.