12. EIGHT INVALUABLE PERSONAL GROWTH TIPS TO A FINANCIALLY REWARDING CAREER
12. EIGHT INVALUABLE PERSONAL GROWTH TIPS TO A FINANCIALLY REWARDING CAREER
“If you wish to achieve worthwhile things in your personal and career life, you must become a worthwhile person in your own self-development.” - Brian Tracy
In order to have a financial rewarding career, you need to invest in your character growth and personal development through good work habits, human skills, and soft skills in addition to technical skills.
You must know yourself to grow yourself. You must see value in yourself to add value to yourself. Personal growth always increases your capacity. Growing yourself also allows you to grow others.
However, personal growth doesn’t just happen. It takes time to grow. Growth stops when you lose sight of where you are and where you could be. Sometimes it also means giving up something to grow as a trade-offs. You need to constantly motivate yourself to get you going, and consistently discipline yourself to keep growing.
Based on 27 years of my personal working experience, I’d like to share eight invaluable personal growth tips with you that I find them to be very practical and relevant to me personally.
I strongly believe that if you focus on these eight personal-development tips, you will grow yourself faster, add value to yourself more effectively, and increase your capacity more intentionally. Ultimately, your reward will be a better version of you with a financially rewarding career.
1. Master your English language and learn Mandarin Chinese
There are roughly 6,500 languages spoken in the world today. Each and every one of them makes the world a diverse and beautiful place.
English language
I bet you are not surprised that the most spoken language in the world is English with 1,132 million speakers. It's the official business language in today's interconnected, borderless world. It's also the official language of the sky - all pilots have to speak and identify themselves in English.
Most international news, books, articles, songs, videos, movies are in English. If you want to absorb knowledge of the world fast and have access to the latest news first-hand, you must master your English well – both spoken and written.
Based on annual Jobstreet.com Fresh Graduate Report, a survey on fresh graduate employment in today's job marketplace from the perspective of the employers, one of the top five reasons for fresh graduate unemployment is poor command of the English language.
Most of us know minimum two languages, Malay and English. If you are from Chinese ethnic, you tend to know the third language Mandarin Chinese and other dialects like Cantonese, Hokkien, etc. If you are from Tamil ethnic, you tend to know your mother tongue language too.
Sadly though, not many people in Malaysia master their English language.
During my Phuket holiday trip in 2019, I happened to be sitting in the same airport van with a Malaysian young couple in their late twenties. We were on our way to Phuket airport from the hotel.
I could hear them both speaking happily about their Phuket trip full of excitements in Bahasa Malaysia. They were also discussing about their plans to stay in another beach resort in Phuket island in their next trip.
For those who have visited Phuket, you know that there are two airport terminals - international and domestic. Our airport van skipped international terminal and stopped at the next domestic terminal for us to alight.
The young Malay chap started to get panic. He asked his girlfriend nervously why the van driver didn't stop at international terminal. He was wondering if they should get off at domestic terminal or not.
The girl friend said, "Kamu tanya lah dia! (Why don't you ask the van driver!" Then he turned his face towards the van driver who were unloading our luggage from the back of the van. He stared at the van driver for a long while and no words uttered out from his mouth. Even after the Thai van driver finished unloading the luggage, there was still no word coming out from his mouth.
I knew that he wanted to ask the Thai van driver in English. But somehow, his tongue was twisted with not a single English word uttering out from his mouth.
I quickly explained to him in Bahasa Malaysia that they could alight from domestic terminal and walk to international terminal. I didn't want him to be embarrassed so I quickly got off after that. But I could hear his girlfriend bursting into laughter behind me, making fun of his boyfriend for not being able to ask a simple question in proper English.
Let me share another experience. I had reviewed many fresh graduates' resumes during Jobstreet.com resume clinic sessions during the annual job fair over the years. A large number of them couldn't speak proper English. They kept asking me if I could converse with them in either in Bahasa Malaysia or Mandarin Chinese.
Even though I could speak both languages fluently, I refused to entertain them. I intentionally slowed down my conversations with them in English. I wanted them to know what's required of them in the real corporate world out there. I would rather them stumble and fall during the resume clinic session with me then during their job interviews later. Before they left resume clinic sessions, I always repeatedly reminded them to polish up their English language and encourage them to speak English with their friends.
If you work for small medium size or family-run companies, the business owners may speak their native language with you - be it Bahasa Malaysia, Mandarin Chinese or Tamil.
But if you want to work for multi-national corporations or have the opportunity to work overseas, mastering your English is a must. Even if you want to climb the corporate ladder for that matter, you can't run away from mastering your English.
When I was involved in hiring process of new country manager for Jobstreet.com Indonesia and Thailand, one of the main requirements was to find local country managers who could write and speak well in English. The reason was very simple. Country managers are required to meet up with clients who probably can only communicate in English. Besides, new country managers from Indonesia and Thailand were required to report to, and liaise closely with regional office in Kuala Lumpur. If they were unable to command English language well, there will be a communication breakdown between country and regional office.
Now you see how the command of English can affect your career progression.
Multi-lingual
I'm not saying that any other language is not important. In Malaysia, Bahasa Malaysia is important. It's our national language. Chinese dialects such as Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka are important. They will help you to communicate well with older generations. If you know Cantonese, you can probably enjoy your Hong Kong trips more. If you love Japan, knowing Japanese language can also help you during your travel to Japan and your business communications with them.
I personally can write and speak English, Mandarin Chinese, Bahasa Malaysia. Being educated in Chinese school since young, I had difficulty learning English. During first few years in the United States, I had many challenges. It was a prerequisite for me to take "English as a Second Language (ESL)" class in U.S. high school, and subsequently a prerequisite for me to take English composition class as a foreign student. Being in America forced me to learn English the fastest possible.
Additionally, I can converse in 3 Chinese dialects - Hokkien, Hainanese, and Cantonese. After being based in Jakarta, Indonesia for two years, I can now speak basic Bahasa Indonesia with Indonesian slang.
I find that being multi-lingual really helps me to communicate with all levels of people at work - be it with the cleaning ladies in office, the executive levels, managers, or top management.
I find that if I speak a language they are most comfortable with, they usually open up to me more. And that helps tremendously in understanding their issues so that I could lend my hand to them more effectively.
Mandarin Chinese
Out of all the other languages, if you need to pick up a second language other than English, I will strongly recommend you to study Mandarin Chinese language. It's the second most spoken language in the world with 1,117 million speakers, just slightly behind 1,132 million people who speak English. Chinese Mandarin is also an official language of mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore and one of the six official languages of the United Nations.
With China's economic power rivalling America, and many countries' economies largely depending on China, especially in Asia, it is definitely to your added advantage if you can speak Mandarin Chinese.
You can have business dealings with your clients or bosses from China. Alibaba, Huawei, Oppo, and TikTok are all Chinese conglomerates that we are familiar with. Being able to write and speak Mandarin Chinese would open up another window of opportunities for you.
I had a short-stint with a Taiwanese manufacturing company many years back as one of their business development managers managing of their clients from America. I was based in Guangzhou, China. Internally, from email communications, business letters, to daily conversations, I would communicate in in Mandarin Chinese.
But when I liaised with U.S. clients, I would then communicate in English. I was the bridge between U.S. clients and the Taiwanese company. I was also the translator when U.S. clients paid a visit to the factory in Guangzhou, China.
I wouldn't be qualified for the job if not of my multi-lingual capability in English and Mandarin Chinese.
During your travel, do you also notice many countries like Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, America and Europe start to employ mandarin-Chinese speaking personnel to work in service sectors like retail, hotel, travel, etc, serving millions of tourists from China? That shows how widespread mandarin Chinese is.
Therefore, learn other languages if you can. But first, master your English.
You must be able to listen, speak and write English well in order to progress in your career - be in in Malaysia or overseas.
There are many intelligent engineers and scientists who can write very well. They can write many pages using eloquent English. All the grammar used is absolutely perfect. However, in many occasions, their readers don't understand what they are writing about.
A close friend of mine can write exceptionally well. I rank his English the best of all my English speaking friends. Being an English-educated person, he uses powerful vocabulary in his writing. Even in our WhatsApp conversations, he loves to write long text messages. I used to joke with him that he loves to write about his "grandmother's story." I also fail to understand some of the powerful words he uses and that way he structures the sentences. No doubt his English is perfect, rivalling my English literature professor in university. But somehow reading his emails or text messages on social media posts are quite tiring. I end up reading selectively.
At workplace, all the bosses are very busy. They don't have the luxury of time to read through pages of information without major points. Therefore, even if you are good in writing essay or short stories, that doesn't mean you are good in business writing.
At workplace, it's best to write your memo, business proposal, business letter, business presentation, etc short, precise, and straight to the point. It's even better if you can do an executive summary to begin with, or a title that pretty much sums up what you try to convey. It's just like the newspaper or magazines with catchy grabbing titles. In such a way, bosses will already know the main point you try to convey from the beginning.
I personally had countless struggles throughout my career journey to write well so that my bosses, colleagues and clients could understand in a very clear manner.
I'm a very detailed person. I'm always worried I might miss out some points. Therefore, I loved to squeeze all my points in the presentation, proposals, or paper to my bosses. Unfortunately, I failed to put myself in my bosses' shoes. These were not what my bosses wanted to read.
If I were to be given only 5 minutes of their precious time instead of 1 hour, how could I convey the whole presentation or paper to them within 5 minutes? That was my real challenge and struggle.
Right after Seek Australia acquired Jobstreet.com and Jobsdb.com businesses in this region, then Seek Asia’s CEO Suresh Thiru was schedule to visit Australia office to give a presentation on business strategies and challenges of Seek Asia.
Suresh Thiru gave this responsibility to my ex-boss, COO WK Leong, who in turn got my assistance to help him to prepare the slides. My struggle was how I could put a 40-page information deck into 5 slides without missing out the key points.
There were many late evenings working on those slides. Every time my boss presented to the CEO, CEO would give some comments and I ended up having to redo again. This went on for at least 7 rounds with 7 revisions. Finally we had a nod from the CEO on the latest version.
Now in retrospect, I realised that it would be the first time Suresh Thiru would meet his new boss in Australia. He was trying to figure out what the new boss in Australia would like to see in the business presentation without taking much of his time.
It was really a challenge for me to squeeze a 40-page information with charts into only 5 slides. Making things short and precise sounds simple. But it's not. It's an art in business writing. It was truly a humbling learning experience for me.
Even during the movement control order period due to covid-19 pandemic, I'm extremely impressed by daily media statements issued by issued by Ministry of Health Malaysia. They are in point form. They are short. They are precise. They are specific. They are graphical. They are easily understand with no Shakespeare-like English vocabulary. We as citizens from all walks of life can easily understand.
3. Speak up and being direct
In Asian culture, most people are more preserved and conservative compared to those living in western culture such as America, Europe, or Australia. For most Asians, even if they have something they disagree, upon, they don't like to voice it out. They like to keep things in their heart. They like to keep things to themselves. They avoid upfront confrontation.
I had a cultural shock when I went to further my studies in the United States at age 17. Being educated in Chinese school back in Malaysia, I couldn't speak proper English. I was timid and shy with low self-confidence. I was an introvert who didn't like to speak much. I preferred to be alone. I used to choose the last row to sit in lecture halls. I used to choose to sit at my place quietly during lectures even though I had so many questions popping up in my head that I wanted to ask.
But I was so worried I would be laughed at and ridiculed by others. I really didn't want to make a joke out of myself in the class. Self-doubts filled my mind: "What if I ask some stupid questions?" "What if the teacher / professor doesn't understand my poor English?" As a consequence, my learning and social life suffered a great deal because of not speaking up, for not asking questions, for keeping quiet.
I was very amazed at how expressive my American fellow students were. They were full of guts and bravery! They were full of curiosity! Anything that they don't understand, they would just raise their hands and ask questions. In their dictionary, no question was a stupid question. In their belief, “If you don't ask, you won't learn a thing.”
Spending 6 years in California really opened up my mind about speaking up. Unfortunately, due to my shy nature and typical Asian mindset, I was still holding back in many ways. No doubt I'd improved but still not to the level of my expectation.
One of the key reasons why I wanted to change my career from engineering to sales was to overcome my shyness. I wanted to put myself in situations where I could confidently speak up, express myself, and articulate my ideas across. I wanted to put myself in situations where I could confront conflicts, dealing with objections and difficult people. I wanted to put myself in situations where I could learn to be more "thick-skinned" and not worried about what others would perceive me. I wanted to put myself in situations where I could overcome my shyness, and speak up. Truly, being in sales profession really helped me to be bold, to be “thick skinned” to speak up.
Being direct and upfront with problems
But what really brought me into the next level of speaking up in terms of communication was the impact of Jobstreet.com’s work principle, "Being direct and upfront with problems."
You see, many Asians are not being direct and upfront with problems even when they speak up. They are worried they may offend someone. They are worried if they offend someone in office especially, it might jeopardise their working relationships with colleagues, hence jeopardising their career.
Remember that you deal with issues, not people. You want to solve a problem, not to point at any individual specifically.
During the good old days of Jobstreet.com, this "being upfront and direct with problems" was one of the 6 key criteria that all employees had to uphold. Every staff in organisation was encouraged not to hide a problem but to be upfront and direct, to speak up about the problem. It's only through knowing what the problems are, resources can be allocated, brainstorming could be arranged to solve the business issues.
Articulate well
At workplace, your daily schedules may be filled with meetings after meetings. Being able to give an effective meeting report or presentation is crucial to your career success. You will have managers or representatives from various departments in the meetings. Your direct boss and perhaps top bosses may be present too. Being able to give a solid presentation on your findings or business reports is crucial. That's when others can gauge you in terms of your communication and presentation skills. And if issues pop up during discussions, they will also know how you handle them.
For some of you, you may be invited as guest speaker at some company events, press conferences or media interviews. Many people can communicate well in a small group. But when the audience group becomes larger, they have stage freight.
Toast Masters International is an excellent platform for you to learn public speaking and improve your presentation skills. People in marketing department, product team, or top management are very used to giving presentations. You definitely need to be comfortable with that when the opportunities lay in front of you.
Read others’ body language
It's true that asking questions is important. Speaking up is important. Being upfront and direct with problems is important. Giving a clear presentation in a meeting and speaking on a stage are important. But the how part is even more important. How do you speak your mind without offending someone? How do you communicate with people from all levels of organisation (top, across, and down) without making them feel you are stepping into their territories or showing disrespect? Additionally, being about to express and articulate your ideas well is definitely what bosses and others love.
When you speak, you shall also learn to read others' body language. This means that when you talk to your boss, your peers or your subordinates, do watch out for their body language. For example, if someone folds his arms while you are speaking, he may disagree with your point of view. If someone has a facial expression of a question mark, perhaps he has some unclear questions that need your clarification. If such situation happens, you shall address their needs.
Unfortunately, most people just love to do what I call "information download." They don't care if the recipients agree or not, understand or not, get impatient or not, they simply just want to finish what they plan to say. This is a one-way communication. It's not going to help you get things done. Therefore, learn to respond to others' body language when you speak. It will put you in a listening mode instead of information-download mode.
4. But you must learn to listen first
Personally, I believe that before you speak up to express yourself, you shall learn to listen first.
There is a reason why we were born with two ears and one mouth. It shows how important listening is. Imagine if we were born with two mouths and one ear! I believe both of our mouths will be fighting with each other to speak all the time.
I've learned from a leadership program that during a one-on-one coaching session with others, it's important to let the other person speak 70% of the time and you speak only 30% of the time.
This means that you need to first listen to understand, not to react. You also need to listen more than you talk. By doing so, you will be able to see things from other person's perspective. You are more open to different ideas. You will not have this pre-conceived outcome or decision before even listening to others. You will not be judgemental.
I have two good friends who love to talk. They didn't know each other. One day I arranged for a seafood dinner with both of them. That evening, I was the most quiet person. Both of them chatted very loud. They seemed happy. However, the next day, good friend A told me that if I ever go out again, don't ever invite friend B. I asked him why. He bluntly said that friend B talked too much. A few days later, coincidentally friend B told me similar thing. He said, "Your friend talks too much." I guess when I put two people who love to talk on the same table, their "airtime" was limited. Hence, the unpleasant moment was created since no one wanted to be listener.
At workplace, I've encountered managers who simply talk too much. They don't listen to their peers and subordinates. Every time another person wants to talk, these people love to interrupt and start to talk about their own ideas, their own lives. They literally shut out other people. They were not listening to others. They were waiting for their chances to speak. If they run out of patience, they would then jump in and cut the conversation. They don’t realise that their career progression can be negatively impacted if they don’t listen to others first. Their inter-personal communication skill can be further improved to help them in their careers.
People who usually gain more respect from others are those who are not only able to articulate themself well, they are also good listeners.
5. Be a subject matter expert, then go beyond
An organisation offers you a job because you specialise in a core discipline or field of study. You may arm with a degree in finance, hence it opens up job opportunities for you in finance core discipline. As you gain more and more work experiences in finance field, and as you go deeper into finance profession, you become a specialist or and advocate in finance. You become the subject matter expert. You become a walking Wikipedia of finance subject. Once you become a subject matter expert, your bosses, colleagues, subordinates, and even clients will love to consult you for your advice and opinion. You will draw them to you for your in-depth knowledge and experience. It’s law of attraction at work.
During Jobstreet.com days, when we talked about sales operations, we instantly could call out Chief Operating Officer WK Leong's name due to his expertise in operational excellence knowledge and experience. When I was facing with tax issues as an expat with work permit in Indonesia, I loved to consult Wong Kar Lai, the Tax manager, for her expertise. I never had any doubt about their professional advices . If you can become a subject matter expert like them one day, you will become indispensable to your current employer as well as future employers.
Once you make yourself a walking Wikipedia of your chosen subject, you shall start learning other skills or picking up second core discipline needed for your next job. This is to ensure that your career will progress well to areas you may not have envisioned previously.
6. Be a problem solver, not a complainer
Do you realise that you are hired to solve problems for the organisation you work for? If there are no problems and issues, your job is practically redundant and you will no longer be required.
The fact is, business problems and issues are abound in any organisations.
For example, a competitor just launches a new product. The competitor’s aggressive pricing strategy and marketing campaign pose a threat to the revenue of the company you work for. What do you do?
Strategy team may need to revise business strategies to address this. Marketing needs to think of marketing campaigns. Sales needs to mobilise the team to be more aggressive and perhaps come up with attractive pricing. Product team needs to think harder on how to improve own products. Customer service team needs to serve customers better so that they are happy and satisfied. Finance team needs to look at monthly report to ensure organisation as a whole will still meet the stakeholder's earnings’ requirements. Then of course there are always the people issues: disciplinary issue, poor attendance, under performance, resignations, recruitment, retention, compensations and benefits, etc.
Every department definitely has problems and issues to solve.
Will you be the type of employees who says, "That's not my problem! That's not my job! Don't look at me! I'm going home now!" or "That's the other department's problem. Nothing to do with me."?
Or will you be the complainer who says, “Why there are so many problems?”, “Why do they always create these problems for us?” or “Why can’t I have a peaceful day today at work?”
If you belong to this type, sorry to say this, you will not progress well in your career. You will be seen as too self-centred, too individualistic and not being able to see the big picture.
How should you react when you face a problem? Should you push it away? No, you shouldn’t push it away. You should welcome problems. You should get excited in solving problems. You should look at problems as opportunities, not challenges. You should feel grateful that you can solve the problems and learn something new during the journey.
The problem isn’t the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem. A positive attitude may not solve every problem but it makes solving any problem a more pleasant experience.
Yes, I know. Solving problems is definitely not easy. It's tiring. It's time consuming, It's sometimes unappreciated too. But if you have the right mindset that you just love solving problems and make your company better, then whether you receive recognition, appreciated, or higher increment is no longer important. You will be surprised that in most cases, financial rewards and due recognition will be given to you.
7. Raise your bar! Go above and beyond
Two of Jobstreet.com's six principles that I’ve learned, "Accept only grade A work" and "Continuous improvement" go hand in hand.
Grade A work today may not be grade A work tomorrow. I used to have some staff complaining to me about their annual performance ratings (which will indirectly affect their annual salary increment and performance bonus in the new financial year).
They couldn’t figure out why they performed the same grade A work as previous year yet they received only average performance rating in current year.
The missing piece here is "continuous improvement."
If you expect your boss to give you high performance rating in the current year for the same work quality you have done the year before, please wake up! If you don't continue to improve, you will fall behind in terms of your skills and experiences.
In today's ever-changing world, there are so many new things to learn every day. You shall continue to sharpen your saw through learning. And only through continuous improvement that you can catch up with the latest skills in the market.
For instance, in today's marketing, it's all about digital marketing. If you graduate with a conventional marketing degree, you might be left behind in your career if you don't know digital marketing. Would you tell your boss that during your university years, such courses were not available yet? Or you would attend some digital marketing certification courses to upkeep yourself with the latest skill and knowledge requirements in marketing?
When I was transferred to a regional sales operations role looking after Indonesia office at Jobstreet.com, I had no prior working experience in Indonesia. I had never managed a country before. I had never been responsible for the profitability of a company before. I had never managed a team as large as 110 people before. It was my first regional posting. It was my first country management exposure. It was my first project in regional sales operations.
Was I ready? No, I wasn't.
Did I have all the required skills and experiences? No, I didn't.
Did I turn down the challenge because I wasn't equipped? No, I didn't.
I saw it as a platform for me to learn and grow. I was just grateful that bosses entrusted me with the responsibility to do something I hadn't done before. With their trust and belief in me, I took the leap of faith taking up the challenge.
I tried to learn from everyone, as much as possible, as quickly as possible. I sought advices from my direct boss WK Leong and other senior managers who had been working in Indonesia before. I worked closely with Indonesia team so that I could pick up the operations soonest. I really pushed myself before I was ready. I really raised my bar, went above and beyond.
Therefore, be a go-to player instead of a passive player or an observer at your job. You shall always raise your bar a couple notches higher. Step up and go above and beyond what's required of you. Even for things you are not ready, just push yourself to do it. This is a sure way to max out your income potential from your career in a long run with your gained knowledge, experience and exposure.
8. Build your reputation
You need to let everyone, especially your bosses, know that you are a trustworthy, reliable, dependable person with high integrity and strong principles. You can be counted on when it counts. Any tasks, projects or problems entrusted to you can be considered done. Your bosses don't have to worry.
In order to build your reputation, you need to fulfil every word or promise you say and walk the talk. Being punctual to every single meeting is actually one of the easiest ways to gain your reputation as a disciplined person with good work habits.
If you set a meeting to start at 11.00 am, you need to be there at 11.00 am sharp or a few minutes earlier. Don't let other people, especially your bosses, see you coming in late to meetings. You don't want to become apologetic and say, "I'm sorry. I'm late."
In any organisations, most senior people have their meeting schedules packed daily. Many leaders have back to back meetings. Sometimes, their work through their lunch hours. Everyone's time is precious. Therefore, if you appreciate everyone's precious time, you want to be on time for meetings so that you won't waste other people's times, especially big bosses'.
If a simple thing as being on time can never be done, how can your boss entrust you with more important projects with strict timeline? Won't they worry that you may not complete them on time?
And when your boss entrusts you with a problem to solve, make sure you deliver results within specific time frame.
Even if you are not too confident initially, you shall be upfront with your boss by saying, "Boss, I'm more than happy to take up this project. But I might encounter some challenges due to my lack of experience in this area. Anyway, if I'm stuck, I will come to you for advice and guidance."
By doing so, you demonstrate your professionalism and enthusiasm. You demonstrate that you are very open about your own shortcomings or weaknesses. By your willingness to ask questions, you show your humility to learn from your boss. Slowly but surely, you will build your reputation as someone who means what he says, who walks the talk, who delivers.
Don’t be like some employees who claim “sure, no problem. I know what to do” yet nothing is complete when deadline is due. Even if the work is delivered on time, the result is error-prone and unsatisfactory. These employees are too proud to seek help and careless in their work. I call them “Mr/Ms No Problem”. It’s hard to entrust them with any important work at all.
Last but not least, build your reputation as someone who cares for others, who puts the team before self, who expresses genuine interest in others, and who respects the dignity of others. I like to call this servanthood or servant leadership.
You become the last to be the first. If you have this servanthood in mind, you have no self-interest in what you do. You are considerate for others. You put your team’s interests first. You will definitely gain the respect from others.
SECTION 2
INVEST IN YOURSELF AND YOUR CAREER
“The best investment you can make, is an investment in yourself…
The more you learn, the more you’ll earn”
Warren Buffet
F I L L
Financial Independence, Live Life
achieving financial independence from 9-to-5 job before 50
