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Hello, and welcome back to the Medical Mentor Coaching Podcast. I'm Stacey Ishman, and today we're going to talk about how to decode academic promotion criteria before you waste five years. Now, if you're an academic physician, you probably know that your promotion is based on a set of predetermined criteria, really individual to each institution.
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But you probably don't know, so this is actually the roadmap for you to figure out what you want to do over the next few years, coupled with what you already know that you care about. So, I want you to recognize that being promoted is not just about getting published or being busy or saying yes to everything. It's really about having an intentional plan so you can make sure that the things you're doing align with both what you like and what's going to make a difference.
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Because a lot of people get passed over promotion, they think they're ready, they jump in, and they realize there's some critical component they just didn't know was part of the criteria, or they didn't pay attention, or they haven't quite met the mark. But knowing what that mark is ahead of time is really the key. So, the first is know your institution's criteria.
Don't guess. It really does vary by institution and track. So, are you on the promotion and tenure criteria? Are you on the non-tenure track? Are you in a clinician educator? Are you trying to be a clinician researcher? So, these are the important things to really pay attention to, read the division chief or a chair.
And you want to take some time to figure this out at the beginning. There's so much to set up when you start a career, but this is one of those important things. More important than knowing the title of your next paper or even necessarily what the first grant is going to be.
So, get the document. It's usually available online, but you may also really want to talk to your administrator or your chair or division chief because there can be individual requirements in an institution that don't show up. So, it may be that your chair requires everybody be part of a national honor society or be in a national committee, and that may not be one of the things.
It's also important to know where you need to be in authorship. Is it only matter if you're a first author? Does last author count the same way? Is second author count the same way? So, that you understand when you're negotiating those kinds of papers and projects, what's going to be important for your criteria as you move forward. The other thing I mentioned just briefly was identifying your track and your rank.
So, if you're an instructor, you want to be moving towards assistant professor and then associate and then full, but look at those criteria. They do differ. One may require a national reputation.
One may require an international reputation or a regional reputation. It'll help you figure out what to say yes to and what to say no to, and then break it into domains, and this could be scholarship, clinical work, teaching, service. National recognition is often woven to a lot of those, but the pro tip is to pay attention to the action verbs.
Those small words really matter, and we're going to talk about that more in just a couple minutes. Now, the second is to understand that that promotion is a narrative, not a check, excuse me, not a checklist. So, when I had my first meeting with my department chair, I walked through this huge list of things that I've done.
I was on committees. I'd written papers. I had grants.
They really didn't add up to a story. I was telling sort of a disparate group, like I did this about this topic and this about another topic, and I was working on sleep apnea and medical education and allergy and neck masses, and it was really like a lot of busyness but not a lot of intentionality. So, the conversation changed everything when I finally realized they want to see coherence.
They want a story. Why did I write this paper? Why did I pick this topic? What was important about this grant, and how did it help fix that whole narrative? And so, if you're really good at this, you're going to have a story about how this project asked this question, and it led to this next paper, and then this paper really led me to add this question, and I submitted this grant, and we used that to walk our way through a problem and a set of solutions or at least some more outcomes and understanding. Now, at that time for me, I was really interested in making sure that I was talking about pediatric sleep apnea, but I started by just including the word sleep in everything, and then it went on to sleep apnea in the majority of things, and then it went on to being pediatric obstructive sleep apnea, and honestly, over time, it got even more and more reformed.
It was persistent sleep apnea in children, but it was really a clear backbone that I could walk people through in my signature talk, and so your CV should read like a story, not a smorgasbord like mine did at the beginning, and while random activities may seem like something that's interesting to you, they don't usually get people promoted as easily or as quickly, and so be strategic about what you pick, and if there's something you like, then be able to make that story. Now, the other thing that I talked about was understanding what the verbs mean, so this is step number three. Words like contribute, lead, demonstrate excellence, they all signal very different things that they expect you to do, so contribute means you're an engaged team member, you're reliable, it may mean that you're co-authoring papers, you're on committees, you're helping with QI projects.
Now, if you talk about lead, just being a member of the committee isn't really going to be enough. You're in charge, you plan, you execute it, and so this is going to be expected to be first or senior authors on the paper, you should be PI on the grant, you may be chairing the committee, and then demonstrating excellence really means going beyond expectations and have a measurable impact, and so this may be national awards or at least local awards, it may be teaching evaluations that put you at the top of your game or invited lectureships, visiting professorships, being on the program, getting a letter of outstanding recognition. So, the key is if it says to lead or demonstrate excellence, you can't just show up as a contributor or else there's a mismatch.
The fourth is to create a realistic timeline, so figure out your target promotion date and reverse engineer the steps. Oftentimes, this is somewhere in the five-year range, and so in the first couple years, you want to make sure that your niche is well understood and that you understand it most importantly, that you get some mentors in those areas, you start building your output, and you have some systems to collect data or to look at the things you care about. Over the next couple of years, in years three and four, you're going to be leading those projects, you'll be mentoring others and getting mentorship, you're going to grow your national visibility, serve on committees, whether it's locally, regionally, or nationally, and then in your fifth year, you want to put all that together, although I'm going to tell you, you should have been working on it all along.
You're going to request letters, and you're going to meet with your chair or your division chief for your formal review, but you should be talking about it every year, so there's no surprise when you hit year five, you're ready. And then build in some buffer time, because promotions often get delayed, and then also can take quite a while to go through. You may put in your paperwork now, and it doesn't get into effect until next year, even if everything goes perfectly.
Now, the fifth step is to set some aligned, clear targets. Now, talk to your institutions, see what these are. Oftentimes, we're talking about three to five publications a year, or it may be less or more, depending on where you work, but increasing senior authorship over time, and don't jump right to being senior author.
Being first author, especially at the beginning of your career, can be very valuable. And for your biggest papers, be the first author in that first five years. And then regional or national invited talks can be really critical.
Submit abstracts to your national meetings. I actually think panels are a great way to get on those, where you bring some of the world's experts everybody wants to listen to, but you get to ask the questions you care about and think about, and it really helps elevate your position with those folks. Teaching evaluations are also important.
Peer observation reports. You maybe work on curriculum. Then in the service area, think about the department institutional roles, but pick the ones that make sense.
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So if you really care about looking at finance, your research is going to be about finance and health care, then being on the finance committee makes a ton of sense. But if what you're really looking at is outcomes in clinical areas, maybe it makes more sense to be on a more clinical committee, or you really love teaching. Curriculum committee makes sense.
And it's okay to say, I really appreciate the opportunity to work on that committee. It may not be the right one for me in terms of my career, but I would love to be on the next opening for any of the educational committees. Or you say, this is service.
Your chair says, I really need you to do it. Great, I would happy to do this, but know that I really appreciate being on X, Y, and Z committees that fit to the area that I care about. Grants are the other thing.
Sometimes look at internal funding first or foundation grants that are smaller. There's oftentimes early career grants you should be thinking about. And then work on external applications over the next couple of years so that you can actually be building that, building your mentorship and identifying mentors.
Because those first grants, mentorship is a critical component. And so showing that you have regular relationships, regular meetings, that they're really going to be able to guide you is important. And then getting known outside your institution is also really great in terms of helping move this along for promotion.
Track, or step six, is to track everything. Keep a live CV. This could be Google Docs.
You get updated on a regular basis. Make sure you know your institutional format. Nothing more annoying than having this great CV, but the format doesn't fit your institution at all.
And quite honestly, when you're going to send it externally, most of them don't need it to be in a set format. So keep it in the institution's format or the research format that you need. Create a promotions folder.
Keep PDFs of evaluations or letters of congratulations or letters of expressing the gratitude for your serving on a committee. Keep peer reviews and student feedback so that it's really easy to grab when you're ready to put everything together. And then try and log some key activities monthly.
So I have a project sheet. I keep, as everything gets finished, I just write to a single section that says, go to CV. And then I throw it all on there, whether it's monthly or quarterly, so it's easy to find.
And there are templates and tools that I use in my academic Kickstarter course can be really useful. Or look for your institutional template for sure, because that's going to be important. And then I really do use a method I call the academic accelerator method.
It's really to look at my vision first. Helps me figure out my niche. It helps me figure out my yeses and my no's and set boundaries.
And say no to low impact tasks or things that you don't like. It is so hard to work on things that bring no joy to you. So find ways that you can do scholarship in a way that you care about.
If you don't want to write a grant, figure out the questions you care about or the patients you see and the questions you have in clinic and work on those. And then prioritize high value activities that build your narrative and your reputation. And then keep track of that progress.
So in summary, understand their expectations of your institution and any special ones they have in your department or division. Translate the verbs they use like contribute or lead or develop excellence. Build a timeline to support your growth, not just output.
And tell your story with your CV that shows an intentional academic focus. You have one niche for those first couple of years at least. Track everything and stay organized.
Try and do it on a regular basis. And use a structured method, like something like my accelerator. Fast track your progress.
So I want to talk a little bit more here at the end about what you can do to pull it all together. And the first of these is to have mentors and sponsors who you talk about the stuff with, or peers. People in your department who just got promoted are great.
They can actually tell you some of that unwritten stuff. But set up a time with your division director, your chair, whoever it is that helps you with this stuff, and make sure you understand it from the start. I look forward to talking to you again next week or in two weeks.
And I ask that you please rate, review, and follow the Medical Mentor Podcast on your favorite app. I know I'm at Apple and Spotify. I'm definitely on YouTube.
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If you want to get in touch with me, or share a question, or just let us know if you're interested in more information, DM me at smishmancoach on Instagram, or on LinkedIn at Stacey Ishman, or email me at staceyishmancoach at gmail.com, or just check out the website, medicalmentorcoaching.com. Thanks.
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