111725 Visibility and Connection in 1 hour a week(1)
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[00:00:00] Welcome back. Today I wanna talk about visibility and connection without overwhelm and some one hour a week strategies to build your national reputation. If you're an early career physician, you probably feel that tug of war between wanting to be known for your work and simply trying to get it all done.
There's your inbox and your EMR inbox and your trainee feedback and you know all the other things you're trying to do in order to build your academic career. You see other colleagues are giving grand rounds. They're visiting professors, they're publishing high impact papers. They may be serving in some big national positions, or at least in big regional roles, and maybe you're just trying to get through clinic or finish your charting or not chart at home, which by the way, I hope you can do.
But if you feel overwhelmed by all of this and this idea that you have to network and you have to be visible and you have to work on all the things that make it so that you can move ahead, but seem like they're taking time from you, just living your life. I want to understand visibility and connection do not require hours of networking and constant [00:01:00] posting.
You can fuel your reputation with just a few small things that you can do in one focused hour a week. And so that's what I wanna talk about today. Now, the key thing in this is that you actually have to protect that hour by scheduling it like you would a clinic case or a procedure. You can't skip patient care and you don't skip career care either.
So that's where I wanna start today. Now, early in my career, I was doing all the right things. I was lucky enough to have a stay-at-home spouse and I was seeing patients, I was mentoring trainees, I was publishing papers, but no one outside my division seemed to notice. I would scroll through conference programs and wonder why others were invited to speak on topics that I had spent several years researching, that I've been publishing about.
Unlike many faculty, I assume visibility would just come to me. Somebody would notice what a great job I was doing, and they would pluck me and throw me on the stage somewhere. It didn't really work that way because what I didn't realize is all of that churn. I wasn't doing the job of making connections.
And so some of that visibility requires [00:02:00] you to have intentional connections, not accidental discovery. So one afternoon on a Friday, I actually just gave myself an hour to focus on connection, and that hour became really, really important for me. Some of it was not quite so, one-on-one, I wasn't always sitting in my office, you know, coming up with a plan sometimes out as a meeting.
And there was a doctor who I'm very good friends with now, but at the time we were just getting to know each other and we said, let's write something together. Let's pull our patients. And we sat down, we thought of some ideas, we thought the gaps in the literature were, and we put something together and that
30 minutes that we spent thinking about how we wanted to collaborate. Turned into something where every year we wrote a paper together and one, it was fun and I really enjoyed it. And two, we helped move the literature forward and it was a better paper 'cause we had data from more than one institution.
Now there's other things you can do and I've done with some of these more recently. And one is send a note to somebody I've met at a conference and you know, a handwritten note sounds great, but an email's fine or a text message connecting, letting them know that you remember. [00:03:00] The conversation that you're interested in, the collaboration that you know, if there's something comes up in the future or a panel that you could collaborate on, that is a great way to start a relationship.
You can also nominate a colleague for an award and get on their radar or post a reflection about something you saw on social media. You may tag them in something on Instagram and show a picture of them on the panel or cite the paper. All of those things are great, and I've yet to meet the person who does not like to be cited in somebody else's paper or on somebody else's social media.
The other thing is you can pitch a panel. Using them as the expert and you as the moderator. And so I did that. It was a great way, I think, at the beginning of your career, to really get some prominent people to be aware of you and also for you to be on their radar in such a way that they know that you're organized, you're thoughtful, you ask good questions, and you make it easy for them.
So it makes it easy for them to say yes to you that time and in the future. So I suggest you start small. Start with some genuine connection, an email, a text message. Just reach out to [00:04:00] somebody. Now my one hour visibility routine is really, really helpful and I wanna go through it first. So in the first week, I want you to connect, reach out to somebody new or an existing colleague.
It could be somebody who's a journal editor, society member, or program committee. So if you're a hospitalist, it might be a national expert on quality improvement. If you're a psychiatrist, maybe it's a mentor who developed a training curriculum years ago, pick whatever speaks to you, but send a short message.
I really enjoyed your presentation. I'd love to connect with you about how you designed that or, opportunities to present it in a different setting or to collaborate on something in the future. And my tip is to keep a running list of people you admire or you've met briefly at a conference or online.
And reach out while the connection is fresh, which increases the likelihood of real engagement. So if week one is to connect, week two is to share. I want you to share one meaningful piece of content or contribution. So this may be a teaching reflection with the residents. This may be a slide or a post summarizing your research on social media.
This could be a short [00:05:00] post about a publication or a guideline or a shout out to a colleague or a trainee. And don't forget to tag others if you're gonna use social media or just amplify their work and Listservs or other groups or mention it in grand rounds. Now a tip for this is to try and keep it real.
People connect with your insights, not your perfection. So, you know, just put something out you think can be of value. So we have connection, we have sharing. And the third one is pitch. I want you to find one opportunity that fits your expertise and I want you to submit it. So that could be a proposal for a conference, for a panel.
You could offer to review a manuscript for a journal that you actually enjoy. You could reach out to a committee that you're willing to serve on. Even if they don't add you to the committee, you can offer your service. Or suggest a webinar topic or a podcast to the organizations that you work with, and then send an email even if you're unsure.
That simple act of asking builds confidence and it gets you noticed even if you get a no. So an example might be. You know, I loved our recent wellness seminar. I'd love to put a panel on about that at the academy. Can we talk about [00:06:00] it? But I wanna make sure you remember the Perfectionism Kills Momentum.
You can refine it later, but opportunities only appear once. Don't write the perfect email. Just put a heartfelt question out there. Now our last piece, number four and the fourth week is to do follow up. So follow up on those emails you sent to Connect and to share and to pitch. And then check and see how people are doing, just checking in.
I love that conversation. Are you interested in a panel? If not, what else might be an interesting way for us to work on something together? Or if you don't know people well, it's an opportunity to reintroduce yourself. Now, this is a mind set shift. It's visibility. It is not hustle. So I don't want you feeling like you're out there selling yourself in a way that feels ungenuine.
I don't know if that's a word, but you know what I'm saying? Do something that feels authentic, even if it's a little scary. The discomfort is healthy. Feeling like you're not genuine is not. So don't do those things if they don't feel good. Those are the road to exhaustion. But do push yourself to make the connections, to [00:07:00] share the values of others, and think of as a little exercise.
One hour once a week won't transform your career overnight, but 52 hours a year of focused action will. So over time these can lead to invitations to speak collaborations with other departments, invitations to be a visiting professor, leadership roles in your professional society, local, regional, national, and recognition by the promotion committee that you are making a contribution.
I do recommend you stack your visibility hours, something you already do, like right after clinic sign out, or your weekly research meetings so that you're more likely to do it. And then I want you to think about your visibility and connection without overwhelm plan by writing it down. Pick out the hour, block it out on your calendar, and then I want you to connect, share, invite, collaboration, and follow up.
Track your efforts and celebrate the small wins and prioritize consistency over perfection. It's all about visibility and connection and it's [00:08:00] something as small as saying, great talk to somebody when you hear a great talk. Thanks for joining me this week and I look forward to talking to you soon.
