Stop Being a Good Citizen and Start Being Strategic
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[00:00:00] Welcome back to the Medical Mentor Coaching Podcast. Today we are on our third of five in our turning business into promotion series, and the goal here is to stop being a good citizen. Don't tell your boss I said that and start being strategic. And it doesn't really mean stop being a good citizen, but it does mean be thoughtful about your yeses and your nos.
Now one of the reasons for this is that overcommitment is the killer and service quietly delays advancement. So we want to choose our roles that build our rank. Now, obviously, if there's something you love doing and it's not gonna get you promoted, do it. There's too many times that we do things that we think are going to help our promotion that really don't.
And I did this absolutely at the beginning of my career. There was a whole bunch of work I did around medical student curriculum, which I loved and enjoyed, and I love those interactions. And to this day, my interactions with medical students are some of my favorites, but the actual curriculum development work was not something I [00:01:00] published.
It was not something that showed up as anywhere with one, anybody line on my CV and it didn't tell a story. But that's fine. Working on those things makes a ton of sense. If it's something that feeds your soul, and it did. So I did it, but it was intentional at the time, and I thought it was gonna move towards my promotion.
And so understanding where those things fit are important. Now, one of the most important things is to understand your story. So we talked about your career story and we talked about your calendar audit. This week we're gonna address service. So in academic medicine, nearly all service is important. And I really mean this.
Like we could not make academic departments run without it. Editorial boards matter, committees matter, curriculum work matters. Task forces matter. The issue is not whether that work is valuable, it's whether it's strategic for you. And the other thing to keep in mind is so many of us really appreciate sponsoring somebody, and there are times when the thing that is.
Fun for you, but not strategic is absolutely [00:02:00] strategic for somebody else whose goal is to be on the education track when mine is to be on a research track. So it doesn't mean I can't do the work, but it also means if I say yes, I might be keeping somebody else who really wants to be able to do that. And it helps with their narrative from being able to do it.
So for me, early in my career, maybe middle of my career, honestly, I was in four different editorial boards and I was serving as an associate editor for a separate journal. Work was great. I understood it's important. I knew why I was doing it. I knew it helped show my reputation and grow my national reputation, and it was absolutely sore service and it supported the field and it had some prestige.
The journal that I was an associate edit for, I love that journal. I still love that journal, but I didn't enjoy a second of it. I really disliked it. More importantly, it absolutely exceeded what was necessary. Nobody needs to be on five editorial boards. Now, being an associate editor for a journal, that's awesome.
That showed by itself that I've been selected as an expert in my field and I was recognized I didn't need to be on four [00:03:00] other or editorial boards, and especially when I didn't enjoy the work. So at one point when I moved to a bigger leadership role, I had the opportunity to say no. I said no to all of them.
It was one of the favorite days of my life. I used to say it was the favorite, but don't tell. My wife or my children or any of those people, and come on, it's a joke. But it was a great day for me. That decision was not about disengaging. It was about reallocating my energy. And quite honestly, I recommended great people for all the roles that I left.
People who wanted the jobs, people who were excited that it was gonna grow their CV and it was gonna show their reputation and help build their promotable activity. So when I stepped away, I sponsored five other people. And at the same time, I focus more intentionally on my leadership, which included serving as the chair of the Board of Governors and sitting on the board of directors for my academy.
My work didn't decrease, my alignment improved, and I was so much happier and I wasn't doing less. I was just intentional. Now, one of the keys there is to do what you love doing versus doing what promotes you, and quite [00:04:00] honestly, finding the thing where the intersection occurs. So I love working with medical students.
Like I said, teaching really energizes me and I've spent significant time mentoring and supporting and sponsoring trainees. And at one point I was on that curriculum committee and I really loved it. I wasn't on an education or a teaching track, so it was great that I did it because it fed my soul, but it did not advance my promotion.
And that's okay. You should do work that you enjoy, but if you can find work you enjoy, so if the committee work could be something that supports your clinical work, that supports your scholarship, that's the ideal world. And really to be intentional. So instead of just being on the curriculum committee, I said, oh gosh, the next thing that's opens up, I'd love to be on the sleep committee.
It makes more sense for me to do that and for me to move forward in that direction. When I was working with the academy, I was on a general education committee, and then I got to be on the peds committee, and then I got to be on the sleep committee and all of those shifts made sense as I moved closer and closer to the thing.
That was [00:05:00] my story and my narrative. And there is a difference between choosing something that you love. Or moving towards it 'cause you think it's gonna help your rank. I absolutely did things early in my career that I thought were gonna get me promoted and it really many of them didn't. And so understanding the leadership roles that actually move your promotion forward is an important conversation to have with mentors and sponsors and chairs and promotion committees.
Now when service provides scholarship or measurable outcomes or authorship or visible leadership progression, it compounds. So don't say no just because you're like, oh, I wanna help me with my promotion. But do say, Hey, let's, I can do the service activity, but what I love is to make sure the next thing you're offering me is X.
That does move your promotion forward, or that tells your story. Now, as being good at something means more and more requests are gonna come in. I had somebody tell me today about a junior faculty member who we both love, who says yes to everything. And so people don't even ask anymore if she'll do it.
They just add people to her clinic and schedule her [00:06:00] during her admin time. And if you are that reliable, you are asked to serve. You are asked to do more. You're thoughtful, you're invited to committees, you're organized, you get asked to lead initiatives. With those meetings and committees and work, they multiply and they can sometimes be managed by email instead of that meeting.
It's all important. I'm not diminishing the work, but sometimes you need to think about how you can make sure that you're only doing the work that you have time for. That feeds your soul and the promotable work that helps move your scholarship forward. Because honestly, promotion committees do not reward attendance.
Nobody gets the perfect attendance award and promotion committees. They reward sustained impact, intentional story narrative and increasing leadership. So if your service is not giving you some kind of measurable change or something that looks good on your cv, like leadership or alignment with your focus, you may be thinking about something that you are gonna get burnt out on in the end because you're still trying to do your scholarship and you're trying to do all this service work [00:07:00] at the same time.
So how do you evaluate that service before you say yes? And the first thing I tell some people to do, especially if you're an automatic yes person. Is practice saying, thank you so much for the opportunity. I'm gonna have to think about it and get back to you. That's all you have to say. Even if you know you're gonna say yes, I want you to practice saying, let me think about it.
I will tell you my, one of my favorite stories is one of the residents who would say yes to every faculty member who asked him to do a project, whether he was interested in it or not. And at one point I finally was like, I need you to practice saying no. And he couldn't say no, and that's fine, but I need to think about it as reasonable.
I need to look at this in context. I need to be able to see if this makes sense for my narrative. I need to understand more about it. So before accepting or continuing a service role, ask yourself, will it deepen my expertise? In my defined area of focus, or will it create visible leadership progression over time?
Does it lead to some scholarship dissemination or measurable program development? Is the time investment proportional to the signal it [00:08:00] sends? And if I reduce it in half, what roles would remain because they truly matter. Now that's way too many questions. So all I want you to start with is, will this role give me something I want?
Either it moves me towards my narrative for my career, or I enjoy it. It can be as simple as that. Do I like it? Will it help me? And if you're not sure, ask those mentors and those sponsors and those leaders. Now, I'll also tell you the very same people who asked me to do things, I'll say, will this move me towards promotion?
Is this a good idea? Some of them will say no, but they were like, but I knew you would do it and I don't wanna do it. So I asked you first. It doesn't mean I'm the only person that could ask. There is not an obligation or guilt to come out of this. It is not selfish to say, Hey, I wanna be disciplined in my career design, and I can say no to things that don't align.
I'm not asking you to say no to everything. I am asking you to be intentional in the yeses, so I want you to reframe. You're allowed to enjoy your work. You're allowed to choose service that aligns with your goals. You're allowed to stop doing things simply because you don't want to do them [00:09:00] anymore. You don't have to keep going.
You don't have to find your replacement. Promotion is not a reward for being everywhere. It is recognition of service that's aligned, intentional, meaningful, disseminated. So that's what I want you to think about. If this resonates with you, first of all, please look at what you're doing right now and see if there's something that doesn't align and maybe should be given to somebody else or sponsored for somebody who actually it will help with their narrative.
And please come back and listen to us again at the Medical Mentor Coaching Podcast. Please share this with a friend who might find this useful so that we can get the word out there. Thank you so much and I look forward to talking to you next week.
