Are you a physician who's looking to build your career and be recognized nationally, but is having trouble getting on the program or getting your articles published? Are you having difficulty finding mentors and coaches to help you get ahead quickly? Well, don't spin your wheels or lose out on your personal life. This is the podcast for you. I'm Stacey Ishman, and I'm the host of the Medical Mentor Coaching Podcast.
I'm a full professor who's built clinical research and administrative programs while mentoring and coaching young academic physicians from medical school through their first 10 years of practice. It was not long ago I was in the same boat as many of you, struggling to be known for my area of expertise, feeling like my contributions were lost in the shuffle and unsure how to advance my career. I spent a lot of time juggling tasks that didn't quite align with my goals or bring me any joy, and I missed out on a lot of precious moments with my family.
But I've had my aha moment, and now I'm all about channeling my energy into activities that truly propel me forward and bring me happiness. Please join me on the Medical Mentor Coaching Podcast as we dive into all things career advancement, finding your niche, and working towards that elusive work-life integration. Hello, and welcome back to the Medical Mentor Coaching Podcast.
I'm Stacey Ishman, and today I'm going to talk about schmoozing like a pro, or networking with the stars, or just talking to people that you want to get to know. And I want to let you know that you can find all this information on my blog at medicalmentorcoaching.com backslash blog, so no need to take notes. At the beginning of my career, one of the things I had some comfort with was getting to know people.
And while I've talked about being an introvert, and I am, my mom brought us up as performers in her opera company. So I learned to overcome my introvert trepidation of saying hello and employed my tried-and-true technique of focusing on making a connection with just one person in the room. This skill has come in very handy for me as an academic physician as there are a lot of situations where networking is useful and a crucial skill to help you get ahead.
This skill is especially important in the early years of your career when you may not know as many people in your specialty, and you really need to network in order to get on a committee or be invited to be on the program. Because of this, my first tip is that you should prepare for networking in advance. Now, if you know you're going to a meeting, this might consist of looking up who's the leadership, where do they work, who's going to be speaking at the key sessions in the topic area I care most about, what's the latest paper, and if I've already read it, is it something I want to discuss? I'd also focus on whether there are other attendees I'd really like to connect with.
At the beginning of my career, I actually made appointments at major meetings with a couple of the thought leaders in my area of interest, which is pediatric sleep. I asked them if I could get on their schedule prior to traveling to the meeting and gave them a quick introduction of myself and my primary interests, which brings me to my second recommendation, which is to set clear goals. Know what you're looking for from the meeting overall and these networking opportunities.
When meeting with senior thought leaders, my goals for those meetings was that they serve a couple of purposes. Well, maybe more than a couple. First of all, I wanted them to know who I was and I wanted their feedback on my research ideas or at least my major topic area.
Of course, I wanted them to validate my ideas or at least tell me they weren't great and help me come up with better ones. I also asked them to tell me where they thought there were gaps in the field so that I could design my studies to address these gaps. Lastly, if I thought it was appropriate and I liked them, I often asked if there were any opportunities to collaborate or if they would be willing to participate on a panel if I made it easy for them, meaning I'd do all the work to be able to be on the podium with them.
I also asked them if it would be okay if I reached out to them again in the future as I worked through things. And to a person, everyone was gracious about meeting. They were friendly and enthusiastic about my outreach and they have remained collaborators and people I put on my panels.
Now that I'm a senior academician, I love when people reach out to me for a conversation at a meeting. Now, if you're not familiar with the thought leaders or you're intimidated to reach out, this is also a great area to involve your mentors and your sponsors who can help make these connections. Just like when you meet with someone to see if they might be a good match as a mentor, I recommend going into these meetings with a few questions and clear goals in order to make the most and show them what it's like to work with you.
It makes you look professional and prepared. Now, I've used the same approach in a lot of ways. Let's say I'd go to a board meeting and I knew I hadn't really met the person in charge of policy.
I made it a point to know who they were, walk up to them and say hello. If I had a policy question, this was the perfect time to throw it out. Or if I didn't know anything about policy, I'd ask them to tell me the top couple of things I really needed to educate myself on first.
I also wanna mention that it's okay to let people know when you don't know things. In fact, I find it far more valuable to know when people know their limitations. Now, when you meet with the senior thought leaders in your field, this is a perfect opportunity to present your elevator pitch.
So the third thing I recommend is perfecting your elevator pitch. Now, if you don't know what this is, it's a 30 second summary of who you are, what you do and what you're looking for. If you're not sure what to put in it, put those three concepts into chat GPT or cloud three or whatever you'd like to use in order to get some ideas on how to put it together.
Or once you have a first draft, see if it can refine it. That's what I did. Now, the goal of the elevator pitch is to give a strong first impression with the goal of facilitating conversation going forward.
This is your calling card. I also recommend that you practice your pitch until it feels natural. It's a little strange to pitch yourself.
An example of a pitch could be something like this. And yes, I did ask chat GPT to give me some ideas to make it concise. Hi, I'm Stacey Ishman.
I'm a faculty member at XNX University, specializing in the treatment of children with persistent obstructive sleep apnea. I'm board certified in ENT, complex pediatric otolaryngology and sleep medicine. And I'm very interested in where our field is headed and where you see the greatest needs for future research.
I'd love to hear your thoughts. Now, make this your own. Feel free to steal the words if the words help and put in something that uses your information, but come up with something quick and concise.
Now, my fourth recommendation is that you engage on social media. This is a great way to join in the conversation. And if you're at a specific event, oftentimes there's even an event hashtag.
So feel free to use it and tag the speakers, especially if they're members of a social media platform that you're using. Everyone likes to be mentioned and tagged. And this is a great way for them to remember you.
Now, I also recommend if you're not at an event, you may find that posting about your interest attracts others. So if your number one most interesting thing is, I don't know, pediatric sleep medicine, then post a great article or ask a good question or tag somebody. Now, I also recommend if you're not at a specific event, you may find that posting about your interest attracts others.
So if your number one most interesting thing is appendicitis, then post a great article or ask a great question. But feel free to tag people as they give presentations or show their posters. Speaking of the poster session, that brings me to my fifth recommendation.
I absolutely recommend attending networking events or the social events. While I know this may not be your idea of a great time, I think I've actually described going to a cocktail party as one of Dante's circles of hell. I do think this is really an opportunity to meet the movers and the shakers and get to know the people who run the organization.
I also think if there are local events, this is a great way to network. Let people know what your practice is about. Maybe talk about collaborating, whether it's about clinical programs or research.
But don't be afraid to introduce yourself or join a conversation if things are already going on. And just say hello. Find out who they are, ask questions.
Most people like telling you who they are. Now, my sixth recommendation is to follow up promptly if you meet somebody new, especially if you made an appointment with them. Following up with a personalized message, ideally while mentioning something specific from your conversation, is a great way to keep yourself top of mind and help jog their memory.
In this reach out, I recommend you thank them for meeting with you and note how much you liked their poster or their talk or their keynote and express your interest in staying in touch. Now, if there's somebody you didn't get to meet or you didn't get to exchange information, consider asking mentors or sponsors if they can give you some idea how to contact them or make the connection for a mutual colleague. If that doesn't work, LinkedIn can be a really good way in order to connect with others.
Now, one of my other hints is that I often go to my specialty organization to see if they have a directory with emails. If this doesn't work or if I'm looking for something else, you may want to go to peer-reviewed publications. Contact information, including emails, is usually listed for corresponding authors in PubMed and I found a lot of people's emails this way.
Although a word of caution, some of my patients have figured this out too. Now, my seventh recommendation is to have some kind of digital contact method exchange. And the old version of this is a business card.
And if you still have one, that's okay. But most people just take pictures of those now and they don't really want to carry around a business card. Since there are many ways to share your contacts with QR codes or contact sharing apps, this is often preferred.
If you have an iPhone or an Apple Watch, you can also use a feature called Name Drop. You can use this by holding your iPhones a few centimeters apart or on top of each other and they'll blink to show you're connected. You can do the same thing with an Apple Watch and an iPhone or you can go to the Apple Watch, go to Contacts, tap on your picture and hit Share.
Now, the eighth and last thing I want to emphasize for an effective networking is that you want to be a good listener and show genuine interest. Be curious, ask good questions. Don't just network to network.
Make connections, make friends and be sure to avoid interrupting when you're talking to people. And one last thing, I heard a story just the other day where someone said she can't stand when someone looks over her shoulder when she's talking to them because she's feeling the whole time they're just looking for someone better to talk to. She immediately tunes out, she thinks that there's rude and she no longer feels like this is somebody she's connecting with.
So I want to make sure that if you're doing this, you're meeting new people, you're talking to them at meetings, be fully present. Make eye contact and don't look over their shoulder unless there's some horrendous thing happening in the background you're going to save them from. Now, the goal here is to make real connections and to work with people you respect and admire.
But if it all seems overwhelming and you want to focus on only one thing, I recommend starting with your elevator pitch. You can absolutely put a prompt that says I want to write an elevator pitch to give someone an idea of who I am, what I'm about and what I'm asking for and then put that information specifics in. So for a physician, an X and Y specialty, talking to somebody in leadership who is senior in the field.
Give it a try and see what you come up with. Thank you very much if you're still listening. If you can, please rate and review the podcast.
If you have any questions or thoughts for additional topics, please feel free to contact me with questions by DMing me @sishmancoach on Instagram or message me on LinkedIn or email me at [email protected] or just check out the website at www.medicalmentorcoaching.com.
I look forward to talking to you next week.
