How to leverage relationships for career success

0:00 Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor. As clinicians, we spend a decade or more as trainees learning to take care of patients. When we finally start our careers, we want to build research programs, but then we find that our years of clinical training did not adequately prepare us to lead our research program. Through no fault of our own, we struggle to find mentors, and when we can't, we quit. However, clinicians hold the keys to the greatest research breakthroughs.

0:40 For this reason, the Clinician Researcher podcast exists to give academic clinicians the tools to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor. Now introducing your host, Toyosi Onwuemene. Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast. I'm your host, Toyosi Onwuemene, and it is an absolute pleasure to be talking with you today. I'm excited to bring you today's episode about five ways to enhance your career using relationships, five ways to use relationships to enhance your career. And I'm speaking to clinician researchers.

1:21 So speaking very specifically about enhancing your research career. However, this is applicable to every aspect of your career, not just research. So I'm excited to bring you this episode today. The reason I bring you this episode today is because of a particularly fraught conversation I had in the last week with someone who's been to some extent a long-term collaborator. And we had a recent opportunity where I was offered an opportunity that I did not accept. And I think that the collaborator was upset. And I didn't know about it clearly until a few months later when something came up and I thought, oh, wait a minute, are you upset out of proportion to what's going on right now?

2:03 And it turned out that it was what was considered a snub a couple of months ago that really made this particular collaborator super upset. And I remember thinking, oh, I didn't realize that you were so upset by this. I didn't realize. Because whatever has happened subsequently is kind of still reason to be upset, but it seemed like there was something unresolved beforehand. Not to be cryptic, I think the goal of my conversation is not necessarily to share what the issues were or what the concerns were because that's not as important. What was important is that feelings were hurt. And in order to move forward, it is important to acknowledge those feelings, even if you don't necessarily agree with why the feelings are generated.

2:49 So I thought it was important then to come and talk about how challenging relationships can be, why they're so important to our research career, and how we can make the most of these relationships that we have. We are, I want to say obligated to have, but also really privileged to have so that we can enhance our careers. And don't get me wrong, this is not just about careers. This is just about life. Relationships are the source of life. And so we need them, we need them to be strong to enhance our careers, but we also need them to be strong in our daily lives. And so I'm focused on research, but this is applicable to other parts of your life as well.

3:31 The very first thing I want to share, and I think is important, is that you should become the kind of person you want to hang out with. Become the kind of person you want to collaborate with. Become the kind of person you want to be with. Just you know, there's just some people that, they're just people in your life where it's like, I just like to hang out with you, you're cool. That's the kind of person you should be. We are looking for the one who is cool to hang out with. I want to collaborate with that person because they are so cool. And yes, those people exist and thank you, I'm glad that you are looking for them. But what I'm inviting you to do is become them. And how do you become them?

4:12 It's a great question. I think one thing that one of my mentors always says that I think is so important is that the better you become, the better everything becomes. The more you enhance yourself, the more you enhance every experience that you have. And that just means personal development. I know we talked about career development, we talked about professional development, but more important than all of that may be personal development. Who are you as a person? And how can you enhance more of what you already have? Now, for many of you who are listening to me, you're physicians. And so it's like, wow, I've done a really big personal development thing by going through med school, residency, fellowship, all of those things.

4:55 It's great personal development. And some of you are parents and you'll say, oh, I will tell you that my children have helped me get some personal development. Absolutely. Some of you are married, like, oh, being in a long-term committed relationship will definitely help you grow. It's a great source of personal development. However, yes, there's more, all of that and more, and then some. How else can you grow as a person? Yes, reading books and not just any books, right? Books are people who thought very deeply about issues. Those can help in your personal development, attending seminars, attending courses that may or may not be related to your professional or career development, but become a better you.

5:39 Spend time thinking about thoughts that are deep and challenging. Spend time thinking about things that are beautiful and elevating and excellent. Spend time doing things that help you develop as an amazing person. And yes, that includes rest. And yes, that includes time away from your amazing work that you're doing. And yes, that means taking time away from toxicity so that toxicity does not become part of your frame of reference or your frame of behavior or your reference point for the way you live life. So first things first, that if you're going to have successful relationships, successful collaborations, if you are going to allow relationships or benefit from relationships, enhancing your career, the very first thing you've got to do is become a cool person yourself.

6:33 Now when I talk about becoming a cool person, I think sometimes it's like, oh, I should be the person, the party person, right? The person who's the life and soul of the party. And not necessarily, some people are not that way. I was going to say some of us don't like to be the life and soul of the party, but my husband might disagree. I'm just saying that being a fun person to hang out with is different from being a great person. You can be fun, maybe you tell great jokes, that doesn't necessarily make you the kind of person that people want to collaborate with. And so I think it's deeper than just the superficial entertaining people, which we can do and really spice up a party.

7:16 It can be fun to hang out with people who are entertaining or comical. But what I'm talking about is like growing the deeper you, really taking time to develop you because other people benefit and clearly you benefit as well. Okay. The second thing I want to share is to remove judgment from your relationship with yourself. Remove judgment from your relationship with yourself. And the book I always like to refer to with regard to this is the book by Shozha Min, Positive Intelligence. This is a great book, I totally recommend it. But it really helps you realize that we have saboteurs in our lives and one of those is the judge and the judge is always judging you and the judge is you.

8:07 And it's harsh, it's critical. And maybe it was the voice of your mother or maybe it is the voice of your father, maybe it's the voice of a childhood friend in air quotes, or friend in quotes. But that voice is harsh and critical and you can never be enough for this character. You can never do enough, you can never be enough and so it judges you harshly. But again, the judge is you or is it? You should read the book. But I think what's important is that we are so critical of ourselves and criticism never really helped anybody thrive. But it's this thread that runs through physicians, physician scientists, this thread of work harder, do more, be more, show up more, this is not enough.

9:03 And some of us are on that hamster wheel where no matter what we do, it will never be enough. And so no matter how much we attain, it will never be something that we can pause and really celebrate for a long time because we're always moving to the next thing, because we're always critical of what we have accomplished. Holy cow, it is exhausting. And the reason it's important is because nobody really thrives under harsh criticism, even when it is yourself criticizing you. It's like, oh no, as long as I'm the one criticizing myself, I really motivate myself to do work. I used to believe that too. And when I read Sharzad Shaman's work, it really did change my experience.

9:45 And I realized that, wait a minute, what if I decided I was going to stop criticizing myself or judging myself so harshly and instead started to speak kindly to myself and started to instead encourage myself? How might I be different? You know what? Oh my gosh, it is so much better. You do more, you accomplish more. So it's not like you can't accomplish more unless you're criticizing or judging yourself harshly. Creating an atmosphere in which you thrive is so much more beautiful. And you actually do accomplish a lot. You can be very productive. You're no longer under the harsh criticism that causes you to shrink back and be less creative.

10:29 You can be more creative. And so yes, please read that book, Positive Intelligence by Sharzad Shaman. No, I do not get any money from you buying the book or participating in whatever programs he has available now. But it really is a great book, an important book if you're going to work on lessening the sound of the judge that harshly criticizes you so that you can create an environment in which you thrive, an environment in which you find peace in the work that you do and don't feel as if you continually have to be on a grind just to please a person that can never be pleased. And yes, that's the judge, the inner critic that is you.

11:11 So number two is remove judgment from your relationship with yourself. Number three is to remove judgment from others. Now I'm pretty specific about the order in which I've put these two. So the first being remove judgment from yourself because you are the most important relationship. The relationship you have with you is the most important relationship that you can have with any human person. And if you have a poor relationship with yourself, you are guaranteed to have a poor relationship with other people. It is a guarantee. I know it's interesting.

11:52 So I grew up as a people pleaser and so I understand people pleasing. And I realized that part of my people pleasing was a poor relationship with myself and this feeling that I had to be manipulative in making people happy so that they could give me back something. And so it wasn't even honest. Many of my relationships are not honest because there I was working so hard to make them happy and lying to myself or denying my real feelings or my real emotions about things. And someone would do something really neat and I would say, oh, it's okay. I must have provoked you. Sounds silly now. But what I'm saying is that my poor relationship with myself allowed the people pleasing to thrive because it seemed easy for me to step on myself so that I could make somebody else happy.

12:43 But in the meantime, it wasn't a true real relationship with the other person because I had to step on myself to do it. But also it wasn't authentic. It wasn't real. It was actually kind of manipulative. And so you cannot have a great relationship with others if you do not have a great relationship with yourself. And for many of you, you might be thinking, wait a minute, relationship with myself? What? But you know that you have a relationship with yourself. If you think back on your thoughts, how do you talk to yourself? How do you check in with yourself throughout the day?

13:24 Are you kind to yourself? Do you consider your needs? How much sleep you need? How much rest you need? How many toxic relationships you should stay out of to be kind and healing to yourself? What is your relationship with yourself? That may be the most important human relationship you work on because the extent to which you have a great relationship with yourself manifests in your relationships with other people. But now I'm talking about the importance of removing judgment from others, right? And so you can't actually successfully remove judgment from others until you remove judgment from yourself.

14:06 You cannot successfully honor others until you first honor yourself. You cannot successfully love others until you actually have first loved you because you are the most imperfect being you will ever meet unless you're narcissistic and then just this episode cannot help you. You are the hardest person to love, right? And when you can love yourself, then you know that you can actually really love others. And it's important because if you're going to collaborate well with others and create a culture of respect free of judgment in which others can come and thrive as well, you do need to do it for yourself.

14:49 And as you do it for yourself, you recognize that it's important to do it for others as well. To let go of your judgment of them, let go of your criticism of them. Nobody ever thrived under criticism. I'd like to say it again, nobody, nobody I know, no human I know, ever thrived under an atmosphere of criticism. Oh yeah, they may have worked harder. Oh yeah, they may have really pushed. They may have pushed all the way to the brim, all the way to the edge, but they didn't thrive in an atmosphere of criticism. And so don't criticize yourself. Don't criticize others as well.

15:30 And by criticism, I don't mean don't give people critique, right? The difference is that feedback really builds up. It helps people move forward. It's like, I'm giving you this feedback, so now you know what to do to improve. And that's different from I'm tearing down your work because it's so crap. It is so unworthy. It's different. But anyway, remove judgment from your environment, judgment of yourself and judgment of others. Number four is to pay attention to what people communicate. Now this is important because sometimes you're like, well, remove old judgment from other people. Well, how do I know when people are doing a good job or how can I communicate that?

16:13 I want to say that it is important to recognize that you can never make anybody do what they don't want to do. Now you can manipulate them to do what they don't want to do. You can incentivize them to do what they don't want to do. You could disincentivize them from not doing what you want them to do, but you can never fully make someone do what they don't want to do, right? So what are some strategies to try to make people do what you want to do? You can nag them until they're like, you know what, this is enough, stop. You could strike terror in their hearts. You could say, hey, if you do not do this, I will not support you with a letter of recommendation. You could do that.

16:53 You could make them afraid. You could manipulate them into thinking that you're really there for them and you just want to see how much they can do for you. And then you're like, ha, not here for you. Just kidding. Yeah. But people do what they want to do because they want to. And the more you collaborate and the more you want to create good work through your science or have people in your program who create good work, the more you should pay attention to what people are telling you. What do I mean by that? It means if somebody says, hey, I will treat you disrespectfully. I want you to believe them the first time they tell you that. Don't say, oh, you're a noble laureate. Of course you can treat me disrespectfully so that some of your goodness and your greatness can rub off on me.

17:37 So much of that in medicine where we think that just because someone is influential, it's okay for them to be rude or disrespectful to us. I'm saying that you do get to choose how you allow people to treat you, but I do want you to recognize what they're communicating. Recognize what they're communicating. Or sometimes you give someone an opportunity and they have an excuse. They're like, oh, I couldn't get to it. Oh, I couldn't get, oh, I couldn't get, I was so busy. I was so busy. Don't judge them, but appreciate and recognize and receive what they're communicating to you. I'm always going, at the season of my life, it may not be an always, but this season, this time of my life, I am going to struggle to produce things on time.

18:26 And that is okay for you to recognize what they're communicating. Judging them is saying, I can't believe this person is always late. That's judgment, not very helpful. But recognizing what they're communicating is like, okay, now having things turned in on time is important to me. This person doesn't seem to have that as their goal. How can I move forward? Right? That's really gets me to number five. Decide what you're going to do so that you can move forward. Decide how you want to move forward. So for me, I've had experiences where people were very rude to me. It was a simple communication and they came out guns blazing, almost feeling like I was going to be run over.

19:08 And I thought, hmm, okay, what does this communicate? This is a person who, for whatever reason, is struggling to respect me right now. Hmm, how do I want to move forward? Hmm, I like to be respected in these spaces. I choose not to have dealings with this person to any great extent. I get to make choices. I get to make choices. And so that's number five is decide how you want to move forward. Collect the information they give you and use it to make choices, active choices, because you are always choosing. And if you choose to stay in situations that don't enhance you, that don't support you, what you do is you close the door against opportunities for people to support you and encourage you.

19:52 Right? If you are tolerating collaborations, relationships, mentoring relationships or mentee relationships that abuse you, then what you're not doing is opening the door for opportunities that enhance you. So the five things I talked about, number one, become the kind of person you want to hang out with. Personal development is key. Number two, remove judgment from your relationship with yourself. The most important human relationship you will have is you. Number three, remove judgment from others. And number four, pay attention to what people communicate. Number five, decide what you want to do, how you want to move forward. All right.

20:32 It's been a pleasure talking with you today. Remember, if you're looking for coaching, I would be happy to connect with you. We have a group that's going on Mondays at six. I hope that you will think about joining us and we do have some slots for individual coaching as needed. I want to thank you so much for tuning in and I look forward to speaking with you again next time on the Clinician Researcher Podcast. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Clinician Researcher Podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor.

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