How to transform your work environment

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 a pleasure to be talking with you today. I want to thank you for tuning in. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your kind words as you are continuing to support me on this podcast. I'm excited to be talking today about how to transform your work environment.

1:24 And I laugh because this podcast episode comes out of many conversations that I've had in the last few days alone about people who want to just transform the world, right? And they want to change their institution, and they see all these gaps. There are not enough, there's just not enough resources to support young faculty. Therefore I'm going to do this. And there is just not enough to support women in the academy, therefore I'm going to do this. And I do applaud it. I think it's pretty awesome. And to be honest, this podcast for me is part of the transformation that I want to affect in my work environment or in my academic environment. I want many people to have the resources they want to succeed.

2:05 And if you're going to transform your work environment, if you're going to transform the world, you've got to be strategic, you've got to be strategic about it. So I'm going to talk about it today. I'm going to talk about how to transform your work environment. And before I share a couple of steps that I recommend in what to do to transform your work environment, I want to share first that I have always kind of had this superhero mindset. I've always wanted to save the world because I could see so much that was wrong. My critical eye could identify all these problems. I was like, well, if we do this differently, then it would work this way. And I always had a lot of solutions for the people who were responsible.

2:52 So when I started my faculty career really early on and I was fully clinical, seeing patients five days a week, and I remember thinking, this clinic is so inefficient. And I wrote a proposal. I wrote a proposal for how to enhance the efficiency of the clinic. And I saw that patients were having a hard time getting in. And I wrote a proposal for how to improve access. I was the one who was constantly writing proposals and submitting them to my division chief for evaluation. Like I would literally stay up in the middle of the night thinking about the problem, write a one page proposal by the morning and say, I have a proposal that's going to solve this problem. And I laughed because I think it was very cute that I was writing all these proposals.

3:35 But what I wasn't doing was submitting a proposal and saying, this is the proposal I'm going to execute. It's like, this is the proposal I have for you to execute because it's your job and I'm just telling you what you need to do. And I don't know what my division chief did with all those proposals, but I certainly wrote a few. I definitely did. Anyway, so I think differently about transforming a work environment today. And so I want to share a little bit of that with you. The first thing I want to remind you of is who you are. I want to remind you of who you are. The first thing is remember who you are. And when I say remember who you are, I want you to remember that you're the person who as a teenager or even earlier for some of you made a decision that you were going to become a clinician.

4:24 And maybe you didn't make the decision until later, but at some point in your life, you decided that you're going to do it. And if you didn't do it when you were a teenager, then you did it later in life, then you made a decision as a conscious person, as a conscious person who's already been working saying, I'm going to drop this thing and go back to medical school. You chose that. And you didn't just make the decision you were towards executing on your decision and you made it. You got into medical school like the impossible happened. And then you didn't just make it into medical school. You actually graduated. And then you went and you pursued residency and you pursued fellowship. And here you are now in an academic job.

5:08 You did that. No, you were not lucky. You took advantage of opportunity. I'll give you that. But you worked hard. You were strategic. You planned. You made it happen. Remember who you are. You have shown in life that you can do hard things. In fact, to be honest, I would just say you can do impossible things. I can see that. I know that because the experience of clinicians is that we're able to make impossible things possible. So I want to ask you to remember who you are. Remember the superpowers you've already demonstrated from the very beginning up until this moment and the same superpowers that you have been exhibiting since you started.

6:01 They still lie in you and they still have capacity to do amazing and incredible things. And that's why number two is that you should recognize just how much power you have. So you imagined that you were going to become a physician. You imagined it. And then you went to work and you made it happen. You imagined that you were going to graduate residency. You went to work. You made it happen. You imagined if you did fellowship that you were going to finish fellowship. And you went and you made it happen. And now you imagined your faculty job.

6:43 And you went and made it happen. Oh my goodness. You're really incredible. Oh my gosh, you're amazing. What? Like some people, they didn't make it all the way through. You know it's not necessarily because you were smarter than them. It's not like you were like, you know, the 1% of the 1%. You know. You know how hard you worked. You know how strategic you were. You know that this didn't just happen by chance. And so that person who made all that happen, you, you've got a lot of power. Oh my goodness. It's incredible power. You've got power to bring things to pass that other people are just dreaming of.

7:26 You go and you make dreams happen. You've got a lot of power. And I want you to recognize how much power you have. The third thing I want you to recognize is the limitations of your power. So when I talked about this whole thing that you did where you went from college student to medical school or maybe post-grad or whatever to medical school. And then you turn around and you went to residency and you turn around again and you made it. You went to fellowship. The power you were exhibiting in all of that was really on yourself. You were pulling the power inwards.

8:08 And so they said you needed to study for the MCAT. You went and studied. You didn't ask anybody else to study for you. You did it. And then you got up. You went and took the exam. And then you're the one who studied for all the pre-med classes and passed them. Nobody did that for you. And so I want you to recognize that over the course of the great power you exhibited in transitioning from college student to amazingly confident physician, you are using power on yourself, your power on yourself. You willed yourself to go to work. You willed yourself to study. You willed yourself. You were using your power on yourself and you accomplished so much.

8:54 That's amazing power, but it's limited power because that power is limited to just you. Yeah, try to apply that same power to somebody else. Yeah, make them study. Make them study so that they can go take the MCAT like you did. Okay. Make them go put in applications. Make them do it. Yeah, it's very hard. You can't make people do what they don't want to do. You can't. Even when they want to do it, you can't make them do what they're not ready to do. And so I want you to recognize that the limitations of your power are such that it only works on you.

9:39 It doesn't easily work on other people. And so when you're thinking of recognizing that your power is limited to you and to your actionable steps, then it's helpful. It's helpful because you recognize where to aim your power on yourself. Yeah, your power is amazing and powerful when used on yourself. And it's pretty weak and piddly when you try to use it on other people. Okay. So then the fourth thing you do, and I am still talking about how to transform your work environment because you've got power to transform it, but maybe not in the way you're thinking, not in the way I was thinking where I was writing all these proposals.

10:30 And so that's why number four is grow your power. What does that mean? Hmm. So in order for you to go to medical school, you needed to find out about what it took to get into medical school. You did a lot of investigating. You asked questions. You went on websites. You read things. You went and got informed. And then you went and you executed. And then when it was time to get into residency, you kind of asked the same questions. What does it take to get into residency? What kind of residency do I want to get into? What are the scores of people who get into residency? What rotations have they done? What letters do they have? What research projects did they do? You did all of that. You got information. And then you went and executed.

11:13 And so each time you got information about a thing you were planning towards, it gave you courage and opportunity to go looking for how to satisfy whatever that requirement was. And so you grew your power really by getting information and then executing on the information you got. And so that's what I mean. When I say grow your power, go get information about the next phase. Okay? This work environment is toxic. Go get information about what it takes to transform a toxic environment. Go get information. Attend career development workshops. Attend professional development workshops.

11:55 Attend conflict management workshops. Get information. Get information. So as you get information and then execute on the information you have, you're growing your power. You're growing your power. And what you're going to find as you do all these things is you're growing in patience. You're growing in acceptance of what is. You are growing in recognition of the things you can change and the things you cannot change. You're growing in immense tolerance of things around you. You're growing in negotiation savvy because you're getting that information. Then you're executing on it.

12:37 So you're growing your power by being very clear on what information is needed to affect the change you want. And once you grow your power, you use it on yourself. You use it on yourself because it is very hard to convince other people to do what they don't want to do. But what you can do is influence them. And one of the ways you influence them is by you changing first. You change. You grow. You expand. You become larger than life. And then people look at you and they're like, excuse me, is there something different about you? I can't tell. Like, are you more patient? Are you more productive? Like, what's happening? How come I see all these things happening in you and through you?

13:21 Yeah. So what you find is that the more you grow, the more you expand, the more you become more than you used to be, the more you cause people to pause and say, huh, what's going on there? And this is not to say you don't have conversations. It doesn't mean you don't have meetings. But the bulk of the conversations and the meetings you have are not about telling people what to do, but it's showing them and influencing them to think differently. And so one of the best ways to do that is to grow and expand and think differently yourself because then it challenges the people around you.

14:07 So grow your power, use it on yourself, and then watch your environment transform. Watch your environment transform. Because I think sometimes what we're doing is we're working very hard to get other people to do things that they don't want to do. And then we're neglecting the things that we can do. So there I was, not the division chief, writing proposals to the division chief for how he should do his job. Meanwhile, my job as a young faculty member was kind of left undone. Not OK, not cool. But the moment I left pursuing him to do the things that he, well, maybe or maybe didn't want to do, I could focus on the things I could do.

14:51 For example, here I am on this podcast because this is where I have power to share my words with you as you listen. And I am able to sit and watch my environment transform as time after time you all tell me that these episodes are beneficial to you. And that's really, really awesome. Your environment transforms as you transform. Now number seven is recognize your weaknesses. And in this particular situation, what I'm talking about is like Superman kind of weaknesses.

15:31 You know, Superman was made weak by kryptonite. Kryptonite was the one element that would just weaken him. Be careful of your kryptonite. Be careful. You care so much. You want to help everybody solve their problems. And you're like, yeah, I know I haven't written that grant that's due in three weeks. I know I haven't submitted that paper that I should have submitted. I know, but I really just want to help. It's kryptonite. It's kryptonite. It will sink you. It will sink you. But when you recognize your weakness, when you recognize the kryptonite pieces of your life, it allows you to create and build your life in such a way that you are protected from kryptonite.

16:18 What you're doing is building boundaries against kryptonite so that you can succeed. And I don't know what that weakness looks like for you. For me, it was people pleasing. Yes, that's a weakness that I have struggled with throughout my time as a faculty member. And to be honest, still struggle with actually. It's getting better, but I still have it. I still recognize its tendencies. And so because I know that I have this weakness, I protect myself. You know? I protect myself. Instead of having five meetings a week with people who have different questions, I have five podcast episodes that I record in one sitting because I know that my tendency is to just go all out and meet with as many people as possible and fill the schedule and not meet the goals that I've set for myself academically because I'm doing all these meetings.

17:16 And I want to support you. I want to support as many people as possible. And I have limitations in terms of how many people I can support. And so as I do the work of growing and expanding myself and I recognize my weaknesses and I protect against my weaknesses, I'm really able to transform my environment because I'm moving forward the things that are relevant, the things that are resonant. Yeah, so those are seven things about how to transform your work environment. And I know you were looking for something different. Maybe you're looking for a start a grassroots movement and then pick it in front of the dean's office. I know you weren't expecting that, but it is different.

17:58 And my job, I feel on this podcast is to help you think differently about your career, is to help you think differently about you. In reality, I love for all of you to lead vibrant research programs. It's my life mission. And I also recognize that you're a whole person and there's so much more to you than just the work you do. And you want to expand and grow in so many ways. You've grown and expanded in so many ways. Don't stop now. And so yes, I want to share with you things that are kind of a little bit off the beaten path to help you just think differently about your career, your experience.

18:42 So how to transform your work environment. I talked about seven things. Number one, remember who you are and all the power you wielded over these years. Number two, recognize how much power you have. Number three, recognize the limitations of your power. We can mostly apply it to you and not to the other person. Number four, growing your power, making sure that you have access to information that helps you transform and making sure you're using your power on yourself, not trying to do it on other people or use it on other people and then getting frustrated because they won't do what you want them to do.

19:23 And then as you do all that, you watch your environment transform. That's number six. And then number seven is to recognize your weaknesses. Kryptonite will sink you. Maybe it's a lack of boundaries. Kryptonite will sink you. And so you're going to want to protect against your weaknesses so that Kryptonite doesn't speak up on you and sink you. All right. It's been a pleasure talking with you today. Thank you for listening. As always, I am available if you're looking for a coach and you do not have one, please reach out to me. You can send me a DM on Instagram or on Facebook or on LinkedIn and I'd be happy to talk to you.

20:03 We'll see if this will be a great fit for you. All right. It's been a pleasure talking with you today. Please share the episode with at least one person, just one person. And well, actually you can share it with more if you want, but definitely share with one person. And I look forward to talking with you again the next time. 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. If you found the information in this episode to be helpful, don't keep it all to yourself.

20:46 Someone else needs to hear it. So take a minute right now and share it. As you share this episode, you become part of our mission to help launch a new generation of clinician researchers who make transformative discoveries that change the way we do healthcare.