Make your own path

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 speaking with you today. Thank you for taking the time to tune in and listen as I talk today about creating what you wish to see. Creating what you wish to see. And part of the story or the reason behind this particular episode is my experience growing up as somebody in the academy wanted to lead research, but didn't necessarily have all the currency necessary to receive the right support to do that.

1:39 And when you find yourself in a situation where you want to really lead research, but you're not really supported to do it for whatever reason, whether that you're not seen to be qualified or you're not seen to be qualified enough, whatever the reason, it is an interesting place to be because you still have all these needs, but now nobody feels like they can make a case for these needs. And so in a sense, you're on your own. And I used to think it was a unique experience and it was just me, but in reality, there's so many faculty who start their careers in this way where they really want to lead a research program, but they don't have access to resources. And for that reason, they're not resourced to succeed.

2:19 And so they really are figuring out how to make things work on their own. And so I think where this episode becomes important is to just make it easy in a sense to normalize the fact that there are many people who don't start out resourced to succeed as scientists, many, many people, and it's not the way it should be. And I don't necessarily recommend it, and I definitely am an advocate for institutions supporting faculty who want to lead research programs so much more. And it's the reason why I'm a coach for faculty members who really want to lead research programs, even though they may not even have the time or the space to do that.

3:02 But ultimately, what happens is you're building for yourself what you wish to see because you do not have access to it. And interestingly, many people who are underrepresented in the academy find themselves in these places, and many times women as well. And the reason I add women to that is that there are certain jobs in the academy that people don't necessarily question whether women should contribute to or participate in, for example, kind of things that are along the lines of leading the residency program or being part of like the welcome committee or the welfare committee, those kinds of things. But the kinds of things that actually really advance careers in terms of publication and manuscripts and things like that that are actually the currency of academic medicine, you tend not to find people who are underrepresented in the academy represented in that as well.

3:58 So a lot of the things you're building, you're building what you don't have. You're building the mentorship you may not have access to. You're creating opportunities for your writing like you may not have been able to before. And I just want to encourage you, and that's what this podcast episode is really about, is you're about encouraging you that, you know what, if you don't see it, you can create it. And yes, it will take time. Yes, it will be challenging. Oh, it would be so much easier if you didn't have to do that. And wow, you're surrounded by so many people who don't have to do that. It is all true. But it's also true that what you want is worth the wait. It's worth the investment. It's worth everything you bring to it.

4:38 And the reward is so amazing. And so yes, if anyone's going to create what's needed for what you want to come to life, then who better to do it than you? Who better to create exactly what is needed than the person who has dreams about it, who wakes up from sleep thinking about it? And those are things that are super important as well. So I would say that the unofficial title of this particular podcast episode is how to become a magnet, because the things that you are creating are very difficult to create just by yourself. And you really do still need a team, even if you don't have the finances to resource a team. And so what you're going to do is you're going to become the kind of person who attracts people who are able to help you fulfill the goals that you have come to fulfill.

5:28 And that sounds harder than it should, because in reality, we already are doing these things. But what we're not doing is doing them with intention and specificity. For example, if you have a sense that you don't belong in the academy, your work is not worth anything, and that there's no point being here, you begin to project that to the environment surrounding you. And so even when you go to a new collaborator and you say, hey, come work with me, even though your words are like, come work with me, I really am excited about this project, what they're reading from your body language is, no, don't come work with me. I don't believe in myself. I'm not even sure this is going to work.

6:09 I don't even know why I want to be here. And these are the subtle things that we communicate that are not always so obvious, but are so important that we start to think about them more clearly. So we start to think about them intentionally. That we're not chasing people away by our core values and beliefs, but we're actually attracting them to us. And part of attracting them to us is really about becoming a magnet, becoming a magnet. Okay, so what are five key points? The first point is to be clear about who you are. And this may be the hardest thing to do, because for so long in our training, we're pretending to be somebody else, and to get the kind of resources we need from senior faculty, we pretend to be someone else.

6:59 To get what is needed from our mentors, we pretend to be someone that we're not. And so one of the things that's important is to come back home, come back to center, come back to zero gravity, come back to the starting point. Is that what I meant? Ground zero, not zero gravity, but ground zero, come back to where it all began. And to really define who you are, defining your personal values, defining your professional values, and how you want to come to your academic career with those values. And it's important because if you are not clear on who you are or what you stand for, then other people are confused as well. If you are not sure, other people tend to not be sure as well.

7:43 And so when you think you're kind of like creating a, you know, like you're sharing or exuding a persona of confidence, well, people can tell, people can tell that within the, behind the confidence is insecurity and concerns and worry and anxiety and fear. And so it's really important that you are clear on who you are, what are your core values and beliefs. And I would say that you have them, you do. And if you've never done the work of unearthing what those things are, I invite you to sit with a coach to do that. And granted, I'm the coach I want you to sit down with, but it doesn't have to be me in the sense that it is such a gift to be able to have that kind of space where you can really think deeply about who you are and how you want to move forward in the profession.

8:38 And if you are able to do that, you will be ahead of so many people who literally just kind of live on autopilot, going from clinic to clinic to note to note to project to project to submission after submission without really understanding what makes what drives them so that it makes it difficult to look at what are the components of this career that I enjoy if you're so busy kind of working out of obligation. And so it's important to define your personal professional values because when they become clear to you, only after they become clear to you, can you make them visible to other people as well.

9:22 The second thing you want to do is make sure that you are authentic. So again, we have this training history of becoming anything that we are asked to become, right? So if you're okay, today we need you to be a neurologist and you show up as a neurologist and we need you to show up as the person who takes care of these events and you show up as that person. You've gotten really good at pretending to be somebody else or someone that you're not, that you can kind of miss opportunities to just be you. You can kind of miss opportunities to let yourself shine, especially if for whatever reason you've been put down or someone said something that's really upset you, perhaps you don't feel like you can really show up authentically because maybe you did that once and backlash came out of it.

10:08 But if you're going to really, really succeed in creating something that you have not seen before, you're going to want to do it from a place of authenticity. You're going to want to do it from a place of belief. You don't want to do it from a place of faith because it allows you to build where other people have life challenges that keep them from helping with you and they keep keep them from helping you. It allows you to keep moving forward even when you can't find the right collaborators. Having an authentic personal brand gives you in a sense a compass by which to move things forward. Now, I know that feels like defining a personal and professional values and clearly they are related, but being authentic for people to be able to say, well, this is what we expect when it comes to this person.

10:53 It allows you to attract people who appreciate who you are authentically. And if you're pretending, you might attract people who are driven to your pretend self, but ultimately your authentic self is so important and it absolutely is worth valuing at every point in time. You want to make sure that you are authentically, authentically personal or authentically engaged. You want to be authentic in everything you do. The third thing I want to share is the importance of intentionality in all that you do.

11:34 You want to be intentional in your networks. You want to be intentional in the faculty you're engaged with. You want to be intentional in the mentors that you engage with because the people who surround you are the people who define who you are. And the more you're around them, the more you become like them. And so you want to be intentional about the time you spend with people so you ask yourself, well, is this who I wish to become? What aspects of this thing that I'm getting from this person can come from somewhere else? But you want to make sure that you have intentionality in your interactions with other people.

12:15 Not because you're looking at them as like a source of something good. Actually, I mean, to some extent, yes, you want everything to be a source of good to you. But it's really about making sure that what you need is available around you. And if you can't find it, where can you go to get it? So you want to make sure that you're intentional about the things that you do so that people can be drawn to that authenticity that is you. Okay, the other component of this becoming a magnet is about you creating the kind of mentoring relationship that you never had.

12:56 So I'm not assuming that everybody on here had negative mentoring relationship, but a lot of you perhaps did. And it's important to be able to acknowledge that and to be able to move on from it. So you want to acknowledge it. You want to move on from a situation that didn't work well for you, but then you want to create opportunities for other people as well. So if you didn't get it, create it for somebody else. And in creating it for someone else, you actually are creating it for yourself as well. The second piece of that is collaborations. Hey, you know, nobody can go anywhere doing work by themselves. And so how can you really supercharge your collaborations so that you're moving an extremely wonderful amount of work going forward that you and your partners are proud of as well?

13:46 And so having mentoring opportunities allow you to be the mentor you never could be. And hopefully you've done the work of healing that allows you to be a healthy mentor. And if you haven't, we should definitely talk, send me a DM so that we can schedule a time to meet. But it is important that we become the mentors that we have wanted to have all along because that's a gift that we are able to bring to them that they don't otherwise have. And so I'm recommending that. I think the fifth piece of this is just engaging with community. You know, at the end of the day, creating what didn't exist before is really about relationships.

14:28 It will always be about relationships. It will always be about relationships. And so it's important to nurture those relationships, to give back to the community, and to just in general be a blessing to as many people as possible. And really, the more you do that, the more you engage people who are like-minded, people who are interested in helping, people who are interested in giving. And it becomes really, really deeply satisfying and special as well. Okay. So I talked today about what is important as far as becoming a magnet to attract like-minded individuals.

15:10 And I would like to recap those points. Number one is really thinking about, well, what is a thing that is a core of personal professional value? You want to make sure that you understand that so that that's part of it's woven into your identity as a clinician scientist or a clinician researcher. The next thing we talked about is building an authentic personal brand. There's so much out there, but authenticity is lacking. And your authenticity makes a world of difference. And the other thing I talked about was being intentional, intentional about next steps, intentional about what I'm working on right now. Is being intentional, be intentional so that you are able to really take advantage of opportunities when they come.

15:57 Okay. And then we talked about mentorship and collaboration. Although you look around and you're like, I still want to be mentored. It's important for you to start the process of mentoring others so that you have a larger than life network as needed, as opportunities come up as well. Okay. And the last thing I would share is really giving back to an engaging with the community. And sometimes part of that is really caring personally for the community members or part of your program. And I would say that it's a really, really, really important skill to be able to have. It's a really important thing is just how do you engage with the community in which you are in so that you can have maximum impact.

16:45 So those are the five things that I wanted to share today. And I want to make sure that you have a way of really resting and taking care of yourself as needed. All right. It was a pleasure talking with you today. 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.

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