Course 1 – Take Control of Your Academic Career so you can Solve, Succeed and Celebrate on Your Terms

Who should enroll in this program?

• You should enroll in this program if you are a physician early in your academic career and want to establish a strong foundation for your professional and personal success.
• You should enroll in this program if you are a physician struggling in your current academic career because you feel out of control.
• You should enroll in this program if you are an academic physician who wants to proactively manage the various demands and pressures that seem to come from every angle.
• You should enroll in this program if you are an academic physician looking for a happy and sustainable career..
• You should enroll in this program to learn from a fellow academic physician who survived and thrived in a 30-year academic career, earned 20 years of NIH funding, held significant leadership positions, learned from and recovered from mistakes, and achieved considerable success.
• You should enroll in this program to expand your current community of academic physicians who share common experiences, concerns, challenges, and goals with you.

A CAREER IN ACADEMIC MEDICINE

Academic medicine is a career worth pursuing. Despite the occasional heartache, I wholeheartedly endorse it. I would not have chosen a different path.

Unfortunately, changes over the last thirty years have made a career in academic medicine more challenging. These changes include, but are not limited to, the following.

• Increased expectations for production with commensurate decreased resource support
• Decreased societal respect and trust for medicine, science, and evidence-based healthcare
• Increased corporatization of healthcare with commensurate decreased humanistic experiences, the latter of which enticed many of us to go into medicine
• Decreased resources invested in the future of healthcare through education and research, which enticed many of us to go into academic medicine

You may be feeling out of control or underappreciated. We are sorry. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. You can gain control over your professional and personal life.

Our 12-class program, titled ‘How to Take Control of Your Academic Career,’ aims to equip academic physicians with evidence-based and experience-based strategies to proactively manage their careers by solving problems, achieving success, and cultivating a practice of recognizing and celebrating progress. Solve (identifying and addressing challenges), Succeed (achieving goals and well-being), and Celebrate(recognizing strengths and accomplishments).

Navigating the complex interplay of clinical care, teaching, research, administration, and institutional dynamics requires more than disciplinary expertise. You must have significant self-awareness, strategic thinking, and adept relationship management skills.

We will emphasize four key principles throughout the course to meet these needs.

1. Holistic integration: Career control requires integrating self-knowledge, organizational understanding, and relational intelligence. Our program will help you weave these threads together in a manner that poises you for personalized strategic planning.
2. Emphasis on Agency and Intentionality: Career control requires applying significant agency in shaping your experiences and outcomes through intentional practices, such as reflection, aligning your values, cultivating well-being, and building strategic relationships. We acknowledge organizational culture’s and systemic factors’ significant impact on career progression and well-being. Many of which can not be avoided entirely. However, you will be poised to make proactive decisions about which factors to celebrate, endure, or avoid.
3. Contextual Relevance: Career control requires that you acknowledge and adjust to the unique pressures and complexities of the academic medical center on your terms. The adjustments will require you to navigate both formal and informal systems.
4. Actionability and Practicality / Critical Engagement: Career control requires identifying and using the practical tools, techniques, and frameworks that work for you. We present options; you’ll need to evaluate them to determine what works best for you.

Our program presents an opportunity to join and learn from a community of fellow physicians and academic medical center members who share similar experiences, concerns, challenges, and goals. We encourage engagement in this aspect of the program.

Part 1 of our program focuses on the internal landscape by cultivating self-knowledge (Classes 1-5). The foundation of taking control lies in deep self-understanding. Understanding oneself enables the identification of career misalignments or obstacles (Solve), provides direction for aligning actions with aspiration (Succeed), and highlights personal attributes and achievements worth acknowledgement (Celebrate)

Class 1 focuses specifically on reflective practices for self-assessment. We will review and discuss the critical role and benefits of reflection in academic medicine. We will discuss various reflective techniques, their implementation, and the implications for connecting. Group discussion and community breakout sessions will add insight and perspectives to the practices discussed.

Class 2 investigates how to identify and learn from various role models that align with your values. These role models include mentors, respected peers, senior colleagues, and/or historical figures. No single role model will likely embody all the desired traits, and we encourage using multiple role models. These role models help shape an individual’s self-perception, inform tactical approaches, and highlight successful professional and personal strategies. Group discussions and community breakout sessions will facilitate a comparison of the types of role models that other community members have appreciated and cherished.

Class 3 focuses upon how established philosophical schools offer practical frameworks for individuals to enhance self-understanding, navigate complex decisions, build psychological resilience, and cultivate a sense of meaning and purpose within academic medicine’s high-pressure and uncertain environment. Group discussions and community breakout sessions complement the discussion around different philosophical schools and may add a few more!

Class 4 leverages personality and career assessments to advise and complement your other efforts. Multiple assessment types will be discussed, including a review of validity and reliability when data is available. A coach-driven 360-degree evaluation, the Checkpoint 360-degree evaluation, and the PXT Select Assessment will be reviewed in detail, including the process involved in taking each assessment and evidence on validity and reliability. A coach-driven 360-degree evaluation, the Checkpoint 360 Degree Evaluation, and the PXT Select assessment are all available through the Physician Career Solution Institute through our coaching services. Group discussion and community breakout sessions will allow community members to share their experiences with different assessments.

Class 5 focuses on theories of cultivating happiness, well-being, and resilience from multiple sources. Self-agency and informed choice are encouraged when determining which tactics and practical strategies work best for each individual in the cultivation process. Group discussions and community breakout sessions will facilitate community members sharing their journeys voluntarily, benefiting others. A particular focus will be on engaging personal strengths and values through the selected tactics and strategies.

Part 2 of our program shifts from the internal landscape to the external environment. We aim to equip our community members with the framework necessary to understand their institutional context and how they can choose to fit within and/or manage that context. (Solve). There will be a discussion on how to absorb the organization’s culture, values, power dynamics, and unwritten rules so that you can proactively navigate through the labyrinthine maze of academic medicine and succeed on your terms (Succeed). We will emphasize the importance of managing key professional relationships, such as those with direct reports, team members, peripheral stakeholders, and your supervisor (Succeed). You will feel more in control of your career as you holistically apply what you learned in Part 1, becoming part of a community that strives to improve healthcare while utilizing your strengths on your terms (Celebrate).

Class 6 focuses on analyzing institutional history, dominant culture, and prevailing norms, both formal and informal. It will acknowledge the unspoken ‘hidden curriculum’ often found within academic medical centers, with a particular focus on its complexities. A review of organizational theory will be included, involving models of organizational culture, such as the Competing Values Framework, Discussion, and breakout groups to compare and share experiences among the class participants.

Class 7 focuses on identifying and analyzing both formal and informal reward structures, as, implicit priorities, patterns of recognition, and resource allocation. The summation of the identification and analysis process is an understanding of what behaviors and achievements are genuinely valued and rewarded, including the operational balance between clinical care, teaching, research, administration, and community service.

Class 8 focuses on understanding and managing direct reports and team members through evidence-based practices. Areas to be discussed include understanding team members’ values, motivation, working styles, developmental needs, strategies for effective delegation, providing constructive feedback, fostering motivation, and creating a psychologically safe environment. Community members will have the opportunity to share their experiences through group discussions and breakouts. How assessment tools may be helpful will also be discussed.

Class 9 focuses on understanding your boss’s background and history through practical strategies for gathering information about their professional background, including education, career trajectory, expertise, and work habits. The class will discuss how this background information shapes the boss’s leadership styles, expectations, and priorities. Group discussions and community breakout sessions will facilitate community members sharing their insights on which background data and subsequent applied tactics have been most helpful.

Class 10 focuses on understanding your boss’s functional styles and priorities by actively discerning their style to facilitate early adaptation. We will focus on communication preferences, decision-making processes, feedback delivery, and how these may align with their current operational priorities and professional goals. Discussing what drives your boss’s professional satisfaction and how this affects the workplace culture will be part of the group discussions and community breakout sessions.

Class 11 focuses on identifying the key stakeholders relevant to an academic career, beyond direct reports and the boss. These stakeholders include collaborators, administrators, institutional leaders, sponsors, peers, trainees, funding agencies, patients, and community groups. Group discussions and community breakout sessions will be constructive in this session to identify alternative stakeholders, because, as you’ve seen, one academic medical center is often like another.

Class 12 allows for the synthesis of past experiences and an opportunity to reintroduce topics that the program’s community wants to discuss again. We will review and receive feedback from the community on the most critical skills, tactics, and strategies from the program. Class 12 should be a step towards positioning the program’s community to solve career challenges and grasp career opportunities by making strategic choices (Solve), implementing practical actions (Succeed), and cultivating a mindset of celebrating progress and achievement (Celebrate).

These classes in our program take place weekly, with adjustments made for holidays and traditional vacation times, such as Spring break (please see the site calendar). We recommend attending the classes in person, but each class will be recorded for convenience. Benefits of live sessions include being able to ask questions in the moment and participating in community-building breakout sessions. Watching a recorded class will count for attendance. Each class lasts approximately 60-90 minutes.

Your tuition allows you to attend live classes over 12 months and a 45-minute individual career counseling and/or coaching session with Dr. Lane. You also have access to our membership-only blog, which includes reviews of relevant evidence-based work on physician burnout and well-being, book reviews, and commentaries on topics ranging from health politics to compassionate leadership.

Over the 12 months from the date of your first course, you can attend any live session that is convenient for you from this program, and you can repeat any session that you find helpful. When you have finished attending the 12 classes, either live or virtually, you will need to submit a homework assignment that will be detailed and discussed in class. The ‘homework’ assignment aims to poise you for further success by emphasizing key processes from the program. Upon completing the homework assignment, you will have earned a certificate worthy of framing from the Physician Career Solution Institute.