Career and Life Planning Guidebook for Medical Residents

Recommended Tool Interviewing Use this tool to develop a negotiation process before the interview process begins. http://md.careers/Ch12 R E A D : The Employer’s Perspective – Seek to Understand Before Being Understood According to Stephen Covey, author of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People : “If I were to summarize in one sentence the single most important principle I have learned in the field of interpersonal relations, it would be: Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” If you're like most people, you probably seek first to be understood: you want to get your point across. And in doing so, you may ignore the other person completely, pretend that you're listening, selectively hear only certain parts of the conversation or attentively focus on only the words being said, thus missing the meaning entirely. So why does this happen? Because most people listen with the intent to reply, not to understand. You listen to yourself as you prepare in your mind what you are going to say, the questions you are going to ask, etc. You filter everything you hear through your life experiences and your frame of reference. You check what you hear against your autobiography and see how it measures up. And consequently, you decide prematurely what the other person means before he/she finishes communicating” (2). This is a lesson you’ve likely learned in medical schoolandresidencywhen learninghowto interview a patient. In that setting, your job is to listen to what the patient is saying, not just the words that they are choosing. Apply the tools you’ve spent years honing in hours of patient interactions to your job searching process. By seeking to understand your employer’s needs before communicating yours, youwill help position you for successful negotiation. The Art of Physician Negotiation 293 WWW.PHYSICIANCAREERPLANNING.COM