Career and Life Planning Guidebook for Medical Residents

Build High Quality Connections: Research has shown that building a career requires both human capital—those skills and experiences you have honed through your residency—and social capital—which is entirely based on relationships. Relationships are more likely to be helpful to you (and more enjoyable) if they are of high quality. In fact, building your success network through high-quality connections that help you grow, both cognitively and behaviorally, will enable you to reach your goals and facilitate your success. How do you build such high-quality connections? First, try to approach potential advisors with a sense of positive regard, so you intentionally see the best in one another. Second, in these high-quality connections, you are intentionally more open and create a sense of responsiveness towards each other. Finally, if a high-quality connection has been cultivated, you feel a sense of heightened energy after interacting with one another. This does not mean you need to be bubbly or doing cartwheels, just that each of youwill leave the interactions feeling heard and that it was a meaningful exchange. That quality relational experience is energizing in and of itself. We connect when we are respectfully engaged in a context, doing a task together, developing trust in one another, or simply having fun. Consider where you can begin to build more high-quality connections. What events, professional organizations, conferences, or community activities could you engage in that would also serve as opportunities to create such a connection? Consider a Variety of Developmental Relationships: As you have begun to uncover, we need a variety of developmental relationships to succeed in our careers and in life. In this chapter, we have advocated that you expand your idea from that one traditional mentor to cultivating an enhanced success network. However, the terms ‘mentor,’ ‘sponsor’ and ‘coach’ are ubiquitous in our society. With that in mind, we will outline the key differences among these relationship types. COACH MENTOR SPONSOR Purpose Improvement on task or professional goal(s) Personal & professional development Advocate for protégé's promotion Focus Immediate challenges and opportunities Both immediate and long-term issues Increasing protégé's visibility & opportunities Role Internal and external Leader at any level; usually not direct report Internal leader Methods Professional development, facilitate transitions, remediate derailing behavior Holistic discussions that support career development and personal growth Expand protégé's perceptions of capabilities; mobilize network on her behalf Outcome Generate actionable learning; performance Objective and subjective career success Personal & professional Promotion Duration Flexible Longer-term 6 months–1 year ©Murphy & Kram (2014) – Full citation is at the end of the chapter. This chart is adapted from the one pp. 112 in Strategic Relationships at Work. SECTION III: T MINUS ONE YEAR CAREER AND LIFE PLANNING GUIDEBOOK FOR MEDICAL RESIDENTS 404