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.
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 super amazing pleasure to be talking with
you today.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I am excited to bring you this episode about how to talk about your work without feeling
as if you're bragging.
Now, I'll tell you that this particular episode comes after a coaching call.
We had a coaching call just actually I'm recording right after the coaching call, because some
of the questions that came up were so important.
I was like, oh, this needs to become an episode.
But one of our participants, so one of the clients asked, well, how do you talk about
your work without feeling like you're bragging?
And there was this sense of dirty, icky, like, oh, I don't want to brag.
I don't want to try to market my work.
And there was just this feeling of dirt, this feeling you get when you're doing something
wrong, something sleazy, like you're selling.
And I wanted to just come and just share with the rest of the audience just about how to
do it.
How do you share your work?
How do you talk about the importance of your work without feeling as if you are like bragging?
And that's so important because we need to talk about our work.
And I'll talk to you about why you should talk about your work.
But how can you do it and not have that icky feeling?
Because here's the thing.
Every time you talk about your work and you do have this weird feeling about it, people
can tell.
And so even if it's not dirty, your feeling of the dirt associated with you talking about
your work starts to rub off.
And they start to feel as if it's kind of dirty the way you're talking about your work.
And so it's so important for you to be able to communicate your work well.
So what I want to share is actually a situation I was in when I was preparing for promotion,
when I was preparing for promotion going from assistant professor to associate.
So you have to pull together this whole packet.
And one of the things you do is you write what we call an intellectual development statement.
And it's really kind of the summary as much as you can fit all your work so far in academia
on four pages and talk about your impact in scholarship, in education, in the clinical
space and also in research.
And it was the hardest thing for me to write.
I was so stressed.
Like I kept feeling as I was writing, like, why do I have to justify myself?
Why do I have to justify who I am?
I just had a lot of negative energy about writing that needed such a drag to write,
such a drag to write.
And I remember I spent so many hours trying to put together this four page document because
I couldn't find a way to really like say, this is what I did without feeling as if I
was trying to say, oh, I'm all that.
I'm amazing.
I'm super cool.
I mean, I am, but it just feels like the wrong thing to do.
So anyway, so I, you know, this was a situation where I went to a coaching call.
We had a group coaching call and I was talking about this way I was feeling so stressed about
writing this document.
And the coach asks me, he's like, well, how will people know what you have done if you
don't write about it?
And that was really, it was really powerful to me because in that moment I thought to
myself, I was like, oh, they don't know what I've done.
I'm just telling them about it.
It's not that I'm trying to justify why I should be here or why people should promote
me.
It's that I'm just having a chance to tell people about my work.
And so that's the kind of energy change I want to bring to you is I want to help if
for whatever reason you have this feeling of sleaze when it comes to talking about your
work publicly, I want to help you think about how do you talk about your work in a way that
doesn't feel sleazy.
So the first thing I want to talk to you about is to help you recognize that your work is
impactful.
The work that you have, that you share is super impactful.
You're doing this work because it's going to affect the lives of patients.
To be honest, clinically you're already making such an impact, but the work that you're doing
in your scholarship is so important and it's going to touch the lives of so many people.
Your work is so impactful.
But here's the thing about the impact of your work.
If nobody knows about your work, it cannot have impact.
So the reason we publish is not to make the publishers money.
We do a great job at that.
Congratulations and well done.
But it's not just about that.
It really is about getting people to know about the work.
And why do we need people to know about the work so that when they have the same challenge,
they're able to use your work to advance beyond that challenge.
You solved a problem through your scholarship.
You solved a problem for yourself, for your research group, maybe for your institution,
if it's a QI project potentially.
You solved a problem.
And when you publish it, you're saying, hey guys, people in the scientific community,
we solved a problem.
And there are problems that remain beyond the problem you solved.
But now other people don't have to try to figure out the solution anymore because you
figured it out.
So your work has impact beyond just your space.
Because the fact that you're saying you want to communicate it other than the fact that
you're looking for publications is that it actually is helpful to somebody.
And so if you're taking time to communicate your work in a journal, then it means you
recognize the value of sharing your work.
And if you recognize the value of sharing your work, you also recognize that people
might not come across that paper.
So it's nice when people are looking for papers and they find your paper.
But there are a lot of people who don't know that that paper was written, yet they need
that information.
And so I say all that to say that your work has impact only to the extent to which people
hear about it.
Your work has impact only to the extent to which people hear about it.
If nobody has ever heard about your work, was ever read about your work, your work has
zero impact.
It may be the greatest discovery since sliced bread.
But if nobody hears about it, it's as if it didn't happen.
All that time you spent in the lab, all that time you spent doing this research project
that challenges the pains, all the suffering, didn't matter if nobody is able to benefit
from that work.
So the first thing I want to establish is that your work has impact, but only if other
people hear about it.
That's number one.
The second thing I want to share is that people don't know what you've done unless they hear
about it.
So ideally, they come across your amazing publication, they read it, they're like,
oh my gosh, this work is going to change our lives.
And it's so awesome.
But most of the time, most people don't know you've written it.
I mean, there are millions and millions of papers indexed in PubNet, right?
How do you know which one to go to?
If you're specific, you do a search and you pull the papers you want, but your search,
unless it's a systematic search, may miss a lot of things.
And so suffice it to say that the mere fact that you just put it out into the universe
by publishing it is not enough for other people to hear about it.
And so people don't know what you've done until they hear about it.
This is really important.
And again, they may hear about it, they may read about it because you've published it,
and thank you for doing that.
But more often than not, simply putting a publication out there does not guarantee that
your work is going to be widely disseminated.
Okay.
Your work is impactful.
People don't know about its impact until they've heard about it or until they've read about
it.
Okay.
The best, this is number three, the best and sometimes the only person who will communicate
your work with complete understanding of what was done and a complete communication of the
impact is you.
You've done great work.
And to be honest, other scientists read your work and they're like, wow, this is great
work.
But the best person to share how great that work is, is you.
And to be honest, you may be the only person.
It's great work, but people don't know about it yet.
And until it crosses what I've heard called She-Hens Wall, until you are known, until
your work is known, it may languish in obscurity.
And so the only person, many times the best qualified person to talk about your work is
you.
If you don't talk about your work, who is going to talk about your work?
And this may be a point at which you stop and say, oh yeah, my mentor should talk about
my work.
And I'm going to stop and smile and say, really?
Is it your mentor who's going to talk about your work?
When they've gotten million other things to do, they barely have time to meet with you.
Now, if your mentor was your mom and your mentor is not, oh, they would be bragging
about you everywhere.
But since we're in academia and not at home, who is the best, most equipped person to talk
about your work?
It really is you.
And if you don't do it, nobody might hear about it.
And so you got to recognize your role in communicating the work and the fact that you may be the
most qualified person to really put the work in context for other people and draw parallels
where they may not be able to easily draw the parallels.
Okay.
Sometimes we have the sense that the work should just speak for itself, but you know
what?
There's nothing in life that ever spoke for itself.
If it spoke for itself, there would be no need for advertising.
Coca-Cola is pretty popular.
And I will tell you that Coca-Cola is so successful because it's in like the most obscure villages
throughout the world and still Coca-Cola is on TV.
And so if that's how a recognized brand still feels like the work still needs to be communicated,
be advertised, then your work needs to have continued champions to continue to move it
forward so that the impact continues beyond just your research community or your research
program.
Okay.
Number four is that if you don't do it, if you don't speak about the work, it may never
see the light of day.
Again, you might be like, but I published it.
Okay.
What does it mean?
A paper is published.
How many papers are published every day?
So many.
If you don't speak about your work, if you don't share it, it may never see the light
of day or maybe a few people will find it three, four years from now.
And to some extent, the only way to bring your work out of it, obscurity is by talking
about it.
Okay.
Number five, if the work is to be advanced, if the impact of your work is to go where
it needs to go, you are the best person and sometimes again, the only person to do it.
And so to some extent, it's an imperative.
It's a moral imperative really for you to talk about your work.
If talking about your work is what allows its impact to go further and allows the work
you do to actually help the patients, to benefit the patients that you want benefited, then
you kind of are obligated to talk about your work because the only way to advance the impact
of your work is to talk about it as we've talked about.
And if you don't do that, then the work doesn't go further.
More patients are not helped.
If you think about it, the reason why you started to do the work anyway was because
you wanted to have an impact.
You started to do the work because you wanted to have an impact.
I hope you don't do work because you're just looking for a publication.
I mean, if that's you, that's okay.
You get to choose, but it's not the audience I'm talking to.
I'm talking to people who go do research, suffer through this whole challenge of being
both a clinician and a researcher so that other people can benefit from the work they're
doing.
Right?
Because I know how many patients it's going to benefit in the long term.
It may not have direct impact now.
It may not have direct benefit now, but it will.
And so if I've done all this work because I want people to be helped, then it kind of
is my responsibility to make sure that the work goes beyond me, to make sure that other
people can hear about it.
And if I know that publishing it is not enough for other people to hear about it and use
the work to the benefit of patients, then I kind of have a moral obligation to make
sure that people know about my work.
So think about it.
It's that you're communicating your work because if you don't, people may not know, but it's
also that, hey, you didn't do this work so that other people could just not know about
it.
You did this work so that people could know.
And therefore, you kind of have a responsibility to really share this work with other people.
Okay.
Number six is that when you speak about your work, it helps you, but it helps others as
well.
It helps the people who value your work and have ideas about moving the kind of work you're
moving forward.
Now, here's the thing about research.
There's never only one person working in a particular area.
There are always groups of people.
Even if they're completely independent, many times you'll hear that there was simultaneous
discovery of a new gene or something like that.
People are working on areas, they're adjacent.
And so that if somebody else has an idea that's different from kind of how you've been approaching
something, it helps you move work forward.
And so it's where collaborations are born.
It's where opportunities come to think differently about the way you are doing your work or the
way you're applying your science.
And so when you communicate your work, other people can see the value and they'll raise
their hands and say, can I come on board or can I collaborate with you in some way?
And the reality of our science is unless there is collaboration, our work can only go so
far.
Gone are the days when someone could sit in their lab by themselves and do work and it
would be, oh my gosh, impactful.
Like gone are the days of the discovery of penicillin.
And even the discovery of penicillin needed the machinery of business to be able to allow
penicillin to become widely marketable.
So your work is relevant to the extent to which other people come around and support
the work, to the extent to which other people come around and build on the work.
You've built on other people's work and then other people are able to build on your work
as they hear about your work.
And so sharing your work allows other people to hear about it and potential collaborators
and partners to come alongside you so that the work can move forward.
Okay.
And the last thing I want to share with you is that you know what people forget?
Yeah, you did this great presentation of the American Heart Association meeting.
It was so awesome.
People stood up.
They give you a standing ovation.
They clapped for you at the plenary presentation and they still need to hear about your work
over and over again.
So if you share your work, don't say I shared it already.
Say how else can I share it?
Who else needs to hear about this work?
And you do it for yourself and you do it for other people as well.
Because here's what happens when you go around talking about your work.
You clarify your work.
People ask you hard questions and it forces you to think about how could we think about
this differently?
What else could we do that could help us really move this work forward?
It helps you grow in your science.
It gives you feedback that you need.
Sharing your work helps you.
So to answer the question of how can you share your work where you don't feel sleazy?
I want you to recognize that sharing your work is kind of a responsibility.
And if you don't do it, then your work doesn't go as far as it needs to.
And the people who could be helped by your work may not be helped by your work.
And so maybe you can start to think about how can you reframe the way you share your
work when you recognize the purpose of you sharing your work?
The purpose of you sharing your work is impact.
It's not about bragging.
It's not about trying to be like, I'm better than them.
You know that's not your heart.
To be honest, there are people who do brag, but that's not you.
And so leave others to do the bragging.
You don't get to choose what they do.
When it comes to your work, you want to make sure you share it again and again and again
and again because you do this work so that people can be impacted.
And so what an opportunity when you're able to do that.
So I'm going to summarize those seven things again.
Number one, it's only impactful.
Your work is only impactful to the extent to which people really know about it.
And people don't know what you've done until they hear about it.
The best person to hear about it, sometimes the only person really to speak about the
work, so the best person to speak about the work often is you.
And if you don't speak about the work, it may languish in obscurity.
Speaking about your work is an obligation.
It's like a moral imperative so that your work can be advanced and it can impact people.
Speaking about your work connects you to people who value your work and may want to connect
with your work or collaborate with you on your work.
And people forget.
So you want to be prepared to communicate your work again and again and again.
Now this week, I'm inviting you to take some time to write about the features of your work
and that people need to know about.
So you're like, oh, how do I communicate my work?
Just start by writing it down.
What are the most important things about your work that you need to share with people?
Write it down.
And then I want you to choose just one person to go share it with.
Say, hey, can I practice telling you about why my work is so impactful?
Can I practice telling you about our results and what these results mean in the grand scheme
of things?
Imagine if more people could hear about the work you're doing.
Imagine if more people could take the techniques and the things that you've put out there and
use them to benefit the lives of more patients.
How much more impact could your work have if you are able to really share it with as
many people as possible?
All right.
I hope that you will take the challenge, take on the challenge, and share your work this
week.
All right.
I want to invite you.
We have coaching sessions on Mondays at 6.
It's rolling admissions right now.
And so if you're interested, Clinician Researcher Academy is open and enrolling.
You can check out our website, gohidecoach.com, and check out the tab called Academy to sign
up to be contacted as soon as the slot opens up.
And we'd be happy to talk to you about your fit in the program and how we can best serve
you and your journey as a clinician researcher.
All right.
It's been a pleasure talking with you today.
Thank you so much for listening.
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.
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