Episode With PaM Mudd
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Stacey Ishman: . [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Academic Medicine Strategy podcast.
Stacey Ishman: I am very excited today to have a guest who I've gotten to work with over the last year or two, and her name is Pamela Mudd. She is a physician at DC Children's, and she's gonna tell us a little bit about herself before we jump in.
Pamela Mudd: Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. And yeah, it's definitely been two years, maybe even longer.
Pamela Mudd: And I have also been an avid listener of your podcast, which has been great for strategy and for working forward. I am proud to say that I am a newly promoted professor. Yay. And so that's a great academic achievement. I've been at Children's National for going on 13 years now after doing a two-year fellowship in pediatric otolaryngology.
Pamela Mudd: And yeah, I specialize in voice and thyroid disorders, and have also a kinda unique, I think, interest in the business of medicine and operational leadership. And so I've really leaned into that as well.
Stacey Ishman: Awesome. Thank you so much, and congratulations. I'm [00:01:00] so excited. This is the first I'm hearing you actually got the final promotion, so that's awesome.
Pamela Mudd: Yes. As of tomorrow I'm in, ...
Stacey Ishman: This is really hot off the press. I love it.
Pamela Mudd: Yes.
Stacey Ishman: I wanna ask a little bit, you just mentioned your research interests in voice and thyroid and laryngeal disease, and I would love to know which of these you think has become more of your through line, and how did you get clear on what actually mattered to you versus, doing just whatever was easy or easily accessible?
Pamela Mudd: Yeah. When I, came out of fellowship, I had in my mind I really wanted to focus on, communication disorders, helping, children find their voice or their hearing impact quality of life, and that was really my goal. And like many of us coming out of fellowship I followed a job and was able to choose a job that had voice as my specialty.
Pamela Mudd: And so I really was able to expand that role in pediatric voice and in doing so also brought a novel at the [00:02:00] time intervention of laryngeal nerve reinnervation that I had learned in fellowship. And so I brought that into the program and of course, in doing so, c- that really enhanced my want to do thyroids because I felt like I needed even more experience with recurrent laryngeal nerve and knowing where it was since reinnervations weren't so common.
Pamela Mudd: And so I expanded into the thyroid realm and, that was one of the things where, I showed up to thyroid radiology conference and I leaned into the opportunities and I expanded that program. And I've really seen that program grow over the last, 10 years. And then in addition, through the voice program, not only do I see a lot of vocal mobility issues, but also I see a lot of kinda unmet needs.
Pamela Mudd: And so I would say that over time, at first maybe it was about access and growing my clinical career that really honed my research interest, and then over time it became more of, being attracted to problems without [00:03:00] obvious solutions maybe and using that to build programs and collaborations, and out of that comes research.
Pamela Mudd: And I guess research as a way to expand that knowledge that we're gaining from clinical skills into the population at large and in ENT. So I would say my current through line is probably in vocal mobility disorders, but I'm also expanding my pediatric airway stuff with voice, and I've also really leaned into thyroid and gene profiling.
Pamela Mudd: So it's hard to say it's just one, but it, I think it all goes back to that initial kind of say of I followed my clinical skills and now translating that back to, to research and trying to find problems that need solutions.
Stacey Ishman: So two thoughts as you say all that. One is I love that what you did was try to put yourself out of business by moving into thyroid, so there should be less vocal fold mobility, so that's a lovely strategy.
Stacey Ishman: But the second is to think about [00:04:00] when you talk... I know you do a lot of mentorship of your junior colleagues and faculty your fellows. And so one of the things I always talk about is to establish a niche for the first couple years so people really understand what's the one reason I should put you on a panel or call you to collaborate on an article?
Stacey Ishman: What advice do you give to your junior faculty? 'Cause you're far enough along in your career that you're like, "I can do a couple things and be known for a couple things," but what do you tell people at the start?
Pamela Mudd: Yeah. I like to tell my story about the... One of the things that has driven me in my life and in my career is to be- build a legacy and to be good at something that not anybody else is interested in, or maybe not something else that, or something else that not everybody would be naturally good at.
Pamela Mudd: And I'm not saying I'm so good at all of those things, but I definitely take interest in those things that are a little bit more on the rare side, and I find that has helped me in my career. And so usually when I'm telling par- people as they're going out into the world, I say, "Find something that [00:05:00] you really love."
Pamela Mudd: And that, for me, was something that was on the more rare side, pediatric voice and, reinnervation, and that's something that not a whole lot of people feel very equipped to do. And so you can take something like that and really grow with it and develop it and make it something that people are interested in, or you can take something much more common and, in your career with sleep medicine and other people's career with hearing loss and cochlear implants and some of the leading things like gene, changes and pediatric hearing loss.
Pamela Mudd: And so I do think it's interesting to find that. And I would say when I started my career, I was much more Willing to take anything on. I just wanted to be there. I wanted a seat at the table. I wanted to be seen just as a clinician. And I've learned over time that probably that isn't the best strategy in academic medicine, and coming into academic medicine it's good to find something, even if it's one small percent of your career that is impactful to you, that you can [00:06:00] then use that to really grow that as your specific academic niche.
Pamela Mudd: And it can change over time. But if you can start out with something and do it in a systematic way, it's going to help other people recognize kinda what your niche is, and that can help you avoid burnout in a lot of ways . Yeah. When you have something that makes you feel like you've got something that's yours, it can really help you to be more focused.
Pamela Mudd: So I guess that's my advice. I love that.
Stacey Ishman: Yeah. Thank you. And it, what, I'll tell you, when I started doing sleep medicine, it seems run-of-the-mill now, but I was, there was only two people in the country who were supported in ENT and sleep medicine. So- Yeah ... it felt rare at the time, but now it sounds like it's pretty much as bread and butter as you can get in pediatric ENT.
Stacey Ishman: Now, I know I asked you this when we were off camera but I would love for you to show us the books that are behind you, and what are those?
Pamela Mudd: These are claims to fame from fellowship, actually. So I have one that's Laryngeal In- Evaluation, and it's just basically how you figure out what you're looking at with a strobe and what are the most [00:07:00] high-tech ways to look at voice box.
Pamela Mudd: And there's so much physiology and physics and engineering that's in that book that I think is really cool. It's extraordinarily expensive. I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but I think it's $800, and I got it- from CHOP as one of my fellowship rewards. And so yeah, I asked for it, and they bought it for me, and so I feel really happy with that book.
Pamela Mudd: And then the others are Diagnostic and Interventional Bronchoscopy in Children, which I put a chapter in, and then Textbook of Voice Disorders, which I've had for a very long time, I think since residency. But- still to this day, a good one. Yeah.
Stacey Ishman: Okay. Let's move on a little bit, because y- you are obviously a master clinician, but you also have another whole side, and you mentioned your operational interest.
Stacey Ishman: And you've moved from managing lots of the details in clinic, really like many of us, micromanaging your day, to building processes for your residents and your staff. I know you're the medical director for an entire floor. What was the turning point in realizing that the [00:08:00] system itself, not the people, was the thing that needed to change?
Pamela Mudd: Yeah, that's another good mentorship thing that I tell everybody is when you get out of fellowship, you have all this extended amount of time on your hands, and then that time goes away. But during those first few years, especially for me, I would say that I was a terrible micromanager, and I focused a lot on how people should do specific tasks to fit what I needed.
Pamela Mudd: And over time, I learned that just doesn't work that well for people because when you go into a new system, those people know that system, and so they're really the people who should be teaching and educating you. And so leaning into a little bit about the why and how people do their job has helped.
Pamela Mudd: Even as simple as it was a hard thing to get intact PTH done quickly, and it was a really frustrating multi-email thing. And then I went to the lab one day and I said, "Can you show me what takes so long?" And it was fascinating to me [00:09:00] to learn that process, and it allowed me to restructure that it was the process and not the one person in the lab not picking up their phone that was really that stopgap.
Pamela Mudd: And so things like that, or learning how many interactions my scheduler has with each patient before they get onto my surgical schedule just helps to shift your mindset a little bit to remind yourself that, people are fighting hard systems. And the more that you can do to understand that, hopefully the less you can do to back off on that.
Pamela Mudd: But then also You wanna try to make everybody's job a little bit easier and your own job a little bit easier by setting good expectations, managing what you need to manage, and hopefully creating systems that people can use so that their jobs are easier to support you. And that's specifically in talking to support staff, which I think is a hard thing.
Pamela Mudd: And that, that kind of continues along the same vein when you're talking about leadership, right? Because in leadership roles, you need to understand what the front desk [00:10:00] person is doing, what the nursing's doing, and what their needs are, what their hurt points are in order to effectively lead and to effectively listen.
Pamela Mudd: And so I think that is one of the things I certainly do to design systems is learn the system that's in place, and then I can make suggestions about how they can improve.
Stacey Ishman: I love that. Do you think there-- It sounds intrinsic to me, but maybe it's not to you. It sounds like there was a mindset shift in there from, "I need to make sure everybody's doing something the right way for me" to, "I need to understand the system and the people in order to optimize it for all of us."
Stacey Ishman: Is that what it felt like to you? Or give me a better explanation if that doesn't sound right.
Pamela Mudd: Yeah. I think there is a mind shift that comes with maturity and in your career and kind of settling into your career maybe, and I hope this is the right direction. But, I think your first kinda three or four years, you're just in it and you're learning a lot about yourself and "Can I do this?"
Pamela Mudd: And then there's this mind shift around, ages maybe years [00:11:00] five to seven where you say "Can other people recognize that I can do this?" And, "How can I show that I'm doing this right, and how can other people around me see the value of what I'm doing?" And so it becomes a little bit less selfish, and then over time I think it- you shift into this, "How do I make it useful for everyone else?"
Pamela Mudd: mentality. Or at least that's how I envision myself, and also just my awareness of myself and my ability to like deal with hard things, whether it be a long OR day or a complication, really shifted at that same time. Like five to seven years in, I s- I still lose sleep over things, but like a lot less, and I felt a lot more confident.
Pamela Mudd: And I think that those mind shifts that are happening clinically probably also define those mind shifts that are happening from a leadership and a systems role. And I don't know if it's just maturity based on age. [00:12:00] I think it's more maturity based on Comfort, maybe allowing yourself to let go a little bit of things, or maybe one follows the other.
Pamela Mudd: Maybe that's the real answer, that once you let go of all that micromanaging, you're able to do your job a little bit more effectively. You have other people around you who respect you and support you, and everything actually just does get easier. But that's how it felt. So-
Stacey Ishman: No, I think that's smart. I think you're seeing the chicken and the egg, and that they both help each other.
Pamela Mudd: Yeah.
Stacey Ishman: One of the things I remember, I think the very first time I was supposed to meet with you you were about 15 minutes late, and in 15 minutes I think you took out somebody's parathyroids. So I remember being like, "Oh my gosh, this woman is a complete badass." I was like, "This is amazing." And you were like, "Yeah, whatever," and like just got on the phone and it was no big deal.
Stacey Ishman: But I just remember thinking like, I love seeing someone whose clinical skills come so easily to them that they don't think of it as like superpower genius. But I think a lot of people would look at that and be really [00:13:00] impressed, just like I was, and I think a lot of us also take the things that are easy for granted.
Stacey Ishman: And so I know you've had a lot of great clinical skills and a lot of great research output, but was there a point at which you had to get strategic about how you made it visible and recognized? Like how did that shift happen, and why did it matter?
Pamela Mudd: Yeah. I think the most obvious answer in talking with you at this moment about that is that I had a kind of forced personal time where I had to take a break in my busy clinical career.
Pamela Mudd: And during that busy time in life, in my personal life, I was able to step back and focus my career in a very specific way where I really worked minimal. And during that time period, like I was able to focus on thyroid and I was able to focus on voice, but everything else was off the table.
Pamela Mudd: I didn't have to say yes to anything else or do anything else. And that kind of personal life [00:14:00] pause happened and I could kinda say, "Yeah, the thyroid and voice stay." But then there was this overwhelming time of coming back into going into my career again, and that's when I called you. And I can actually remember the first time we talked too, and I was like in the sterile core, in between cases, like running to do this stuff.
Pamela Mudd: And I was like, "Yeah, I just had a kid, and I just had this family thing happen, and now I'm back to work, and what do I wanna do? Do I wanna stay in academics? Do I wanna keep climbing the ladder? Do I wanna not?" And I was really overwhelmed at that time. And I think that all of those things together happening at the same time as having the opportunity to have a coach that gave me intentional time to just sit with an hour at a time and look at my career intentionally and ask those questions intentionally, that pause in life followed by that resumption of [00:15:00] career and having that time to reflect was probably one of the key times where in my, I would say mid-career, that I was able to really reflect on my changes and actually change what I was doing.
Pamela Mudd: And a lot of that was, the comment you made to me that every yes is a no to something else, and I really looked at my calendar, and I had inherited my own calendar. It was all the things I said yes to, and I just hadn't given anything up in eight years or nine years, however long it had been.
Pamela Mudd: And so I was able to put all of that together and really restructure my career that even though, like you said was e- feeling fairly easy, was really clinically exactly where I wanted to be. Academically, I was really doing a great job, feeling really strong. But that reorientation in my mid-career time was really a reflection of those things.
Pamela Mudd: And of course, not everybody has that time [00:16:00] where you have a personal shift. But I think that was really important in my later career, my mid-career time period in terms of finding that focus and changing that strategy.
Stacey Ishman: That's-- I think it's amazing 'cause I also think so many people in that time of overwhelm don't know what to do with their energy.
Stacey Ishman: Are there other things you contemplated or you tried? What were you doing... I know I've had times where I've had big personal upheaval, career changes, deciding to become a coach, deciding to become a CMO, decide- there's big points in our lives where we make these shifts, and I found coaching to be really useful because it helps you reflect on yourself.
Stacey Ishman: And I think one of the things I think is that academic medicine doesn't teach us to value ourselves. We spend a lot of time focusing on patients or trainees or junior colleagues, that there's always somebody else to worry about instead of yourself. I think it also feels selfish to start thinking about yourself for a little while, and I don't think I got that from you.
Stacey Ishman: I had that in my own life where I felt like I was giving up maybe some things that I had always valued in order to take time [00:17:00] for me. And I don't know if you had similar feelings in that time. I know you had some bigger personal life things going on that anybody would have needed to take a pause and spend some time working on.
Stacey Ishman: But I also know that during that time, you went from feeling pretty overwhelmed about what to do next to being much more intentional about where your energy went. And so what do you think gave you permission to stop doing some of the things? Like you said, you realized your yeses and your noes, but was it something that simple, or were there other things that came into it?
Pamela Mudd: Yeah. I think a lot to unpack there, but I think from-- to get to that specific question of what allowed me to kinda shift my career in the end, part of it probably had to do with making the decision to go up for promotion because in the decision to go up for promotion, whether that was for associate or for, professor, you have to put together your kinda life story and your life picture of what's going on clinically, [00:18:00] and it gives you this time to really reflect on what you've done.
Pamela Mudd: And that visibility is pretty empowering And, it's not so much self-promotion that you're going for, even though it really sounds that way when you're putting together a promotion packet or if you're thinking about your elevator speech for when the CEO comes on . There's things that do feel like self-promotion.
Pamela Mudd: But when you really look at it and you really appreciate the visibility of what you've done, who you're getting letters from, who you're asking for letters from, who's supporting you in that, like it's actually pretty empowering to say, like my career is really worthwhile and that I've put a lot into it."
Pamela Mudd: And I think that's true for every time you get a promotion, but the promotion doesn't stop at when you put the promotion packet in. There's still growth that you need to continue, and that's part of being in academic medicine. And so being in academic medicine and I g- is such a special thing, right?
Pamela Mudd: In pediatric ENT specifically, a lot of people think we're going into it [00:19:00] for the complexity, but there's so much more to academic medicine. And I think doing things like that, like doing big career promotion packets, things like that where you really are looking back at your career it can certainly make that a change.
Pamela Mudd: But backing up from that, I would say, in terms of just on a day-to-day basis, some of the things also that I felt are helpful in terms of being able to focus your career, find your time. For me, I... Part of one, one of my life changes was becoming a parent. And so what I knew I wanted was to not be working from home when my kid was awake, and even after that, to spend time with my spouse when my kid was asleep.
Pamela Mudd: And so I needed that space. And so some of the ways I was able to find that space was, one, looking at my calendar. I think one of the things you and I did together was put everything that I was doing down. And then as I was [00:20:00] writing them, I was able to say, "I love this." And then you asked me to justify it.
Pamela Mudd: What do you love about it?" And then there was things that I was like, "I really don't wanna do it." And then you said why don't-- why are you doing it?" And one of the things that I felt was always gonna be there was this guilt of telling somebody, "I'm not interested in that anymore," as if they were gonna take it as a personal reflection.
Pamela Mudd: But that really did feel like how it was gonna go. But once I started the process of letting things go, if it needed to have a backup person, it felt pretty good to give that to another person who was interested. Empowering somebody else to take over. Yeah. And if it didn't really need that, to say no, I found some people were like relieved to not have that on their plate either.
Pamela Mudd: And so it ended up being a lot less guilt and a lot more understanding. And so some of that guilt and kind of responsibility that we take on early in our career that sticks with us it's just [00:21:00] not necessary because as we evolve, our calendar should evolve and our to-do list should evolve. And so I found that was another thing that, that changed.
Stacey Ishman: I love that. That is one of the most powerful things is when we realize we take on all this guilt about things that other people don't even necessarily care if we're doing. I love when you said you found somebody who was relieved that you could give it up. Yeah. Yeah. And the sponsorship feels really good, right?
Stacey Ishman: When like I could give this to somebody who really wants to do it, when I don't really wanna do it.
Pamela Mudd: Yeah.
Stacey Ishman: And the energy that comes in a room when you do really wanna do something, totally different.
Pamela Mudd: Totally different, and sometimes when you think about giving something e- up and you say, "I don't wanna give it up," then you can be more energized and be like, "No, you know what?
Pamela Mudd: I really like this. I'm leaning into that." And then- Yeah. Yeah ... find something else to get rid of, but yeah.
Stacey Ishman: Yeah, it's like recommitting to the thing that's already on your schedule, but now there's an excitement about it, which-
Pamela Mudd: That's right ...
Stacey Ishman: which you did in a beautiful way, and you did a lot of cutting, honestly.
Stacey Ishman: You- I did a lot of cutting ... did a really good job of [00:22:00] going through the list and figuring it out. And I love the fact too that I think I heard you passing that along to others too, as you thought about what you could do, but also who you could give it to who would really value it.
Pamela Mudd: Yeah.
Stacey Ishman: Now, I also would love, it's not one of the things we had talked about ahead of time, but are there any other time hacks that you found really useful?
Stacey Ishman: Are there things, other things that helped give you back some time other than the sort of a calendar time audit?
Pamela Mudd: Yeah, during our coaching sessions, I just was like, "Oh, I just wish I could be as organized as you would be." And you gave me all of these things and all of these ideas, and I loved all of them, and I would do them here and there.
Pamela Mudd: But I would say it's just not the way my mind space works. I just like to have everything in a big cluttery mess and just know in my mind where those priorities are gonna be. And I would still say that I do that. But I do feel like my time is a little bit more intentional. Let's see.
Pamela Mudd: I've used ChatGPT or other AI sources a lot more. I think that's all of us have leaned into that a bit. So [00:23:00] that- ... has been helpful. One of the things I found has really changed is that I have given myself time to be less reactive and more intentional with my communication. And this is a pretty good time hack in that I used to get myself going and replying to this email and kinda think about what I was gonna say or find a problem and really put together a whole processing plan behind it.
Pamela Mudd: And then I just table that email, let it sit. Sometimes I'll throw it into an AI source and see what kind of feedback or thoughts that they have. And then I just give it time, because there's something that you and I had talked about, am I the right person, is it the right time to deliver this feedback or to change this process?
Pamela Mudd: And so some of that has been, I don't know if it's necessarily a time hack, but it's definitely a growth strategy in terms of just taking a little bit more time to be less reactive and be more intentional with feedback. And that saves you a lot of [00:24:00] head space and a lot of worry but also helps people that when you're able to actually go bring that information to them or do that change, it seems a lot more timely and directed and that's been helpful.
Stacey Ishman: No, I love that. That's what I say to people is "Does it need to be said? Does it need to be said by you? Does it need to be said by you right now. And it actually is really good for me too, because I do a lot of things where I feel like I need to say something, and then somebody else says it and you're like, "Oh, good, it's out there.
Stacey Ishman: It doesn't actually have to be from me." Or maybe this isn't the right time for me to say it, and there's a better place and time where it could be received.
Pamela Mudd: Yeah. So- There was a book suggestion that I think you had given on one of your other podcasts, and I- it really resonated with me. I've actually g- shared this with so many other providers and, physicians along the way, and it was a lot about kind of this reactivity that a lot of us have.
Pamela Mudd: Like cleaning out your email inbox, finishing your clinical [00:25:00] notes all the things that you know you have to do, there's a deadline for them, that's like reactive work. And then you have to give yourself this time space for having the work that's strategic work, and I thought that was a really interesting thing and it has helped me to put in those two buckets.
Pamela Mudd: This is my reactive work. It's the stuff that I need to get done, and that's where we always spend our energy, in that reactive stuff. Yeah. But giving a little bit more time to the strategic work, and I don't know if that's what she had called it, but in terms of, giving your time for I'm gonna spend my time doing this intentionally.
Pamela Mudd: I'm gonna spend my time looking at, this research project or talking with this medical student, and that's different work and that also helped. Yeah.
Stacey Ishman: No, that's great. That... So the book is called Deep Work by Cal Newport but there's also the Eisenhower Matrix, which I think you're also talking about a little bit, which is where you, we live so much in that urgent, important world, 'cause everything in medicine feels that way, that we don't necessarily get the big bucket stuff, like the big [00:26:00] research projects.
Stacey Ishman: So the stuff that's strategic not urgent, but important. And so I love that you've actually melded those together, which I like even better than I think the way that I tell people. I have one more question for you. And it was really that when you shifted how you led, whether it was through better delegation or focused research or intentional leadership like you just talked about, did that ripple into how your team operates?
Stacey Ishman: How did that show up? You talked about your administrative staff and really learning from them. Like, how did you see it work at all those levels?
Pamela Mudd: Yeah. Yeah, I think one of the things that we talked about, and I still say out loud, but I've shifted, is, that I've decided I really like passive leadership.
Pamela Mudd: And it's one of these things of knowing all of the things on the back end, and then just being able to help people on the back, and, that had these concerns. So one of the things that you and I talked about in the past was that I loved passive leadership, and what that meant to me was that I had access to a lot of information.
Pamela Mudd: [00:27:00] I sat on a lot of committees. I did a lot of things in, with operational leadership. And I kinda knew a lot of that back-end stuff, and then when people would come to me, I'd be able to give them advice because of what I knew, and I thought this was considered passive leadership. But I really feel like eventually I actually learned it's like mentor first leadership.
Pamela Mudd: So it's more that I'm wanting to help people, and I want them to seek me out as a mentor. I want to find mentees, and in that mentor first leadership helps me to lead by not only example, by, but also by giving these- Types of things that not every physician has time for or not every physician is interested in, such as operational leadership or, RVU metrics or how to optimize billing.
Pamela Mudd: We're not all designed that way. But because that's something that I like, like I speak administration, but I can also speak clinical, that it's allowed me to kinda use that [00:28:00] mentor-first leadership to help people to solve problems. I don't know if that's going in the right direction, but I feel like that mentor-first leadership style, rather than calling it passive leadership style, is really an active leadership style, but is based on mentoring and using knowledge that I have, not expecting everybody else to have that same knowledge, and then helping that to solve problems.
Pamela Mudd: And also empowering them as a mentor to help to solve those problems, to be part of it, so that it's not always about, being the person who knows everything or making all the decisions, but helping other people to help to find those solutions. And I think if people understand things, just like when we talked about earlier about, learning the processes, if people understand things better, then they're more willing to be part of the solution, and I think that I've seen that with my- within my own team.
Pamela Mudd: And I still get a lot of value from people in my team coming up to me and asking me questions about things that they don't know or [00:29:00] starting a conversation with pure frustration, and then me leaning into an answer based on knowledge that they didn't already have and empowering them to then refocus or reshift their, viewpoint of things.
Pamela Mudd: And I would say that's been pretty interesting way to see my leadership s- style kinda go down to other people.
Stacey Ishman: Yeah. It sounds like you had a shift from r- thinking what you were doing was passive to realizing it was intentional, but just in a different way than maybe you'd seen in the past because that isn't how leadership looked to you when you first walked into this.
Pamela Mudd: Yeah. Did that even sound right? I f- I feel like I changed directions on that one and-
Stacey Ishman: No, it was great. It was great. Okay. Do you mind if I ask you one last question?
Pamela Mudd: Yeah.
Stacey Ishman: So if somebody else was thinking about getting a coach, what would you tell them?
Pamela Mudd: Yeah I think it would be person dependent, 'cause I think there's a lot of whys to coaching, and I think that there is probably some people who need a therapist and other people who [00:30:00] probably would benefit from a coach.
Pamela Mudd: 'Cause I've actually had a lot of these conversations recently in terms of, there are certain people that are going through things that I think coaching is really helpful for. So transitions is a big one. Starting off your career. I actually think people would hugely benefit from career coaching at the very beginning of their career.
Pamela Mudd: And I'm try- I try to take some of that away, and even give that to people that are-- that I'm mentoring. Some of the things that I learned in coaching, like start now, don't start when you're, eight years or 10 years in. Try to find that intention early. For me, coaching was helpful because it was transitional and it really...
Pamela Mudd: and that would probably be our first year, but I would say I extended our coaching because it changed into helping with the promotion packet and moving my career in a different direction than maybe I had thought I was gonna start off with when we first started talking. And so I found it helpful both in decision-making, kinda career planning, but also in that [00:31:00] transition of, highlighting my, my, my career path and going up for promotion and it was really helpful during that time just to help with that visibility and getting things kinda clean.
Stacey Ishman: So I was talking to somebody not very long ago whose coach gave her an analogy that I really liked, and she talked about it in respect to learning how to ride a bicycle.
Stacey Ishman: So what she said was, "A therapist is gonna help you figure out why you can't get on the bike." It's what happened in the past? What's affecting you now? But not necessarily what's moving forward. And a mentor is gonna tell you how they learned how to ride a bike, so it's really much more advice and telling you about their experience.
Stacey Ishman: But a coach is gonna stand there and hold the handlebars while you figure out how to ride the bike. And I liked that analogy because I think that coaching is about having a goal and us helping people get to the goal. And sometimes the goal is, "I don't know what I want and I need to figure that out," and that's a perfectly reasonable goal.
Stacey Ishman: And sometimes the goal is, "I wanna become a full professor," or a division chief or a chair, or, "I wanna be the best person at [00:32:00] leading my- my system in my CMO role." And those are easier, right? To hang your hat on, that's what I want. But I'll tell you, no matter who I talk to about career coaching, 100% of the people I talk to we end up talking about some of the things that affect your life, because I don't think you can have a great career unless you make sure that your life is good, too.
Stacey Ishman: And starting there and helping you feel like you have a basis is a really important starting point. So I love the fact that you're helping people look at therapy, and I think lots of people need both therapy and a coach, to be completely honest. Yeah. I have needed both at certain points in my life, and I have different coaches for different things.
Stacey Ishman: And that's the other thing I don't think people always recognize is that they can help you do lots of stuff. I have two business coaches. I have somebody who helps me just really work on work things. I have somebody who's been there ahead of me in terms of career things. And I do think also there's some kind of fit there just there is when you're trying to find a therapist, 'cause that also seems to take a fit in my world.
Pamela Mudd: Yeah. Yeah, and same for me. And I would say one thing that [00:33:00] was and is helpful from a coach is that we do have intrinsic mentors. We have people that are on our faculty with us. We have a lot of people that support us, ideally, especially in a, in an academic situation. You... But having somebody that's outside of your normal system that can help you to navigate your career, your transitions, and other things like this is so helpful.
Pamela Mudd: Because any of those worries about what that person may think of you or wanting to protect something that you think that mentor has an interest in, goes off the table when you have a coach outside your system who can really have a unbiased, objective way of looking at these questions.
Pamela Mudd: And I found that to be true in our sessions a lot, where something that was really pressing me, even though I have mentors and I have faculty members and a chief who I really respect, that it was nice to have somebody who had been through [00:34:00] it and even seen it in different ways- To then give me the ability to find that direction, and that was helpful.
Pamela Mudd: And, sometimes it did seem like a therapy visit. A lot of good times where it was like slow down and just wonder what was good this week. And finding that what was good that week sometimes could be really hard. But in general, I think that was the thing I found the most valuable, is having somebody that was really experienced that I felt like, you know my language, you know what I'm doing, you've been here and I'm, I feel like I'm following behind you.
Pamela Mudd: But also you worked with me as a colleague, so it was great. Yeah, it was really great.
Stacey Ishman: Thank you so much for joining me this week. I will tell you that comment you just made about having a hard time finding wins, I found a lot of really incredibly smart, intelligent, ambitious, fantastic people have a hard time slowing down and finding wins.
Stacey Ishman: And we can drop this last part if you want, but you are absolutely one of the stories I tell people without [00:35:00] telling your name, 'cause I tell people about this coaching session I had where somebody couldn't think of any good win that she'd had this week, nothing. And halfway through the coaching session she told me she got married this weekend.
Stacey Ishman: And I thought that was the most amazing thing, 'cause it was just I realize it was not the first time you'd gotten married to the same person because you guys had a formal and informal versions of this. But it was absolutely my favorite story, where you're like, "Couldn't think of a single win, but I, oh, and I got married this weekend."
Pamela Mudd: I love that. You know what it's a reflection of? It's a reflection of that we get so focused on each part of our life that we forget that we're the sum of all of those parts,
Stacey Ishman: I don't think I could have said it better. So with that, I would like to thank you so much for joining me. I hope this was useful for people who are listening out there.
Stacey Ishman: If there's anything we can do to help you, please get in touch with us at amedsg.com. We're Academic Medicine Strategy Group. We would love to work with you, so thank you.
Pamela Mudd: Awesome. Thank you. Have a good evening.
