Mentoring, Career Support, and Education in Breast Medical Oncology

You have to be careful about how you go about managing or coordinating especially bright people. So in my early years, for instance, I tried to set expectations for all of my faculty members which was good—and I still do that—but I try to set sort of one size fits all expectations. And it didn’t work, of course. There were some of my faculty members who were and still are wonderful physicians, but they do not have the knack for—or the interest—for doing research. And trying to force them to do research was a disaster because every year during their evaluation I would end up with this heated discussion about I asked you to do this and you didn’t do—I didn’t have the time because I was—it was a totally non-productive thing. So after a while I figured out that I had to recognize that different people have different strengths, and we all have weaknesses, and there was no point in harping on weaknesses when I could build on their strengths. So the person who did not want to do research but was a good doctor I would just say, “Okay. So let’s make a deal. You do 50% more or 100% more patient care than your colleagues who want to do research. And I will be very happy for that.” And they were very happy for that. That allowed me to empower the others who really wanted to spend more time on research to do research and less patient care and a little bit more protected time. And similarly, for those who wanted to spend more time on education—great. I have some colleagues who are great at committee work—fabulous. And then for as long as the unit—the overall department—the overall faculty accomplishes what we as a unit want to do or as we as a unit are expected to do for instance financially—I am happy. So I think that is an important part of it, building on people’s strengths. The third part is to continuously challenge people in a positive way—you know. Challenge them to stretch, to reach for things that they do not think they can reach. Someone comes and shows you a review paper they have written, you read it, and you say, “This is very nice but I think you can do better than this—you know—by doing X, Y, Z.” Or—you know—someone who wants to come see you with a project and says, “Can you get me some money to do this project?” And you say, “Yes, I can, but I think it would look a whole lot better on your CV if you applied for a federal grant and you got it. Furthermore, that would allow me to give you a little bit more protected time so you can spend on this wonderful project. If I give you the money, that does not help you. It is just—it is a short term Band-Aid. So why don’t you apply for the grant?”