Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Women's Leadership Education and Development Program webinar sponsored by the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy. My name is Marty Roth, and I will be your moderator for this webinar. Before we get started, just a few housekeeping items. There will be a question and answer session at the close of the presentation. Questions can be submitted online at any time during the presentation by using the question box on the right-hand side of your screen. If you do not see the question box, please click the white arrow in the orange box located on the right side of your screen. Please note that this webinar is being recorded and will be available for future use. At this time, I would like to introduce the 2017 Lead Director, Dr. Vanessa Chammy. Dr. Chammy received her undergraduate degree from Colgate University with a major in biology and completed her medical doctorate degree at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, where she also completed her internal medicine residency. She completed an interventional gastroenterology fellowship at the University of Chicago and then joined the University of Virginia faculty in 2004. Greetings, Lead Participants. I am delighted to welcome you to our final 2017 Lead Webinar on the Art and Science of Peer Support. Joining us on today's call is Lead Co-Director, Dr. Asya Ahmad. She is Chief of Gastroenterology and Program Director for the GI Fellowship at Drexel University College of Medicine. Her expertise is in gastrointestinal motility disorders, and she is Director of the Motility Laboratory at her center. And now I'm really honored to introduce the presenter for today's call. As you all know, Dr. Colleen Schmidt. She is President of the Galen Medical Group in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She was Founding Medical Director of the region's first multi-specialty research center, Southeastern Clinical Research, and served as Medical Director at Memorial Research Center. She was Chief of the Division of Gastroenterology at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine. Dr. Schmidt is Past President of the ASGE and the Founding Director of the LEAD Program. Welcome, Colleen. Vanessa, thank you so much. I'd like to thank the organizers, Vanessa Shaming and Asya Ahmad. This is the end, I hope, of an exciting and great year that's been rewarding and informative to you as you move through your career. So the purpose of co-entitling this discussion, The Art and Science of Peer Support, also known as Her Bright Smile, is because of a letter of recommendation I received from a very high-profile gastroenterologist. It was a glowing recommendation for a fellow. I was struck by the description of this extremely intelligent, well-educated, very skilled endoscopist whose one of her primary attributes was her bright smile. It made me curious about how men and women are promoted by peers as well as their mentors and coaches. As part of the LEAD Program, we developed objectives for us to help effectively promote each other and praise each other effectively. So as a part of this course, we wanted to understand how to leverage advocacy and also, as part of that, how to identify how we might stereotype each other, how we might describe each other with what are known as grindstone adjectives. And as we write, refer, coach, mentor, otherwise recommend what kind of flags we need to look for in our reviews of our colleagues and those that we are mentoring. And I thought it might be important for us to consider as part of that discussion how we approach developing strategic partnerships with our colleagues, how we use these skills to build collaborative relationships, and then finally, how we advance these skill sets to improve our diversity and inclusion in our leadership and faculty. So what is peer support? For the purposes of our discussion tonight, this is our ability to provide or share our advice, our knowledge, our experience, our ideas with others in order to help each other and also to consider this an initiative that consists of trained supporters, though certainly we can provide this to our peers without any training. It can take on a number of forms, but we need to consider this approach as a relationship that does have some equity with a certain amount of relevant experience. So there are different kinds of peer support. Move on through the next two graphics. What we are talking about tonight is actually mentoring our peers and listening and counseling. We are able to provide each other mutual counsel and organizational structures in which to do this, but what I'm not talking about tonight are girls' night out or a willingness to cry on each other's shoulder. So as we move through this slide, some of the ways we can think about this being important is our ability to network, our ability to collaborate, develop the professional recognition that you deserve, but also other important considerations, especially for those in academia, including grant support, promotion, and tenure. And for those of us in private practice, the same types of attributes, but also winning contracts, and this includes winning contracts with payers, but also within hospital systems and jobs. Lila, if you'll just continue to move through the slide. This is not about being lucky, but rather about working with each other's abilities and skill sets to be very serious about our careers and as senior or junior women to help move each other through our profession, whether it be in academics, in private practice, or even in industry. Keep moving through the slide for me, Lila. So types of support can include everything from informal suggestions or curbside recommendations for positions, and you all know what those kinds of discussions look like. This might be someone you would consider putting on a committee or considering in a work group, but also think about how we recommend one another as speakers for speaker positions or even moderators and course directors. Who is going to be good participating in a panel on endoscopic complications or in motility considerations, and what type of person might best be able to moderate or put together a bunch of speakers as a course director? But also we'll focus on some of this tonight, how we develop letters of support or recommendation or nominations for awards and governance positions. Some of this involves the situation where we actually serve as gatekeepers, and some folks that are in the roles and leadership positions are going to be the ones that actually incorporate those gatekeeping practices. This might mean something that is as basic as the educational requirements that are necessary for a certain position to the elements that are included in your job interview skills, but also those letters of recommendation. So these are the folks that actually control your access to particular positions, and then the societal or professional benefits that accrue to you as you move into those positions. Gatekeepers use both objective and subjective criteria when they're considering someone for a position. So objective criteria are going to be whether or not your training experience would qualify you for the job, or whether or not your statement of your research interests or your teaching philosophy are congruent with their needs. As you know, if you're in academia, the number of publications in a certain area or perhaps your presentations at your academic institution or regional or national meetings might recommend you for a certain prestigious position. But one of the other subjective requirements often for a position are going to be a letter of recommendation. So this is just a subjective description of the candidate by someone who's had a very good opportunity to come to know that individual and can potentially personally demonstrate that they have the ideal qualities for career success. One of the recent letters I've seen that was a recommendation for the Master Endoscopist Award for the ASGE began with this statement. And it was from someone I know is extremely prudent and careful with their compliments, is not given hyperbole, and frankly might be viewed as an acerbic person, but he began this letter of recommendation as describing this person as quite simply the best endoscopist that I've ever seen. So it wasn't a reiteration or regurgitation of the person's CV or experience, but really quite a subjective and visceral discussion and description of the individual for the award that was simple but so compelling in its eloquence that that individual actually will be receiving the Master Endoscopist Award this year. So the letters of recommendation are something that you've been familiar with since you were an undergraduate, and I wanted to walk through what I think are some of the important qualifications, whether you're requesting one or whether you're writing one for someone that you'll have the opportunity to mentor, coach, or sponsor. But I and others believe that this letter should be written by the person whose signature is at the bottom. While I think it's popular these days for someone to hand you a template of a letter of recommendation that they're requesting, in fact, I think that should come from you or from your recommender and should be written from the heart about your qualifications. But you should ask someone to write this for you whom you know will be 100% positive and in your court. These are taken very, very seriously. By those who review them, they truly are deconstructed, reconstructed, pored over, discussed, and otherwise dissected to see if this is the right person for that very, very rare award. Why is it important to reach for the stars? About 60% of us will wish that we had actually looked for sponsors that could be in our court during our career. And you want to make sure that you have the right people in your court and that also when you're asked to be in someone's court that you can do that wholeheartedly. If you're not sure who to ask, talk to your boss or your colleagues for suggestions. Now why is this important? It's important because even individuals who are egalitarian and very progressive have biases that are implicit or unconscious. So there is implicit messaging that we see that looks matter most. The message that we see very much in our society is that we, as women, should keep our eyes on marriage. And even though we are as likely to pursue a college degree or make better grades in school and so forth, the biases reflect years of exposure to our cultural messages and really don't have anything at all to do with our consciously held attitudes and beliefs. So we want to just think tonight about what the nonverbal behaviors are, what social judgments are, and behavioral choices, including the language that we select in letter writing. So subconscious biases do influence a number of factors that will impact you from now until the day you exit your job. And that's going to include how your job application is perceived, how you're compared to your male colleagues, and how even equivalent language is interpreted to describe you as compared to your male colleagues, in addition to your performance evaluation. And the fact of the matter is that people recommend those and they choose those and they advocate for those who are more like themselves, and it doesn't matter how you slice that. It can be based on personality or your ideology or, for the purposes of tonight's discussion, your gender. This is just one of the facts that we have to work with and try to work through. So with regard to awards, for you, these are some of your stepping stones as you move through your career. In most societies, the proportion of the female scholarly award winners are smaller than the proportion of equivalent high-level degree winners. So that can include those for female full professors and female award winners. Males tend to be overrepresented as winners of rewards for societies and overrepresented as mentors. So the awards are stepping stones and external markers of achievement recognition. This is a validation of the work that you've done throughout your career, whether or not you're in academics or private practice. And it's not only a marker for you, but it actually is important in terms of enriching and reinforcing and endorsing the choices that you make throughout your career. But women are less likely to receive awards for scholarly activities and scholarly experience and are more likely to receive awards for service or mentoring. And we're going to work through these next three slides pretty quickly, but the Association for Women in Science, with a grant from the National Science Foundation, funded a study looking at patterns in award allocations in the STEM disciplines. And they found that these are stratified along gender lines and women are consistently underrepresented among recipients of scholarly and research awards and are overrepresented among recipients of teaching and service awards relative to their proportion among anything from PhDs to full professors and disciplinary society membership. So this is true not only in the biological and life sciences, but also in the mathematical sciences and the physical sciences. So when you consider whether or not you might be a candidate or a nominee for an award, these are the rules and kinds of track record you should follow. Some of it's very practical. Start early and follow all of the directions for the award. For ASGE, for example, these are published and we have resource staff who are available not only to answer your questions, but to point you in the right direction if you're not certain where to go. You want to be sure that for yourself or someone you're nominating that you've matched the appropriate nominee to the right award criteria. So for example, I am not in an educational position in my profession. I would not be an appropriate nominee for an educational award. Dr. Shami and Ahmad, on the other hand, are in a perfect position to be nominated for that type of award. Likewise, you want to choose your supporters and your nominators wisely. Understand with whom they connect, at what level they connect, are they on a nominations committee, do they work with someone on a nominations committee. You want to wield this information smartly and appropriately. You want to be sure that the nomination package is concise and thorough. Some people tend to over-package the nomination. That's not necessary as long as the elements of the nomination are appropriate and well-written. Finally, the more women who are nominated for an award, the higher likelihood there will be that a woman will receive the nomination and the award. And finally, I would leave you with this. Think about whether or not you should ask to be nominated. Some people might not consider a woman unless that woman promotes herself. If it's appropriate, you think you're qualified for an award in your institution, in your region, in a society, ask to be considered for a nomination. When you are writing an award nomination, make sure that every sentence counts. I think the simple sentence of this, he is simply the best endoscopist I've ever met, is as concise and to the point as one could have ever wanted. It makes for an extremely strong opening statement, but ensure that the closing statement is just as eloquent. Make sure the award nomination is specific, applies to the award, relates your skill sets to the award, gives a very meaningful description of your contributions and the impact that your work has done either for your profession, for your society, whether it be volunteer or professional or for your institution, and provides specific examples of these different types of accomplishments. Go back and look through the nominations, criteria, and checklists and make sure that the nomination has addressed all aspects of these criteria and watch out for superlatives. The sentence that I gave you might be an exception to that, the best, the highest level. Less can be more in these instances, but make them count. And if you are writing on behalf of someone else, engage the nominee and find out what areas of expertise or experience they've had that they think should be highlighted. So I'd like to touch on something that might not seem like a big deal, but I think in our profession it is, and that is speaking at meetings. Speaking at meetings allows you an opportunity to be visible to your peers and your colleagues. It actually is a marker and an indicator that you are an expert in your field of knowledge. It's a validation and an external recognition that you are an expert. It allows you an opportunity to showcase your research to your peers and to receive that very valuable feedback and essential criticism that you can use then to further your career and improve the product of what you do. It allows you to demonstrate to your colleagues your prowess and your expertise and also allows you to become a role model to younger women who are in the audience that then look to you as an example of how they too can potentially use this type of expertise in a public setting. The stimulation and discourse that revolves around these types of meetings is, I think, again, essential, and it helps also inform financial support for the projects that you're working on in a certain discipline. This was an interesting study that was published by a researcher in the American Society of Microbiology who had also taken a look at this at their Interscience Conference on Antimicrobials, and they found that in sessions that were convened by male organizers, the invited female speakers averaged around 25%. But in the sessions where the convener teams included just one woman, the women speakers represented an average of 43% of the speakers. So it's important for us to have women who are representing other women when we're putting together courses that allow you to demonstrate those types of skill sets. This slide demonstrates that inclusion of at least one woman among the conveners for these meetings increased the proportion of female speakers by 72% compared with those who were convened by men alone. So this is an opportunity for us to advocate for other women for them to have this type of visibility. Julia Schroeder and Hannah Dugdale have looked at the number of women who were invited to present at an International Biology Meeting Congress in 2011 and found that women are actually less likely to be invited to speak at expert symposia compared with regular presenters, and less likely to be visible at a plenary session. But they also found that women are less likely to accept such a prestigious invitation. So my plea to you is to look carefully at the invitations that you receive, but say yes, this is a message that I've tried to get out to the lead participants for the reasons that we described. So at ASGE, our society charges the program committees and the program directors with finding speakers who reflect the diversity of the organization and membership. We try in the society work to understand the no. If someone says no, I can't participate, what caused that individual to decline? And when you are in the position of selecting speakers for educational symposia, I would encourage you to try to understand the no as well, and try to suggest topics and women speakers who can help fulfill this goal. If you believe that you are an expert in a certain content area, then suggest yourself, but try to say yes when you're invited to one of these scientific meetings or symposia. So at ASGE, we've looked to see whether or not our programs are effective, and as a part of that review, we reviewed some of the hallmarks that make advocacy factors and advocacy for programs effective. Do they address the priorities of women? Do they create and support programs that provide mentoring or support for women to strategize together, such as a session like tonight? Do they support women in diversity and leadership positions, and do they highlight the importance of women's contributions? I think we can look back at some of these programs as successful and understand that there is more work to be done. So for the last part of the program, we're going to look at how and why we should consider our supports and recommendations to be effective tools. Letters of support are meant to provide substantive information about proposed partnerships, or as we used earlier, examples for nominations, and describe the means and appropriateness using knowledge, user, support skills. When writing letters of support for our colleagues and peers, more detail is better, but again, you want to keep it on point, and there is a good resource for you in the slide here that's actually from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research that I've found to be helpful. There's no standard lengths for letters of support, but keep in mind that weak letters are often short. One or even two paragraphs is usually not enough room to expand on the importance that a project may have to an organization or on behalf of a nominee. Letter writers that are ineffective tend to be those who write token or template letters that are quite impersonal. The weak letters are ones that are not going to have the right background information or discuss the relevance of the project. For letters that have been analyzed, the element that's often most lacking is a wraparound or 360 back to the hypothesis or description of outcomes or impacts on research and the importance that that would have for an organization. Francis Tripps and Carolyn Sinska from Wayne State published a classic qualitative study in 2003 of 300 letters of recommendation for research and clinical faculty and found that a higher percentage of the recommendation letters written for women tended to be very short. And what I mean by very short is fewer than 10 lines, while those that were written for men were on average over 50 lines. And they found that about 15% of the letters written for female applicants compared to 6% for the male could be termed letters of minimal assurance. So the letters lacked a stated commitment or a real commitment to the applicant. They lacked detailed comments or other evaluation of the traits or accomplishments. So in this study, they not only found that men have quantitatively longer letters and women shorter letters, but they found that letters for men are written with what is called affirmative language, that is, standout words, while the letters written in support of women typically raised doubts. So she can have a challenging personality or she works hard on projects that she's accepted. They are also rich in their difference in stereotypical language. For men's letters written for men, they typically elevate the man's accomplishments and use very proactive pronouns, his research, his skills, his career. They take ownership. While for women, the letters tend to diminish her teaching, her training, her application. And with regard to gender identification, the men identify the women twice as often as the women did men, as ambitious or dominant. And women are referred to with grindstone adjectives. She's hardworking. She's dependable. She's careful. Tony Schmader and colleagues in British Columbia found more similarities in the letters written for men and women job candidates in chemistry and biochemistry than differences, but the letters that describe the positive qualities of men more often emphasize their role as researchers and professionals, while those describing the women emphasize their teaching with the pronoun her followed by words such as training, teaching, and personal life. So our descriptors tend to be stereotypical and refer both male and female applicants with gender stereotypes. Men are typically referred to in terms of success and accomplishment, while women are referred to with communal adjectives such as nurturing and compassionate. While I acknowledge that both sets are positive, when you use communal terminology, it's linking people to a feminine type, and they're not seen as credible, and they are less likely to get hired or promoted. It's not just men doing this to women, and it's not just women being hurt, but it hurts women more. Women are more likely to be referred to, as I mentioned, with grindstone adjectives, and the one that you hear the most is, she is a hard worker. This is used more often for women than for men, and the implication is that women have a strong work ethic, men have more ability. Schmader and colleagues also found that there are more similarity in letters written for male and female candidates in chemistry and biochem, but the standout adjectives for men were more often present, and the evaluators placed a higher weight on these types of letters where the standout words were most gifted or best qualified, or he is a rising star, while the letters that contained doubt raisers, it appears that her health is stable, or while she has not done X, Y, and Z, were less likely to be hired. So my advice is to ensure that we, as Advocates for Others, compare the applicant with the job requirement and make a concerted effort to avoid unnecessarily invoking a stereotype when it's entirely not necessary, and when describing what we might consider stereotypical female traits, ask ourselves if these characteristics are really relevant to the job, or are we simply copying out and missing out on other potential strengths of the candidates. We need to be sure that we're careful not to overuse gendered adjectives or overuse grindstone adjectives, make sure that we use the title and surnames for both men and women instead of, as commonly done, refer to the male as Dr. Smith and using the first name for the female applicants. And while I agree it's important to talk about personality and interpersonal skills, when it comes to getting a letter of recommendation, women need to be sure that their letter writers are focusing on their agentic qualities, not just the communal qualities. Let's talk just for a few minutes about the practical effect of mentorship, because as future leaders in our profession, in our discipline, and in our professional societies, you are the future leaders and the future mentors. A mentor is someone from whom you can seek advice, and sometimes there is not a mentor available. It might not be in your discipline, it might not be in your department, but you should be able to find someone in this world that you can ask about advice regarding awards and promotions and opportunities like the ones that we've talked about tonight. Make them aware of you, make them aware of your interest, and help start the process of them investing in your success. You can use your mentor, that's what we're here for, to help you identify your interests and your strengths, to help you understand what's available to you, and to help refine your plan of action to get the skills that are necessary for you to get that award or that promotion or that speaking opportunity. Make their job easy, so keep your CV up-to-date constantly, be sure that your CV is up-to-date before you seek a nomination from someone else, and have your elevator speech ready. I'm sure you've heard about elevator speech as part of the LEAD program. Most of the folks that you're going to be asking for support from or to mentor you are busy people, so it's important to give them your CV before a nomination or a request slips off their to-do list. Be sure that you have addressed specific goals for whatever award or nomination you might be seeking and provide them with examples and why you might merit the award or promotion or position. This is not the time to be modest, but be fact-based and be ready to talk about yourself like you would talk about and promote someone else. When you're in the middle of a job search, I think one of the yardsticks that we use is measurement of diversity. So as you look over, consider a job, one of the yardsticks is to make sure that to your eye it looks like this is an open search, and you can look and check the diversity for attitude across all levels of that application process and organization. It's usually easy to understand what the explicit requirements are, but also see if you can look and gauge what you think the filters are for the gatekeepers for a certain position. Try to think about your interview process with an objective eye and consider that later. Write down your thoughts and externally validate these thoughts outside the department and with your own mentors. I think one of the important elements for most of us is to understand what resources are available for our families and our own personal support systems. A major telecommunications company once commissioned some research to find out which attributes best predict long-term leadership success. Why do some leaders succeed while others may seem like a likely prospect but don't really live up to expectations? After looking at a variety of factors, including tenacity, intelligence, work ethic, and ingenuity, they found that the ability to build and leverage a network of relationships is the best predictor of success. The same thing is true in medicine. I think that's one of the huge benefits of the LEAD program as it's developed from year to year, is that opportunity to network with your colleagues' relationships. Making the transition from being an individual contributor to a group leader begins with helping others to achieve their goals. That helps everyone's agreed upon vision come alive and it helps you move from thinking about only the you to thinking as a group and promoting others. I think that's one of the highest caliber leaders I would ever want to know. To many of you, the terms collaboration and strategic relationships may seem a bit redundant because, after all, aren't all relationships collaboratively, but initially team members may only cooperate rather than collaborate. You will find that both in academics and in private practice, especially as a practice leader, the silo mentality simply does not lead to growth and does not provide good leadership in the workplace. It doesn't matter what type of workplace you exist in. The tradeoff can be viewed as a lack of focus and it has to be balanced by your ability to say no, but collaboration is a leadership issue and you want to try to capture and communicate cumulative wisdom within your workforce. That's essential in leadership growth. We all like to, in fact, as GI fellows and gastroenterologists, we tend to do everything on our own by ourselves, but creating these types of strategic partnerships are essential. It doesn't matter if you're trying to manage a research team or to try to manage a multi-specialty group. They can help us develop suppliers and technology, help us build partnerships, they help us build credibility, they help us access a broader patient population or a more diverse patient audience, and increase your market share. Next, in the great strategic partnerships that I've had an opportunity to participate in are the GI Outlook course, I'll keep moving through this, the GI Quick Registry, which is a collaboration between ASG and ACG. Locally, we have a clinically integrated network called Tennessee Gastro that's worked together to promote quality endoscopy and help develop marketing and business relationships in the state of Tennessee. Then those types of professional consensus statements that you're used to seeing, such as the CENIC guidelines that were developed by our professional societies. Use opportunities when you can to increase your visibility. This is the opposite of saying no, this is saying yes. Consider where you might want to volunteer and use your skill sets in areas that might not be expected. Encourage underrepresented minorities, those that you have an opportunity to coach or mentor or sponsor, to apply or volunteer and be available to nominate them when appropriate. Participate in search committees. Women who evaluate other women are more likely to approve women. Consciously and continuously consider unconscious biases, which really requires a step back and a different kind of continuous thermometer. Partner strategically, but again, continue to say yes and recruit everywhere, all the time. I'm going to open it up now for questions and answers. Thank you again for the opportunity to work through this discussion with you tonight. I congratulate you on becoming the future leaders of our profession. Thank you very much, Dr. Schmidt, for that valuable information and excellent presentation. Again, I also want to thank everyone else for joining us today on this ASGE-sponsored LEAD webinar. At this time, Dr. Schmidt will address questions received from the audience. As a reminder, you can submit a question through the question box. If you do not see the question box, please click the white arrow in the orange box located on the right side of your screen. It will be towards the bottom. Dr. Schmidt, the first question I have for you, how can I be more assertive without being assessed as the, quote, difficult woman? Are there any tricks of the trade to be strong, yet perceived as a nice person? Thank you for the question. One of the things that you might have learned this year is, ironically, more successful women are viewed as being nice. Having said that, I'm going to assume you are a nice person, but would also suggest to you that you need to know your topic, research. If the interaction is already scheduled, research what that interaction might look like and understand what others might view as being difficult. Always have data to back up your argument so that your approach can be objective rather than one built around emotion, and use active verbs. So phrase your conversation with the I, I feel, or I believe, rather than you. It helps take on responsibility for the conversation onto your own shoulders and takes the burden off the person that you're talking to. I don't believe in trying to dumb down the conversation or being apologetic or trying to make yourself look stupid in order for the other person to perceive you as less difficult. But I do believe that you can describe your knowledge base and still promote the notion that you are a nice person. And while times may change, I still think that that's an important attribute in any conversation. All right, thank you very much, Dr. Schmidt. The next question I have, sometimes I feel other female colleagues are more critical of me than male colleagues. How do you overcome a situation like that? I think women and men have cultural biases, and we've discussed some of those tonight that we have to work through. One of the benefits of having women as colleagues is that we can use each other for sounding boards, but we can also be our own worst critics. Can be difficult to ask our colleagues, men or women, for frank feedback, but you should be able to sit down with your colleague and ask. Getting feedback from colleagues is one of the best and most effective ways, most meaningful ways to make a difference between whether or not your career is promoted or not. So use the opportunity to sit down with the other person, man or woman, and request frank feedback. You have to understand the other person's perspective. No one wants to come across as mean. No one wants to feel like they're going to hurt your feelings, but you can present it as an opportunity for a 360-degree analysis. I think we have to be careful that we don't disguise those kinds of requests as fishing for compliments. So you want your request for feedback to be as specific. As you know, getting vague feedback is not even helpful to begin with. Focus on requests for your skill sets, not personality traits. And I think it can be helpful to ask the person providing feedback for candor and be as specific as saying, I'm looking for feedback on thus and such, or warm it up a little bit more. Do you have any tips for this situation? All right. Thank you very much, Dr. Schmidt. Question number three that I have, I want to keep growing as a leader, but I don't see any models of leadership and success in my current organization that I can relate to. Keep looking. Look elsewhere. Look inside the entire organization of ASGE. That's what this entire program is built around. So look at your colleagues, your peers within the LEAD program. Look at your LEAD co-directors. They are fantastic leaders. At your institution, you might need to look outside your department. There are wonderful collaborations that are built between specialists and internists or specialists and surgeons, and they might be able to provide effective mentoring or sponsorship for you. Take the opportunity at DDW to network. There are sponsored symposia there, and there are sponsored leadership events there. There are sponsored events specifically for men and underrepresented minorities there, and those are all developed for the opportunity to network. And then, finally, read. Look on the Lean In website, read. There are fantastic books available that will provide you with more tips about developing leadership skills everywhere from physician leadership to women don't ask, take a class. There are lots of opportunities that might not be at your doorstep. All right. Thank you very much, Dr. Schmidt. The next question I have, being the only female presenter at a meeting can be intimidating, but it is also a way for me to stand out. What pointers would you suggest I do to take advantage of this type of opportunity? Well, first, recognize that you obviously are an acknowledged expert and enjoy yourself. Take your pulse and take a deep breath. If you think that the issue for you is stage fright, I literally would consider taking a beta blocker, but otherwise, sit down, pull that microphone up to yourself, and be ready to answer questions with the authority that I know you have, because someone thinks you're an expert and you should believe that you're an expert. Don't change your communication style, but be professional in conveying the knowledge, just like your colleagues will. It will be one of the funnest experiences that you ever have. Enjoy it and be ready to do the next one. All right, Dr. Schmidt. Thank you very much. The next question I have for you, compared to men I compete with, my style seems differential, but when I interviewed for a chief position, a search committee member told me that I came across too self-confident. How do I handle this? I think this is a cultural challenge. Again, I think women are more likely to be viewed in a positive way if they're considered nice, but I think that reflects a culture of inexperience, and I hope especially in view of recent public events that this culture is going to change and change rapidly. Having said that, I think you can take a step back and consider your elevator speech. Re-evaluate what that is. Be able to talk about your successes in an emotionless manner and listen to the tone of your voice. You can convey confidence without sounding, perhaps, abrasive or aggressive, so make sure that you don't have confidence mixed up with arrogance. Your audience or the person you interact with should know that you enjoy what you're doing and you might be able to connect with that person or those persons with common areas of enjoyment, and so that might be something about a recent great ERCP case or a complex follow-up, how they might approach it, but try to connect with them on something with mutual interest. I think sometimes it's okay to describe what your vulnerabilities are, although I might leave that last on the list. I think you can ask for an opinion, but none of that should necessarily be differential. Think about reading the book by, I think it's Claire Shipman and Katie Kay, that actually addresses what's described as the confidence gap, and I think that book might have some tips to help bridge that gap. All right. Thank you very much. I just have one last question here, and I believe you kind of touched on this already, but I'll ask it anyway. The question is, what is the best way to receive feedback on how others perceive me? Should I ask colleagues for feedback? Yes, absolutely. You should not only ask your peers and your colleagues, but you should ask your friends. Certainly you should ask your own mentor or coach or sponsor. I've actually just requested feedback from one of the national consultants on episode development. I think that's really one of the tools that we use to try to improve ourselves. Getting this kind of feedback, especially meaningful feedback, can really make the difference between moving your career along, so you've got to ask. Again, understand the other person's perspective. Make sure that you are genuinely being specific and asking for very specific feedback, which is going to help the person that's going to provide that for you. It's funny you should ask that question again, because I actually just asked our practice administrator tonight for a 360. That's one of the, I think, most effective ways to receive feedback. It's important for you to receive feedback, not only from your boss, but people that work for you and work around you. It's a way we learn and develop. Well, again, Dr. Schmidt, I want to thank you very much for your time and for that great presentation. Also, I want to thank all of the other participants for joining us this evening. We hope this information is useful to you and your practice. Following tonight's webinar, you will receive a short survey. Please take a moment to complete it. This concludes tonight's webinar. Have a great evening and thank you.

Women's Leadership Education

Development Program

peer support

recommendation letters

advocating for oneself

networking

mentors

leadership roles

feedback