On Coaching the Experts -- Coaching for Academics & Physicians

Coaches and physicians affiliated with the Institute of Coaching at McClean Hospital (@Harvard) recently published a study in Mayo Clinic Proceedings that outlined six essential competencies for coaches who serve physicians.

At the IOC conference in May, I heard someone report on this research and took notes. Reading the published article has now confirmed my overall impression from the conference: coaching physicians (or medical or surgical residents, or physician leaders or physician educators) bears a great deal of resemblance to coaching faculty and academic leaders.

Why is this important? Because coaching is an unregulated industry, meaning that just about anyone can call themselves a coach without undergoing formal training or certification. Those of us who do believe in rigorous training and have specialized in coaching clients from specific career or demographic niches pride ourselves on our skills and our efficacy in partnering with clients to achieve the results in their lives they want to see.

The 6?? competencies outlined in the Mayo Proceedings article give language to some of the ways my specialty in coaching faculty serves those clients.

1?? "physician-specific competencies" or in my case "academic-specific competencies" points to the fact that your workplace environment and the training that led you there have a huge impact on your mindset and self-awareness. Advanced degrees like an MD, JD, or PhD tend to focus on cognitive learning and omit (or explicitly de-value) growing one's self-awareness, self-efficacy, emotional intelligence, etc. Additionally, going through graduate training in competitive environments adds fuel to the (likely already smoldering) fires of perfectionism and imposter syndrome. Understanding that physicians and professors (and, from what I understand, lawyers, too) operate from this mindset is crucial for a successful coach.

2?? Understanding the health-care/academic context --> being aware, as a coach, of the increasing corporatization of health care and education and its accompanying decrease in autonomy on the part of the subject matter expert. Understanding the hierarchy, the reward structure, etc. means that my client doesn't have to explain to me how their job works. Or, in simpler language, "why can't you just get paid to write" is not an ok question for a coach to ask a professor of sociology ??

3?? Coaching theory and science --> working with subject matter experts means that your coach, too, needs to be an SME in their own areas. I don't need to be a trained biologist to coach a biology professor, but I do need to be a trained coach and understand how coaching works to facilitate transformation (and how it differs from other helping modalities).

4?? DEI and Social dynamics --> as a coach, it is essential that I am aware of how race, class, age, gender, ethnic origin, first language, immigration status, sexuality, etc. impact my academic or physician client AND their environment. The study authors note that no current coach credentialing body emphasizes the importance of social markers of identity and their intersectionality.

5?? Wellbeing and burnout --> the study authors rightly point out that health care practitioners suffer from extremely high rates of burnout and that their jobs provide notoriously little time for basic self-care. This has its parallels all across academic campuses, with professors, both full-time and contingent, working at or above their maximum bandwidth in order to teach, research, and serve according to standards. For me as a coach, being both well-informed about the environmental nature of burnout and educated as to how to help professionals who care deeply but are also profoundly burned out is essential.

6?? Leadership -- in both medicine and the rest of the academy, subject matter experts and physicians are elevated to leadership roles based on their expertise, not on their leadership experience. They are often offered little or no management training and even less training in how to lead other professionals. The coach can be a helpful bridge here between the physician or academic learning to lead themselves and learning to lead a team.