Thriving against the odds: Takeaways
This week I was a panellist on an Royal College of General Practitioners faculty event pitched at support for colleagues with long term ill health and disability. The event was lead by Dr Itunu Johnson-Sogbetun and Dr Aaliya Goyal delivered a brilliant keynote speech. What came through more than any other theme was the power of network.
Building capital by way of a professional network means access to spaces where colleagues share their experiences. This can mean hearing about others’ career/ life challenges and the workarounds they found that helped them manage.
Network also means gaining insights into other people’s career trajectories. Particularly in general practice where portfolio careers are increasingly popular, seeing what other people do during their working week and how they got there is inspiring and often actionable. This includes gaining insights into the upsides as well as downsides of portfolio careers…
A strong professional network will also contain colleagues that can be a sounding board for discussing career/ life dilemmas. While initiatives like formal coaching can be expensive, having an informal reflective space with a trusted colleague can be really powerful and does not cost anything.
We are fortunate to work across disciplines, grades and specialities in medical training. Professional organisations can be helpful for cultivate networks and communities of practice, such as those offered by the RCGP. Outside of official groups and events, keeping lines of communication open with colleagues is relatively easy, and social media can help keep up to speed with what people end up doing next.
Lara’s take
When it comes to career decisions, I have found soft intelligence much more informative than anything I gathered from online research or attending formal events. While people’s circumstances differ widely, understanding the human aspects of the drive for and impact of a career change has helped place different options within my own set up in a way that would have been impossible if thinking through logistics without context. Every career change will have a story behind it and very often challenging circumstances are a forcing function for what becomes a positive career change.