Follow inspiration, recognize opportunities to guide your career, keynote speaker says
CHICAGO – Laura Desveaux, PhD, MSCPT, clearly remembers the day she found the inspiration that guided her career.
It was 2018, she had a 10-month-old baby at home, and she was attending a women’s leadership conference featuring renowned physician and speaker Julie Silver, MD. Almost as soon as the speakers took the podium, Desveaux, scientific director at Trillium Health Partners, assistant professor at Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at University of Toronto, and executive director of Women Who Lead, said she could “feel the buzz.”
“As I sat there and the keynote speakers came up on stage, I started to realize that these are my people,” Desveaux said in her presentation at the Women In Medicine Summit. “These talks on leadership, on advocating for yourself, negotiating, building your career — that was what I wanted to do and the impact that I wanted to have. I decided that this would be my inflection point.”
Desveaux did not yet know how she would execute her plan — at the time, she did not even have a plan. She was a non-physician in a room filled with physicians. Yet, she felt excited and inspired, and she paid attention to that.
“So here I am, 3 or 4 years later, and I get to be that same speaker at conferences,” she said. “Why am I telling you this story? It’s because I had that one moment of inspiration. I had no idea how I was going to get there, but I knew it started with a spark.”
‘Appreciative inquiry’
Desveaux discussed the many ways in which an individual can identify, envision and achieve their career goals — much of which involves a shift in mindset. She discussed the use of “appreciative inquiry,” which frames a situation around opportunities rather than problems.
Desveaux gave an example of a situation many business travelers have experienced —arriving at a destination and discovering your luggage has not arrived.
“If the airline industry asks, ‘How do we ensure that people get their bags at their destination?’ That is a problem-focused way of framing the situation,” she said. “Instead, what if we asked, ‘What does it look like to create an optimal arrival experience?’ One would assume that would include luggage arriving on time, but we’ve also opened ourselves up to a whole bunch of other possibilities.”
change a problem into an opportunity. One example was the frustration and burnout regarding the number of meetings many clinicians and providers attend.
“I often hear, ‘There are so many meetings, they’re sucking the life out of me. How do I fix that?’” she said. “If we flip that framing, it then becomes, ‘What would it look like to be more energized by my workday?’ It’s not a leap to think that might entail less meetings, but it opens up more possibilities.”
Anchoring skills to values
Desveaux further discussed the importance of thinking of one’s career in terms of who that person is, rather than simply what they do. She cited the fact that so many introductory and networking conversations start with the question “What do you do?”
“If I introduce myself as a scientific director of a Research and Innovation Institute, a coach and a speaker — that’s one way of telling you about myself,” she said. “Instead, I could say, ‘My name is Laura. There’s nothing I value more than growth and impact, and everything I do aims to close the gap between where we are now and what our potential is.’ Which version of me would you rather have a conversation with?”
Desveaux said focusing on values and priorities can lead an individual to their professional passion. She noted her own nontraditional steps to becoming a career coach and speaker.
“When you have a skill and can anchor that skill to something you value, it becomes limitless,” she said. “It might feel non-traditional because the person next to you isn’t doing it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a possibility. That’s the moment where you can stop and recognize that you’re redefining ‘the possible’ for those around you.”
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Desveaux L. Building the Blueprint: Achieving success through non-traditional career paths. Presented at: Women in Medicine Summit; Sept. 16-17, 2022; Chicago.
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