Academic Leadership Summit

This half-day pre-course during SHM Converge 2025 was organized by the Academic Program Committee and incorporated three distinct learning opportunities for hospitalists looking to expand their leadership skills.

To start the session, the senior deputy editor of the Journal of Hospital Medicine, Farah Kaiksow, MD, MPP, FHM, presented some tips for “getting your foot in the door” with the publishing world. When writing a manuscript, it is crucial to know your audience (i.e., the target journal) by reviewing the journal’s mission statement and its preferred submission structure. This allows the writer to appropriately align their subject matter with the desired publication.

Additionally, the little things matter—make sure that grammar, spelling, and organization are correct. Artificial intelligence tools can be helpful for this step. Content tips include readability, inclusion of tables or figures, acknowledgment of limitations, and addressing generalizability; focusing on these attributes will improve success at the peer review step.

After completing the manuscript, the best way to get noticed for publication is by crafting an excellent cover letter. A strong cover letter only needs to be eight to 10 sentences, but it should highlight the significance of the work through an introduction, background, methods (“what we did”), results (“what we found”), and discussion (“why it’s important”). Finally, be sure to promote your work once it is accepted for publication. Tell your supervisor, post on social media, and share it with colleagues in the field.

For those interested in learning more about the work behind the scenes, the Journal of Hospital Medicine offers two one-year fellowships. These positions are built around mentorship and distance learning while providing junior faculty with the opportunity to experience the full scope of the academic publishing process.

The keynote address at the summit introduced a novel leadership model based on a chemistry analogy: reagents funneled through a regulator to arrive at solutions. Participants were reminded that a leader’s role is not to motivate others, since motivation is an internal process, but rather to understand and align with each team member’s intrinsic motivation. To achieve this alignment, it is important to build a leadership solutions model based on emotional intelligence, in which the key elements are self-awareness and self-regulation. Through self-awareness, a leader is able to identify their triggers, strengths, and liabilities and use these attributes to formulate a personal mission. This skill also requires practicing mindfulness and accepting feedback. Self-regulation is important in the cultivation of resilience, patience, and personal accountability, leading to better self-care and the ability to achieve personal de-escalation. Through the application of self-awareness and self-regulation, a leader is then able to build relationships based on respect, trust, and empathy.

Returning to the chemistry analogy, the reagents of emotional intelligence are funneled through the regulator of relationships, resulting in leadership solutions of communication, strategic thinking, decision making, shaping culture, conflict resolution, leading change, and coaching and learning.

Participants were urged to implement practical applications of these leadership principles, including debriefs, using mission, vision, and values for managing poor performance, and a leadership journal club. The debrief is a relationship-building exercise that provides an opportunity for a leader to demonstrate respect and humility by asking questions such as “What has been going well?”, “What have we learned?”, and “What do we need to do differently?” The mission-vision-values framework supports strategic thinking and can guide feedback conversations by pointing out behaviors that undermine a group’s values or prevent a group from fulfilling its mission. Finally, a leadership journal club uses seminal business articles to coach all members of a team towards leadership.

The third part of the summit was an interactive workshop designed to apply the CORE2 framework to identify character strengths, draft a professional vision statement, and integrate Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound (SMART) goals into a flourishing career. CORE2 is a five-step process: identify Character strengths, create an Overall vision, perform a Role assessment, state Explicit goals, and implement an Evaluation strategy for accountability. The character strengths can be identified through the VIA Character Strength Survey (freely available online) or a similar tool, and a person’s signature strengths are then used to draft a professional vision statement. This vision is a short, concise statement that is clear, future-oriented, motivating, broad enough to guide actions over long periods, and inspirational. Leaders should then assess how well their professional roles align with their vision statement and draft SMART goals to set a path for a more desired alignment. Once the goals are set, leaders should make a habit of evaluating their progress by displaying their CORE2 worksheet in a prominent location and setting accountability meetings with a mentor or coach. By remaining committed to a vision grounded in their character strengths, hospitalist leaders can maintain a flourishing career.

Overall, the summit provided an opportunity for current and aspiring hospitalist leaders to learn practical publishing skills, reflect on the role of emotional intelligence in leadership solutions, and explore their character strengths as a foundation for a professional vision statement.

Dr. Angeli is an associate professor in the department of internal medicine and chief of the division of hospital medicine at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, N.M.