Hey, guys. Welcome to the podcast. My guest today is Doug Yao. He is senior director of oncology MSLs at Sanofi, and we talk about why emotional intelligence is more important than ever for medical science liaisons. Doug's amazing. This is such a great, great episode. I think you guys are gonna love it. Don't forget to check it out on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Connect with me on LinkedIn. I wanna send out an invitation to anyone that hasn't connected with me yet.
Please do do so. And then also follow us on Instagram and check us out on MSL Talk Live, which is the first Tuesday of every month at 1:30 pm Eastern Time. And that's on the Clubhouse app. Welcome to MSL Talk with Tom Caravella, a podcast specifically designed for MSLs and all things field medical. Hey, Doug. Thanks for joining me today. Welcome. How are you doing? Great, Tom. How are you today? I am awesome. I'm excited.
I could tell you that because I have been looking forward to this conversation for a very long time. For those of you who are joining us and excited to hear about emotional intelligence, Doug is the guru of emotional intelligence. He's also a super, super guy. I've known him a long time. I've had the privilege of working with him, and, and I get to see him at conferences, and he always puts a big smile on my face. So, Doug, welcome. My pleasure to be here, Tom. Yeah.
So, we're gonna do an intro before we get into the intro. Just wanna give a quick shout out to, all of our listeners. We hit a milestone today. We have a 125,000 unique downloads, 125,000 listeners in over 60 countries. So thank you guys for listening. Thank you for sharing this podcast. It's the one of the fastest growing podcast on the planet right now, and I owe that to you guys. So just a quick shout out, and I appreciate you all. So, Doug, why don't we start with an introduction?
Sure. My name is Doug Yao. I'm the senior director for the solid tumor field medical, group at Sanofi, Oncology. I'm based in Chicago, Illinois. Been in the medical affairs industry for 11 plus years now, all in oncology. And it's, as I said to a lot of people, it's the best profession to be in today. Yeah. You're there's no doubt about that. Never been a better time to be in medical affairs. And, I think it's it's exciting to see what's going to happen in the future as well.
This topic of emotional intelligence is, it's an enormous one. And it comes up a lot, as people, you know, break into the pharmaceutical industry, into the MSO role. Comes up a lot with seasoned folks that are in medical affairs, people looking for promotions. It's always something that gets assessed or determined in interviews. And you're the guru, so I'd love to hear about your background with emotional intelligence because I know from our conversation that you have, like, certification.
Who even knew that there were certifications in this stuff and you have them? So can you tell us about that? Absolutely. I think that's for a lot of scientists, right? So, you know, you have your standard degrees, your medical degrees. I have a PhD, for instance, but I encountered EQ when I was doing my MBA training, and the first certification I got was from University of Illinois at Chicago in emotional intelligence. Who knew there was such a thing? Right?
And then further after that, I also took a certification with the Liautaud Institute, and that's where I got trained to be a facilitator and instructor of EQ for students.
And, that led to me to this long passion project of mine, teaching EQ as part of the MBA program at University of Illinois at Chicago, but also being a coach to not only MSLs, but sales reps and, giving conference, talks just like the one we may do doing today, to help MSLs, further develop their EQ skills so that they can be better engagers of, of their thought leaders.
Yeah. Awesome. Well, I know most people understand or at least have somewhat of an understanding of what emotional intelligence is, what EQ is. But I'd love to start with your definition. And if you could just describe what it is, I think that would be a good place to start. Sure. So EQ or emotional intelligence is a group of soft skills. You could break that down into 2 broad categories. One would be more of the intrapersonal skills.
So that's what you would call, like, self awareness, self management. And then there's another set of broad skills, which are interpersonal skills, which is social awareness and relationship management. Now recently, there's been a 5th group, a category called engagers. That those are these those are called motivators, where you are looking at passion, motivation, grit, determination. And so all of that together is these, you know, what we call emotional intelligence today.
Yeah. And, you know, it's funny. There's there's so much talk about it and so much emphasis. And I think that there's almost a movement around this now. So I think it's very timely that we're having this conversation. I appreciate the background, but also kinda feel like maybe we should just cut to the chase. Like, why is it so important? Why is this such a big topic nowadays? Interesting question, Tom. And let me pose it back. If you think about the MSO profession, what do we do? Right?
We're all scientists, but what exactly do we do and why is EQ important? Well, I could tell you that we are the conveyors of knowledge. Right? Scientific knowledge, medical knowledge to what we call our thought leaders. Now this may be engagements to these external stakeholders or also maybe internal stakeholders. And you need this EQ because again, we're forging relationships.
You you're trying to build credibility, you're trying to develop this sense of value to this KOL, and you need to connect. Right? That's the first thing I think of when I was on myself. I need to connect before I share. They need to like me. Right? And that's the same thing when working on teams. We're all remote. We are, working on various matrixes of teams, and you need to work well together with whoever you're paired up with.
And so these skills are critical to, to be successful within this corporate environment within pharma. There's no doubt. There's no doubt about it. And especially considering the fact that there's never been a time when MSLs didn't truly need to be dynamic in their engagement. Because now there's virtual, there's live, there's the challenge of trying to gain access with k wells, whether it's live or virtual. Everybody's trying to get their time.
So does emotional intelligence fit into that piece of it in in being in gaining influence? If I don't know if that's or access maybe is a better way to describe it. I think that's first of all, the social awareness piece comes in, right? We know that our k o l's are short on time. They're focused on a million other things besides just our meeting, and we have to be aware that that time with them is precious. And and then also recognizing too, what is the thing that they value most?
And, you know, in talking to them, tone of voice, in using video like we're doing today, looking at any type of visual cues, but also understanding from their perspective, what do they care about and how do I address those, needs first before asking for, as we like to ask for insights and other their thoughts on certain things? And, a second thing would be also, when they are in the clinic, right, or or in in Zoom, the engagement's the same. Right? We we're we're trying to make a connection.
And, again, video can be a little harder, but still, I think that the world is slightly changing now. Hopefully, we'll be back to normal, and, we we can see them live and have that more dynamic engagement there. Awesome. Yeah. Now, when I when I as I'm listening to you talk about the this and what it is and why it's important, can this be taught? Or is this something that people either have or they don't? Like, there's an expression, you can't teach height. You have it or you don't.
Can you teach emotional intelligence? And and the answer is yes. I I could tell you that a certain number of us, we may be born or we may be, learning the skill set as we grew up. Right? I think that's, naturally, sales reps, MSLs, a lot of, all the people that engage people at a, customer level, we have a certain level or base line of EQ already because we self selected for this type of job.
However, as I taught this with the MBA program, what I found that, in my students, which were, you know, accountants, engineers, nurses, those which have customer facing jobs, they all realize something is that their baseline may not be good enough to be successful.
And so they're seeking out to gain the skill set through education, through practice And with various types of assessments to look at where you're at now with focused, lessons to to help you develop skill sets one at a time, you can increase your EQ through practice, just like we do for knowledge. So that was gonna be my next question. For people that wanna improve their EQ, what do you recommend they do? There's various other things you could do. Right?
I think that's, for me, I went through the the professional route of going through a certificate program or taking a class. That's one way. That's a didactic way. You could get a coach. Right? So several people have reached out to me, and I've been informal coaches for them, helping them be more self aware as to where are the areas or skill sets they need to focus on now and what are the exercises they could do throughout the months, not days, months, to to improve that skill set.
And then also, I would say, you know, you you should definitely get an assessment done. You know, whether it's just a personal self assessment or a EQ 360 because maybe what you're aware of as your deficits or areas of improvement may not be what's most critical. And your friends, family, spouse may be able to help you develop the ones that are most key for today. That's funny because I just got an EQ assessment. And Yeah. And and and how and how how did that go, Tom?
What what was your what was your leading I'll tell you, man. They said to me they've never seen scores that high before ever. Tom. Oh my goodness. I can imagine so. You're a dynamic guy, Tom, and I and I think that's, you know, you you have a special knack of connecting with people. No. You know, the funny thing is the way they do the way they provide the information, you learn.
You definitely learn about yourself, and there's I don't wanna go into this this specifics, but, I did pretty good I did good in in certain areas, and there were other areas. I'm like, wow. And so it isn't it's it's insightful. The the the assessment part of it can be very insightful. It's I think it's worth doing. I know everybody's real, super busy. A lot going on. I think it is worth doing to see where you stand and try to find areas of improvement. And there's lots of books available too.
I I'm a I'm an avid reader myself. And I like to learn from other people's experiences. What can I do? Right? And then I think that's the key is I need to be the one who chooses to improve myself because I can't change my students. And and they need to figure out that I am aware that I have this issue. And I would like to change it because I want to grow as a person. I want to grow as a professional. And and there are ways to do that.
Yeah. And I think that in this day and age, we have the Internet, there's books, there's audio, there's video, They if if you make the commitment to yourself that you wanna improve in a certain area, whether it's emotional intelligence, whether it's public speaking, or, you know, whatever it might be, there's plenty of stuff available.
So I think that this is just another thing that would be important to pay attention to, especially if you're looking to establish a career as an MSL and in medical throughout medical affairs, not just MSLs, but throughout medical affairs. Do you think companies pay enough attention to EQ? I I think that in my last, you know, especially last 5 to 7 years, there's been a bigger emphasis on EQ, especially.
Yeah. I think that's when when we used to work as individual contributors, EQ is not as important, right, because you're defined by just your quantitative metrics. But now as we are in this dynamic world where we're counting on others to, to develop a product as a team, we're counting on people to be the face of the company externally and engaging with our stakeholders. You have to have good EQ. And and I think that when we even when we look for candidates, right?
You know, that's one of the areas that we focus on is, you know, are you coachable? Are you self aware of about yourself? How do you engage with others and build relationships? Because, again, I don't want one superstar. I want a whole team that's collaborative in a way where they push each other up and lift each other up so that we all can be successful. Yeah. And we're gonna talk about that in a second.
But before I get to interviews, I wanna ask you, because you you brought up a good point, and made me think of obviously, companies are looking for this more now. But what should leaders be doing? Is is there something specific that leaders should be doing? Or is there some type of system protocol process that you think that should be initiated, to make this more of a strategy for leaders? Yeah. I I was up to I'll give an answer in 2 parts.
I think that as a leader, you need to be a you be you need to be self aware yourself. Right? So so I think that, you know, I think back to myself as a second line leader, I went through leadership training, just like a lot of the managers do. And EQ was one of the curriculums that we went through as as part of a leadership development workshop. Why? Because we need to motivate our our team and our frontline leaders to act on our behalf for the success of the company.
So so in order to be effective, we have to show that we have empathy, especially in this day and age. But also we need to be, able to focus on the various characteristics, right, and positivity that that we can motivate our team to do what's what's right. Secondly, I think that, we need to provide the resources to our team and that goes into continuous professional development.
Whether it's small workshops on team building or workshops for our team on how to be more self aware or even socially aware of your KOLs. Those are skill sets that we can have as part of our continuous learning throughout the year, not just therapeutic training. And I think that, when we when we focus on these skill sets combined with the science side, you as a whole, the MSO grows a lot faster. Yeah. Wow. That's awesome. That's great advice.
So let's talk about the interview part of the process. So when candidates are preparing for an interview, and they're thinking about this piece of it, what's your advice for folks in in their preparation? And what should they expect? Yeah. I think that, you know, as much as you could prepare for interview, your your true self always comes out eventually throughout the interview process. Right?
So I think that as a whole, you wanna be able to develop in a way where that's you're you're showing your true self whenever you talk to your, to your interviewer. There is a whole book on EQ interview questions, surprisingly. And, you know, I used to be one that would pick out certain questions, looking at various traits. But I think that for, MSOs in particular, right, what we like to focus on is those broad categories, right? Your interpersonal and your intrapersonal skill sets.
Are you self aware about yourself? I think I talked to you offline. Now if you're if you're the candidate that speaks 10 minutes about yourself as, you know, tell me about yourself. Yeah. I think that you're not quite self aware enough, to to to be to do the job because that's not what the KOL will care about when you when you ask them that same question.
So I think that the these skill sets truly come out whenever we ask these behavioral questions, and it gives us a sense as to how will you be as a teammate or how you will be as a subordinate in on my team. Because we in the end of the day, we need somebody who's a team player. We need somebody who is accountable and and delivers. And I think one of the key ones is also they have to be driven because we're all remote.
I I'm not a micromanager, so I I depend on my employees to do their job to the best of their ability as they are the ones leading their region. So that motivation to get up in the morning, to make the calls, to connect with the KOLs, it's all on them. Yeah. It's so funny. I I'm gonna pick pick something out that you said that really stood out to me is that people can prepare. But eventually, when they're interviewing, their true self comes out. It's like they go back to their default setting.
And I think what's important, and people have heard me say this a 1000000 times, but preparation is always the key when it comes to interviews because if you want to be the best version of yourself and show the best version of yourself, you have to be prepared. You have to know that if you and I I'm I'm perfect one to say this. If you talk too much, you have to be able to can show the self control and limit the time of your answers. You have to have that internal stopwatch to say, okay, Tom.
Stop talking now. And I think that that's gonna be an important piece of your interview preparation is to know your strengths, know your weaknesses, be really aware of them, hold yourself accountable for how you behave in the interview, and then it'll that in and of itself will show emotional intelligence. Am I oversimplifying that? No. I I don't think so. And I think that you raise a good point too is that even if you have the weakness, right, you have the areas of development.
What I like to see as an interviewer is, how have you addressed it? Now now that you know you have that, you could tell me, oh, I've been taking a workshop to to develop my relationship skills. I've been taking a, you know, Toastmasters class to to to be more confident in my speaking abilities. Right? And that shows me that you are a person who focus on personal growth, and and that that truly is key. Yeah. Well, that's great. That's awesome advice.
So let's go back to we talked about, the assessment side of this. How do people go about finding or getting, an assessment for their emotional intelligence? There's many ways. I think that if you even if you just Google EQ assessments, there's there's a lot out there that can be either free or they they can be paid. I would say that you might wanna take one that is more of a EQ 360 type because, again, you know, depending on the number of questions, the validity and accuracy, can vary. Right?
And and then also, you wanna be able to take the take this over time because you wanna see what's your baseline. But then if you're actively working, right, just just like if you're at the gym, Tom, and and you you have your whole your baseline stats, I run at 5 miles an hour right now, but after training, now I could do 6 or 7. Right? I think that that shows growth, and that's gonna be key when you start getting feedback about EQ 360 and your your spouse may say, hey.
I've noticed that you've been more self aware recently. You've been able to, or self manage your emotions more recently. And you don't you don't get as angry as you used to be. Or, you know, you get feedback from your team members. Say, hey. I see that you've been more, attentive to our team needs, and you've been proactively volunteering yourself to help others with your projects. That's that's your I think that is your clear sign.
And not not just some score, right, on a piece of paper, but the feedback you get from your peers, from your supervisor, that's gonna be what's gonna help develop your career even further. Yeah. For sure. And it's like anything else. I mean, if this is important to you, you have to take action. Take the assessment, find out what areas you need to improve on, and then work on it. You you you mentioned the gym. If your goal is to get bigger biceps, you gotta get to the gym and do curls.
You gotta work on your arms. Right? They're not gonna get big on their own. So it I don't wanna again, I like to I like to put things in the most simplest terms. I think this is something that is just like any other muscle. You have to work at it in order for it to grow. Exactly. Well, what what what's that, Tom? Yeah. Final thoughts. So any other recommendations for folks as it relates to emotional intelligence or developing their emotional the EQ skills?
Yeah. I I think that's, I'll I'll give you 3 ideas. The first one's quite easy. There is a ton of material out there already on the web, on emotional intelligence. Right? So if you are a visual person, there's lots of videos on YouTube, especially of, famous talks from from EQ experts to share their ideas on how to do this. Second thing was to consult with a peer or a supervisor on assessing yourself as to what may be, areas of development that you may not be self aware on right now. Right?
And that's just truly take that feedback because I I think I can't say this enough. Feedback is valuable no matter what. Somebody's gonna take the time to give you feedback. Really wholeheartedly accept it, think about it, and find a way to use that feedback to grow yourself. And then finally, I think that, if you truly wanna improve, you need to find a coach.
You you need to find somebody that can show you the specific steps to focus on whichever key skill you wanna work on today and go through the stepwise process for for for development. With those three things, I think that, in the end, you will be a better MSL. You will be a better manager because you'll have these social skills developed where you can be effective in, connecting with others and leading others. I'll tell you, man.
I knew this was gonna be good, but you you you knocked it out of the park today, Doug. I I really appreciate you. This was awesome. What a great conversation. I think this is gonna blow up the Internet, so I can't thank you enough. Thank you, Tom. It was a pleasure being here today too. I I know. Again, this is one of my, really passion projects in life is sharing my, my EQ skills and helping others develop.
And I hope that, some of the little nuggets of information people found today was useful. But this is gonna be just the first part of their journey. Right? This this this one one listening session is gonna be the first part, and I hope they continue the path for, EQ growth. Awesome. Well, thank you again, my friend. I appreciate you coming on. This was amazing, and just wanna tell everybody, get after it. This is a really, really important part of your career, so I hope this was helpful.
And thanks for joining us. We'll, we'll see you next time. Thank you, Tom. Thank you so much for listening to the show. And if you enjoyed it, please subscribe so that you don't miss an episode in the future and feel free to leave a rating or a review or a comment. Thanks again, and we look forward to seeing you soon.