Hey, guys. Welcome to the podcast. My guest today is Kathy Gann, former MSL director and MSL, and she shares her insights on how to transition from an MSL to an MSL manager. Really awesome information. I hope you guys enjoy it. Don't forget to follow us on YouTube and LinkedIn and Instagram and MSL talk live on Clubhouse, which is every 1st Tuesday of every month at 1:30 PM Eastern time.
Welcome to MSL talk with Tom Caravella, a podcast specifically designed for MSLs and all things field medical. Hey, Kathy. Thank you for rejoining me on this podcast. Love to have you back. It's gonna be great. And, how are you doing? Oh, I'm doing fine, and thank you for inviting me back, Tom. I'm pleased to be here. And I think this is a interesting topic that we're gonna be discussing today. It's an awesome topic, and it was your idea, and I'm really grateful for that.
And, you I'll tell you, Kathy, you've been a very, very popular guest. People always comment about the episode that we did prior. Mhmm. You've been an awesome mentor to a lot of people, and I just appreciate you. I appreciate the way you do business, and I'm looking forward to chatting with you. Before we get started, I have to give a quick shout out to our friends in Portugal, and listeners in Portugal because the numbers are staggering.
I mean, we have a huge believe it or not, we have a huge, huge following in Portugal, and I've been meaning to thank everybody. Coincidentally, I'm half Portuguese, so there's that. My, actually, my name is Portuguese. A lot of people think that my name is Italian. I'm half Italian, half Portuguese, but my name is Portuguese. So shout out to all my friends and all my, my relatives in in Portugal. And can I just say we loved Portugal when we were there? So Perfect way to start.
Yeah. We spent a few days in Lisbon a couple of years ago and always say, okay. We've gotta go back. We've gotta go back. Let's do it. I'm right there with you. So, you came up with this topic of how MSLs can transition from their individual contributor role to a leadership role and get into, you know, a promotional opportunity from an MSL position, which I think is awesome. But where do you start? And I think the biggest question for MSLs is, well, you know, I I'm ambitious.
I have all these ideas. I wanna do different things. But where do you suggest people start? I think they start with their development plan, with their personal development plan. I think there are a couple of things. 1 is and I believe you're gonna be talking about this if you haven't already. All the opportunities that are available to MSLs besides being an MSL.
Mhmm. So that's one thing I think people need to think about that when you become an MSL, yes, you can stay in that realm, which is certainly what I've done, but there are other paths you can take. Mhmm. So explore all of them however you can. But whatever it is, put it in your personal development plan because your manager doesn't know how to coach you or how to find opportunities for you if you haven't identified that this is what you want to do. Right.
So that was a piece of advice I got early on in my career when I thought, oh, I wanna be a manager. And somebody said, then make sure you put it in your development plan because they won't know to tap you for leadership courses or projects or anything else if you haven't self identified. Right.
So it's it goes back to identify your you know, establish your goal and make sure that you are communicating that goal to leadership so that they're aware so that they can tap you on the shoulder when opportunities come up. And I think how important is it to be specific in what your goal is? I think it I don't know that it is. I mean, I think that if you say I would like the opportunity to work on a cross functional team with marketing. Okay. Well, that's fine.
Right. If you say, well, I and if what I did, I was very general. I said, I wanna be a manager. Okay. And they're like, oh, okay. And then I got put in various various different projects that would give me leadership, experience. And of course, it's leadership without authority, but it's still leadership experience. Plus, the company I worked for originally had a management development program and a company, many companies still do. Check into that.
Find out if such a thing exists because then you can take courses on negotiating skills, which I think are hugely important, and being a manager. Yeah. Because you're negotiating for your team's time. You're negotiating for information. I mean, it's important to an MSL. I think it's even more important to a manager to have had negotiating skills. Right. The other things are, how to have those difficult conversations. Those don't come easily to any of us.
They certainly I don't think they're natural to any of us. So find a way to get coached on that, to learn how to do it. And just keep building your own skill set. As we're talking about before we got started here, it's all about being a lifelong learner. Yeah. And so when you identify that, oh, I think I wanna be a manager, well, then see what your company offers. And there are courses on LinkedIn. Indeed has courses. There are, you know, a ton of books.
But find opportunities to do special projects where you can show your leadership skills. Yeah. I really think, like, that's a that's great advice. The onus is on you to establish your resume and to build your resume, your transferable skills. You have to raise your hand a lot. You have to go out and seek out ways for you to build up that resume so that you become more attractive to leadership when it comes time and when you're at that point. And I wanna talk about that.
But before I do, we we had mentioned that there's a number of different things that an MSL can aspire to do. Sure. It's never been a better time to be an MSL because there's so many new things that you can do. You can get become an MSL trainer. You can get into medical excellence, which is a relatively new area. You You can get into management. You can go in house, or you can go on to the clinical side. You can Exactly. So there's so many different things.
So I think getting back, I think you have to establish your goals, whether they're more broad based goals or whether they're very specific goals. Communicate them, as you mentioned, in your development plan so that everybody's aware of it. Start to build up your resume so that you can be ready and aligned for opportunities when they come up. But the question is, how do you know you're ready? Like, is there a number of years experience? Like, how does someone know, okay. I'm ready.
Yeah. Well, I don't know that you ever really know. Do you not know? Yeah. You never know. You kinda get just thrown into the deep end of the pool and you see if you can swim. I think a lot of that also depends on what your previous life was before being an MSL. Right. So if you've if you're someone who's gotten that your first MSL job right out of a fellowship, you may not be ready for a while. You know, you need to learn how to work within a corporate environment.
Mhmm. But if you're somebody who ran the hospital pharmacy, you already have a sense as to how to deal in a corporate environment. So a lot of it, I think, really depends on what your background is and what your experiences were before you became an MSL. Mhmm. So I think that's one thing. So there is no one, oh, what 10 years everybody is ready? No. I think it really just depends on what skills you come in with. Mhmm. Well, that makes sense. Yeah. I'm sorry. Say what? No. That makes sense.
Yeah. That makes sense. Evaluate where you're coming from. Right. Take a look at where you're going. Yeah. And and so that makes me think when you you mentioned the word skills. So what and especially as it relates to leadership, because I know that that's a big one. I know a lot of people want to get to that leadership level. You've been there. You've been successful there. You know what it takes.
So what skills are mandatory for those folks, and what do they need to work on so that they can build their resume and show that they have it? Yep. Well, I think one of the things that you first have to recognize is that being a manager or a leader is completely different from being an individual contributor. Mhmm. Because, you know, you're a great MSL. Maybe you've made senior MSL or executive or principal, whatever the 3rd tier may be, if there is a 3rd tier in your company.
So you're outstanding at that, but that's not the same as being a manager. And so it's really starting all over again Mhmm. When you become a manager because now you've got to learn a whole new skill set. You've got to learn how to coach your people. It's very easy to be directive, first off, as a new manager. You know, there's very much of you have to do this, you should do that, you say to your team.
Fortunately, my first management position in industry, I had a team that said to me, stop telling us what to do. And I'm like, oh, okay. Well, they trust me enough to be able to give me that feedback. And so I stopped and evaluated what was I doing. And then said to them, okay. Understand. There are gonna be times when I'm going to tell you that you have to do something or it has to be done a certain way.
But the rest of the time, I'm going to try to be more collaborative and more coaching and let you come up with ideas about how we handle things. Because certainly, as every MSL can tell you, I didn't do the job the same way as my colleague in DC did the job. Right. We're both very good, but we didn't do the job the same way. Was a manager, you have to recognize that now you've got a whole team of people who are hopefully meeting their goals, but they're not all doing the job the same way. Right.
And so you have to flex your own personality to coach them in a way that is good for them. So I think that is probably one of the hardest things to learn as a new manager because you've come from this great position of, oh, I'm a great individual contributor, and now you're starting over. So Is that the hardest part, would you say? Because when you're an individual contributor, you're responsible for yourself. Right. And you're responsible for your own performance, and you can influence that.
But then you become a manager. Now you're responsible for other people. Right. And there's an emotional side to that. There is an emotional side to it, and it is not always easy to take your emotions out of it, particularly if somebody is disappointing you in what they're doing. Right. Because you know and and, you know, again, it depends. You've gotta flex your own personality. But I learned to say that you know, to ask people, well, why? How is this happening? What's causing this?
What can I do to help you? And understand, you know, MSL on my team that I know you can do better, and I'm going to I wanna help you get there. That is that's an emotional commitment that you're making to somebody. So, yeah, emotions get into it, certainly. I mean, the worst part always is if you have to fire somebody. Right. That's the biggest emotional issue. And hopefully, that doesn't happen very often.
But, yeah, emotions are in there, but learning we always talk about MSLs needing to flex their personality. That's no different as a manager, but now it's not me flexing my personality to talk to you, doctor Caravella. It is me flexing my personality to talk to 8 of you. Right. Each individually. So And you're nurturing them, and you're leading them, and you're you're pulling them along, and you're trying to get them to the next level, or you're trying to help them where they're struggling.
So it becomes you know, your one job is now broken out into 8 chunks because each person needs their their own level of support. How can how can somebody prepare for that? Is there if someone hasn't been a manager before, how do you prepare for that? I don't think I don't know how you prepare for it. I honestly don't. It is I think that's just one of those things that managers have high emotional intelligence. And just like we always say, good MSL has high emotional intelligence.
Yes. You can prepare for it by learning the language as to how to give constructive feedback. Right. How to, ask people what's wrong without, you know, probing too far. Mhmm. You know, all those kinds of things. You can learn the language and the and just practice that language.
And I think that's a big thing that I learned along the way was just practicing the language, practicing how to give feedback, how to tell people they were doing a great job, or how to say to somebody, here are ways you can improve without making without putting somebody on the spot, you know, or really being openly critical. You're still you're trying to hope help them. As you said, you're trying to coach them. You're trying to mentor them. But that it's just it's practice. It's just practice.
And I would say modeling yourself on whoever your best manager was. So if you had somebody that you think, I know that person is protecting me, that, you know, they'll make you know, they're they're out for my benefit. They're going to help me. Well, think about, well, what did they do that made you feel that way? And then do it yourself.
That's great advice because, obviously, if you're an individual contributor and you're looking to get into leadership and get into management, you're being managed. Right. Obviously. Yep. So the one of the best ways maybe to prepare is to be able to look at what you like most about the managers that you've had, maybe what you've liked least, and start to take inventory of what type of manager you wanna be. Yes. Exactly.
Yeah. I And, you know, being a good manager, being a good leader, you want to engender trust. You want your people to trust you. If they don't trust you, then you're not going to be very effective. So you have to work it, and it's very open communication. And you have to be you have to be self assured enough to say to your team, either I don't know, I'll find out, just like as an MSL, or even say to your team, I'm sorry. I screwed up. You'll forgive me. Yeah. I'll fix it. Take it home.
But you've gotta have that, I think, have to have that human component. Yeah. To be a good manager, to be a good leader. Because manager is more the administrative side. Leader is the coach mentor developing your people side. Right. Yeah. No. That's awesome. That's really great advice. And as far as looking at the difference from individual contributor to manager, as far as just workload time commitment Mhmm. How does it differ?
One of the things I learned as a manager, which I never would have known, is that you get pulled in a lot of different directions. You know, when you're as an MSL, when you're trying to call your manager and they're like, oh, I have this meeting, I have that meeting, you're not really thinking about what that's doing to their time. Well, then you become a manager and you realize, oh my gosh. I've got to go to this brand team meeting. I've got to sit on this, grant review.
I've got to help with this strategic plan. I've got to talk to the sales manager because they didn't like something one of my MSLs did. You know, whatever it is and your time becomes much more fractured than as an individual contributor. So that whole idea of time management and being able to set priorities and multitask is even more important as a manager than, you know, as an MSL. It's important as an MSL. It's yet again more important as a manager. Right.
When you look back at your younger self, I always like asking this question. When you look back at your younger self as an individual contributor with ambitious, with goals, wanting to get into leadership, what advice would you go back and give yourself? Well, I think part of it was what I've already said. Don't be directive. Okay. You know, it was as an individual contributor, I never liked if somebody said to me, oh, you have to do it this way. Yeah. Well, wait a minute. I'm a smart person.
Maybe I can find a more creative way to do it. And so learning to trust my team that they were each managing their own business as an MSL, finding ways to handle situations and trusting them and then asking them to share those best practices. That took and I said, that took me a while. Fortunately, I had a team that said to me, stop telling us what to do. And I took it to heart and hopefully learned to be a much better manager.
Yeah. Well and, obviously, when you get into that role, there's that learning curve. Absolutely. You you jumped into it, learned some lessons early on, and then developed into an awesome manager because you kept your eyes wide open, communicated really well with your organization, with your team, took that constructive feedback, and then and then took it to the next level. I mean, is does that sound pretty accurate as to how that That that's pretty accurate.
And the other piece of advice I would give is, you know, certainly like as a new MSL, you're always afraid to ask for advice because you want you don't want anybody to think you can't do the job. Right. Was a new manager, it's the same thing. You're afraid to ask for advice. Well, your manager wants you to succeed. So go to your manager and say, I'm struggling with how to handle this issue. Whatever it is, you know, just just ask for help.
And there were times when I would ask even sales managers for help. If I was somebody I really respected and how they respect how they handled their team and I was facing something difficult, I might go to them, you know, kind of peer to peer, even though medical affairs versus commercial, but it's still management. And I would say, here's the issue. Can you give me some tips on how I might be able to handle this? There's nothing wrong with asking for help. Doesn't make you a weak person.
No. Especially not if you're in a position where you're trying to improve yourself in your career and you're trying to get into you know, you're trying to bring yourself up to a higher level. Right. We talk about mentorship all the time on this podcast, and we talk about how important it is to develop relationships with internal stakeholders.
Yes. So while while we're talking about, in this episode, talking about this idea of being promotable, I think it's more important than anything else to seek out mentors Yes. To build those internal relationships because that's what's gonna position you for that next job, whatever it might be. Exactly. And that mentor does not have to be somebody in your own department.
It might be it might be your direct manager, but it might be some another MSL manager in a different therapeutic area who has more experience, has been there longer. You might have and I think probably all of us have multiple mentors Right. That we go to for advice. And as a new manager, it's the same thing. Even as an established manager, I mean, I never stopped asking for help or advice.
If I hit things that I didn't feel I was handling right or I needed another opinion, I'd go ask somebody to help me straighten out my thinking. Yeah. I mean, this is this is a and I said this before, but I'm gonna say it again. This is a very, very proactive thing. This is not reactive. This if if you're if you really are a motivated person and you have ambition and you wanna get to that next level, you're not sitting back. You're being proactive, and you're making things happen.
And I like what you just said. You're you're you don't it's not just looking for mentorship or looking for help from your direct supervisor could be other people in other departments, in other therapeutic areas. Yep. Absolutely. Always. You know? It's that, again, that's that idea of being a lifelong learner and also being a strategic thinker. Yeah. Because as a strategic thinker, you wanna look around and see, well, what's working?
It may not be in my department, but it works over in cardiovascular, whatever. Well, how can I use that in my department? That's also strategic thinking. And as a good leader, that's what you wanna be doing. Yeah. Yeah. So raise your hand, folks. That's it. Volunteer. Volunteer. Volunteer. Find ways to lead a team, lead a project, come up with ideas for projects even.
You know, I'll use an example that at one company, we realized that we none of us were trained on cultural differences and how to deal with doctors from different cultures or or even what doctors faced in dealing with patients from different cultures. So a couple of us took the lead of putting together a slide deck on cultural differences. We just went to our boss and said, we think we need this.
And it was kinda like, well, don't let it take away from your day job, but if you wanna go ahead and do it, yeah, go ahead and do it and then we'll roll it out and we'll use it in training. So but that was something we identified as a need, took the lead on it, had a little team working on it, came back with a finished product that then got some traction within the group as being a training module. Wow. And you just took took it upon yourself. You saw this need Yep.
And decided this would be a great idea. And then from that, obviously, you probably got a ton of visibility. Right? Yep. Yeah. And and it was to me not only bringing value to me because there were things I wanted to know, but it brought value to my colleagues and to my company. Yeah. Well, it's funny. It's like you ever watch Shark Tank? Yes. The the the people that do the best on that show, there's their product or service or whatever it is solves a problem.
Yes. So I think this is a perfect example that if you're let's say you're an MSO, you're and you're in an organization or you're an MSO manager in an organization, and you see a problem in some capacity within your organization, within your team, within your company, within the industry, whatever it is, and you have a creative solution to that problem, and you're able to share that with others. I mean, it's just like getting that attention from Shark Tank.
I would think you would get that attention. Yeah. I mean, that's leadership. Right? I mean, yeah. Absolutely. It is, you know, I always think that if you identify a problem, no matter what level you're at, but if you identify a problem, try to think of a solution. Yeah. What can that so we identified this issue that, jeez, you know, we don't understand enough about other cultures. Yeah. And some of the social signals and other cultures. Well, what can we do about that?
And worked at developing a slide deck on it. So but, yes, you're right. It gives you visibility, but it also shows that you're thinking Yeah. Which is something that companies look for in leaders. Is this somebody who can think strategically? Right. Is this somebody who can identify an issue and come up with a solution? And be a problem solver. And be a problem solver. Yep. Put that on your resume. Problem solver. Yeah. Yep. Well, but here here's the thing, though.
And and as I'm joking and I'm talking about Shark Tank and all this other stuff, like, I'm and I'm being serious because this is all really valuable stuff. Because how many times if you're on let's just say you're on an interview, and you're on an interview with somebody internally, then it could be external, whatever your drive is, whatever your situation is. One of the greatest things you can do is provide examples Yes. Of how you've been effective, how you've done something.
So how have you been a problem solver? Yes. You have an example of something that you've done, and maybe it's a couple of things that you've done Yes. To prove that you're you have strategic thinking or you're you're creative. You're a problem solver. You take initiative. So these are all things that and I talk about this all the time. You have to continue to build your resume. Yes. That's a good way to put it. Absolutely. And and And we don't think about it, you know.
Once you get a job, you stop thinking about, oh, I have to build my resume. So And like, well, no. You always have to build your resume. It's a really good point. Yeah. I think if you if you set a time frame and let's just say you try to revisit it once a month, once a quarter, once every 6 months, like, set a specific time frame, but start to keep track of milestones of Yes.
Examples and, you know, maybe keep some type of and it doesn't have to be a journal where you're running it every day, but it should be some type of document where you're keeping track of things that are noteworthy in your career and can Yep. Can really build up your credibility for when it comes time for you to to apply for that position, which is gonna be a promotional opportunity. Right. And I think the absolutely.
And I think with that in mind, also, if you are the individual contributor, the MSL, wanting to go for that leadership position, start thinking about what your 30, 60, 90 day plan would be. Right. Yep. You know, because you're gonna go into this just like you came into being an MSL, not knowing anything. Well, if you get a little bit of forethought to it, then you can start already building in. Well, who do I need to talk to about this? Or how do I learn to do that?
And, you know, who are the people in finance who are gonna help me with people's expense reports? You know, all those kinds of things. So, you know, many times and you and I have talked about this many times, they'll ask for somebody who's going into a leadership position. Give us a 30, 60, 90 day plan. Right? Yeah. But if you are thinking about going that direction, start building 1 on your own. Just, I mean, just see if you can even think through that.
And are there places where you wanna then go to even your manager and say, well, I did this, but I know there are holes in it. Help me think. Yeah. That's a great I mean, we talked before about how can you prepare, and and it's it's not easy. It's it's that's not an easy thing because you don't know exactly what you're preparing for. But that's a real practical idea of something that you're going to utilize in some way, shape, or form.
Look. You may not be asked to to create a 30, 60, 90 day plan on every interview. But if you had one and you presented it or you had a chance to talk about it, man, you you'll definitely impress for sure. Yeah. Absolutely. And even if you never show it, you've thought about it. You've internalized it. Right. You've done your own, set your own goals for it. For sure. Kathy, go ahead. Own development plan. You are a rock star. Oh, thank you. You are a legend. You'll make me blush.
I always love talking to you. I'm so glad that you came back. We covered a lot of ground. I think we'll leave it there, and, hopefully, people got a lot out of this. I know I did. Well, thank you for inviting me back, Tom. I really do appreciate it. Always. And this won't be the last time. Probably. We'll come up with more ideas. Right? I know we will. Well, thank you again. Have a great one. Thanks everybody for joining us, and enjoy the rest of your day. Make sure you, work on that resume.
That's right. Take care. Bye, everybody. 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.