Listen for people who have the 3Ps:
Purpose, Proaction, and Perseverance.
Career Catalysts
Inner Circles
Career catalysts are people who enhance your career in unexpected ways by providing information, connections, and / or resources.
For men in graduate programs, career catalysts are found in centrality in a social network. Centrality means having social connections who can provide private information that is professionally beneficial.
Women in graduate programs also benefit from centrality in a social network. But they (and probably anyone else bumping up against glass or concrete ceilings) need a second network of career catalysts, an inner circle of “weak ties.” Weak ties are acquaintances rather than friends.
The beneficial acquaintances for women are “predominantly female contacts who are connected to many nonoverlapping third-party contacts.” The acquaintances are not connected to each other. They provide benefits with public information about professional opportunities.
Finding Your Career Catalysts & Inner Circle
If you’re already in the business world, listen for which colleagues who express purpose, proaction and perseverance. Pay attention to which colleagues have access to private information from many contacts. Offer what you can to help them succeed at their purpose. If those colleagues create benefits for you, they are connections worth keeping.
Take advantage of opportunities to make new acquaintances inside and outside of your field. Listen for any public information they know that could be useful to you.
“A network’s gender composition and communication pattern predict women’s leadership success”
Yang Yang, Nitesh V. Chawla, Brian Uzzi
PNAS
January 22, 2019
Rookies As Career Catalysts
Career catalysts can be rookies who have no connections at all. What rookie career catalysts do have is purpose, proaction, and perseverance. A rookie with the 3Ps could help your career beyond your imaginings.
Black Rookie With The 3Ps
In 1930, Dr. Alfred Blalock was a well-connected heart surgeon and teacher at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Blalock heard purpose, proaction, perseverance when Vivien Thomas applied for a job as a surgical research assistant. Vivien Thomas (a male) had no experience and no connections. He was also black, 19, and a carpenter. Because he was only 19, his formal education ended with high school.
Vivien Thomas worked as a carpenter to save money for medical school. Purpose and proaction. He lost all of his savings in the 1929 bank crash. With his savings gone, Thomas looked for another way to get into medicine. Perseverance.
Pioneer Status From A Rookie Connection
Blalock hired Thomas and had him doing experimental surgery on dogs alone within about two weeks. Because Blalock hired Thomas, he is now considered a medical pioneer. At the suggestion of pediatric cardiologist Helen Taussig, Vivien Thomas developed the techniques for heart surgery, which Blalock performed.
For the first dozens of operations, Blalock had Thomas stand on a stool so he could look over Blalock’s shoulder and talk him through the surgery. When surgeons from around the world came to Johns Hopkins to learn heart surgery, Blalock had Thomas teach them surgical techniques. Heart surgeons around the world learned heart surgery techniques from Blalock’s career catalyst. None of Dr. Blalock’s networking connections enhanced Blalock’s career the way Vivien Thomas enhanced it.
Diversity added to Blalock’s and Thomas’s success. Not only was Dr. Taussig a woman, she was mostly deaf. She “listened” to babies’ heartbeats with her fingertips.
If you want similar unexpected career success, listen for purpose, perseverance, and proaction from unexpected people.
Partners of the Heart: Vivien Thomas and His Work with Alfred Blalock: An Autobiography
Original title: Pioneering Research in Surgical Shock and Cardiovascular Surgery: Vivien T. Thomas and His Work With Alfred Blalock
Vivien Thomas, 1986
Vivien T. Thomas, LL.D.
“Medical Scientist Training Program”
“Women In Science: Helen Taussig (1898-1986)”
The Jackson Laboratory
© Paula M. Kramer, 2021 to the present
All rights reserved.