Outside Professional Activities Agenda

Session Outcomes:

• To share our experiences (both good and bad) associated with outside professional activities and lessons learned
• To help determine our own compass/priorities in deciding which outside professional activities to pursue, and which to decline
• To learn practical strategies for approaching outside professional activities
• To grow relationships with the individuals that make up this group

Choose a group member to facilitate today’s discussion (preferably someone who did not lead a previous session).  Choose another group member to serve as a timekeeper, to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to share during the session. 

10 minutes:                
Icebreaker.  Share your first job (outside of urology/medicine) with the group.

45 minutes:                
Sharing.  In addition to our UCSF responsibilities, many of us engage in professional activities outside of the Enterprise, such as service to professional organizations, grant review committees, independent contracting for research projects, speaking engagements, medical-legal work, industry-sponsored activities, among many other possibilities.  While these types of service are not uncommon, we rarely take personal stock of everything that we are doing and discuss these topics with our peers – from whom we can likely learn a great deal.  Here are some questions to help facilitate a meaningful discussion on this topic.  Please feel free to take the conversation in whatever direction is helpful to your group:

• Share your experience with an outside professional activity that you greatly benefitted from.
• Share your experience with an outside professional activity that you regretted participating in.
• How do you decide which activities to take on?  And which activities to say “no” to?
• Sometimes declining certain activities can be challenging.  What strategies do you use for politely saying “no” to an opportunity that may be difficult to turn down?
• While we rarely discuss finances surrounding outside professional activities, it can be very helpful to learn from our peers.  If you are negotiating or charging a payment for your service, how do you determine what to ask for/charge?  How does this differ based on the type of service that you are providing (if at all)?

Final 5 minutes:         
Wrap up.  Offer gratitude to the group for listening, sharing, supporting.  The next, and last, incubator pod meeting will be in July - please use this time to decide on a date/time for that meeting and designate someone to communicate this information to Michelle Lifto.

**Please see the Urology Compensation Plan FY21 document for guidance on any questions that may come up.  Part D (starting on page 18) describes “Department/Unit Requirements on Outside Professional Activities.