Trusting the Process When You Can't See the Results Yet
You Know How to Be Patient With Patients
You've told someone their labs look fine even though they still feel terrible. You've explained that the medication needs six weeks to reach full effect. You've reassured a patient that healing isn't linear and that a bad week doesn't erase three good ones.
You believe that when you're wearing the white coat. But when it comes to your own growth, you want results by session three.
Coaching Has a Lag
Here's the honest truth. The early weeks of coaching often feel like a whole lot of talking and not much changing. You show up, you reflect, you try a few things differently. And then Monday morning hits and you're back in the same meeting with the same frustration and the same dynamics that made you seek coaching in the first place.
That gap between effort and evidence is where most people get shaky. Smart, motivated physicians who start strong and then quietly disengage around week six because they expected something more dramatic by now.
Academic medicine runs on measurable outcomes. Publications, citations, grant funding, patient volumes. When you can't point to a specific result and say "coaching did that," it feels like nothing is happening.
Something Is Happening
But something is happening. It's just not the kind of thing that shows up on a dashboard.
Maybe you paused before reacting in a meeting last week. Maybe you asked a question instead of giving a directive. Maybe you noticed a pattern in how you handle conflict that you'd never seen before. Maybe you had a hard conversation with your chair and it went slightly better than the last one.
None of that feels like a breakthrough. It feels ordinary. But those micro-shifts are the foundation. The visible results — the promotion you navigate well, the team dynamic that finally improves, the clarity about what you actually want — those come later. They're built on dozens of small moments that didn't feel like progress at the time.
You Already Know This Is True
Think about the last fellow you trained. Did they become a skilled clinician in a single rotation? Or did it happen gradually, through repetition and feedback and correction, until one day you realized they were making judgment calls you trusted?
That's how coaching works too. You don't notice the change while it's happening. You notice it after it's happened. And then you can't quite pinpoint when it shifted.
Your habits, beliefs, and defaults were built over decades. They don't restructure in a month. But they do restructure — if you stay in the room long enough.
What Keeps People Engaged
The physicians who get the most from coaching aren't the ones who never doubt the process. They all doubt it. The difference is what they do with the doubt.
They name it. They tell me directly — "I'm not sure this is working." That honesty is a sign the coaching is doing exactly what it should. You're practicing the skill of saying what's real instead of performing confidence.
They track small things. Not grand outcomes. Small things. How they felt after a difficult conversation. Whether they set a boundary they wouldn't have set two months ago. Whether they're asking different questions in meetings. The evidence is there if you know where to look.
They stay curious. Instead of asking "is this working yet," they ask "what am I learning about myself." That reframe takes the pressure off a specific result and puts the focus on the process itself — which, ironically, is what produces the result.
The Temptation to Quit at the Interesting Part
There's a moment in coaching — usually around months two or three — where the initial enthusiasm fades and the real work hasn't produced obvious fruit yet. It's the messy middle. And it's exactly where the most important shifts start taking root.
Quitting at that point is like stopping an antibiotic course because you feel better on day four. You haven't finished the work.
If you're in the middle of it and frustrated by the pace, that frustration might be the most useful data point you have. Bring it to your next session. Let it be part of the conversation instead of a reason to end it.
The Results Will Come
They always do, for the people who stay. Not on your timeline. Not in the form you expected. But they come.
If you're in that in-between space right now — committed but impatient, working but wondering — you're exactly where you should be. That's not a sign it's failing. That's a sign it's working.
If you want to talk about what the process looks like for someone in academic medicine, reach out anytime. I'm happy to have that conversation.
