When we met last, I ended by asking you a question. The question was, “Over the course of your career, do you find that leading others has become easier, more difficult or about the same?”

Last time, I left you with a dilemma: in what direction do you lead if a patient leaves your pharmacy, transfers to another, but then returns to you?

Are there times when we lead others from more than one direction? More specifically, when leading our patients, what direction are we leading? To me, or at least the me of several years ago, I would think it was leading down.

Over the last several weeks, we have looked at the various directions of directional leadership. That is all well and good, but what are you going to do with that information?

Last week I told you about my "plan" to take the last Friday of each month for self-development and how somehow those Fridays just didn't work out as I had planned.

When we talk about directional leadership, up, down and across pretty much covers it, doesn't it? Long-time readers will not be surprised when I tell you we have another direction of leadership to explore – the Fourth Direction of Leadership.

Around 2008 I began learning about performance measures for pharmacy and I was enthralled. What an amazing concept! What if we could describe a way to determine how well a therapy serves a patient?

You would think that leading down is the easiest form of leadership, and perhaps it is. But consider this: if it is supposed to be so easy, why is it so hard? Why is it so challenging?

One of the most important ways we lead is by leading up. This is key for a number of reasons. Perhaps most notably, it is because when we lead up, we make life easier for our boss. And in turn, our boss can make life easier for us.

One of the most important ways we lead is by leading up. This is key for a number of reasons. Perhaps most notably, it is because when we lead up, we make life easier for our boss. And in turn, our boss can make life easier for us.