Isolating your pharmacy leader identity
We love superheroes and villains because they are unique in their clear identity. We understand their strengths, their weaknesses and what makes them special. Why should you be any different?
When you understand yourself, you will navigate the world with confidence, strengthen your weaknesses and build better teams who fill in the gaps of characteristics that you don't bring to the table.
Let's make a very reasonable assumption: the time you spend practising within the various roles of your life determine who you are. Some of these roles will be work-related and others will be life-related. In order to find optimal work-life balance, there should be proper time allocation to those work and life roles.
Here is an activity from Kogan et al. to evaluate your balance:
- Draw a bull's eye: a centre dot, surrounded by a concentric circle, surrounded by another concentric circle.
- Draw a horizontal line through the bull's eye.
- Draw an X through the entire thing.
- Label each of the six equally shaped "pies" with one on your roles in life. These represent the components of your identity as you see it today. For example, dad/mom, pharmacist, husband/wife, athlete, brother/sister. You can even label your pies as life principles that are deeply important to you. For example, nutrition planner, good sleeper, yoga master, violinist, underwater basket weaver.
- Now, place a dot on one of the "arcs" of each pie. If you spent a lot of time on that role, place the dot on the outer arc. If you spend a moderate amount of time on that role, place the dot on the middle arc. If you spend a little amount of time in that role, place the dot on the inner arc.
- Finally, connect the dots into what likely will resemble an oval. If this oval roughly hovers the bull's eye, you are well aligning time with the roles important to you and are practising optimal work-life balance. If not, that role simply requires less time and you are content with it or you have decisions to make.
The concept is: time spent carves identity. If you care about your children, then why are they getting two per cent of your time while work-related roles are getting 82 per cent? What's wrong with this picture?
Understanding what makes you you is critical to understanding how to allocate time, and having the humility to self-evaluate it is a powerful leadership skill. Are you using it?
Are you aligned?
What time shifts do you need to do?
We'll look more into this in my next blog.
