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In the world of pharmacy leadership, the ability to navigate risks effectively is a crucial skill.

Many pharmacists are highly sensitive to risk. I would actually go so far as to say that pharmacists are largely risk averse. And for good reason. We hold people’s lives in our hands. If you have ever made a dispensing error, it sticks with you.

Over the years, I have had the privilege of addressing thousands of pharmacists and pharmacy students. While I have not shared this story for quite a while, I believe it is fitting for our consideration of courage.

Pharmacists face the call for courage in the presence of a single person all the time. Much of the time, the stakes can be quite low. But there are also times when the stakes can be very high.

If pharmacists are to be the Hope of Healthcare, we must be alert to the conformities all around us and the results they deliver. Additionally, we must have the courage to explore new models, systems and services which deliver better results.

When I began my career as an intern, the stories were still common about preparing prescription labels on typewriters. Yes, you read that right. That was the prevailing technology at one time. When printers came along, all sorts of things changed.

We all have skills, and not only do we have skills, we have certain kinds of skills. Not all skills are created equal. Some skills will increase in value over time, while other skills will decrease in value over time.

When you consider the systems and processes we all work in, doing something outside the norm may seem a little uncomfortable, or even not allowed. This is the way we have always done it, and this is how we will always do it.

In the pharmacy, we often find ourselves locked into rigorous workflows designed to reduce, if not eliminate, the possibility of errors being made. In other words, we have agency. But...having agency is not permission to be reckless.

How many of us have encountered situations with patients where we find ourselves dealing with bigger problems because the smaller problems were not addressed earlier? We all have!

Emotions have everything to do with leadership! Emotions are the fuel of leadership. And when harnessed correctly, they can advance us a great distance.

Pharmacists monitor medication safety and efficacy within the drug delivery system. I very much like this definition, but I also understand the need to adjust it as we move forward.

Pharmacists are doing more today than ever before. What are the things you are most excited about when it comes to pharmacy being the hope of healthcare? You can be excited about it, even if you are not currently doing it.

What if I am contributing to the development of other leaders around me and they can see things from a unique perspective – a perspective that I do not have? That's when magic happens.

In the context of leadership growth, the next level is the act of contributing what you are learning to someone else. It is helping others around you become better leaders. It is building your bench of competent and confident leaders.

When I first started to study this principle of consistency, I quickly realized that the only thing I was consistent at was being inconsistent!

As we continue our overview of the four principles of leadership growth, I will readily admit that most people may expect or want something much more glamourous than what I bring you today.

To some reading this column, the word "intentional" will hit you like a punch in the nose. It will possess your attention and inspire your action. Intentionality does not discriminate. It is a principle that will serve all who choose to adopt it.

Let me ask you a question: have you ever made a New Year’s resolution? We probably all have. If we follow the statistics, it is very likely that we did not keep that resolution either.

While the Directional Leadership framework provides clarity on how we should lead, we must never lose sight of where leadership starts. Leadership always starts with the person staring back at us in the mirror!

I don't know where you find yourself today, dear reader. But if you find yourself in a situation where you feel that you are being asked to do more with less, allow me to encourage you. You can become more. You absolutely can!

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.

I trust the new year still finds you well and well on your way to achieving your goals for 2023. Over the course of the next several articles we are going to look at the idea of what I will call “directional leadership.”

It is not uncommon when it is time to sit down and write one of these articles that I reach out to my editor to see if there are any specific topics that I should address.

Considering what to write this week, I am reminded of how many leaders are lonely and feel isolated and disconnected from others.

What do you do when faced with patients with questions and concerns? What about your staff? What are the key lessons we need to learn and impart?

Many years ago, I was building out a network of pharmacists to serve as “MTM specialists.” These pharmacists were being used to address a specific group of patients whose problems were going to be very challenging.

I struggled for a long time with the idea of “winning.” A big part of the struggle came from my definition of winning. I confused dominating with winning.

Do you have a Leadership Lens? Do you look at things with a leader’s perspective? Do you look at situations and assess the ways you can help someone get from where they are to another place? If you do not, do not be discouraged. You are not alone.

In 2005, I received a phone call with an idea. The idea was to get pharmacists trained to provide immunization services. At the time this was an outrageous idea to me. But I did not reject it.

In the real world, building a bridge takes engineers and raw materials and time. In the leadership world, it takes the ability to communicate effectively, to establish and build a relationship, and time.

The relationship principle that I have learned to employ is called the Exchange Principle. The Exchange Principle says before you put someone in his place, you should put yourself in his place.

I ran into an old friend who is currently a district supervisor for several pharmacies. After a bit of small talk, I asked how things were going and how her team was holding up. She went on to describe a bleak situation.

Often, when we start to think about how things can improve, we quickly jump to external sources and resources and become discouraged because we may not have much, if any, control over those resources.

Think about this: when we each of us entered pharmacy school or began working in a pharmacy, we knew very little.

A couple weeks ago, I was scrolling through LinkedIn and one of my colleagues had shared a post about carrots and eggs.

Something that captured my professional imagination many years ago was the idea of measuring quality in the pharmacy industry. How do we know if medications are being used appropriately?

If you have ever seen a late-night infomercial on television, you may have encountered a product that was so amazing and so easy to use that all you had to do was “set it and forget it.” While that phrase may sell product in late night infomercials,

Many people, including myself, believed at one point that patients were very much like a cup. The education provided would be like the liquid filling up the cup.