The fourth direction of pharmacy leadership, Part 2

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 I realized this, I started with myself.  I decided instead of leaving things to chance that I would get the last Friday of the month to work out for me, what I would do is figure out a way to do something every day.  My solution was to buy a book, preferrable with short chapters (less than 10 pages), and read one chapter each day at the very beginning of the workday.  If that meant I had to get in 15 or 30 minutes earlier, so be it. 

This is what I found: I was gaining all sorts of new ideas. And I wasn’t just gaining them, I was having opportunities to put those ideas to work throughout the day. I was leading myself. That felt good, but even better...people noticed. 

I became so excited about improving my leadership skills and seeing the impact (the effect to the cause) that I prescribed time for everyone on my team to lead themselves.  I could not change the whole company, but I could absolutely create an environment for my team. I told them I didn’t care what aspect of leadership they studied, but I wanted them to spend the first 15 to 30 minutes each day working on an area that interested them and to drop me a quick email at end of the week on what they are learning. My rationale was that by investing 30 minutes each day in developing or improving a skill that would help them, they would easily gain those minutes back by the end of the day. And they did ever. 

While people on my team did not pick the same areas and they improved at different rates, they did improve. They improved in their competence, confidence, and problem-solving skills. This all started when I decided to intentionally lead myself. 

What about you? How are you leading yourself? How can things improve for you as you intentionally lead yourself?

We have now touched on the four directions of leadership, but we are not done. When next we meet, we will put some strategy into our leadership. I look forward to meeting with you again soon.

Until next time –

Jesse McCullough, PharmD

Connect with Jesse on LinkedIn

PS – A great place to lead yourself is into environments where you can learn.  One of the best environments to learn is coming up in just a few weeks at Pharmacy U Toronto.  Don’t miss out!