Why is it so hard to "lead down" in pharmacy?

When we started to look at Directional Leadership a few weeks ago, this may very well have been the first thing to come to mind: Leading Down. After all, many of us spend so much time in this particular area of leadership.

If you are just joining us today, let’s take a moment to level set on Directional Leadership. Directional Leadership is all about the relative direction of authority. When we are Leading Down, we are leading people we have direct authority over. 

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?

Surely, I am not the only person to ever come home from work, completely spent, because of the people I had direct authority over.

In full transparency, this is a big subject and not something we are going to do justice to today. To that end, we will look at just a couple thoughts with the understanding we can return to this subject again and again in the future.

At one point, I thought leading down meant giving orders and having people follow them. 

In some instances, it could be taken to the extreme in the form of micromanaging. But I've found these were not environments that fostered the best in patient care. Some of the pharmacies I have worked in had specific workstations with the station’s duties prescribed on the wall in front of the workstation. That fostered an environment where people would not answer the phone and made patients wait to be served because other duties were prescribed or someone else was assigned to be responsible for those duties. Environments like this exhausted me.

Leaders know that everyone has different, unique strengths and weaknesses. Because of this, everyone needs to be led differently. 

Leading down requires that we know the strengths and weaknesses of the various people we lead and then encourage an environment where each person can succeed.   We need to maximize the use of every team member’s strengths and minimize the exposure of the weaknesses to best serve our communities.

Another key component of leading down is equipping your team to be successful. This is about identifying the skills, tools, and resources that someone needs to perform at a high level. 

Ask the people on your team if they have the tools they need to succeed. This can be a dangerous question because some people may want things bigger ticket things, such as new computers, which can be cost prohibitive. But the real magic of this question comes from some of the simple requests that can be easily solved. 

Let me give you an example. I had a technician who was fantastic with customers on the phone, however the way her workstation was set up kept her by the printer rather than by the phone. When the phone rang, she would have to disengage from her station and walk over to answer it. As I type this example, I can’t help recognizing the absurdity of the situation. The solution was to reset the workstation by moving the printer closer to the phone. It was so simple! It took just minutes to make this change.  Yet those few minutes created a better environment to serve our patients.

Leading down requires leaders to position people in places where they can succeed and give them a voice to provide feedback and solutions to overcome obstacles in their way.

I am sure we will revisit leading down many times in the future. For now, I encourage you to ask your team if they have the tools they need to be successful. If not, what do they need? You may just find some great solutions to empower your team and lead them forward.

Next time, we will look at Leading Across. See you next time!

Jesse McCullough, PharmD

Connect with Jesse on LinkedIn