Leadership Resource Center
Leadership Assessment
Why don't they do something about that?
Do these questions sound familiar?
Unfortunately, they are all too common in our everyday personal and work life.
Where is the leadership?
Successfully leading the pharmacy enterprise means that you need to choose to lead, whatever your practice role, title or experience level, fostering strong connections between peers and colleagues, and across organizational levels and functions. You can choose to lead, to do "something" about the challenges, issues and obstacles you face in your role and your organization. Building leadership skills, experience and capability is a lifelong commitment, a journey that starts now, from where you are today, to gain the confidence and behaviors that will drive the decisions, actions and results that will define your personal leadership legacy . . .
In 1988, the Institute of Medicine urged that leadership -- or lack of it -- was at the core of many of the issues facing the healthcare system. While leadership has been a growing focus of attention across many industries, including healthcare, there has been a lot of talk, and far less skill building. As social values and expectations have changed, there has been a dramatic shift from authority-focused leadership (also referred to as BIG L leadership) to collaborative, team-oriented leadership, but professional education and training support have not kept pace with the need for skills development and knowledge transfer. Even less developmental attention has focused on leadership skill building for mid-level and line managers, and almost none is dedicated to the clinician, staff pharmacist, technician and anyone else who provides a strategic role in the fulfillment of the everyday work of the overall Pharmacy Enterprise.
More recently, the National Quality Forum (NQF) has endorsed best practices that should be universally applied to to reduce the potential of harm to patients. A culture of leadership for safety has been a pivotal component from the initial recommendations in 2003, but the most recent update in 2009 underscored the importance of leadership and organizational culture across the continuum of care, but specifically dedicated a chapter to medication management, and even more directly focused on the role of the pharmacist as a vital leader with a strong role in administrative leadership to reflect their authority and accountability for medication systems performance across the organization. This is a critical time for pharmacists to choose to lead. What are your skills, how ready are you to take up the challenge, and where do you need to strengthen your capabilities?
Your natural leadership skills and style are the foundation and starting point for your journey. Self-assessment of where you are, where priority opportunities for self-development should be focused, is a first step. This resource will enable you to evaluate critical aspects of your leadership capability, to identify areas for growth and nurturing and to begin the development of a personal plan for your leadership journey, future and legacy.
Several assessment instruments are designed to provide you with a line of sight to your potential and the opportunity to make the most of your leadership journey, including a range of self-assessment opportunities, including
Leaders need to develop the personal capacity to recognize patterns and common interests, particularly to recognize and understand other perspectives in order to arrive at shared vision, purposes and values. Connecting the dots, bringing different points of view into perspective, and encouraging a diverse group to think clearly about change opportunities, benefits the organization, the team and its individual members. With an aim to setting priorities, analyzing barriers and obstacles to develop actionable strategies, environmental assessment capabilities are a fundamental leadership building block.
Clarity of values, commitment to a cause that transcends self, and clarity of purpose for a goal involving commitment to a better future are inherent components in visioning to mobilize people to confidently take action and sustain energies toward common vision. Clarity of purpose and the focus it engenders inspire people to commit their best effort to achieve.
Trust is an essential foundation of effective leadership. Without trust, commitment, support and inspiration are fleeting and change initiatives are at risk to the whims of organizational pressure points of the moment.
Few leaders understand the capacity to share power and influence widely as a strategy to not only achieve, but to expand success. Shared effort, a wide range of experience and input, and empowerment of the team through development of dispersed influence, not only rewards the individual, but increases advocacy position within the organization.
Bringing out the best in others, developing talents and capabilities, building power through shared influence and abandoning the need for control build individual and organizational capability. Training, coaching, mentoring, feedback and networking support the development of individual confidence and capacity for creativity, innovation, goalsetting and transformation.
To be an effective leader, self-reflection must be an active and continuing thought process, with focus on understanding and evaluating personal values and how congruently behaviors match those values. Analysis on verbal and nonverbal communication, the impact of actions and words on goal achievement and the capacity to self-adjust behaviors are essential to effective collaborative leadership in an increasingly complex environment.
One of the most challenging aspects of leadership is the mastery of the art of delegation -- both horizontal and vertical -- as an effective means of developing people, charting organizational successes and building effective team collaboration. Often how effectively you delegate defines the limits of your potential successes.
Do you feel that you never have enough time? Is there always a list of to do's that hangs over your head? How and how well you manage your time is a key factor in your success as a leader and an important aspect of taking care of yourself.
Every leader is involved in multiple teams in our complex healthcare environment, and your skills in effective teamwork are likely a key factor in the success or failure of the initiatives you undertake. Assessing your team strengths and weaknesses, and diagnosing where you could benefit by some self-development for teambuilding. Visit the MindTools Team Effectiveness Assessment . . .