Leading a team is tough.  It takes courage, strength and resilience. There are days where everyone is working together like a fine oiled machine, and there is positive energy, a lightness in engagement and great productivity.  Then there are days where every hour seems a struggle, relationships seem strained and the negativity that hangs in the air gets passed onto the patients we serve.  

With all the pressures on pharmacy managers, it can be extremely hard to focus on the health and functionality of our teams.  But without this focus, our teams are prey to negativity, competition, and complaining.  A team mired in negative behaviour is stifling to creativity, leads to poor performance and job dissatisfaction and ultimately less effective patient care..  

Leading a team is all about human relationships because teams are made up of humans.  Humans who all have their own stressors, insecurities, fears and anxieties as well as significant life events; all of which they bring to work with them.  So how do we, as leaders, foster a culture of cooperation, empathy towards co-workers and a sense of common purpose.   

I have said this many times, but it is worth repeating:  Our responsibility as leaders is not to drive results, but to create environments where our people can work at their natural best.  They will produce the results. 

Here are my top three tips for fostering a positive culture.  

Take a stance of empathy

See the person in front of you for who they are, not just their role.  We all have stresses, insecurities and fears.  As a manager It is easy to become frustrated with our people or to “label” a person as the problem rather than address a behaviour and work with the person to find the root cause .  Complaining to yourself or to others that “Dave just doesn’t know how to be on-time” is counter-productive, and if voiced to other team members, contributes to the negativity and break down of the team.  A strong leader would sit down with Dave, acknowledge the behaviour as an issue and ask Dave how he thinks it can be solved together and then create a plan you both agree with.  

In the same way, we need to take mistakes as learning opportunities, not as opportunity to blame and shame.  

I reinforce this with team members when one person comes to me with a complaint about another. I have zero tolerance for staff talking behind someone’s back, spreading negativity, or blaming. It requires strong emotional intelligence to not fall prey to these behaviours because we are human, and it makes us feel better to create “sides” and have people agree with us and be on our side.  Inter-personal issues always need to be addressed up front, and I always start with encouraging all parties to see the other person as human, to assume good intentions and to resist the tendency towards gossip and negativity. 

Check in 

We talk a lot about mental health, and as pharmacists we address mental health issues daily with our patients.  But how often do we make a point of assessing the mental health of the team members we lead?  I’ve talked about the importance of the ten-minute check in quite often, but it has been an eye opener for me to consciously focus  on mental health when I’m meeting one-on-one with a team member.  I assume everything is fine and when checking in I discover that I have a staff member who is really struggling.  Check ins have at times addressed such things as recommending counselling, suggesting simple self-care such as meditation or calming APPs, encouraging time off or a change of hours, and enlisting support of other health professionals.  It’s important to know what’s available for staff in your own organization (eg. coverage for services) and within your community.  When thinking about your team members, consider that if we aren’t checking in, maybe no one is.  

Model Healthy behaviours

Leaders need to be conscious of self-care.  Sometimes we are the worst models of healthy behaviour as we push ourselves to keep the engine running.  Be honest about what you do to stay balanced and the struggles you may have with implementing strategies to reduce stress.  If you follow Brene Brown’s work on leadership, you’ll hear that it’s not only okay to be vulnerable, it is necessary.  Team members will be more likely to adopt recommendations for self-care when they see and hear you talk about how you do this in your own life.  

Resources

https://hbr.org/2020/08/8-ways-managers-can-support-employees-mental-health

https://brenebrown.com/hubs/dare-to-lead/