The best pharmacy leaders are great passers

How do you set up your pharmacy teammates for success? Learn from the best and take away winning lessons.

Wayne Douglas Gretzky from Brantford, Ont. is more than just a retired pro hockey player. Nicknamed “The Great One,” he is the game’s all-time highest goals producer, winner of multiple Stanley Cups, international gold medals, and probably boasts the NHL record for holding the most records. 

He is credited with changing the face of the game in countless ways, from being an ambassador for Canada to exploring the top of the net, setting up his teammates from behind the opposition’s net and growing the game south of the border, in California and the American desert.

Wayne’s trump card

Of all these qualities, what I admire about most about Wayne is that he was a great passer. The skill requires you to feed the puck to a moving player. It requires an attention to various details, anticipating where your teammate will be given all the parameters in high-speed motion during a fast hockey play. It also requires you to let go of ego, giving others the glory of the goal.

The opposite of a great pass in hockey is called a ‘suey’, short for suicide pass. This happens when the pass is behind your teammate, requiring them to look back to receive it, only to be bulldozed by an opponent because their head was down.

Your trump card

In the pharmacy, there are countless ways of being a fame-deferring set-up person. For example, you can leave a proper note, count out the meds in anticipation of the door-crasher tomorrow morning, allow staff to make their own schedule within set parameters, give people freedom to make workflow decisions, do the dishes from the compounding sink, check your fair share of blister packs or organize the paperwork for tomorrow’s appointments. These passes bring a positive ripple effect to everyone else on the team. By osmosis, they also put positive pressure on others to reciprocate.

Going one step further, printing a list of to-dos for tomorrow, with some tasks already crossed off, gives the next shift a good start and gentle pressure not to waste the efficient start for the next shift thereafter.

Great passers may not get all the credit, but a win is a win, and maybe they deserve more credit than they receive.

In your pharmacy:

How can you be a great passer?

How can you prevent ‘sueys’?

For solutions to what is not taught in pharmacy school, visit layeredleadership.ca and subscribe to Jason’s weekly newsletter: Rested, Fueled & Ready.