Limitless humility in baseball and pharmacy practice

to the motivating days you felt when you graduated. It is time for a reset and only you can do it.

How? Think about you being a leader. Whether you work for yourself or someone else, you are frontline to your team. Whether you like it or not, that team looks to you to lead, so harness it. 

You reach the full potential of your leadership capability on the day you realize it is all your fault.​ You may not be the one who fumbled the ball, but you were the leader who built the systems for catching it.

You oversaw the decisions that led to selecting that player and putting them in that position. You supervised the training and development process. You signed off on the uniform that included the shape of hat peak that failed to fully block the sun from the player’s eyes. You hired the coaching staff who led a hard practice the day before, which over-exerted the player. You approved the use of the analytics that told the trainers the player was the fit to play that day.

Ultimately, you created the culture that allowed failure to occur. A player missed a catch and it is your fault. Leaders who cannot own the A to Z of their team have not yet reached their maximum potential. When subpar performance occurs, we must realize that our fingerprints are all over the products our teams put out.

A prime example

There was an insurance reclamation in the pharmacy. It means we dispensed a drug that was expensive enough for an insurance company to spend their time auditing. We were informed that we coded the billing incorrectly, resulting in us losing a chunk of money. As in $19,000 worth. They found a loophole and went back through two years of claims where the same code was overlooked repeatedly.

Although I was not the pharmacist who signed off the prescription, nor the assistant who billed the drug plan, nor the technician who reconciled the paperwork, the loss is purely my fault. And I wasn’t even on site many of those days!​

I oversaw the development of that specific workflow. I also hired many of those staff members and did not yet create an atmosphere where they fully understood that specific billing procedure for that specific drug plan. I did not follow up on the reconciliation process frequently enough, and I made the schedule for that staff on duty that day.​ Moreover, I am sure there was more I could have done up to that point to arm the team with even stronger dispensary weapons, be they hardware, software or other intangibles.

As much as all of these failures on my part seem a bit far-fetched, it's not unreasonable to say that they point to me directly. Only when I own up to them can I begin to obtain buy-in from others to improve the situation and prevent errors from repeating.  ​Accepting the blame skips the criticism step in the grieving process. Less time is spent thinking about whose fault it is and more time is spent on productively thinking about the solution.​

The essence of humility is that of being fundamentally human. We accept our faults; we put our ego aside and put mission before self. We put extravagant effort into the care of others personally and professionally. Humility allows us to pilot ideas before their launch and accept feedback to empower change. Even deeper, it makes the other  leadership dimensions come alive.

Definition of being in charge: not accepting praise for wins and accepting fault for losses. Look to yourself for blame before placing it on others.

In the next article I highlight why it is imperative for leaders to fill seats on their bus.

Jason Chenard RPh, BScPhm, BCGP, CDE practises full-time in retail pharmacy as a board-certified Geriatric Pharmacist and Certified Diabetes Educator. He is the owner of two pharmacies and is the founder of layeredleadership.ca, a platform that empowers pharmacy people along their leadership & wellness transformations. Learn more about his 7-part series 7 Days Until Finished.