Transformative Leadership Can and Should be Practiced by Everyone in the Pharmacy Organization

The quality of leadership can define the culture and direction of an organization. Transformational leadership goes beyond simple transactional engagements and inspires workers to follow a vision or common goal for the organization. Transformational leaders can intrinsically motivate their team in ways that make them want to go beyond simple contractual transactions (wage) and find ways to advance the organization. The pride and sense of belonging to the organization is the goal. Research shows that employee well-being—which includes concepts of satisfaction, stress management, mindfulness, trust, performance, and engagement—is fostered by a mindful transformational leader.1 As a result of an improved workplace environment, transformational leadership can help build resilience among staff while facilitating employee engagement and mitigating job turnover in the organization.

Resilience is the ability to recover from or withstand difficult situations or hardships in life. The need for increased resilience in the pharmacy setting has never been higher than it is today. With increased workloads and longer hours, burnout has become more prevalent since the COVID-19 pandemic. Burnout often leads disengagement (which increases the likelihood of errors) and to high rates of turnover, which can seriously affect not only the bottom line, but the efficiency of an organization as a whole, as well as patient care and perceptions. In a recent study conducted in 2023, researchers looked at the relationship between resilience, burnout, and work performance and concluded that higher resilience in pharmacists correlated with higher job performance and lower burnout.2 Cultivating higher resilience is a great way to help the organization reach its goal by having motivated employees.

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