There has been a long search for the alchemy of leadership: we all want to find the elusive pixie dust that we can sprinkle on ourselves to turn us into glittering leaders.

The bad news is that there is no pixie dust, but there is plenty of good news:

• All pharmacists can and should be leaders on two levels; leaders within their business, and health leaders within their community
• You can load the dice in your favour. There are some things that do not guarantee success, but do make it more likely
• You can learn to be a leader. You don’t have to be someone else; you simply have to be the best of who you are.

Leadership is a subject that suffers from an extraordinary amount of hype and nonsense. Texts are full of words like ‘vision’, ‘values’ and ‘integrity’. But life is complicated enough without drowning in theory, so let’s keep things simple.

All the grand words and ideas boil down to a few simple principles which apply to leaders at all levels. We call them ‘the 4Ps’ of good leadership:

• People focus
• Positivity
• Professionalism
• Performance.

Three of these drop out of most published research quite readily: Performance is the odd one out. That’s because most leaders see performance as an outcome, not a cause of good leadership. It should not be forgotten, but we are going to focus specifically on the other three.

All the grand words and ideas boil down to a few simple principles which apply to leaders at all levels