You can learn leadership skills and how to be a leader. Think about people who inspire you. We can all learn from our role models. 

When you think about inspirational role models, what traits can you adopt? Now think about managers with poor leadership styles and avoid those behaviours. Take care to learn from the right role model, as bad habits picked up can be hard to change.

Many leaders will undertake some structured training, such as a Masters of Business Administration (MBA), but this is not essential. It is, however, important to read, look to others and understand how they achieved success in their field. Don’t forget to look outside the pharmacy world. P3pharmacy looks outside pharmacy for many of its front cover interviews, partly to explore what works in other industries. Think about how you might apply personal principles you’ve read about to your work environment. 

Be prepared to make mistakes and learn from them. If you make a mistake or misstep, what would you do differently in the future? 

Understand the non-employment ‘rules’ of your organisation – the often invisible political and cultural ones. The easiest way to work this out is to look to the people who are successful in your workplace. How do they dress, act, talk and walk? 

Professionalism doesn’t simply mean impressing your line manager: it’s about acquiring behaviours that make it easy for other work colleagues to engage with you too. 

Good business etiquette is essential for gaining respect. You want people to work with you and follow you. Etiquette involves making the other person feel at ease, valued and respected. Some tips include:

• Being on time for meetings. Being routinely late is rude and demonstrates a lack of time management and respect
• Make others feel important. When you are talking to a team member, focus on them and minimise interruptions. Breaking off important conversations to answer mobile phones or respond to texts are generally no-no’s
• Say thank you. It doesn’t cost anything, but could make all the difference to an employee
• Learn people’s names and use them back in a sentence
• Don’t focus on yourself. You may feel you are the most important person, but your audience will rarely agree.