(upbeat music) - Welcome to the ASHP official podcast. Your guide to issues related to medication use, public health, and the profession of pharmacy. - Welcome back to the ASHP pharmacy leadership podcast hosted by the Pharmacy Administration and Leadership Residents Collaborative, or PALRC. My name is Jake Noble, a PGY1 HSPAL pharmacy resident at Mayo Clinic, and I sincerely appreciate you taking the time out of your busy day to join us. This series is dedicated to exploring various career topics with pharmacy leaders from across the nation. In today's episode, we'll be discussing the first 90 days as a manager featuring our host, Dr. Megan Byrne, a PGY2 HSPAL pharmacy resident at UNC Health and Dr. Lauren Sadchek, a PGY1 HSPAL pharmacy resident at Cleveland Clinic. Our guest speakers today are Dr. Tamara Best to check, Tyler Tomasek, and Brie Bakken. Navigating the first 90 days as a manager comes with its own unique set of opportunities and challenges. Through this discussion, Dr. S. Best to check, Tomasek and Bakken will share their insights and leadership pearls when it comes to preparing individuals for this new adventure. Thank you for tuning in, and I hope you enjoyed the discussion. - Thank you again for joining us today. We're very excited to hear your insights on the transition to a manager role. I wanted to start if each of our speakers today could introduce themselves and tell us a little bit more about your current role. - Hi everyone, my name is Tamara Best to check, and I am the medication policy manager at M Health Fairview in Minnesota. In this role, I oversee the formulary system and serve as the chair of the system pharmacy and therapeutics committee, as well as lead our acute care cost savings initiatives, and I'm very excited to be here today. - Hi everybody, my name's Tyler Tomasek, I'm the senior director for pharmacy informatics at the Cleveland Clinic. In my role, I lead our pharmacy informatics team and our electronic health director and automated dispensing cabinets, inpatient out, patient workflows, I'm really happy to be talking with everybody today. - Hello everyone, I'm Bree Bakken. Thanks for having me on the podcast. A little bit of background, I completed my PGI1, PGI2, HSPAL at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. And my first role after that was serving as a pharmacy manager at Children's Wisconsin, which is what I'll probably be referring to quite a bit in the response was today, but I was the recently changed roles. I am currently an associate professor in health systems administration at the University of Iowa College of Nursing. So in my current role, I am teaching aspiring nurse leaders and nurse executives in the Doctor of Nursing Practice Program, which is focused on executive leadership for nurses. So delighted to be here today with this great group. - Thank you all so much for introducing yourself and sharing a little bit more about your current role and your previous experiences. Preparing to take on a new role can be a really exciting time given all the new opportunities that are possible, but it's also a time that may involve a significant amount of change, which can also present its challenges. When transitioning into a new role, how did you manage both leaving behind your old role and diving into new responsibilities with the new position? - Yeah, I can start with this. Hi, this is Tamara. I love this question because it's challenging and it varies quite significantly kind of depending on whether you're transitioning to a new organization where you have little knowledge of the work group or if you're transitioning within your current organization where you've established relationships and understand the culture, but maybe carrying forward some projects that you either had as a resident or as a new leader. So personally, I've actually only been with the same health system for many years and most of my transitions have occurred internally. Therefore, most of my answers are going to be focused on kind of that internal hire into leadership positions. So I found it really, really important that after announcing your transition, it's important to organize all of your previous work into a hand-off document, clearly outlining the new accountable individuals for each of the responsibilities that you currently have. And within that, you might be outlining an interim leader if there isn't a new person taking over your old role, whether it be a second-year resident or a person that they're hiring into it. I think that communication is key. So ensuring that you have one-on-one meetings with the people taking over your work is important 'cause you're leading a clean slate. You're leaving that position that you've had all of these projects with into something brand new and you won't be hanging on to that old work. And it's also important to meet with your leader more than once as you're transitioning away from your old position so that you don't leave any unfinished work or any of those things you need involved. I think we often give our leaders too much credit too because they're so busy. And so as much help as we can give to facilitate that smooth transition is helpful and really speaks to our leadership style. In that interim process between leaving your old role in the new role, I always made sure to take a moment to breathe. It's really important to leave moving so fast and juggling so many things. Take a role to really acknowledge all the hard work that you went through as a resident or an early pharmacist, celebrate your successes. And because it's such an exciting time that you want to also make sure that you take time to embrace the step and the role ahead with energy and a lot of optimism. And then when you jump into that new role on those first few days, it's essential to really spend the time understanding the scope of your position and how that position fits within the larger organization and how your roles gonna interact with others. I've always tried to aim to meet up with as many one-on-ones as I can, even new people that I've identified a lot of the way just to really fully embrace the new role and figure out what the needs are within the new department. So really, and I think also by learning on those one-on-ones, it really has helped me identify those first impactful projects or tasks to tackle. I'd be curious what Tyler's thoughts are on this. - Thanks, Tamara. I really connected a lot with your discussion around handing off to the new leader. And that's really important to do. And one of the things that I like to do too is as I create a handoff document for somebody else who might be coming into my role is also taking that template and taking it to my next position to see it, make sure I can ask the questions that I thought were important enough to relay onto the next person and make sure that I can kind of get that from the leadership team where I'm starting at. The other thing, and this is particularly if you're staying within an organization that comes to mind is as you transition, that new role is really letting go to some of your old responsibilities and kind of letting that new leader thrive, while also providing some coaching if they ask. I found that sometimes challenging in my career when you're in a role day in and day out helping to answer questions for people and work through problems. And then suddenly your role kind of changes, you'll still keep getting those emails and phone calls and want to help out. But trying to make that clean distinction of referencing back to that new person who is in that role, but then also offering your support back to make sure that they feel as supportive as possible. And also for your own bandwidth that as you focus on new areas. - Tyler, I love what you shared about referring back to maybe someone who's taking a role that you had in the past. I think that's come up even as a resident with resident responsibilities between committees and other things. So I really love that focus on bandwidth and knowing when to refer someone to a different individual. Moving on to our next question for discussion today, I'm curious what steps are important for leaders to take in their first 90 days to make sure that we are soaking up as much knowledge about the new organization as possible. - Excellent question Lauren. And really I have to say that I think some of this also starts before that first 90 day period. Hopefully some of this actually takes place before the interview, but really doing a deep dive into the organization and the pharmacy department, you're going to be joining. So that includes looking at whatever you can find that's publicly available online, the organization's website, social media, or other internet sources to really familiarize yourself with the organization or department. And maybe even who's in the department as well. Beyond that, you might even want to consider reaching out to your recruiter or the person that led your interview day or even your new supervisor to ask them if there's any additional information or documents that they can share with you so that you can get to know the organization and the department better. So some of those things might be asking for a copy of the org chart or the department's org chart, the strategic plan, if they do an annual report, those types of documents can be really helpful to get kind of a better understanding of the organization as a whole and what you're walking into. If they can provide in more detailed information specific to your role, I think that's always vocal as well. But taking time to familiarize yourself with those documents and the people in the department that you're going to be interacting with. I also want to recall something that Tamara said earlier, talking about trying to schedule as many one-on-ones as possible, especially in those first 90 days. And I think that this is something that I would highly recommend as well. It's a great way to help build those relationships and get to know individuals better, including your supervisor, members of your peer group, and of course your direct reports as well. But in addition to getting to know them better and building that relationship, it's also a great opportunity to inquire and learn more from one about the organization and the department, especially the things that you're not going to find on the website or in those documents. Things about the culture of the organization, how the work actually gets done, people to know or potential barriers that you might run into, so that you can really kind of hit the ground running and have all of that information. I think the other thing to keep track of in that first 90 days, you're getting so much information, whether it's people's names, processes, new emails, passwords to remember. So hopefully it goes without saying, but make sure you take notes, write things down, and make it easier for yourself to be able to remember and access that information as you move through your role. - Yeah, one of the things that's most important to me in my first 90 days in a role is building those relationships. I think of those, that first introduction when somebody, when you're going to be announced as a new leader, there's a lot of expectation and potentially fear or worry about what this new leader is going to be like. And talking with the team as often as possible to start building those relationships and then to, as pretty much, and to learn the organization and the processes. And that early learning is not only going to help you learn, what are some of the key areas that you might need to work on and focus with your team, but it's also going to really highlight what you might not need to focus on or what the team doesn't want you to focus on, 'cause sometimes that's really important too, is not just what you're going to eventually change or implement, but what are the things that the team appreciates about their previous leader or their team that you wanna make sure that you maintain. - Thank you both so much for sharing. I know for myself, I'll be starting in a new position soon. And so a lot of the advice and the tips that you're giving has been really helpful to figure out what are the things that I should take into consideration when I start my new manager job in just a few months. So thank you for those answers. Jumping into the next question. So in the book, the author highlights this idea of accomplishing easy wins, which are essentially wins that you can get within the first 90 days to help accelerate your success in the future. What advice do you have to help leaders identify and to accomplish early easy wins? - This is Tamara again. I think really I kind of take two approaches to this. The first is your team, your direct report and items that maybe would be identified through your team. And then others that are maybe a little bit more strategic that you work with along with your leader. And so within both of these and along the themes that bring in Tyler we're talking about, it sounds like we cannot understate the importance of building those relationships early on. And really just one, please know that building relationships is a first early win. And I think it's underappreciated, but something that you have to recognize because it's very time consuming. But really by scheduling those one-on-one meetings, with your new direct reports or other key team members and stakeholders within your group, you're going to learn of those quick high impact projects that you can tackle early on. You'll also learn about kind of what makes your team tick, just like what Tyler was saying. What is truly important to your team? What's high value to them? And so you can't really identify a win unless your team is identifying it as a win and in an area of focus for you. So you really have to use those meetings to understand the challenges that the team is experiencing. And then what the perspective or the lens is that you'll be leading through. And so really by taking the time for active listening and incorporating the feedback from the team is really where you're going to identify those first team building activities. And you're going to build trust through that. And really by building the trust is where you're going to build future engagement and commitment from your team. So that's kind of my approach to, you know, identifying one easy win that's team based, so for those who are reporting up to you. And then the second thing really is picking a strategic project that maybe you're working with on the leader that you're reporting to. And this could be something simple, like streamlining a new process, maybe improving communication channels, addressing some concerns that they've been hearing through the transition period. And so I also think it's great opportunity too to shadow the individuals that will be reporting up to you, understanding what current state works and all the complexities that your team is working through, you know, in order before you identify what the new processor future state will be. And I think by drawing this out, even not a map, I think, you know, having like some sort of visual tool that outlines the change will help show that easy win. We'll have documentation of it. And then it will also help boost the morale of the team to show that you may change early in those first 90 days. - This is Bri again, just to build off of what Tamara mentioned, I 100% echo her sentiments. I think that there's kind of two approaches which she did a great job in highlighting. You know, one of them is the approach of working with the team to help identify kind of what would be a good quick win or an easy win to help solve problems for them, but also in working with your supervisor or your leadership to think about strategically what problem or project would be a good easy win. One experience or one kind of story I want to share, my first pharmacy manager position after residency, when I was starting as a pharmacy manager at Children's Wisconsin, we were undergoing a major remodel of our pharmacy administration offices. So I actually didn't have an office and it ended up being the best thing as a new manager. Instead of having an office, I basically set up shop in the pharmacy and worked from there. And in those early days, I didn't have a ton of meetings, right? It was getting caught up on email, doing some other compliance trainings, et cetera. And so it was a great opportunity to meet so many members of the team, ask about their work, shadowing them, what are they doing, what do they like, what do they wish was different. Some of those things that Tyler mentioned also about, how can I as a leader help and support you? All of those things were just so much easier to do because I was there. So that experience is something I have carried forward with me and will, I think, in any future job. So really just highlighting the importance of going to where the work gets done and spending time with your people, getting to know them, talking to them and really asking about those things that you can jump in with early projects that you can tackle. I think that's a really great way to go about it. Once you gather those ideas, I think it's a great opportunity to then also sit down with your supervisor, your maybe your peer group or other leaders within the department and get some of their insight, whether it's historic knowledge related to that problem, insights or maybe some of the barriers you might run into, why hasn't that project or that thing been solved or implemented in the past? So they probably have some of that that they can share and really help ensure your success if that is the project that you're going to tackle. - Thank you, Bree and Tamara for sharing on that question. I think a lot of what you both shared about active listening and feedback and going to where the work is being done provides a great lead-in to our next question or our next point of discussion about what key things leaders should look for with their new team. How can new leaders help their team grow and accomplish their organizational goals despite maybe being early on in their position? - This is Tamara to start. I really feel like first and foremost, it's essential to create a department in a space that's open to communication and that really will then lead to trust that there will be someone who is listening to the team's needs and will follow through and communicate back thoughts on concerns or areas of improvement or even just simply celebrating successes that a department has. I think by establishing that trust early on, then you'll be able to establish what the goals are together as a team. And again, not just the immediate tasks, but also each individual's long-term core aspirations. I think that in those early days, we keep talking about those naive days. You really only have one chance to make that first impression with your team that you are leading. And so by doing so with compassion and openness to each of your team members as an individual is so important. And so one of the things that I started doing is I have a questionnaire with a series of questions that I ask each of my direct reports and I keep pretty detailed notes on this in that initial questionnaire and it gets down to the details of even what days are important to them out of the year because I think if people on my team know I care about them, their engagement and their commitment to the department goes up. Within that, I also like to ask questions about how they work best. And sometimes we can't create the perfect space for everyone to work with, but then I know maybe they may struggle in certain times of day that they work and we can together know that it's maybe not as easy for them as it would be for others in certain areas. So anyway, I love keeping this living file and it helps me both build a relationship with my employees but then also create future goals based on kind of their interests that they have and the path that they see themselves growing into. So again, just to repeat that, I think the team needs to see that we as leaders are there both for their personal growth and not just for the job that they're doing. And so really by creating those ongoing communications, the team then not just knows that they're there to kind of see themselves as growing in their own path, but also where their path falls or where their goals fall within the larger organization's goals and the mission within our health system. And so again, with that, so that's kind of individually one-on-one but then also by hosting team meetings or maybe daily huddles. Those kind of informal check-ins also help as well because if there's trust within individuals, there's oftentimes trust within the team and so people can speak freely and create ideas within the team and we can move forward together with some collective goals from some of those, either formal or informal team huddles or meetings. - I think it's been interesting that as we've talked, we've revolved quite a bit around relationship building and it's critical. And I think aside from just the relationship between new leader and your new direct reports or the folks that you'll work with moving on, it's also to assess the team dynamic. How do individuals interact with each other? Is there psychological safety within the group and like, what is that culture and what makes that group tick to kind of understand a little bit about when you're going to make your quick wins or to engage in a project, you can kind of get a sense of how that might be taken in advance and who to connect with in advance. I think the other thing is individually, really getting to learn what people are passionate about person A might be energized by something more technical, person B might be passionate about teaching and ask them what those interests are and what they see in their future career. I think that's one thing that a lot of my previous leaders have always asked me what I'm interested in and I know it makes it energizes me and keeps me engaged with the organization and that cascades down to other folks too. - Thank you both for your answer. I really resonated with what you both had mentioned about getting to know the individual, what their goals are and what excites them. I know for myself, that's something that I've been trying to do during my interim manager role as a resident. And one of the things that I found that it really helps is also in this time where we're seeing a lot of challenges with retention of pharmacy personnel, having these things in mind can help us to figure out where we can continue to elevate them in their roles or modify the responsibilities to best align with where their strengths are and what excites them. So I really appreciated both of your perspectives on this. - The next question that we have is regarding managing oneself during a transitional period. When starting in a new leadership role, it can be really easy to feel overwhelmed with all this new information, new people, places, et cetera. What is one piece of advice you have for leaders on managing themselves during a transitional period such as in their first 90 days in a new job? - So when going through a transitional period, I think one of the things is that you can sometimes feel pressure coming into a new possession to maybe try to make some rapid changes. There will be people that are probably excited that you're joining the team and people, other other individuals who might not be so excited for the transition. And just realizing within the first 90 days, yes, you can do your quick wins if you have them, but you shouldn't necessarily feel pressure to make a change just because that is your first 90 days. It's 90 days kind of rounds out to an even number. Your 90 days might be 120 days or 30 days. Try not to put yourself on a timeline. I think the other thing is patience for yourself, whether you're coming fresh out of residency or your experience as a manager, every single role is different. And although there's some core tenets in leadership that might be the same, every team is unique. And everything that worked before does not necessarily mean it will work in your new role. So having patience with yourself and not trying to force anything if it's not an opportunity. - Yeah, this is Brie. I would 100% echo what Tyron mentioned as well. I think one of the ways to kind of help overcome the maybe feeling like there's so much going on and how do you keep track of it all. I think really making sure that you set aside time in those early days, early weeks to do some of that self-reflection. What's going well? What could be going better? What strategies am I relying on? Maybe aren't working. Maybe they worked for I was before and I need to think about doing something different but really taking that time. Even if it's five or 10 minutes at the end of each day just to quickly summarize and think about that I think is important. In addition to reflection, also just that note-taking. You're taking in so much information throughout the day in those early days, names of people, maybe details about them that you want to remember from a relationship standpoint. Their kids' names or their hobbies or things that you want to be able to reconnect with them on workflow, what you observe throughout the day, any ideas, projects or kind of opportunities for improvement that might have come up and maybe even your ongoing questions lists for when you're meeting with your supervisor next or thing that you still need to get on. But kind of having that written down, I think helps clear the brainwaves so that it does the baby feel quite as overwhelming. As a current resident, I really appreciate what you both had to share on that topic just 'cause residency itself is a huge transition and then of course anticipating the transition out of residency. As we kind of wrap up the day, I'm curious, on that same theme, what advice you both would have to share or all of our speakers today to HSPAL residents as they prepare for that transition, wrapping up residency and moving into a manager role. So one of the things I think about is that the feedback really never ends once residency is over. And I think there's a lot of value in asking your future teams for feedback on your own performance. You will probably get some pretty direct feedback that'll help kind of mold you into a bleeder. And then I think it also helps going back to the relationship, establish a relationship to have some of those conversations where if they're able to give you feedback and you're able to have those comfortable conversations when things are going really well, then sometimes when things might not be going as well or there's some more challenging conversations that avenue's open. So asking your team for feedback, I think is really important. - I think Bree said it so well before that this transition is overwhelming. And so really making sure that you embrace this new experience by being flexible, patient, I think Bree said, and with a lot of humility, I think is gonna help. So don't think that you need to jump in and be right away, 100 miles an hour into this new role. It's okay to give yourself plenty of time to meet the team. And like Tyler said, it may be 90 days and maybe 120 or it may happen a little sooner. It just all kind of depends on the size of your team and what the needs are. But you'll only find that out by putting the time into the people and that's both your team and your leader. And so one more thing that I'll add that we didn't talk too much about within the onboarding process is really being actively an active participant in that onboarding process. So your new leader is gonna come to you with their onboarding plan. So make sure you fully understand that and make sure that if there are any knowledge gaps, any areas that you're not confident in tackling or looking up yourself, make sure you're open with your leader and asking a lot of questions. Sometimes leaders may come to you without that onboarding process or it may be very vague and they'll have a lot of expectations for you. So make sure you embrace that and be a part of developing your own onboarding plan because you also know what you need. And so by meeting with the team members and meeting with other stakeholders within other departments, you're gonna find areas that you need to explore as well. And so that's gonna have to be built into that onboarding plan too. So just be open with your leader. Keep organized like both Tyler and Brie mentioned, keep detailed notes. So as long as you're organized and intentional in the areas that you're looking into and researching, you're going to be successful in this new role. And I wish you all a lot of success and luck. - This is Brie, just some kind of round things out, so much great advice from both Tama and Tyler so far. I think I bet to use things that I wanna mention here. The first being don't forget about the network that you've already established from residency or even before that. It's so important to stay in touch with your mentors and the people that have helped train you. Keep in mind, you've spent two years with this group of individuals. They know you, they know your tendencies, they know your weaknesses, they know your strengths. And they can be a really great group to reach back out to, maybe even establish an ongoing cadence for your meeting with them once a quarter just to talk about what's going on and how things are going. This group has also a ton of experience. So if you're working on it, they've probably tackled it or they are currently working on it in their organization. So it can be great to touch base with them, hear their perspective, and sometimes just have a little outsider's perspective from someone who's not in your organization can be incredibly helpful. So keep them in mind, they're a great resource to reach out to. I think the other piece I would grab there is a little more operational, but it's such a great time when you're starting a new role to have a clean slate and really establish good work processes for yourself from the start. And these things can be really hard to change midstream. So think about how you're planning to manage your email and what file structure are you going to use? Set yourself up for success in some of those early decisions and how you're planning to manage that and navigate it. Even things like calendar management. In those early days before your calendar is kind of wild and crazy, can you set aside terms for those really important things you know you want to do as a leader, whether it's leader rounding time for your own reflection, project time, et cetera, but trying to help build in some of those good work practices. The other one I already mentioned is note taking, but again, really think about one of the workflow or the structure that's gonna make the most sense for you. Having just changed roles myself, one of the things that I was really excited about in starting a new role and having that kind of clean slate was switching to one note. Just trying to keep everything more organized and easier to manage. 'Cause again, these things are really hard to do midstream after people in a job or in an organization for 7 to 10 years. So really be thoughtful and intentional about the processes that you're building. And similar to my other colleagues, I just want to wish you all the best. You're going to be great. And again, think about the resources that are available to you. Also your peer group of residents and all of your mentors from the past are there to help you. - I definitely appreciate the wealth of advice that was just shared. And I feel like we spanned the spectrum from more operational things, like how to manage your inbox, but then also continuing to receive feedback after leaving residency. So very much appreciate everyone's thoughts on that. - We want to give a very big thank you to both our hosts and our guests today. So thank you to Dr. Byrne, Dr. Osachek, Dr. Bezduchek, Dr. Tomasek and Dr. Bakken for their excellent conversation surrounding the first 90 days as a manager. We greatly appreciate you joining us. And if you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe to the @ASHPofficial podcast. Thank you and have a great day. - Thank you for listening to @ASHPofficial, the voice of pharmacists advancing healthcare. Be sure to visit ashp.org/podcast to discover more great episodes, access show notes and download the episode transcript. If you loved the episode and want to hear more, be sure to subscribe, rate or leave a review. Join us next time on @ASHPofficial. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (gentle music)
