APhA 2025: Empowering Pharmacy Leaders With Mindful Self-Care Strategies

In an interview with Pharmacy Times®, Lauren W. Bristow, PharmD, MBA, senior director of Pharmacy for Providence, emphasized the critical importance of self-awareness and emotional intelligence for leaders highlighting her presentation at the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) Annual Meeting & Exposition.

Bristow recommends resources like personality tests, counseling services, and understanding one's internal and external self-perception. She discussed the need for leaders to develop their teams by delegating effectively, creating opportunities for growth, and helping team members build confidence through incremental challenges. Bristow strongly advocated for separating self-worth from work performance, encouraging leaders to maintain a sense of personal value regardless of professional outcomes or external perceptions. She highlighted practical strategies for managing stress and maintaining personal well-being, including exercise, self-reflection, and understanding one's motivational drivers.

Pharmacy Times: What resources do you recommend for leaders looking to enhance their resilience and well-being?

Lauren Bristow: I'm a huge proponent of leaders knowing themselves. I can't over explain the value of knowing yourself. One of the best articles that I've had, it's in Harvard Business Review, and there's a test you can take online, but it's on self-awareness. There are 2 types of self-awareness. There's internal self-awareness, how well are you in tune with how you're feeling? Then there's external self-awareness, how in tune are you with how others experience you? Both of those are so important. I really think a rate limiting step to how effective a leader can be is directly related to their level of self-awareness. I really can't say enough about that.

The other part is emotional intelligence and anything that can help your personal growth. I highly recommend counseling. BetterHelp, I know is one source. I know my company offers Lyra, which is a solutions-based counseling service. You go in saying, I want to work on this. Perhaps you say, I want to work on stress management. Will they use solutions based on actual science and psychology and research, saying: tell me more about this; how do you feel when this; tell me the circumstance; here's a tool; I want you to try it for a week; tell me if it works out. It's very similar to how we treat people with medications in terms of, here's the diagnosis or here's the thing we're going to try to fix, let's try this tactic or tip and see if it works for you. To me, those are a couple that are great.

The other part, I would say, is really any type of moving your body and exercise. The book burnout, stopping the stress cycle, by the Nagoski sisters, talks about the importance of exercise even just 20 minutes a day — even if you just tense your muscles and then flex them and release them again. Even a movement as small as that, can decrease and spur the metabolism of those catecholamines, the stress hormones running through our bodies. We try to stop that down, or we stay still, those reek oxidative stress on our systems, that is the physiology, so that can help as well.

The other resources I can think of are any kind of tips to help know yourself. Maybe personality tests — I like the Enneagram. The Enneagram chooses if you're a number based on motivations, not based on traits. It can help diagnose whether you're on the healthy end of that or the unhealthy end of that, but really helps you see the work that you need to do to get back. It can give you some indications again of knowing yourself and knowing your dashboard of when you're on the unhealthy side and need to do some of those self-care tips to get back.

Pharmacy Times: What advice do you have for pharmacy leaders who struggle with delegation and workload management?

Bristow: To me, this really must be a mindset switch. What I expect from my leaders is that they be able to replace themselves. Just like me, I'm able to go on vacation because I make sure person A, B and C knows what is needed of them, and they know how to get in touch with me if they need me. I've coached them up to again, if given them the framework of how to make decisions, then the decision they make is lesser of importance to me. For me, the framework I use in leadership is I put the patients first and have the teams back. If your decision was in line with that, then I will back it, and we can do that.

The other part is, if I asked them to think back of their road to leadership and what helped them get training and help them gain confidence, it was getting to take on smaller projects and seeing success with those that allowed them to get to where they are. What I challenge them with is to afford other people on their team the same opportunity. I want all my leaders to have in mind, 3 people who, if they fell off the face of the earth tomorrow, could be the ones that I would go to train them up to take their role. A couple different things, one, when people feel needed, it reduces their burnout — in some cases. Over needed, then you've gone too far on that end of the spectrum. But if it's a frontline staff member, and they see the stress, they know their team leader works a lot, they want to help. Let's let them help. Then again, you're teaching fishers. You're not canning people fish, but you're creating fishermen on your team that will bear fruit later. For me, the value there is the collective good, not the one-time burden. You think of it as a burden because it’s one more thing on your list, but it would be a new challenge, that there's somebody on your team that would value that. So, decide if it's the time that you must coach them in that, and teach them that, and then do it. But there must be a mindset switch on that.

The last thing that I'll say, and this is really what I want to challenge every person with, specifically leaders, is you really must question how much of yourself worth is tied into your performance at work, your achievements at work. If you fail, do you feel like a failure as a person? If you succeed, do you feel like a success as a person? At some point, there must be a coming to terms if you are a healthy leader, yourself worth is not attached to your work performance. Your status, your reputation, is not attached to those things because people's feelings about you — whether it's leaders you work alongside, whether it's the team you're serving or leading, whether it's the leaders that are above you, at some point, you're going to get misunderstood or mislabeled or get in a light that you didn't want to be in. If that ends you, then you weren't strong enough to be in that position to begin with. You can't be about popularity; you can't be about achievement, or your burnout is going to be so large, and it will chase you forever. There must be a I know what I bring to the table. I will find ways to serve in that way, and then I will help others do the same in that space. The more we can teach more of our leaders and more of our pharmacists and more of our residents and more of our students that their self-worth is intact when they walk at the door, and their self-worth is intact when they walk out of the door, and that whatever happened in between that never impacted them as a human, I think we'd be a lot freer to try things, to fail at things, to be open about the fact that I don't know things, and be open about the fact that I can't do this by myself. What do you recommend? Can you help me do this? I do that all the time as a leader. I hope I'm never the smartest person in the room, but I have to say and make it safe and invite others in so that they also feel valued. Maybe we go with as a supervisor's idea today, and that was the best one in there. They win. We win. We get there faster.

I think we as individuals in terms of our own personal health and wellness, really must evaluate, where do I find myself worth? If that's in something that is fickle or could change, or a job that will replace me tomorrow, that is not a healthy place to be. It doesn't matter. You can do all the things, you can check, all the boxes, you can read all the books. You are cruising for a hurt, if that is your approach to that. I just want to blanketly give that to people. As the self-help, the wellness perspective is, remember who you are, remember what you're worth. Walk in knowing that, walkout knowing that, and do your best in the meantime.