I have been fascinated by the topic of Leadership at least since my freshman year in high school. It must have been the Introduction to Business elective, or my choice of HR Management as one of my two events for my high school’s Business Professionals of America (BPA) club. Over the past year and half, as I have been reading, researching, and reflecting on my PBH blogs, I began to observe the important role played by leaders and some common leadership traits – even in the areas of life sciences innovation and public health. In this blog I will present my emerging leadership model.
Why do I think this is important? I believe leaders and the way they lead – their teams, research labs, companies, or countries – have a meaningful impact on outcomes. Leadership can be a decisive difference between success and failure. This is certainly true from a historical context, in terms of a President Lincoln or a President FDR playing such a decisive role in leading our country in times of crisis. More recently, this was evident in terms of how well or poorly countries around the world have fared in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic, based on the quality of their respective leaders. My recent readings have revealed that this is also true in the life sciences. Leadership plays a critical role in effectively harnessing the power of science to develop medicines and to help improve the lives of patients across the globe. The role that Dr. Roy Vagelos played, more than 40 years ago, in Merck’s development and the launch of the first statin drug is legendary. A more recent example is the pioneering leadership role played by Dr. Jennifer Doudna in bringing together a global team of research collaborators to discover and develop the CRISPR Cas-9 gene editing technologies. These examples serve as valuable reminders – that leadership attributes greatly influence the outcomes we see, even in the fields of applied biology and health.
My concept of PBH (Philosophy of Biology and Health) is based on the premise that scientific knowledge, while often necessary, is not sufficient to solve complex challenges facing our society. The solutions to these challenges are multidisciplinary and often include the need to have expertise and experts across various disciplines including: Science, Ethics, Policy & Law, and Economics; my four PBH lenses. What, then, are the PBH leadership attributes?
I believe that effective leaders need to have seven key leadership attributes. They are:
- Perceive and envision opportunities, especially when they are not obvious; not just in the near term but especially in the long term. The ability to envision the implications of new scientific breakthroughs or the potential application of new discoveries. The ability to connect the dots and see around corners.
- Apply multidisciplinary expertise across both Science and Business. The ability to keep up with and gain expertise in rapidly evolving areas of basic science, as well understand the business potential and economics of managing these new innovations from discovery to commercial and public health use. Additionally, having an understanding of Intellectual Property (IP) law, and a strong grounding in ethics and social impact are important traits.
- Build teams and foster collaborations to bring together functions, companies, and institutions with the right expertise at the right time in the right roles.
- Empower teams and individuals to innovate to come up with and try new ideas, especially in the field of discovery and research
- Make tough decisions and quickly learn from failures. The ability to quickly synthesize complex information, consult experts, make critical decisions in the face of significant uncertainty, but to then still have the humility to acknowledge mistakes and quickly make amends.
- Persevere through tough times, even when others may be willing to give up.
- Effectively communicate, engage, and motivate others to see and appreciate the shared vision and make sacrifices and contributions for the greater good.
Finally, I don’t think that effective leaders have to necessarily be formally appointed. While that is often the case, the concept of leaders as collaborators, or servant leaders who lead to serve others for a greater cause, has really resonated with me.
I am sure over time I will continue to update my perspectives and my PBH leadership model. As a starting point, here I wanted to synthesize my learnings and reflections from my experiences and my readings so far. Now, I have a personal leadership model to inform my own choices and the experiences I seek out during and beyond high school.