Pharmacy Meltdown: How Toxic Workplaces are Destroying Your Profession with Dolores Neira

Are you feeling like you're in a constant battlefield, trying to navigate the murky waters of negativity within your pharmacy career? Friend, again, just breathe. You aren't alone and the good news you're in the right place. Let's shift gears from a meltdown to a symphony of harmony in your pharmacy profession. In part two of our interview with Dolores Neira. Welcome to Pivoting Pharmacy with Nutrogenomics. Part of the pharmacy podcast network, a must-have resource for pharmacist entrepreneurs Seeking to enhance patient care while enjoying career and life. Join us as we pivot into Nutrogenomics, using pharmacy and nutrition for true patient focused care. Explore how to improve chronic conditions rather than just manage them. Celebrate entrepreneurial triumphs and receive priceless advice. Align your values with a career that profoundly impacts patients. Together, we'll raise the script on health and pivot into a brighter future. Hello, hello, hello. This is Dr Lawful, doctor of pharmacy and certified nutritional genomics specialist. Given the current pharmacy climate, we are taking a break from the science of genes and nutrition to focus on the human side of the equation the pharmacy team. If you missed us last week, we are continuing our conversation with our guests and positivity powerhouse, Dolores Neira, who, since 2001, has been inspiring leaders of her solution-driven mindset, and she's here to share that wisdom with all of us. Dolores is also a published author of the book a workplace inspired and is a licensed brain health trainer with Dr Daniel Amen. Her dedication to inspiring leaders and teams is truly unparalleled. So, my friends, let's continue the conversation with Dolores. So, Dolores, can you unfold your strategy to create a positive workplace where negative being stressed are kept at a minimum?

The first thing I do is I sit with the managers who are the leaders? Because again, as everyone says and it's been used a lot, you know, a lot of dysfunction begins with the top down. So I have to sit with the top leaders and say and investigate number one, how much does having a dysfunctional team hurt you as a person To do you have the resources to put into this effort? Because when that's limited it's like anything. You know, if we say it too often, are you gonna walk the talk or you just talking to top? You know Then then, third, what are your goals? Where are you? Now? Let's measure, because many times people call what I do soft skills. I don't think they're soft at all. I think they're very concrete and that they're very foundational. If you don't have this, you're not gonna have the other stuff. You know it's gonna be really hard. Let's talk about baseball for a quick minute. Okay, the Padres. How much money did they invest in that team? And they're still the worst. I'm sorry, quadri fans, but anytime I won't say who my team is, because then people are gonna say, oh, just cuz. You know I won't, I'll be fair, but anytime something happens, that's kind of like, you know, my organizational development and leadership training kicks in and I say to my husband, I say there's some dissension in that clubhouse, that's why they're going down, that's why they're not playing correctly, because if you have the right people but they're still not performing, there's something wrong with the leadership. There's something wrong there's I call it dissension, meaning that they're talk, they're not talking to each other. And come on, you know, tomorrow we are in agreement with this that most pharmacists, anybody in that field, are very analytical people right and they work from one side of their brain a lot and that one is not Very social, it's not, and it's not touchy feely and it's not colors, and it's not let's go play. No, it's very. Do it. Because I said you, you need to job, and and at that point if you don't speak up, if you don't Share a little more than your disappointment that's on your face, then you're gonna lose those individuals that you need to balance that workforce. See, we need influencers, we need controllers, we need satisfiers, we need doers, we need all of that. And that's one of the things I do do is when I go, when I ask for us to all do kind of a real brief personality styles test, so then I know what I'm dealing with and then I plan six months minimum of some training a couple times a month, and then we measure it at the end. But we have to have like a pre and post measurement. I feel like continuous improvement is very important.

Yeah so you're a private investor, not private investigator, but you go in there and you're invested what the real root cause of the problem is and so that from there they can do the work.

So, but tomorrow they have to be invested in it. Like, in other words, I can go in and tell I've been doing this for over 20 years. I can go in and tell you exactly, just give me a couple days of assessing the situation. I could tell you exactly what they need. But they have to tell me what they think they need first, because I'm. It's like somebody coming in telling you you know something that you felt like you had under control. You know you're gonna reject that, you're gonna push it back, but if they, if you told me, then I'd be like you know, you got that. You got that many times. The impression of a manager or a leader on their teams dynamics isn't always 100%. It's skewed through their idea of what they want in their team. But now I can go on forever in this. I've seen so much success where I align teams to the business goals and I literally have to tell some people you know, it's not about you when you come here. It's not about you, it's about the goal of this company. What are your core values?

Right, and that's an interesting point. Yeah, it's not about them. You're there for the team Healthcare. You're there, ultimately, for the patient. But what if they are still? They are frustrated. We don't want to ignore that. So what can they do?

So I would first tell them if they could open up to me. I do, I do individual assessment, I do coaching. I have a mentorship program that I've implemented throughout the state of California and it's really just one on one and we talk about the areas in your life that you might feel are. You know there's a shortcoming. For instance, you know what's your nutrition like, but it would be in a very private manner, so. Or, you know, is your home life in? I don't need to know details, I just need to know. You know, is there something that's causing you more stress or more when you go home, are you able to unwind? Or usually I find out that unwinding for them is the happy hour at whatever, and that doesn't help your brain, in fact. Actually, you take in two steps back every time. And I'm not going to say that I don't have a glass of wine once in a while because I do, but the brain does not function well under artificial influences. So that could be extra sugar, that could be drugs, that could be alcohol, all those vices that we love because it makes us calm down, like who could say no to chocolate on Valentine's Day? Right, but if you know that that's you know you're kind of, you know we just. I just had my 40th wedding anniversary this past weekend. I made room for that, congratulations, I did, I had a slice of that cake. But let me tell you the next morning I was like whoo, whoo, the brain was not used to having those artificial, you know because? And then, moving on, you know it's important that I talk to them kind of on a one on one, coaching for those who are really kind of writing the fence if they're going to leave or not. If you want to save those good employees, it's so important for you to invest these dollars in this time. Here's one thing they say that you know there's three camps. So if you had a bell curve right, just think of a bell curve you have 20% of your staff here that are. They're just so excited about working. They're just usually the newer ones that just came out of school and they're like bring it on, I'm a pharmacist, you know and then the higher number, 80%, up here in the bell curve you have neutral. They've gotten into the neutral camp. And then you're going down to the other end of the bell curve and you have very negative people who have just, they're toxic, they're really toxic for the team, right? So you got 20, 20, 80, 10, 10, 80. Excuse me, I know my math. Okay, 10, 10, 80. If a leader does not work with the toxic which we we tend not to want to do because that's conflict so we're like no, let's just. Eventually they'll quit, you know, or eventually we'll just ignore them. But that toxicity will will go into the minds of those 80% who are neutral and eventually your Numbers are going to start to skew this way. And if this these very excited side of the, the 10%, see that the toxic doesn't get any Supervision, if they come in late, if they make errors, if they treat somebody you know negatively or even you know use profanity in the workplace, whatever that is, if these people who are so excited or there see that there's nothing done about the toxic, they will go into a neutral camp. Remember then the neutrals going into the toxic camp and eventually you will lose your whole team.

Well, you just described what happens in pharmacy. Absolutely amazing, laura, now, since you've been doing this for 20 years and so could you share it. Maybe an example of teams or health institutions? Yes, positive workplace culture has benefited both the employees and and the Leaders are even patient.

So I recently had the opportunity to do any an entire Service model for a group of individuals. Now these are preschool teachers and it was a group of 45 down south and they were having some tough times, and, in fact, a lot of the members, the teachers. It's very hard to recruit teachers to preschool right now, by the way. So because they're they're not paid. Well, you know they have to give a lot for a very little in return in terms of your Monetarily, but they love the children, you know. So they do this. But they needed an entire revamp of the whole organization. So my full services start with an assessment and then a training plan. I did the brain fit for work in life six week series and then I went on and I did another kind of series that they needed to do on leadership and organization and time management. So then I said, well, we could be done now. And the organizer said no, no, no, we need to. They're on fire for staying. They want to get things done. We need to do some mentoring. So I was able to do the mentorship with them for six weeks and then they had a final project, or they were able to. They picked two areas. They wanted to encourage Individuals to have more, a higher morale for what they do. So we had a morale team and then we had a team building team and within the two groups they took another four or five weeks to create actual Projects that were helping that organization. So at the end of the effort they realized, you know, our break rooms are sad, they're depressing, so we're going to try to do something with the break rooms to brighten them up. They had a fundraiser so they could have some massage chairs in the break rooms. You know they didn't have water there or ice. They now had crushed ice and water to do these little things matter. I mean, it's not just pizza.

It's not just because.

I mean, pizza wasn't gonna help them because too much carbs messes up your brain. So here we go, so. So then the other team building team talked about how they went as a team and they all bought t-shirts and and they were out in the public and any kind of event. They all went together and they were like we're here, you know.

Come, bring your kids to our center.

We're doing great. It's a lot of unity, not a unity instead of dissension. So this took me into about seven or eight months, night and day. I did a final survey and everybody was saying how this plate I would, I don't want to leave this place. And then by that time the director was able to find some funds and increase their dollar amount, their wage, and it wasn't a lot. But you know, little things like that make a big difference.

Right, that is awesome, dolores. That is amazing. Just those small differences, small differences, a complete turnaround on how they thought about their workplace.

But I didn't tell them to do it tomorrow. They decided to do it. See that I did. I could have said, oh, you need to do the. They said, no, what we need to do is paint our break room. We need to have something in there that you know, brighten it up. It's sunny here.

That's like coaching 101. They, you don't have to find what to do.

Yeah, they said it's hot in the summer and we're tired of going into our car because we can't be in that break room. It's depressing, you know right.

Little things, amazing, amazing, and I'm sure you have so many others, so many stories, so many 20 years. I want to thank you for being here with us today. But how can our listeners, our pharmacists out there, inspire their teams, or pharmacists that may be entrepreneurs like myself, or managers, supervisors of their pharmacy departments, or farm or independent pharmacists? How can they inspire their teams so they feel supported, heard and respected, especially during these challenging times?

Leaders become vulnerable. That's my number one coaching statement is be vulnerable. Don't be the person that acts like I'm the boss, so I should have it all together. No Again, don't go to the other extreme and say I don't know what we're going to do. No, just say these are my concerns as well. How can we stop saying I and say we from now on? All right. In my book this is really neat because I talk about it's called a workforce inspired. It's the second edition. It talks about understanding diversity, brain health and a pandemic, but for business sake. So how are we going to understand all those things? For business sake? It's just a little quick read and what I did is I fashioned it after the chicken soup for your soul. But I have eight examples from different individuals who wrote stories about their challenges in the workplace. So I think first and foremost is admit, hey, we need to fix this place. Talking to a customer in that way is unacceptable. Not looking like you have a smile on your face and I'm not saying you're laughing, I'm just saying a peaceful smile like I can help you and if I can't, I'm going to find someone who can. I'll give you something. Just know I'm here for you. But you don't get that if you're mad at your supervisor and if your team member is talking behind your back and everything is allowed. No, it's not allowed. You have to know what your non negotiables are in your workplace.

Yeah, definitely so. Dolores Neira. How can the pharmacist who need you get ahold of you?

I'll send my QR code. You'll be able to reach, get my book and my my website, and then just send me an email. I'll be more than happy. We can start talking ahead of time, before we even meet, and then we'll do a zoom and then I can go see you. But I could definitely let you know what I think I can do for your team. You know, team dynamics are the same, no matter what the commodity. Your team needs certain things and we've forgotten that, and we need them even more as we transition out of COVID, this pandemic. So I'm here for you. Just let me know if you need me and we'll figure it out.

Thank, you, Dolores. Dolores has proved that team morale in a positive work environment are as crucial to patient care as proper dispensing and disease management. If any part of this conversation sparked interest or resonated with you, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Connect with me on Instagram or LinkedIn at Dr Tamar Lawful. You can also leave your five star review and comments here in this podcast so you can help guide another pharmacist on a similar journey. If you haven't already, subscribe, rate and download the episode to ensure you're always in the loop. Coming up next week on a show, we're navigating the intricate labyrinth of our microbiome so you can embrace the empowering role of gut bacteria in shaping health without getting confined by the DNA blueprint. See you back here next time and until then, always remember in your journey as a healthcare professional, always raise the script on health, because together we can bring healthcare to higher levels.