The Evolution of Healthcare and Pharma Leadership into Wise Leadership
In heavily regulated industries like pharmaceuticals and life sciences, technical expertise is essential. But knowing the science does not tell you how to respond when a colleague challenges your decision or your team agrees in a meeting but does nothing afterwards.
These moments have operational consequences. If a leader becomes defensive when someone raises a risk, the next concern may stay unspoken until it delays a launch. If people have no say in a decision, they may leave the meeting unsure whether to commit to it.
For decades, leadership development followed a familiar trajectory. If you were an exceptional scientist, a respected clinician or a brilliant strategist, you were promoted to lead. The assumption was that technical expertise would translate into leadership capability.
In my experience, many of the bottlenecks facing healthcare organisations are relational, behavioural and ethical. Addressing them requires leaders to recognise what happens to their own behaviour under pressure. When they stop asking questions, dismiss an objection or push for agreement because another delay would make them look ineffective.
The Trap of the Expert Leader
An executive, let’s call him Chris, recently took on a director role within a major pharmaceutical company.
In his previous organisation, Chris was highly respected. He could get complex, cross-functional projects moving with a single conversation. In his new role, even routine decisions required repeated follow-ups.
Absolutely nothing about his expertise had changed. He arrived with a strong track record, clear priorities and experience leading teams. Yet some colleagues would nod and agree in meetings, then fail to follow through. Others checked with a network of peers before committing to his decisions.
Frustrated, Chris’s instinct was to establish his authority. He thought showing people how much he knew would give them confidence in his leadership.
Through coaching, he began to recognise the gap. He was trying to earn trust by proving his expertise. His team was still discovering what it would be like to work with him.
Their concerns were different from the ones he was trying to answer:
- Will he respect our experience in this therapeutic area?
- Will we have a say in the targets we are expected to deliver?
- Can we disagree with him without damaging our careers?
- Will he support us with stakeholders when a project runs into difficulty?
Chris could explain his decisions. But people still checked with colleagues before acting, and he still had to chase work he thought everyone had agreed to.
If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand, if you don’t have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can’t have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.
Daniel Goleman
What Leadership Development Needs to Address
Chris’s experience illustrates a limitation of leadership development that concentrates on tools and frameworks. Knowing how to structure a change programme does not necessarily help you notice that your response to disagreement is making people reluctant to speak.
Approaches such as The Aston Edge, part of Aston Business School’s MBA, explicitly include self-awareness, reflection, emotional intelligence and ethical decision-making. The programme draws on behavioural science and uses reflective exercises and feedback tools to support development.
For me, the practical value of this emphasis is what it helps a leader notice in the next conversation.
Chris had been asking, “How do I prove I know what I’m doing?”
He needed to consider, “What have people experienced of me so far that would make them willing (or unwilling) to speak openly?”
Under pressure, that distinction is easy to miss. A leader can become so focused on securing agreement that they stop examining why people are hesitant.
Self-awareness creates an opportunity to pause:
Am I pushing this decision because I have considered the concerns, or because being challenged feels like a threat to my authority?
Moving from Insight to Action
Recognising a pattern only matters if it changes what happens next.
Chris stopped trying to be the most persuasive person in the room and began making three changes to how he worked with his team.
1. Ask Before Proposing Changes
Instead of arriving with recommendations for process improvements, Chris asked why existing processes had been designed that way.
“What problem was this intended to solve?”
“What happened the last time you tried a different approach?”
Those questions gave colleagues room to explain the constraints and history he had not yet encountered. They also helped him distinguish between a process that needed changing and one whose purpose he had not understood.
2. Involve People in Decisions They Will Deliver
Chris began involving his team earlier in shaping decisions, rather than presenting a finished plan and asking them to implement it.
He moved from “How quickly can you deliver this?” to “Given our regulatory constraints, what do you believe is the most viable path forward?”
This gave people an opportunity to identify difficulties while the plan could still change. It also made their expertise part of the decision, rather than something consulted after the direction had been set.
3. Make Trust Visible Through Action
Chris gave colleagues credit in front of stakeholders. When difficult decisions involved trade-offs, he explained the reasoning and acknowledged the downsides.
Whenever he assumed something, he was open about it.
He encouraged people to raise risks early and worked to respond without treating bad news as a personal failure.
Inviting people to speak is only the beginning. They watch what happens when someone does. Whether the leader listens, investigates and helps, or makes the person regret bringing the problem forward.
Over time, Chris’s team began sharing their views more openly and flagging risks earlier. He spent less time chasing follow-through and trying to persuade people to support decisions.
If you want a quick way to spot the gap between expert leadership and wise leadership, this table might help.
| Situation | Expert-Leader Move (common trap) | Wise-Leader Move (what to do instead) | Example language (use next time) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Someone challenges your decision in a meeting | Defend the decision; re-explain the rationale to prove you’re right | Treat the challenge as data; explore the concern before re-arguing | “From your side, what’s the main risk you’re flagging here?” |
| Your team agrees in the meeting, then nothing happens | Chase follow-ups: assume people are unreliable or busy | Check whether they truly had a say; if not, adjust how the decision is made or implemented. | “In hindsight, where did you feel you didn’t have enough of a say on this? Tell me one change (target, timeline, approach) that would help. I’ll take it to [steering group/sponsor] and come back by [day] with what’s changed.” |
| You need to change an existing process | Announce the new process and timeline | Ask about the history and constraints before proposing changes | “What problem was this meant to solve, and what happened last time you tried a different approach?” |
| A colleague flags a risk close to a deadline | Minimise the risk to protect the plan; treat it as a personal setback | Thank them; investigate jointly; adjust the plan visibly | “Thanks for flagging this. Given where we are, what options do you see?” |
| You’re under pressure from senior stakeholders | Push your team harder; tighten control; demand certainty | Name the pressure; involve them in shaping a viable path | “Given the regulatory constraints, what’s the most viable path you see?” |
| You don’t know enough about a therapeutic area or function | Over-compensate with expertise talk; avoid admitting gaps | Be explicit about what you don’t know; invite their expertise | “You know this territory better than I do. What would you do if this were your call?” |
| A decision involves trade-offs that will disappoint some people | Present the decision as obviously correct; downplay downsides | Explain the reasoning; acknowledge the costs; invite input on mitigation | “This is the call and the downside. How do we make it easier for those carrying the cost?” |
| You notice yourself getting defensive in real time | Double down, talk more; shut down dissent | Pause; name your reaction; re-open the conversation | “I may have closed that down too quickly. What’s the key risk you’re seeing?” |
| You’ve made a call that later looks wrong | Justify retrospectively; shift blame to circumstances or others | Own your part; focus on learning and next steps | “I take responsibility for my part. What do we need to change so this doesn’t happen again?” |
| You want people to take more ownership | Delegate tasks with tight instructions; check constantly | Delegate decisions within clear boundaries; back them publicly | “You decide within these constraints. I’ll back you with stakeholders.” |
Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.
Aristotle
The Impact on Retention and Stakeholder Relationships
A researcher can believe in the science and still consider leaving after yet another meeting where their concerns are dismissed. A regulatory specialist can care deeply about a project and become frustrated when their advice is sought only after a decision has been made.
Of course pay, progression and workload matter. AND so does the daily experience of working with a leader.
Do people receive credit for their contribution?
Can they challenge an assumption?
Are they trusted to make decisions within their remit?
When they raise a problem, does anything happen?
These are practical questions for leaders who want to retain experienced people.
The same discipline matters with external stakeholders. When an academic partner or regulatory stakeholder challenges a plan, can you understand their concern before defending your position?
Their objection may reveal a risk your team has missed. Responding defensively can make that harder to discover.
Leadership is not about being in charge. It is about taking care of those in your charge.
Simon Sinek
In pharma and healthcare, that often means inviting dissent before a decision, thanking people for bad news, and making trade-offs visible instead of pretending they don’t exist.
Wise Leadership in Practice
Chris did not need to abandon his expertise. He needed to notice when relying on it was preventing him from understanding other people’s concerns.
That is where wise leadership becomes practical. In the pause before responding to an objection. In the decision to ask why a process exists before replacing it. In how a leader handles bad news when the deadline is already slipping.
Your corporate designation gives you the authority to make decisions.
How people experience your leadership determines how willingly they will support them.
P.S. I’d love to know: where have you seen a leader’s reaction to disagreement or bad news prevent honesty, and what would ‘wise leadership’ have looked like in that same moment?
Developing leadership capacity across healthcare and pharma
Purposefully Blended partners with organisations to design and deliver diagnostic-led leadership development that builds the inner capability leaders need to navigate complexity, lead with conviction and create measurable organisational impact.
About the Author
Lucy Philip, Purposefully Blended, Founder
Lucy Philip is the multi-award-winning founder of Purposefully Blended, a boutique Learning and Development Consultancy that blends learning design expertise with high-impact leadership practices to drive sustained behaviour change.
Purposefully Blended has established a strong reputation among pharma and healthcare organisations for developing leaders at all levels through tailored programmes that demonstrate highly significant, measurable impact.
