The role of pharmacy has evolved over the past two decades, from one of primarily supplying medicines to a one-stop local health resource offering medicines optimisation, effective self-care management and public health promotion. This evolution requires the pharmacist to come out of the dispensary and become more patient facing, while leading a well-trained team with the appropriate skill mix to manage the workload.

Any effective leader has confidence in their abilities and a belief that they are in control of their environment. Breaking this down further, it appears that confidence is driven by the twin virtues of self esteem and self efficacy. Self esteem relates to an individual's own feelings of worth. Self efficacy relates to the individual's belief around the likelihood of succeeding.

Self esteem also relates to the degree of contentment you have with being yourself and therefore impacts on personal happiness. It's important to appreciate that developing self esteem alone does not necessarily bring success. However, it is a key contributory ingredient.

People with high self efficacy are more likely to see barriers and difficulties as exciting challenges, and knuckle down to the task at hand, focused and determined. As always, there is a balance to be struck, and you need to appreciate the boundary of where well grounded self esteem and self efficacy become narcissism in terms of inflated self importance.

Here are some other ideas that could help you to develop your own self esteem and self efficacy:

• Recognise what other people appreciate and value about you
• Allow people to praise you, and resist the temptation to brush aside positive feedback
• Try not to compare yourself to others
• Feel genuinely pleased for others when things go well for them
• Enjoy it when something goes better than you thought it would
• Make a conscious decision to choose to complete a task, rather than having to do it.