Pharma is a high-pressure, high-regulation environment with the goal post changing quite frequently and legislative assumption forming the base of decision making and plans. The science is complex, there are very high stakes and more often than not there is decision ambiguity. The moment someone steps into a senior leadership role the expectations rise dramatically and this is were most leaders get stuck.
Along the years, working with so many leaders, I was driven by the curiosity to understand what makes some succeed shortly after the role change and what made others struggle. It became clear that the vast majority do not struggle because they lack capability or knowledge, but rather because they change title but forget to change the behaviour and adapt to the needs and approach of the new role. It is what I call the Senior Shift, the mandatory behaviour and mindset change for any new senior pharma leader.
1. Stop doing, start directing
In many industries the senior leaders have been promoted to their new roles because they have done a great job in their previous one, which usually involves exceptional execution. These people are doers. They see a problem they fix it. They absolutely thrive in these environments and have the capacity to mobilise resources and work with speed to manage whatever crisis arrived short term. But this type of behaviour is the one they need to leave behind once they get promoted to more strategic roles, because senior leadership is not about output is about orchestration.
The old behaviour “I’ll fix it” needs to leave room for a new one “I’ll enable the right people to fix it”, because directing does not equate stepping back, but stepping up.
2. Replace speed with prioritisation
For many operational leaders speed is a superpower. It enables them to act fast and solve the problems. In senior leadership role the balance changes as speed is not of essence. In a strategic role it is less important how quick a project is done, it is more important to prioritise the right project an make sure that one receives the required airtime. Pharma leaders need to juggle competing priorities: regulatory deadlines, clinical milestones, safety escalations, stakeholders expectations, making it really hard sometimes to know where their attention needs to go first.So moving intentionally, not fast, becomes their job.
There is an “urgency”…. to shift from “I’ll do it know” to “I’ll do what matters most”.
3. Trade certainty for judgement
The same as speed is the operational leader superpower, the ability to take decision without certainty is the senior leader’s one. In a high-pressure, highly regulated environment, clarity rarely exists. Incomplete data, evolving science, shifting regulatory guidance can create a very blurry picture and senior leaders need to have the ability to take decisions in these less perfect scenarios.
Operational leaders are trained to seek precision — to validate, verify, and confirm before acting. That mindset ensures safety and compliance, but at senior level it can slow momentum and erode confidence. Waiting for perfect clarity in a world that never provides it means decisions arrive too late to matter. Senior leadership demands the courage to decide amid ambiguity and the wisdom to adjust as new information emerges. Judgment replaces certainty. It’s the ability to weigh evidence, experience, and context — and then act. It’s not recklessness; it’s informed confidence. Senior leaders understand that decisions are rarely perfect, but progress depends on making them anyway.
The operational behaviour: ” I need more data”, the senior behaviour: ” I’ll make the best call with the data I have””
4. Let go of control. Build trust instead
Working under pressure can persuade many leaders to tighten their grip. The need to check, to double-check, to over-manage is understandable when stakes are high and the impact on other people lives, like in the pharma industry, is tangible and sometimes critical. Yet this behaviour, while comforting in the short term, becomes corrosive over time. It drains energy, slows decision‑making, and signals to the team that the leader doesn’t trust them.
Control is often rooted in fear — fear of mistakes, fear of scrutiny, fear of losing credibility. Managers who have thrived by being meticulous and hands‑on struggle to let go because control once equaled competence. But at senior level, that same instinct becomes a bottleneck.
Trust is not blind optimism; it’s an intentional leadership choice. It means setting clear expectations, defining outcomes, and empowering others to deliver. It’s about replacing supervision with stewardship — shifting from “I need to be across everything” to “I trust my team to deliver.”
5. Stop protecting yourself, start exposing your thinking
This is probably the hardest shift for most new senior leaders. Many believe they must project certainty, confidence, and expertise at all times, to prove value and show they have deserved the role they are in. But in pharma, credibility is built through transparency — not perfection. People rarely need their leaders to know everything, but they need to understand how the leader thinks. By sharing their reasoning, leaders help their teams to
- anticipate expectations
- understand decisions
- learn how to think at a senior level
Exposing your thinking isn’t vulnerability. It’s leadership.
Senior Leadership is a behaviour not a title. The Senior Shift is not about foregetting all your skills and capabilities, about becoming someone new, someone you are not, it’s about upgrading the behaviours that no longer serve you in your new role.
If you’ve recently stepped into a senior role — or you’re preparing for one — start here:
- Direct, don’t do
- Prioritise, don’t react
- Decide, don’t wait
- Trust, don’t control
- Expose, don’t protect
These five shifts will accelerate your credibility, your confidence, and your impact — especially in the high‑pressure industry like pharma.
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