PICK Your Leadership Style

As a lover of puzzles, Jayesh Shah was naturally drawn to the ever-evolving world of data and analytics. 

“There are more puzzles and problems that you can solve using data and analytics. This is very exciting to me,” shared Shah. 

Shah’s excitement and passion for connecting the dots, alongside teams with diverse perspectives, accelerated him to his role as the senior director of enterprise analytics at McKesson Corporation. Throughout his growth, Shah developed his leadership style: positivity, inclusivity, curiosity and kindness, or PICK. These are his four fundamental characteristics for a leader. 

Shah took some time to share his insights on his four characteristics and how he has used them to piece together a trustworthy and supportive analytics team at McKesson.

Positivity

“I’m positive. I start with that because sometimes that gets overlooked. The fact that you can always lead with a smile,” said Shah.

Being an optimist, you can be pragmatic about the challenges, but you can still have a positive frame of mind.
 

Leading with a positive attitude has helped Shah on many difficult projects throughout his career. Several include breaking down the culturally fortified walls of different business units and data silos. This smile and shine helped him to be an evangelist for his projects and share the benefits of data and analytics to others who didn’t quite understand.

Inclusivity

When asked about his leadership style, Shah discussed the importance of being inclusive and open to the ideas of others.

“Everyone has a seat and voice at the table and is able to share ideas freely. This has helped to evolve our solution,” Shah said. 

Shah’s inclusive approach helped him advance their solutions further than expected. His team understands they are accountable for the success of their solutions, so everyone’s opinion matters. “We brainstorm, bounce ideas off each other and run through scenarios together,” said Shah. 

Even outside his teams, Shah uses his practice of inclusivity to meet and embrace the customers where they are. He has found that adoption will suffer if the users are not included throughout the process, especially at the beginning and the end of the projects. Inviting and welcoming diverse perspectives to the table from both his team and customers has formed this key characteristic to Shah’s leadership style. 

Curiosity

After setting a positive and inclusive table, Shah discussed the importance of curiosity. For his team to believe his positivity and inclusivity were genuine, they must also understand this third piece, curiosity. 

His biggest learning challenge was when he entered the world of operational forecasting. Initially, there was a large learning curve. He needed to learn the process, which resulted in Shah asking a plethora of questions to his new team. While some teams may misinterpret his questions as Shah being untrusting of his new team or doubtful in their abilities, his positivity and inclusivity helped to shine the light on his true reasons. 

“Initially, my curiosity was about needing to learn the process because I was new in the operational forecasting world, but it helped as I first built trust with my team, so they didn’t feel threatened when I asked questions. They knew where I was coming from, trying to better understand,” said Shah.

They know the place I am coming from is more a curious person, eager to learn, versus a boss questioning their work. I am a learner at heart.

Kindness

Shah’s three leadership characteristics lead to a final foundational characteristic: kindness. Although Shah did not formally describe this as his style, he demonstrated it throughout our conversation. Shah boasted about one thing more than anything else, “having an awesome team.” His kindness resonated towards his team through his stories of their successes and accomplishments. 

Throughout his career, Shah has “picked” a leadership style that allowed him to find the pieces that are missing within his organization and snap them together with a smile. His positivity, inclusivity, curiosity, and kindness have created a strong, repeatable foundation for him to inspire others to think, grow, and build the future of analytics at McKesson.

Special thanks to Jayesh Shah and McKesson Corporation.

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