Serving as a professional association board member: Benefits to leaders and their employers

This commentary, written by past presidents of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy, highlights the benefits of serving in leadership roles within professional associations to the leaders themselves, their employers, their colleagues, and the broader profession. Fostering the development of leaders is a necessary step to advance pharmacy's future. Leaders benefit not only from the reinvigoration and personal growth associated with their service effort but also from the further development of skills such as collaboration and consensus-building, written and oral communication, critical thinking, leadership, and time management. The honing of these skills has benefits at the leader's workplace. Colleagues in businesses outside health care view this type of leadership experience as external training to develop and refine organizational communication and leadership skills and better prepare their employees for the future. The leader also learns best practices and new perspectives that, when shared locally, can energize the employer organization. Beyond the benefits to the leader and the leader's employer, there are holistic benefits of association service to the profession and interprofessional teams. With this in mind, we suggest that employers welcome opportunities to have their coworkers serve in elected or appointed positions within professional associations.