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Leadership insight: Dermot Dolan, Global EHS director, systems and audit, Pfizer

Published on: 4 Jul 2018

Dermot Dolan

Leadership insight: Dermot Dolan, Global EHS director, systems and audit, Pfizer

Moving to a leadership post in a global company was the biggest challenge Dolan has faced professionally. “It was a massive global company and getting up to the pitch of what was required took me three to six months and they were tough, though I have never looked back since,” he says.

One important thing he has learned about working at the safety leader level, he says, is to concentrate not just on the relationships with his manager and his own reports but on his peers in the wider senior management team.

When under stress, Dolan says he is tempted to default to his comfort zone of data analytics, rather than focusing on maintaining relationships. But he has controlled the tendency: “Now I have smart triggers to pull myself out of there and manage it in a different way from before.”

He draws inspiration from colleagues, including Pfizer’s new head of manufacturing and her ability to communicate her passion about her work – “I’ve no shortage of purpose and passion,” he notes, “but it’s about how you articulate that within your team or to whoever you are working with.”

He says he has also learned a lot from Pfizer’s CEO who is piloting the company through a substantial change in its business model: “He has been very smart in how he’s done that.”

Read IOSH Magazine’s full interview with Dermot Dolan: https://www.ioshmagazine.com/article/dermot-dolan-pfizer