What is quality? What does good (or great) quality look like? Who determines what is “good” or “poor” quality? Does quality effect leadership or does leadership drive quality? How can strong, positive leadership raise quality standards and are we even ready to do that? How can we make each (every)thing better?

These are just some of the questions I ask myself, research, reflect, and train for. I see the lack of leadership training for bench scientists, which inevitably leads to poor or underperforming organizational “leaders”.

Is that the scientist’s fault or is it the quality system’s responsibility to properly equip all its members?

I contend that it’s both: the scientist must take self-responsibility for his/her own personal and professional growth and the quality system shouldn’t wait to act. “Quality, Forensic Leadership (QFL)” is my attempt to bridge the divide; to create a positive, growth-oriented environment for enhancing quality and building successful forensic leadership.

We know there are areas for improvement – that is the cornerstone of quality and science; continuous improvement and advancement. Yet how often do our egos keep us from advancing, asking the questions, or listening to the hard answers.

Raising our collective leadership level will increase our professional quality standards leading to better, improved forensic science – and forensic scientists. It means modeling the behavior we expect of our teams. It also means moving beyond the checkboxes, looking in the mirror and recognizing our blind spots.

Thank you for joining me on this exploration of quality leadership! It IS possible to combine high standards with excellent leadership, and together we can work to (slowly) model a strong culture for those who follow.