What are your strengths and weaknesses as a manager in your pharmacy?
Personality tests can help you identify your strengths and weaknesses. You can take a personality test, like Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or this online personality test, to identify general personality characteristics and find your strengths and weaknesses as a manager.
Once you identify your strengths and weaknesses, you can use that knowledge to improve your management style. Here are five common strengths and weaknesses, plus tips to help you develop these characteristics to improve your management skills—and your pharmacy business.
1. Communication
If you have strong communication skills, use them to enhance your relationships with your employees, your patients and your business partners. Use this skill to facilitate brainstorming among your staff and to consult others for advice. Your strong communication skills will help you pull the best ideas from your employees and build mutually beneficial relationships with your business partners.
If communication is an area of weakness for you, try scheduling regular communication with employees and staff. A routine and structure, such as a weekly staff meeting, can push you to communicate more frequently and to hone your communication skills.
2. Teamwork
If you have strong teamwork skills, highlight them by partnering with other businesses and organizations. Work with a local health organization to promote your flu shot program, or with a physician’s office to improve patient adherence.
If you need to strengthen your teamwork skills, start doing team-building activities with your staff, like relay races or team challenges. Activities like these are a fun way to help people learn to trust each other, and will hopefully create a bond between you and your employees, making it easier to work together in the future.
3. Time management
If you have great time management skills, use them to help employees get the most out of the time they spend at work. Improve your staff’s work schedule so your pharmacy isn’t understaffed during peak hours, or overstaffed during lulls.
If time management is an area you need to improve, use technology and tools, like automated calendar reminders, calendars or planners, to keep you on track. Establish a routine and plan your day ahead of time to help you prioritize what tasks you want to spend your time doing. Set reminders and timers to remind you when your scheduled time is up, and try to force yourself to stay on schedule.
4. Problem solving
If you’re an expert problem solver who isn’t stumped by any issue, use this skill to build your relationships with your patients. Devote extra time at the counter to talk to patients and help them solve their health problems. Using this skill in patient interactions will build your reputation as a helpful resource.
Problem solving isn’t everyone’s strength, and if you find it difficult to come up with creative solutions to issues facing your pharmacy, there are a couple of things you can do. First, get creative and set aside time to work on recreational logic problems. Problem solving is like a muscle, you have to warm it up and exercise it in order to start coming up with strong and creative solutions. Second, involve your employees. If you’re facing a problem that stumps you, ask your staff for help. They see problems from a different perspective, and they’ll appreciate that you asked for their input.
5. Delegation
If you have no problem delegating tasks, use this to grow your business. Outsource as many services, such as website development, marketing and accounting, as possible so you can focus on expanding your business. This skill can help you surpass competitors who are too focused on controlling every detail themselves.
If you have a hard time letting go, and trusting others to complete a project as you would, start small to develop your delegation skills. Give one task, such as your pharmacy’s social media page, to a trusted employee. You can create a social media strategy together, and discuss your posting policies so you’re on the same page. Then, let the employee take over the day-to-day posting and management of your profiles while you monitor from afar. Build on this trust and turn over other small, but time consuming daily tasks to other trusted employees.
Use your strengths and improve your weaknesses to develop your business and manage it more efficiently.
