Why is it more important for pharmacy schools to teach pharmacotherapy and kinetics but avoid teaching management? While it is important to understand how a reaction between Bactrim and warfarin will change previous outcome, isn’t it equally important that a pharmacist manager knows how to manage? I spent hours memorizing classes of drugs but never once learned the rules of being an employee or a manager. I thought I’d go over those now…
1. A good manager communicates well. He not only communicates thoroughly and succintely in email, he will pick up the phone to schedule the more serious things. Emails and text messages should only be used for short messages. Anything serious in nature should require a phone call.
2. A good manager will not under any circumstances make promises that can’t be delivered. Not only does this build distrust, it also gives an employee something to bitch about.
3. A good manager would never ask an employee to write up or monitor their peer. Again, mistrust.
4. A good manager thinks about how decisions affect their employees. If the employee is going to be deeply affected, a personal touch with explanation is probably the way to go.
5. A good manager doesn’t keep the riff raff around to use for all the crap jobs.
6. A good manager isn’t a manager obsessed with punitive action.
7. Remember positive feedback is more important than you think!
These are just a few of the tips I’d highly recommend a pharmacist manager begin with learning. Be fair, trustworthy, and logical. Care about your employees. Call them rather than blasting off an instant message. Don’t accuse them for lack of communicating when all of your communications are short sentence fragments via email.
Walk the walk…. don’t just talk the talk!
