Building Great Pharmacy Teams Through Leadership and Training

Building a successful pharmacy business requires building an outstanding pharmacy team. A team full of engaged, empowered employees who want to, and are capable of, doing their absolute best every single day.

This dream team is achievable. No matter how big or small your pharmacy is. But it starts at the very top.  This quote from John Maxwell’s “21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership” sums up perfectly why excellent leadership is critical to the success of any business.

“Only if you reach your potential as a leader do your people have a chance to reach their potential.”

While this concept isn’t exactly new, it’s perhaps more important than ever.  Which is why we sat down recently with Leadership Expert and Certified Business Growth Specialist Terri Norvell to talk about exactly why leadership is so very important and how good leadership, coupled with training, can help you build the very best pharmacy team.

Here are five quick tidbits from that conversation that we hope will motivate you to think about leadership and employee empowerment.

Leaders need to define their vision for the company or group.

Share your mission, vision, and purpose. Studies confirm that people are motivated by a sense of bigger purpose. Employees want to know that they are contributing to something bigger and without that mission, vision, and purpose, it’s almost impossible for employees to engage in the ways you need them to.

Leading and growth are not the same thing as climbing the ladder.

Not every pharmacy employee wants to take on a managerial role. That doesn’t mean they don’t want to grow and be the absolute best at their job. Don’t make the mistake of focusing on growth via promotion. Provide the opportunity for progression through learning and training.

30% of workers are disengaged.

Terri shared this statistic from a recent study of Millennials. And this is important because by the year 2025 Millennials will make up 75% of the workforce. Think about having 10 or 12 employees, 3 of which are disengaged. Those 3 employees create drag. They don’t provide customer-centric service and they can also lead to the loss of your high performers who have to pick up the slack and work in a less than ideal culture.

Every employee should want to grow and get better.

If they don’t… you need to evaluate whether you have the right people on your team.

You can reduce turnover when you provide coaching, training and growth opportunities.

Employee turnover is expensive and time consuming. Turnover is also avoidable. Regular meetings with managers can help to increase engagement. Providing job specific training can improve confidence and an employee’s ability to do their job efficiently. And employees are going to be more likely to stick around if they are given a chance to grow their skill set.

The ball is in your court.

It’s easy to say, “I don’t have enough time” or “I’m not sure where to start”. Easy. But it won’t solve any problems. Invest in yourself as a leader so that you can then invest in your team. Inspired leadership helps to empower your employees do their best. Focus on engagement and set your team up for success.

Ready to take the next steps?

These few pieces of information are just the tip of the iceberg. Our full conversation with Terri Norvell is full of more insights, resources, and actionable takeaways. You can watch the full interview here.  Best of all, it’s a great foundation for an upcoming presentation where Terri will join us again to talk with pharmacy leaders about the challenges they’ve faced and overcome.