Understanding and knowing yourself and how you affect others is known as ‘decentring’. How you lead, manage and communicate with employees will obviously affect their response, behaviour and their performance. 

We are all different; one approach may make perfect sense to you, but it can seem impossible to another person. Assessing your leadership style is a useful start and there are a host of different techniques and tools available. 

Is there one correct leadership style? It really does depend on the situation. Above all, it should be a balanced leadership approach. You can find a free online leadership assessment on MindTools. You’ll be able to complete a fairly basic free one, which will give you a useful overview of your leadership style, but there’s plenty of material on the site if you get hooked. 

In the next module in this series, we will explore how you can use a ‘style compass’ to identify your style and those you work with, with specific reference to the key drivers and issues in your pharmacy. When you appreciate how you behave and how you affect others, you will have a better chance of knowing how to influence them positively. 

Leadership involves getting others to do things. That may sound simple, but many managers lack the ability to communicate clearly and sell their vision and ideas. If you were tasked with encouraging your team to adopt a new service, you would need to sell its features, benefits, hopes and dreams.

Features are the tangible characteristics of an idea, benefits convert those features into something people want. The features of a service remain the same, but the benefits of that service will differ, depending on the end user. In convincing people to use a service, you have to relay the benefits that are relevant to the individual.

It’s therefore a good idea to start with what the other person wants and needs, rather than with the idea itself. How do you sell hopes and dreams? Consider this common sense example in which understanding another person is the key to getting them to deliver.