Management Interview

Since my field of study is in pharmacy, I decided to interview a pharmacy manager at the local pharmacy. For the purposes of anonymity, he will be referred to as Harry. Harry has been a manager at the pharmacy for three years and was promoted from within, having previously served as a pharmacy tech. In this interview, Harry was asked a variety of questions, such as what his typical day at work was like and what important skills he found most useful in his role. This paper will summarize the interview results and provide a summary of what I learned from the interview

Harry first described his typical day at work as responding to a number of emails and messages from upper management and then having a meeting with employees about goals that have been set and how to achieve them. As the manager of a retail pharmacy, Harry is in a position between two poles—on the one hand, he is dealing with employees, techs, and customers; on the other hand, he is dealing with upper management and is responsible for performance, productivity, customer satisfaction, and so on. It can be a very stressful job because of the high level of demand encountered from all sides and one has to keep one’s wits about oneself in order to satisfy the various demands that come day in and day out. Throughout the course of the day, he will engage with workers, answer questions, engage with customers, fill prescriptions, monitor output, report to upper management, give advice about medication and offer helpful suggestions to clients who want alternative solutions to prescriptions. Each and every day is very busy and offers its own unique challenges, but Harry noted that he always tried to make time for everybody no matter who it was because that, he found, was what made the workplace environment a happy one and that was what made customers happy as well. This aligns with what Seppala (2006) has noted about managers, who do give equal opportunity to one and all: “Bosses who show they are fair also inspire greater dedication, citizenship, and productivity.”
Harry stated that what he enjoyed most about his job was being in responsible for the pharmacy’s operations. Having a degree of autonomy while being accountable to someone higher up the chain of authority was gratifying to him; it signified to him at this point in his life that he was doing something meaningful—that he had achieved something, he noted. It was clear that leading others gives him a feeling of satisfaction, knowing that others will look to him for guidance, answers, and that he is routinely able to offer comfort and assistance while maintaining order and productivity within the pharmacy. He identified stress as the only thing about managing that he did not like, but that he was willing to accept the good with the bad in order to do this job. He felt that he played an active role in leading the team at the pharmacy and took pride and pleasure in motivating them to do their jobs well. An example he gave of this was that he tried to get his team members to be relationship-focused and pragmatic in dealing with customers, answering questions and being helpful but also being mindful that many others are waiting with their own needs as well. As Winsborough and Chamorro-Premuzic (2017) point out, this is one of the ways in which team managers can get teams to engage more effectively in the workplace.
Another method that is recommended is that team leaders should get their followers on the same page as they are on so that they all want the same thing: “if your team wants what you want them to want, you are five times more likely to get it” (Keller, 2012). Harry noted that one of the most important skills he had discovered that allowed him to be successful was exactly this bit of advice from Keller (2012): whenever there was a push from upper management to reach a productivity level, Harry would communicate a vision and ideal to his team members so that they wanted to reach the goal just as much as he did to help the pharmacy achieve its objectives. One way he did this was to incentivize them. He discovered that incentives helped to motivate his team members. For example, if they reached the productivity goals set by upper management for the pharmacy, the team was awarded with a gift card to their favorite restaurant. As Gerhart and Fang (2015) show, a bonus like this is an external incentive that can be used to motivate employees to perform at high levels.
Other important skills Harry learned to be an effective manager were communication skills and social and emotional intelligence. He explained that all of these were very useful especially when it came to employees having bad days or customers having difficulty explaining their needs. Being able to assess when someone was having an emotional day and using calm and soothing tones could help to detoxify the situation, he said. As Goleman and Boyatzis (2017) point out, there are four domains to emotional intelligence and social intelligence: 1) self-awareness, 2) self-management, 3) social awareness, and 4) relationship management: “in order to excel, leaders need to develop a balance of strengths across the suite of EI competencies. When they do that, excellent business results follow.” This was what Harry experienced in his role as manager. Thanks to his communication skills and use of emotional and social intelligence he has twice been awarded for his managerial excellence.
Harry prefers the servant leadership style, which Griffin, Phillips and Gully (2016) show focuses on meeting the needs of others so that they can be successful in their own lives and work. He says that he learned about servant leadership by following the career of Sir Richard Branson: he has always been impressed by the way Branson would make sure that his workers and clients had everything they required—and then he would get out of the way and let them do what they needed to do. De Vries (1998) likewise emphasized this aspect of servant leadership and showed that great managers are necessarily great servants of others and lead by having an accommodative demeanor.
One of the most challenging problems Harry ever had to deal with as a manager was when he was first starting out—it was hard for him to know what to prioritize and he kept finding himself juggling too many things at once, unsure of what should be done first. He overcame the problem by listing his priorities for the next day at the end of every day. That way he was not running around trying to put out multiple fires at once but could get through the most important things first.
Some of the changes he has seen in his work include working with younger people. He notes that young generation views life differently and is more tech-savvy than he ever was at their age. They are not afraid to voice their opinions and he is surprised at how accepting they are of most things. He finds that he himself has to watch what he says lest he offend them, though, as they are sensitive when it comes to language. He said he manages this change by getting to know what offends and pleases the young generation so that he can know what is off limits in terms of conversation and what is okay to talk about.
Harry went on to note that one thing he would like to learn to keep developing in his role and growing as a person is how collaborate with the younger generation. He noticed that many younger persons have great technical skills with computers and that he is often impressed by their ability to solve problems on computers that he has. He noticed that he, too, has communication skills that he would like to share with them because many young persons, he feels, could benefit from developing social and emotional intelligence skills. He feels that by collaborating with more young people in the industry they could develop mutually beneficial relationships so that he learns from them some things involving computers and they learn some things from him involving communication skills.
One question I asked Harry was whether he had any goals in mind as a manager. He said that his number one goal was to get home happy at the end of the day. When I asked what he meant by this, he explained: sometimes you go to work, and everything goes wrong, and you take all that frustration with you home to your family—and that is not fair. They have their own issues they are dealing with and they do not need to be burdened by your problems that you are having at work. He says, therefore, that his number one goal is always to leave it at work, whatever it is that is bothering him. If he can address the issue before he goes home for the night it is even better, but if he cannot then he sets that issue as his number one priority for the next day and tackles it first thing in the morning when he arrives at work.
Since it seemed that Harry faced a lot of stress in his job, I asked him what coping mechanisms he employed to get him through his day. He indicated that that best way for him to cope with stress was to take breaks throughout the day. He said he advised his team to do this as well. He noted that it was no good for the workplace culture to be negatively affected by build-ups in stress levels and that it was far healthier for everyone to take a ten or fifteen minute break to decompress and let off some steam. Otherwise, work can become so burdensome that stress can actually make you sick. He stated that any recommendation of his for dealing with stress was to get a hobby that you could do when not at work—something enjoyable to take your mind off work. For him, it was constructing model airplanes. He said that he could spend the weekend on a model airplane and feel as though a ton of bricks had fallen from his back. Stress relief is very important in management as Griffin et al. (2016) show, and Harry agreed that without stress relief he would not be nearly as effective.
When I asked him if he had any lessons or advice to give someone just starting out as a manager in the field, he said that one should always try to listen. He said that managers do not have to be autocratic or authoritarian but rather that they should always be willing to hear what someone else is saying because most of the times that person is going to have some perspective on the situation that the manager could really benefit from by hearing. He says that he never lost anything by listening but that, on the contrary, he has gained a lot of followers and friends at work by taking the time to listen—which is important when it comes time to accomplish some new task or goal set by upper management. When workers know that you have taken the time to hear them out and appreciate their feelings and perspectives, they are more willing to help you when push comes to shove and everyone has to buckle down to meet a productivity goal.
What we learned from the interview was that being a manager comes with a lot of responsibility on both ends: one is responsible to the upper level management who oversees the region and one is responsible to one’s employees and customers as they rely on you for guidance and support. So the manager is constantly being pulled in two directions and has to maintain composure the whole time. A good way to do this is to maintain one’s stress levels. Harry recommended making sure you have a refreshing hobby to go home to at the end of the day. We also learned that it is best if you can leave your work at work and not bring it home to the family. And if necessary it is okay to take time away from things at work and go for a walk or take a fifteen minute break just to decompress. These are things that help to keep the workplace environment upbeat and productive.
Another thing we learned was that managers need to be mindful of the feelings of others and to use communication skills and social and emotional intelligence. Harry said that before this question he had not thought much about it but upon reflection he was convinced that social and emotional intelligence were two very essential tools that a manger needs to communicate effectively—the primary reason being that they both allow the manager to pick up on social and emotional cues, such as non-verbal gestures and body language, and know how to respond in an effective way. He says that these skills have helped him defuse many situations.
We also learned that one of the best things a manager can do is be prepared to listen to others and spend time simply hearing what other people have to say. Harry noted that bad managers are ones who do not care about others, either their employees or their customers. He said these types of managers do not last long: they alienate everyone and eventually sales and productivity suffer. We both agreed that by listening to others needs and even serving those needs in a servant leadership style, one can build rapport and establish good relationships with stakeholders so that the workplace culture becomes full of vitality and allows everyone to feel as though they are welcomed. It is also a great way to help motivate, as people love to be heard.

References
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Griffin, R., Phillips, J. & Gully, S. (2016). Organizational Behavior: Managing People
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