Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a cytology laboratory manager and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.

A Cytology Laboratory Manager has the primary task of performing complex medical laboratory tests for diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of diseases. Additionally, he or she will provide technical management for all cytology laboratories while at the same time ensuring high-quality technical performance within the laboratory.

Other duties and responsibilities that he or she will be assigned include; coordinate all training for current and new employees within the department, review all procedures and policies for the department, evaluate new laboratory cytological procedures, attend to meetings and conferences, ensure all cytology procedures are done within the confines of the stipulated rules and regulations and manage the budget and inventory of the cytology lab.

Core Skills Required to be a Cytology Laboratory Manager

Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.

Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.

A cytology laboratory manager should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.

Facilitation:

Facilitation is making tasks or life easy for others while ensuring the daily running of successful meetings or workshops or business at large.

A Cytology Laboratory Manager must use facilitation to process and structure a system that meets the needs of either an individual or a team to help them achieve their goals as well as add value to their lives by making sure each participates.

Decision Making:

Decision Making is the art of making choices by identifying a decision, gathering information and assessing alternative resolutions before settling on one.

A Cytology Laboratory Manager cannot afford to make poor decisions, that's why he ought to develop a systematic approach to decision making that allows him to make every decision with skill, confidence, and wisdom producing a final choice of competence in the workplace.

Strategic Planning:

Strategic Planning is organizational management activity that is used to set priorities, focus energy and resources, strengthen operations while guaranteeing that employees and other stakeholders are working towards common goals.

A Cytology Laboratory Manager should be liable to develop the systematic tools to be used in the organization's processes that coordinate and align resources and actions with the mission, vision, and strategy throughout the organization.

Supervisory Skills:

Supervisory Skills is the ability to lead and manage people effectively in a difficult and challenging atmosphere in the day to day life.

A Cytology Laboratory Manager must cultivate, develop and refine management and supervisory skills to strengthen the present as well as build the future of the business by becoming competent in such roles like problem-solving, communication, managing people, time management, leadership, planning, etc.

Emotion Management:

Emotion Management is the ability to realize, readily accept and successfully control feelings on oneself and sometimes in others around you by being in complete authority over your thoughts and feelings that are generated whenever your values are touched.

A Cytology Laboratory Manager must be able to manage his emotions as well as assist the staff to control their emotions to ensure that the professional reputation, the efficiency, and productivity is not compromised.

Commitment to the Job:

Commitment to the Job is the feeling of responsibility that a person has towards a mission and goals of an organization.

A Cytology Laboratory Manager should be diligent in helping the employees connect and commit to their job by creating proper communication channels that make the employees feel listened to and encouraged to provide feedback thus creating mutual trust and respect in the workplace.

Monitoring Others:

Monitoring others is tracking employee activities monitor the worker engagement with the workplace-related tasks.

A Cytology Laboratory Manager should always monitor his workers to measure productivity, track attendance, incoming and outgoing phone calls, safety spying, employee theft, employee's location, horseplay and collect proof of hours worked using the latest computer detective monitoring system that provides accurate data that cannot be debated.

Goal and Objective Setting:

Goal and Objective Setting is the strategic plan that is set and laid down identifying how goals should be accomplished, by who and by what time.

A Cytology Laboratory Manager must detect and schedule each employee's goals, strategy, and objectives and keep motivating them to ensure all of them are met within the set time bringing growth to both the company and the employee.

Managing Details:

Managing Details is the skill of paying close attention to details of every element of your job performance to ensure nothing is overlooked.

A Cytology Laboratory Manager should be keen to handle every detail using strategic planning and organizational techniques that make it easy to keep track of everything that is happening in the organization consistently desiring to improve their knowledge and skills.

Intercultural Competence:

Intercultural Competence is the knowledge and skills to successfully interact with people from other ethnic, religious, cultural, national and geographic groups.

A Cytology Laboratory Manager should have a high degree of intercultural competence that enables him to have successful interactions with people from different groups as well as train his employees to be sensitive to the cultural differences and be willing to modify their behavior as a sign of respect for each other.

Hard Skills Required to be a Cytology Laboratory Manager

Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.

Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.

A cytology laboratory manager should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.

Cytology Laboratory Manager: Hard skills list

Ancillary Testing and Related Technologies
Analytical
Analyzing cells
Anatomic Pathology
Bacteriology Theory
Biology
Biological Testing Instruments
Biotechnical Theory
Chemistry
Chemistry Theory
Clinical Data
Clinical Research
Clinical Sterilizing Techniques
Computer literacy
Computer-assisted Screening
Cytology
Cytological Procedures/Technologies
Diagnostic
Diagnostic methods, equipment, and technology
Evaluating (evaluating the growing volume of nongynecologic and fine-needle aspiration specimens)
Geometry
Health occupations/medical professions education
Healthcare
Histology
Histologic
Human Tissue
Laboratory Equipment Usage
Laboratory Management
Laboratory Medicine
Laboratory Operations
Laboratory Safety
Laboratory Techniques
Mathematics
Medical Diagnosis Machines and Instruments
Medical Laboratory Specimens (Handle and Store)
Microscopic
Microscopic Interpretation
Microbiology Procedures
Morphology
Molecular Diagnostics
Molecular Genetics
Pathology
Physics
Physical Science
Safety Inspections in Health Care Setting
Screening and Interpretation
Science
Scientific Method
Specimen Collection and Preparation
Statistics
Writing

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