Category Archives: leadership

Measure Up!

17 Wednesday May 2017

Posted by in Developing talent, Effectiveness, leadership, Management, Results

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If we worked together to take a snapshot of your salon’s culture, what would we find? If we examined the series of people, events, and decisions that led to your current situation, would we discover something planned and cultivated or something that, “just happened”? If you had it to do over—or better yet—if you were to be more proactive in the future, where would you start?

Lead by setting standards of performance.

I continue to find four key areas that we must proactively manage in order to drive a very large piece of our salon culture to ensure our long-term viability as an organization. Each of these areas must be a priority, they must be constantly explained, examined, and shared by every employee and manager, and they must be executed to a certain level of excellence. In other words, there must be standards of performance against which we all must measure up.

Revenue. Many, if not most, salons are not generating basic income-expense=profit/loss reports. Even fewer pay attention to them as fundamental decision making tools for planning their viable futures. I am not exaggerating: it would be better to redirect any/all money that you spend on coaching, consulting, and seminars each year and spend it on a bookkeeper every month. The two standards of performance we should work toward regarding revenue are:

  • Leadership: To understand and communicate the amount of revenue required to be profitable—down to a daily basis.
  • Team: To understand the share of revenue each person is directly (or indirectly) responsible to generate—down to a daily basis.

Technical Skills. This is the first thing it takes to make revenue. Our stylists, and other practitioners, must perform services if we expect our guests to pay us. All our schooling, apprenticing, and ongoing technical education must be in service to our technical skills. If you think about an assistant, recently graduated and licensed and newly hired, she wouldn’t claim to be a “stylist” just because she learned our shampoo bowl ritual. Similarly, we wouldn’t consider her a stylist if the only service she could perform were a blow out. Two standards of performance we should work toward are:

  • Breadth. To satisfy the broadest range of potential guests, in the most convenient way for them, every stylist should receive education to enable her to create a minimum set of cuts, colors, and styles. Then, with practice and eventual mastery, each of our stylists must be able to handle women’s short hair, women’s long hair, up-do’s, single process color, highlights, men’s short hair, and so on. The idea is to set a minimum performance standard around how many different types of looks each of our stylists can create.
  • Depth. This is about developing true mastery. Hearing about how to do a chin-length bob is different than attending a hands-on class. Attending the class is different than practicing on a mannequin, and that’s different than doing it for a model or a paying guest. Set a performance standard around the number and types of education, practice, and live performance each stylist must complete—and then measure his results on a consistent basis.

Guest Experience. This is the second thing it takes to generate revenue. In my opinion it is also the area that is talked about the most—with the least to back it up. Most salons I’ve worked with have a technical training calendar which they refer to as education. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a guest experience or people skills training calendar. We need to set these standards of performance.

  • Leadership. Since it’s likely to be a new activity for us, the first thing we need to do is set a standard for how many guest experience and people skills classes we will conduct each and every month. The idea would be to start with one and then grow it to two, then three, etc. until we find an optimum number of “soft skills” training to balance and enrich our technical training.
  • Team. With virtually the same intent as our technical training, we set standards around how many types of classes each team member must complete in order to measure up to our people skills and guest experience expectations. The basics could be chosen from a list like: Intro to People Skills, Active Listening, Building Rapport, Making Conversation, and then move into experience stages such as Phones, Greeting and Check In, Shampoo Bowl, Consultations, and so on.

Personal Strengths and Development. Just because I’m writing doesn’t mean you’re reading. The same goes for setting performance standards—just because we set them doesn’t mean our team will take them seriously. This is hard work for everyone involved and it requires long-term commitment. The best way to start is by listening and communication not by dictating. I’ve always found that people are naturally motivated when they get to spend a great deal of time in areas where they feel strong. Let’s find out what those strengths are.

  • 1:1. One-on-one meetings are a must. They need to happen 3-4 times a month, last at least 30 minutes, and be guided by an agenda. Among other things, the agenda must include time for us to listen to, and get to know, each of our team members. Find out where they believe they are strong and compare that to your observations—and to the standards of performance you have set for the organization.
  • Development Plans. Listening and learning allows us as leaders to choose the best path for improving our team members’ performance from where it is to where it needs to be. Whether that’s revenue generation, technical skills, soft skills, or organizational behavior, try to avoid “fixing” everyone’s weaknesses, rather, start from a position of strength and build them up until their comfort zone expands and their improving confidence inspires them to take on new challenges.

 

Multiply Your Impact

26 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by in Concentrating effort, Contribution, Effectiveness, leadership, Management

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Who gets promoted at your company? Who are your managers and what kind of performance did they demonstrate to earn their positions? Who deserves to have people “under them”?

People who are exceptional at getting things done, through their own direct effort, are often the first to earn promotions. As they begin to supervise, manage, and ultimately lead people in their organizations they soon learn:

What got you here won’t get you there.

In other words, the skills an excellent individual possesses are just the beginning of what it takes to be even an adequate manager and leader. Instead of promoting our best “doers” we need to ask:

Are you interested in learning how to achieve results indirectly—through other people?

The answer to this question must be a resounding, “yes.” Effective managers and leaders must first possess the desire to multiply their impact beyond what they were able to accomplish on their own. If they don’t want to make a greater impact, they will never acquire the necessary skills to lead and manage. They will simply set about doing their new job just like they did their old one, which often creates a confusing mash up of power and influence instead of entire groups of people working to create something greater than themselves.

As owners, leaders, and executives we also have to ask ourselves a question:

Are we ready to present the newly promoted with the knowledge and training to help them build the skills they’ll need to make the transition from super achiever to supervisor, manager, and future leader?

If our answer is yes, then here is what I believe is the underpinning of everything to do with mobilizing a group who wants to multiply its impact beyond what any one individual could achieve alone.

Inspire. As leaders our job is to inspire our team with a desirable future outcome. A vivid description that inspires our team to pool our individual efforts for the benefit of our customers, ourselves, our company—and even society—is our first task.

Buy-in. Once we paint a vision of the destination, our next objective is to earn the buy-in of each team member. Admittedly, this can be a detailed and, perhaps, messy step but it’s critical to get everyone “on board.” Sometimes that means some give-and-take or for some members to suspend their disbelief for a while.

Share. At this point average leaders will emphasize “how” they suggest “what” the team should do to get started. Some, falling back on their old skills as an individual doer, will even try to detail every step of the way. To be sure, we leaders have good ideas, but if we did our jobs correctly in hiring the people on our teams, what we need to share with our people is “why” we are setting about a task and then let them take on the “how’s” and the “what’s.” After all, that’s why we hired them, yes?

Own. The holy grail of mobilizing a group is when our teams move beyond buy-in and take an ownership position in our vision. That doesn’t mean mutiny or coopting our vision. It means their commitment to our vision is as strong as our own. It can be scary when someone else owns “your idea” with you but it’s well worth the emotional risk. Rest assured that’s what it takes to multiply your impact.

Communication Plan

05 Friday Aug 2016

Posted by in Concentrating effort, Continuous improvement, Effectiveness, leadership, Management, Results

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In an earlier post we explored the definitions of Leadership, Management, and People Skills. Among all the people skills, e.g., self-control, social awareness, and problem solving; communication is by far the most important. After all, what good is a leader, manager, or employee if s/he can’t convey basic information? As much as we may try we can’t read each other’s minds. That’s why communication is #1.

Information is the lifeblood of your organization. If information isn’t flowing in a regular, efficient, and predictable way you are starving your team of the very thing they need to adopt your values, purpose, and vision as their professional cause.

Here is a simple and effective way to set up communication within your organization.

Yearly. Once a year host a celebration for the entire team. Make it all about the goals you’ve achieved together, the goals and priorities for the new year, and a time to strengthen your emotional bonds. Whether your celebration feels like a business function or a flat-out party is up to you.

Quarterly. Every three months bring the team together in a business or semi-business atmosphere to discuss this year’s progress toward your goals and priorities—including financials. Spend 2-5 hours together sharing information, improving your plans, and figuring out how to do things better. Document your take-aways.

Monthly. This is the classic rhythm to conduct one-on-ones. It’s also the best time to share financial, operational, personnel, and educational details. Celebrate outstanding performance. Think: client champion of the month and major projects completed, as well as upcoming promotional events, etc.

Weekly. Start every week with 45-60 minutes of group discussion about your book, employee schedules, promotions/events beginning or ending, and news that affects everyone. It’s hard to get the whole crew together once a week so consider doing a conference call using a free call-in service.

Daily. Start everyday with a team huddle. Talk about your book, who’s working, and share any last-minute reminders. Use the daily huddle to help the whole team get into their client service mindsets. Feedback on performance should happen daily—as close to the example as possible. All good, of course.

Constantly. It used to be the only way to post timely information was on a white board. Use technology to communicate in real time, make documents available to anyone day or night, or start a new discussion. Dropbox and Google Drive are great for storing and sharing documents. Consider how social media like Facebook Groups and messaging apps can help with real time communication.

Active Listening

04 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by in Concentrating effort, Contribution, leadership, Management, Shared values

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Leaders and managers want to be heard, understood, and to be part of our communities just like anyone else. We appreciate it when people listen to our ideas and try to connect with us because it makes us feel good. That alone should be enough to motivate us to listen and try to understand others. As leaders and managers we often give ourselves too much permission to talk when we should be reminding ourselves to listen.

We always need to model the behavior we expect to see in our organizations. Given that, we have a special obligation to listen and to listen well. Here is a quick summary of the key “active listening” skills we should demonstrate in our personal and professional lives.

  • Attention/Focus. Devote your attention to the other person. Find a place that allows you to do that.
  • Interest. Take a true interest in the person and what s/he is saying. This isn’t a good time to go through the motions.
  • Take Time. Set aside time to listen instead of trying to multi-task. Schedule private appointments when necessary to ensure you have enough time.
  • Body Language. Listen to words, posture, gestures, and tone of voice. Provide plenty of eye contact and use all your senses to understand the other person.
  • Validate. Reassure the speaker that you see their point of view. Even if you don’t yet agree, it’s important you validate his or her point of view.
  • Repeat/Clarify. Repeat what you heard in your own words. “So what I hear you saying is….” is not just a cliché. It allows you to explain what you heard and allows the speaker to verify s/he got her message across.
  • Ask clarifying questions. Rather than interrogating your partner, ask her or him some clarifying questions to solidify your understanding. For example: “When you said (blank) could you clarify what you meant?” “Could you say that a different way so I make sure I understand?” “I’m not sure I understand. Could you go over (blank) again with me?”
  • Feelings. When it’s appropriate, probe for feelings. Communication is not only about what a person thinks. It’s also about how s/he feels about what s/he thinks.
  • Counter Argument. Do not waste your listening time planning what to say. Sit tight. Let the speaker finish and then interact with him or her. Save your counter arguments—if any—until you’re certain you understand the other party.

Thanks for listening. Now, what did you hear and how will you put it into action?

Leadership is a Verb

03 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by in Concentrating effort, Contribution, Effectiveness, leadership, Management, Results

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I searched amazon.com for “books on leadership” and it returned 21,000+ hits. I googled “leadership seminars” and received 76 million+ results.

Apparently, people buy products and services with the word “leadership” in them. It’s a lot like how the word “natural” or the word “organic” helps companies sell food (and haircare products). We know that we want those things even if we’re not precisely sure what they are.

Many of my clients struggle to develop a shared understanding of what leaders are supposed to do versus what managers are supposed to do. Here is how I define these terms simply and usefully. Please give this some consideration—it may save you a lot of reading!

MANAGEMENT

The manager’s job is to create results. When J. B. Say defined management in 1767 he said, “The manager is responsible for directing vision and resources toward greater results.” Of course, he’s talking about one person’s impact (a manager) on more than one other person (employees) in an organization.

LEADERSHIP

The leader’s job is to create priorities and then stimulate individuals and groups to take action. This definition tells us that “leader” is not a noun it’s a verb. In other words, a leader is not a special type of person. She or he engages in a special type of action, that is, pointing others in the right direction and stimulating them to pursue a certain end.

PEOPLE SKILLS

The ability to communicate, interact, and connect with individuals and groups. We all need people skills regardless if we are managers, a leaders, or followers.

STYLE

Leaders and Managers can do their jobs, using different styles, and almost any style can be successful. Prevalent misconceptions are that successful leaders have a particular style (e.g., they are charismatic) and that managers have a particular style (e.g., they are boring). The truth is that any style can work—as long as the person has the people skills to get others to work toward the organization’s vision, mission, and goals.