Welcome to Salon Culture 101
CULTURE
The
word "culture" comes from the Latin word "cult-U-ra", which derives
from the Latin word "colere", which means "to cultivate".
So,
why am I explaining the meaning of the word "culture" to you. Well, I
like to revisit certain words from time to time and get right to the
root of what a word means, where it comes from, and the history of its
use. It gets me back on track.
So, just as in wine making, a
good culture makes a good wine, and a bad culture makes vinegar. How do
you develop a good culture in your salon? You cultivate it.
OR
VINEGAR or WINE?
Ever
walked into a vinegary salon? I have. I couldn't wait to leave. In
fact, I have done classes for hundreds of salons and I have encountered
a surprisingly large number of vinegary salons. I'm sure the manager
didn't plan to have this type of salon, and it didn't just happen. The
salon owner or manager simply misplaced their focus on financial
issues, or advertising goals, or some other element of management they
considered more important. Perhaps they thought that salon culture was
something that "just happened". It isn't. Vinegar is something that
just happens. Making good wine takes experience, skill, thought,
planning, followup, and intense caring. Good salon cultures are grown
just as good wine is made. If you don't tend to your salon culture, it
will wither, get polluted, and you will end up with a vinegary salon.
On the other hand, if you take careful notice of how your salon culture
is growing, make adjustments, provide guidance, trim the edges, you'll
end up with a great salon and the other management issues like
financial management and advertising will also become easier to manage.
bzzzzzzz
BUZZ and ICK
Most
salon owners don’t call positive salon cultures winey and negative
salons vinegary, most instead, use the terms “Buzz” and “Ick”. Buzz is
great. It is the reason we got into this business in the first place!
It is fun! Employees greet ALL clients, they help each other out, they
respect each other, and the collective output by all of the employees
is higher than one might expect. While on the other hand, employees
that work in an "ick" salon culture, don't help each other out, they
are all after ONLY what's best for themselves, they argue, and this
reflects on their customer service, which is generally lacking, which
drives customers away. It’s the old “Watch out for #1” mindset gone
berserk. Ick is an unpleasant environment and everybody who experiences
it can’t wait to get out of it. Unfortunately, many of the stylists,
clients and other salon staff members that create “ick” in one salon or
spa, leave and do it again at another one. Many times the salon staff
think that it’s up to the salon manager/owner to monitor the buzz and
ick in the salon. The salon manager/owner can’t be everywhere at the
same time so ick can start in the little dark corners in your salon. It
is EVERYBODY’S job to monitor the buzz and ick in the salon because
EVERYBODY benefits from buzz, and EVERYBODY suffers with ick. BUZZ
takes every single person in the organization to work together.
LIVE AND LET LIVE?
This
is a great idea, it just doesn’t work in a salon or spa because
everybody is so interconnected. When someone wants to “do their own
thing”, and they believe the live and let live rule applies, what do
YOU do when they destroy the reputation of the salon or spa that you
work in? What do YOU do when they reduce YOUR income, mess up YOUR
books, complicate YOUR business? Not feeling quite so live and let live
any longer? Me either. Each of us has a responsibility to take care of
ourselves, our business, our families, etc. Don’t take it lightly when
someone sabotages YOUR business, they’re not just annoying you, they’re
damaging your reputation, your income, YOUR buzz. Buzz is much harder
to get back than to protect. Be VERY protective of your buzz and kill
ick the second you see it developing.
As a general rule I try to spend about 30% of my time managing my salon culture.
WHAT IS SALON CULTURE?
A
"salon culture" is the collective attitudes, practices, beliefs,
behaviors, artistic tastes, and accepted level of technical expertise
the group accepts as the "norm". You may have an idea of how things
should go, what the quality of work should be within your salon, but
unless you can get the people who actually DO the work to conform to
your ideals, you are only wistfully dreaming of how things should be
rather than proactively participating in improving the quality of work
they actually do.
So, how does one actually improve their salon culture?
SALON CULTURE CULTIVATION
Simply
realizing that the word culture means to cultivate, helps us understand
that our inclusion in this culture is not passive, but rather implies
that some type of activity is required. This is true not only for the
salon manager or salon owner, but from every member of the salon
culture if the salon is going to be successful as a whole.
Managing
our salon culture... Both top salons and those salons that
struggle to survive from month to month, all have unique cultures. The
elements that contribute to make up the qualities of each unique salon
culture come from the combined experiences of each salon culture
member. Some of these experiences can be positive and therefore
contribute positive influences on the salon culture, while negative
experiences will undermine the success of the group.
Carefully
screening salon employees sounds like a great way to manage salon
culture, and it can help to manage the salon culture in your salon to a
degree, but interactions between employees and between employees and
management can also influence the outcome of the salon culture of your
salon. So, while you, one person, is contributing your efforts to the
salon culture, so is every other member of that salon culture. So if
you are trying to have a positive influence on the culture and you have
four others that are contributing negative influences, well... you get
the idea. The only way to successfully develop a positive salon culture
is to have everybody work together. Perhaps you've heard the saying -
"People tend to support what they help create." This has been true in
my experience. Everyone should have a vital role to play within the
salon culture. If you have a staff member that can’t or won’t
contribute, or that you don’t want to contribute, you have one too many
people on your staff.
SYNERGY
Synergy
(from the Greek words syn & ergos), in a salon culture definition,
is a word that describes the work produced by the salon culture as a
whole. From my experience within the beauty industry for some thirty
years now, I have learned that the output from 5 employees in a great
salon culture can out produce the output from 9 or 10 employees in a
poorly managed salon culture. So, why do I bring up the topic of
synergy? Because it is a business decision. Years ago I attended a
workshop by Sam Brocato called "You wouldn't believe who you can live
without." (or something similar to this). This class was about choosing
who you want to work with, who you want to contribute to your salon
culture. Are you willing to put up with a grumpy, manipulative stylist
simply because they seem to bring in a lot of money? Look at the big
picture. Perhaps this stylist is stifling the overall income production
of all of your stylists and replacing it with a good income from one
stylist. what would happen if all of the stylists produced better and
this particular negative, manipulative stylist was somewhere else
messing up someone else's salon culture? I've seen this happen over and
over and this topic was the main discussion at the class I was talking
about.
Why?
The energy wasted on back-biting, arguing,
and negative interactions that take place in poor salon cultures is
positively directed at producing work in great salon cultures. It is
said that "A house divided can not stand". This is a great mental
picture of a salon that suffers from a poor salon culture. While
synergy represents the higher output by happy employees that are
operating in a good salon culture.
MCP
In
an open system, such as a salon culture, there exists what is called
the “Multiple Causation Phenomenon” where every action taken by one
member of the culture effects the other members of the culture as well.
In other words, "one bad apple ruins the others." The really strange
thing about MCP is that it can really be a form of negative synergy.
That is, you can have a couple of average employees, and a negative
employee and they can actually convert the average employees into
enemies of your business. I have seen this happen when the instigator
or the “Catalyst” employee is as dumb of a person as you’ve ever met.
Many
times this is known as the “bad girl” effect. I’ve had extremely high
performers stifle their performance because they don’t want to be known
by the “bad girl” element in the salon as “goody two shoes”. Forget the
fact that the high performer can walk into just about any car
dealership in the country and pay cash for their next car. They will
stifle their enthusiasm, they will reduce the level of their customer
service, they will eliminate any “extra’s” they did around the salon
just to pacify these “bad girls”. In the mean time, the bad girl team
will borrow money from the high performers, cause your customers to
leave, and they will destroy your business. For some unknown reason
many of these bad girl types are exactly like other types of
psychological abusers and they know exactly where the emotional buttons
of your high performers are because they’ve been doing this stichk
since about the second grade. They aren’t beautiful, they’re not smart,
they’re not rich, they’re not talented... ALL they have as a personal
trait is their nasty attitude, so that is exactly what they bring to
the party. ‘N.A.S.T.Y. uh, huh, you bet girlfriend!” If this behavior
goes unchecked, they will destroy your salon. Sometimes the “bad girl”
is a guy! I watched this happen a few years ago. Two “bad girl” guys
were hired into a salon with an absentee owner, and within a period of
several months they ran the salon into the ground and the salon closed.
“Oh-well... My BAD?” Off they went to another salon. Negative catalyst
employees are as serious of a threat as a fire is to your business.
CATALYST STYLISTS
Sometimes
you will have several stylists that seem to be working out and then
suddenly one of them, or a new one, starts creating problems for you.
This person is acting like a “catalyst”. A catalyst stylist is someone
that is easily misunderstood. There are good catalysts and bad
catalysts. Sometimes bad catalysts know they’re causing problems
because they have planned it that way, but sometimes they are totally
unaware. Sometimes they are simply testing your limits. Sometimes they
are trying to develop some social power within the salon culture.
Catalyst stylists, or any other kind of catalyst employees can
completely change the psychological make-up of your business.
Sometimes
a simple arranging of stations can make a dramatic change in the buzz
and ick of your salon/spa. The simple grouping of certain people can
create quite powerful positive culture changes, while a similar
grouping of different people, together, can create intense negative
cliques or subcultures within the dominate culture of your salon. It is
much more effective to manage the subcultures within your business than
managing the general culture in nearly every circumstance. Many times
you can make a couple of changes and watch the outcomes and determine
who the negative catalyst stylist is. You’ll find that just about
everybody you place near them will develop a negative attitude in just
a few days or weeks. If you discover this situation, don’t ignore it. I
worked several hair shows with a person that owned three salons and
they used to always say - “Everybody is doing the best they can in the
position they’re in, with the training they have.” You can provide
them with more training, and if that doesn’t work, you can change their
position. Then, as a last resort, you can finally change the person. It
sounded a bit fluffy to me, but hey, he owned three salons so I thought
it must work.
Well, after trying this technique numerous
times, it ended up being just as fluffy as I thought it sounded when I
first heard it. Not everybody you work with is going to work honestly,
communicate honestly, or participate in your salon culture honestly.
So, three salons or not, I have found this to be a terrible,
over-indulgent philosophy. People either blossom or they whither.
Almost nobody remains stagnant. I’ll move people around a bit, or I’ll
try to work with their communication skills, or I’ll clue them into
what is really going on and how this differs from the way they think
things are going. If it doesn’t work, I find a new person that is
willing to be a member of the group rather than a lone wolf.
PUTTING UP WITH IT?
Have
I ever put up with someone I shouldn’t have? Yep. I sure have. Was I
right in doing so? Nope. Not in one single case in thirty years in this
business. I have NEVER had a problem stylist or student walk up to me
and say “Thanks for putting up with my horrible attitude all those
times.” Or “Thanks for giving me SO many chances.” In each case these
people simply went to another business somewhere else and made their
salon culture miserable. I don’t know if it is arrogance, actually
thinking that I was SO skilled at this that I could turn them around...
or if it was compassion, actually thinking that this behavior is SO
destructive that if I personally didn’t turn them around that their
lives would be ruined... I’m not sure. But every couple of years or so
I do end up with a horrible catalyst stylist or student, and I do put
up with it longer than I should. In the end... I guess I just hate
watching someone destroy their own life simply because they stubbornly
insist on being stupid. I’m still working on this problem of not
getting rid of catalyst stylists / students quickly enough, and I
dearly pay for this action in reduced efficiency, salon buzz, and my
own blood pressure.
SUB-CULTURES
If you have a stylist that
seems to be exercising undue influence over the rest of the salon
culture, you must analyze them as soon as you realize this is
occurring. WHY is this happening. HOW is this happening. Many times
catalyst stylists are the driving artistic force within a salon
culture, and as such, they can elevate the artistic quality of the
total work output by all of your stylists. This type of stylist must be
managed and their artistic drive must be aimed in a positive direction.
Perhaps, a position change to "artistic director" could give them
the motivation they've been looking for to direct their extra energy.
What if this catalyst stylist is influencing the salon culture in a negative way? If so, NOW you are in trouble.
Judge
carefully! If you put up with a negative catalyst stylist they will
almost certainly destroy your salon culture. On the other hand, if you
eliminate a talented, artistic catalyst stylist because you think
they're trouble, you may alienate the rest of the group who have been
silently admiring this stylist, and you may eliminate the artistic
force within your salon culture by eliminating this catalyst stylist.
WALK OUTS
I
have seen more salon close do to walk-outs than any other cause.
Usually one person, sometimes two, are catalyst stylists, and they seem
to develop some type of complaint, either real or imagined. They gather
others into their subculture which then confronts the dominant culture
in a power struggle. Many times the instigator of a walk out isn't a
highly intelligent person, and you may wonder how they were able to
gather other more intelligent stylists to their cause. Intelligence and
empathy gathering ability are two distinct and separate qualities. Many
times the instigator will take enough of your stylists in their
walk-out, (their personal vendetta against the salon owner or manager)
that your salon is either disrupted or suffers financially and socially.
ALL BY MYSELF
My
daughter used to sing this song all the time whenever she was able to
accomplish a new task. "All by myself". I have always tried to
structure my business so that not any one person, or any group of
people had more control, social power, or financial control over my
business than I had. Because of this I have not followed in the
footsteps of salon owners who don't work behind the chair. I don't put
in the 60 to 80 hours behind the chair each week that I used to, but I
put in enough time to keep my skills sharp, to keep up-to-date with
fashion and techniques, and most importantly... I am able to do any job
in the salon at the drop of a hat. I obviously need other people to see
my vision and to help me achieve that vision, I’m just saying that I
don’t hand over the control or the responsibility for succeeding at
that vision to anyone, or a group of anyone’s.
CONCLUSION
It
was not my desire to write a book by writing this article, and the
scope of this article is not the slightest bit "conclusive" on this
subject. My hope is that you will think about your own salon culture
more, to be more active in your own salon culture, and to keep close
tabs as to what is actually going on in your salon.
I wish you the best and hope that all of your dreams and goals are met in this industry that has been so good to me.
Franz Sigel Shroy
MetrOasis® Advanced Training Center
Anchorage, Alaska
