Your Standards Are Slipping | Here's Why and What to Do

There is a conversation you've been meaning to have with at least one member of your team since January. You've rehearsed it in the car, you've maybe nearly started it a few times, and then something's managed to come up and give you an excuse not to. This episode is gonna make sure you have that difficult conversation this week. Your Salon. Hello, hello, hello. My salon friends, Phil Jackson here, your queen of salons coming all over the internet with a big dose of my wise, our wisdom. How on earth are you achingly? Well, I hope as we storm towards the end of March, how has Q1 been for you? Reach out and let me know. I'd love to hear from some of you as we get towards the end of what's been a bumpy quarter for lots of you I know, but heck, aren't they all? When's it ever gonna get easy? When are we gonna get back to the good old days? Honestly, when we were there, they weren't that good darling. It's just that wonderful, wonderful rose tinted glass we're looking through. They're all gonna be tough, they're all gonna be a struggle and that's why I'm here for you. So why are we not having these difficult conversations with team members? There are a few things that get in our way. Lots of you don't know how to structure those conversations. Some of you have never had a formal review yourselves, especially if you've been still for self-employed for a very long time. So running a little performance review actually feels really, really daunting. And that blank page problem is real. I get it. It can be very overwhelming in fact, but I'm hoping by now that you're starting to see the need for some of these things. The second thing that comes along is you are afraid of conflict. We are people pleasers as salon owners. The whole reason we've been successful is because we're good at building relationships with clients. We can't just switch that off. And you've also, because of that, built solid relationships with the people that you work with as well and you don't wanna damage that. But the truth is that avoiding those difficult conversations actually does more damage to the relationship than having it because resentment builds up sometimes on both sides. Sometimes that resentment really starts to get in the way of a good relationship. It gets in the way of communication. Then standard starts to drift as the communication starts to break down. And then eventually that team member either leaves or becomes the problem that defines your workplace culture. They become toxic to the workplace even without realising it. And the third thing is that you start to feel guilty because maybe you should have been having these conversations and you've not always been clear in your communication. You've not always communicated what you expected. And now calling someone out feels very unfair and that's completely valid. But the answer is not to avoid the conversation, is to be honest about it in the conversation. You can say something like, I know I've not always been as clear as I should have been. I wanna fix that today and now is the right moment because the year is young enough that we can make those changes that will show results before the summer. If you leave it until October, you're gonna spend another year managing the same problems. And the problems are that bit tougher, that bit older. So let me give you a framework to start having these conversations and it's a four part framework that I've put together for you. It's simple enough that you are actually going to do it. And part one is to prepare before you sit down. You want to know exactly the points that you're gonna cover before you sit down. You don't want an entire script because that's gonna make the conversation feel a bit stilted. But there might be, and it's okay to have key sentences scripted out in full if that's gonna make life easier for you. If it's gonna mean that you actually have this conversation, then I'm all for it. And I used to do the same myself. So I have bullet point, bullet point and then a full sentence to make sure that I hit every single note. And this is gonna make sure that you've got your crib sheet with you. It is gonna mean that you're not gonna feel quite so daunted by the conversation. It's not gonna drift. And I think it helps take some of the emotion out of the conversation as well. So there's three questions that I want you to answer in your own head before you start making these points. The first thing is I want you to acknowledge genuinely some points that they're doing well. So what is this person actually doing well, how are they performing well that you can bring into the meeting as well. Secondly, what's the one thing I most need them to change or improve? And then finally, what do I want to agree on as the outcome of this conversation? Now, two little points there. The first thing, yes, I asked for one thing. It might be that you have a team member in front of you who has 47 things that you want to change or improve that's not okay. We pick on them one at a time because if I take you into a room and give you a list of 47 things that you are not doing properly, you're just gonna go, This obviously isn't working. I quit. And I don't think that's the outcome that you want or perhaps it is, but I'm assuming that we want to keep the person, we want them to improve in their performance. We want them to stay as part of our team. And the second thing is around agreeing. What do you want to have as the outcome of the conversation? What do you want to agree on? And this has become a template for all of my management conversations. I always know what I want the outcome to be before I step into the conversation. It means that I can steer the conversation much more effectively. It means that somebody in that conversation feels like they're in control. It's a really useful template. Much more powerful than perhaps you think. So we don't wanna go in with a list of grievances, we wanna go in with focus. One main thing to address honestly and specifically then we're gonna book a time. We're not gonna ambush people. I want you to say to the team member, I want us to sit down for 20 minutes on Wednesday. I wanna have a proper catch up about how things are going. So the framing is calm, it's non-threatening, and it's not confrontational. Then we're gonna jump into the meeting and we're gonna start with that bit of genuine recognition. We're not gonna make a compliment sandwich. Starting with praise and then burying the difficult bit. Actually in management speak, they call it a compliment sandwich. In real life we call it a shit sandwich where we just bury the difficult bit in the middle. That formula is so well known that any praise is gonna sound really, really hollow. But we are gonna give some genuine specific recognition. So something like, I wanna say that I've noticed how strong your client retention numbers are and I've noticed that they've been building over time as well. That really matters and I appreciate it. We wanna be specific. It's the difference between praise and recognition that actually lands and recognition. That just sounds like fluff and a bit of a preamble. And then we're gonna jump in and address that. One thing. We're gonna be direct, not brutal, but direct. There is a difference. We're gonna say that I want to talk about a specific behaviour or performance area. So talk about the things that you've noticed and talk about the impact that it's having and how you want to find a way to fix it. So it's specific, it's observed and it's impactful. We're not gonna be vague, we're not gonna talk about attitude, we're not gonna be personal. We're not talking about lazy and we're not talking about things that have accumulated over time. And another thing and another thing, we're gonna be specific. We're just talking about that one thing. So for example, I wanna talk about your retail performance. I've noticed that the number of items that you're selling seems to be on the decline and it's having an impact on your take home pay or it's having an impact because you are someone who the rest of the team looks up to. And I want us to find a way to fix it. So it's specific, it's observed and we've talked about how those things have an impact. Then we're gonna give the other person space to respond. This is a conversation. We're not delivering a verdict on their behaviour. They might have some context that you did not have. They might have some valid points that mean their performance has slipped. Listen, then we want to reach agreement on a next step. Not let's see how things go or this is your warning to buck up your ideas. We want a concrete commitment. I want us to revisit this in two weeks. And by then I want to see a specific change. I want to see your retail numbers back on the incline again. Or I wanna see us hitting minimum of 15 items per week, whatever that specific change is. Now, part four I wanna throw in there because it's not appropriate for every single conversation, but I wanna talk about the pay conversation. And this is where the I had a listener question from WhatsApp. And it was basically, what is the right time to give your team a pay rise? And the answer to that is when you can justify it financially and when you want to retain someone worth retaining, not as a reaction, as a threat to leave, not as a reward as part of this difficult conversation. So if the difficult conversation is around pay or pay comes into it, I'll book a separate time to talk about money and the review is the right moment to maybe mention that proactively. So we could say, I wanna talk about your pay. Here's where we are, here's what I think we might be able to do. Let's book a different conversation about it so we can start to spell out in these difficult conversations the changes that we need to have that wage conversation. So if there are things that they, that your team member can be doing to make that pay conversation easier, now's the time to bring those in. But we don't start getting specific about what we're gonna do around pay. It's a really significant moment. 'Cause the minimum wage increase is about to kick in. And if you've got team members at or near minimum wage, that pay is gonna go up whether you reviewed it or not. We can start framing that properly as a deliberate decision, not just an obligation. So don't promise what you can't deliver, but we can deliver a separate pay conversation, a realistic conversation about pay then tied to specific performance expectations is much more respectful than a vague, I'll see what I can do for your strong performers. There shouldn't be a problem if you've got good reward systems in place. If you've got good commission structures in place, we shouldn't be really worrying about these pay conversations. If something is broken there, if you've got a strong team member and they're not getting properly rewarded, we either need to look at your commission structure or we need to look at your wage, your pricing structure. The cost of losing a good team member. My God, can you imagine recruitment training, lost client retention? It's always way more than the cost of paying them properly in the first place. After that conversation, most reviews will fail. Not because you had a bad conversation, but because nothing happens after. Make some notes. It's not a formal HR document necessarily. We used to have just a blank piece of paper that just said manager's report at the top. So a note to yourself, ideally something brief that you'd be happy to share with the team member. And then make sure we book that follow up. If you said you're gonna revisit something, revisit it. We need to have authenticity in these conversations. Absolutely. But we also need to be really clear on when we say we're gonna do something, we're gonna do it. Okay? We need to be honourable in our actions as managers. If you are not authentic, if you don't do the follow-ups that you promised, the team member learns that you don't mean it, okay? And that you don't lead by having strong standards. And those standards are gonna get worse and worse in That's a follow-up meeting. We're gonna acknowledge progress if they've made the change you've asked for say so. I notice that you've been doing what you said you were gonna do, and that's exactly what I asked for. It's making a huge difference. These reviews are not one-off events. It's the beginning of a much clearer management relationship. The one after is easier. The first one is always gonna be the most difficult conversation. Reviews, reviews, these reviews feel hard when you've not been having them. Once you get into the habit of it, you get into the habit of following up, you get the habit of being consistent, then we're going to absolutely make them easier and easier over time. So you know what you've gotta do? We're now no longer afraid of conflict. You've got that four part structure that I've given you. Part three around pay may not be a feature at all, but the review framework, absolutely jot it down. Make sure you've got your notes beforehand. Make sure that we're keeping records afterwards. Make sure that we are following up in the way that we said we are going to do. So there we have it. How are things going with your team? How are things going? For those of you that employ team members, I'm finding people more willing to recruit at the moment. And that fills my heart with Glee. But maybe there's something I've missed. Maybe there's something that I'm not picking up on. Reach out and let me know. Fill a build your salon.com, my email address, scrolling at the bottom of the screen. Also, do your Uncle Phil a favour. If you are watching on YouTube, please can you give us a little thumbs up and can you subscribe to the YouTube channel? These are the ways that we get other people to hear about the amazing things that we're doing on the Build Your Salon podcast. If you are listening on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or anywhere else, please, please, please take two minutes to give us a five star review. Honestly, it makes so much difference to the marketing of the podcast. It's disproportionate. It's a bit like your Google reviews, honestly. It takes two minutes and it will make my day, I promise. Just a few short days until I'm coming all over the internet again with another dose of my WiseOwl wisdom. And until then, take care.