How to Run Salon Team Meetings That Don't Waste Everyone's Time

Most salon team meetings are a waste of time. They're either non-existent, or they're just you moaning at your team for 45 minutes while everyone stares at their phones. Either way, we're not building a better salon. Here's how to actually get them right. Hello, hello, hello, my salon friends. Phil Jackson here, your queen of salons, coming all over the airwaves with another dose of my Wise Owl Wisdom. How on earth are you? Achingly well, I hope, as we steam towards the weekend. How's January panning out for you? Today we're talking about our team meetings, and I'll be honest with you, I promised myself that we were going to do more episodes and shorter, so we've got a lot to get through. I'm going to jump straight in. I've been visiting salons and coaching for almost a decade now, and the meeting situation breaks down into three very neat categories. In Camp 1, we have people that have no meetings at all, and I see this an awful lot. People saying that we're too busy. Everyone knows what they're doing. We just communicate as we go. And the result is that we end up with a team that has very little cohesion. Everyone's kind of working in their own little space, and nobody really understands what's happening. And the indicator that we've started to get things wrong is when you're trying to do something, let's say, like marketing, and your client says, oh, I've read an email about such and such, and your stylist or your therapist kind of goes, I don't know. That means the communication's not there, okay? We've got to make sure that we're doing a really good job so everyone's on the same page. Second camp is when people have very occasional meetings, maybe every couple of months, three months. The owner is having the meeting because they're frustrated about something, and they're using the meeting to basically tear everybody a new arsehole. Everybody leaves feeling a bit like shit, and nobody wants to come to the next one. Well, Camp 3 is when there's regular meetings, but there's no structure. The meeting starts 15 minutes late. It goes on for like an hour and a half, covers everything and nothing. Everyone's looking at their watch. Clients are arriving. Nothing actually gets decided, and no one feels like the meeting is good use of the time. And none of these approaches are going to work. So let me show you what does. And I got this horribly, horrifically wrong for a really long time. For the first few years of owning my own salon business, I thought team meetings meant everybody sitting down in a horseshoe, me shouting and screaming and stamping my feet because I wasn't happy.

And the meeting basically wasn't over until somebody cried. And that's because I used to work for someone, before we had our own salon, I used to work for someone who was a bit of a tyrant, and she didn't have many team meetings. In fact, I was there for two years. I think we had two team meetings. And when she did, guess what? She'd scream and shout and stamp her feet, and the meeting wasn't over until somebody had started crying. So I thought that's how you ran a team. And it was only when I realised that people were starting to dread my team meetings, and they wondered why they were turning up at all. And I was wondering why morale was so awful that I realised I was actually destroying what I was trying to build. So don't do what I did. Let's do what I learned instead. So the framework that I teach is firstly, we need to look at frequency. And I would start with monthly team meetings. But you've got to make these non-negotiable. They don't necessarily have to be on the same day each month. If you've got some people that work Monday to Friday, and some people that work Tuesday to Saturday, try and catch people when most of your team's in. And if you can't get everybody, then move the meeting around the week a little bit. So do it Monday one time and Thursday another time, so that you're not missing the same people every single time. Get it in people's columns and communicate how important that meeting is. We don't take bookings, even if it's Doris who's been coming to the salon for 25 years who wants that slot. She can't have it. We need to communicate with our team that this is important. This is sacred turf. Now, there might be times when we need more frequent meetings. If you've got a lot of change that's going on in the business, a lot of things that are being launched into the business, or if you've got a particularly young team with lots of training needs, you might need more frequent team meetings. But shorten them. Don't make them too long and frequent. Otherwise, we're eating into profitable time. In my mind, your team meetings should be about 45 minutes maximum. I used to book out an hour, finish it in 45. That gives everyone a chance to grab a coffee, gossip behind your back about what they've just heard, because that's really important communication between team members. It prevents that rambling that goes on, but it also prevents spillover. We haven't got clients turning up while you're still wrapping up your team meeting. If you can't cover it in 45 minutes, you're probably not getting organised enough. I like my meetings at the beginning of the day when everyone's fresh. I try to put them on at the end of the day.

Everyone's just looking at their watch. They just want to go home. And also, if you try and do it during the day, there's always somebody who's running late. So we don't want people arriving. We don't want clients around when we're having these team meetings. Let's do it before everyone gets busy when energy's high and no one's checking the watch. I personally make sure that we start on time every time, even if people aren't ready, even if someone's running late. If you start accommodating your latecomers, you're teaching them that the meeting isn't important and that turning up late is acceptable. So start on time every single time. What are you going to talk about in your team meetings? Well, it's a training opportunity. So product training, for example, if you've got new products coming in, products that aren't selling well, this is the perfect time to get everybody on board. If you've got promotions coming up, educate your team about the promotions that you've got going on. Any marketing going out this month, don't send it as an email or as an SMS or as a Facebook post until your team knows about it first. Because it's embarrassing when a client knows about your promotion and your team member doesn't. Also a great opportunity to celebrate wins, positive reviews, read them out, share them. Anyone who went above and beyond in the name of success, personal achievements, make people feel good about working for you. And then any brief updates, anything that we've got that's out of the ordinary, any diary changes, any operational stuff too. What we don't include is negativity. We don't use our team meetings to roast people. We're certainly not singling people out for poor performance. That should be in a one-to-one meeting. And don't let one person's complaint hijack your meeting. These are individual issues. So if you've got performance problems, that happens in a one-to-one. If you've got personality conflicts, that's a private conversation. If you've got specific complaints about specific team members, we do it in the office, not in a team meeting. And this is definitely not space for anyone who wants to vent any negativity. And the way that we prevent all of that sabotage, prevent all that negativity, is by having a really clear agenda. So one week before your meeting, put a notice in your staff room, anything you want to discuss at the next team meeting. Add it to the agenda by Friday and I will build it in. Now, here's the key to it. Here's how it works. Anything that's negative, anything that you think is going to derail your meeting, we take that person to one side, say, this is a really important point.

I'm worried there's not going to be enough space in our team meeting to discuss this properly. Can we schedule a one-to-one and talk it through properly? It shows the team member that this matters, but it protects the energy inside your meeting. Works like a charm every single time. So here's what I want you to do this January. I want you to book out your team meetings, get into a rhythm with it, get it in everyone's diaries for at least the next three months, if not for the whole year, and start creating that agenda template. Do this for three months, then report back and let me know how it's going. I reckon you'll have a completely different culture in your team by April. So team meetings aren't optional. They're how we build culture. They're how we share information, how we keep everyone moving in the same direction. But what have I missed? I haven't got all of the answers. Reach out and let me know. Phil at buildyoursalon.com. My email scrolling at the bottom of the screen right now. If you'd like my help with building these systems into your team, into your salon business, my details are in the description box underneath this video. Just a few short days until I'm coming all over the airwaves again with another dose of my Wise Owl wisdom. Phew, we got through that okay, didn't we? Until next time, take care. Thank you.