Life’s too short to put up with people on your team who take all the joy out of coming to work.
Whether you are a salon owner or an employee life is too short to keep having to accommodate the ‘staff room terrorist.’
You know the type I mean. The individuals hell bent on ruining it for everyone, often with slightly above average ability, but with supercharged ego’s they run amok and destroy team morale and poison everyone in their path.
I’m sure you have come across them at some stage, they exist in salons everywhere.
I occasionally still meet them in other peoples salons, unfortunately I even employed the odd one over the years, they don’t start out like that but for whatever reason left unchecked they are cancerous to the business and if you let them be, they will do untold damage in the process.
You can’t change people…
but they can change themselves …if they want to. The problem is, often they don’t want to.
They lack the courage to do it on their own, they lack the respect to follow the leader …and they lack the common sense to see that they are destroying their own reputation in the process.
Often the manager has let them get out of control through some misguided idea that because they are creative people you have to accept ‘superstar ego’s’ that go with it, nothing could be further from the truth.
But the challenge then becomes, “How to get them back as a valuable part of the team?”. Often it’s not possible to reign their out of control ego’s back in, the damage has been done and the energy and time you will then be spending on that ‘one person’ is out of all proportion to what you will ever get back.
Why have they become like this…
Often it’s because they think that’s how they are meant to behave, so with no parameters they start to think of themselves as far more creative, far more important, far more valuable, far more …of everything than what they actually are.
The real shame is that, ‘often if these people were managed properly from the outset they respond really well to it’. But, you have to be firm and you have to be consistent from day one and they then have the potential to become far better than they will left up to their own unchecked out of control ego’s.
They may not always like it, but hopefully they might recognise that they need it to become the person that they want to be and are capable of.
The really talented people…
in any industry are usually, extremely professional, positive, very hard working, respectful of others, and with a humility about their ability.
People like that are a real pleasure to be around.
When you have someone like this on your team, ask yourself, “What can I learn from this?”
I always look for the positive message, when you have people like this on your team, it’s not just about their short comings, ‘it’s also about you’, So what can you learn from the situation? Because if you don’t learn from it, then it will inevitably happen again.
So ask yourself
- What have you done, or not done, as the owner or manager that has let it get this far?
- Did you employ them on the wrong criteria? For example because they looked good or were technically competent and not based on their attitude?
- Did you give them a written job description?
- Did you give them a proper induction and explain the salon culture and values?
- Did you give them regular feedback, appraisals and target meetings?
- Do you have a proper procedure for coaching and issuing verbal warnings?
- Did you let it go on for too long because you didn’t know how to reel them in?
- Do you feel trapped because they bring in a good revenue?
Life really is too short to put up with it…
Occasionally I meet salon owners who have lost the joy, the passion for their business because of people on their team who are destroying it from within.
It’s never worth it, take control, give them ultimatums, don’t make threats you are not prepared to carry out, get the right legal advice and manage them out of the business, firmly but fairly, you’ll never regret it.
