The difference between a good business and a great one is consistency. The way to achieve this result is by having defined ways of working with your team that produce positive outcomes that can be replicated by all members of your staff. It is more important than ever to put together a game plan for your team that instills and builds upon leadership and growth.
Creating a culture that is unique to your organization is crucial for building your business. You must establish common values and goals for the staff and business. Each employee needs to be aware of the various goals of the company and their role in achieving that goal. Establishing shared goals and values via a mission statement, job descriptions, or value statement will get everyone on the same page. People tend to rise up to the level of expectation, so knowing what is expected of them will increase the likelihood that they will achieve their goals.
There are four key factors that contribute to the success of leveraging and building your team with dynamic leadership in mind. You need a clear job descriptions for each position, an understanding of the different communication styles of your team members, individual team member coaching sessions, and incentives that motivate and inspire your people to strive for excellence.
Job Descriptions
Your team can have an intimate impact on the lives of their customers. Each relationship can be unique and you must emphasize this to all the team. Each team member needs to understand the importance of their job and specific duties in order to deliver a consistent extraordinary customer experience. This ensures clarity and a focused vision for all of your staff in making your business a professional place to work .When you have clear expectations set up there are no gray areas and you can coach your team members effectively. Job descriptions need to be defined in writing, understood and signed by the team member. Your descriptions should include the some of the following examples
Employment Requirements
Appearance and Dress Policy
The appearance of your team members and their dress accents your image. They both make a strong impact on the way a client will view your business. Tasteful and fashionable attire is a must. Dress should be appropriate for the image of the business and should be at your discretion. Clothing, hair, makeup, must be complete upon arrival to work. Make sure to detail what is and is not appropriate for work including certain color schemes, clothing styles, tattoos, and piercing. Do not leave anything out because it’s guaranteed someone will show up wearing the clothing item or the look you do not want if it is not on the exclusion list. You never get a second chance at a positive first impression,
Cleaning and Sanitation Policy
Your team members should be familiar with rules and regulations on sanitation to maintain adequate levels of cleanliness. Your facility’s cleanliness directly affects your client’s perception of your business. Include how their work areas need to be maintained from opening to closing in addition to assigned daily cleaning duties if appropriate. 80% of new customers who come into your business and do not perceive it as clean won’t say anything. They just won’t return.
Financial Goals
It is critical to outline what financial goals your team members need to meet in order to be a part of your organization. Drivers to your business such as product sales, referral programs to gain new clients, and client networking should be clearly spelled out and tied to the pay structure. Define the process and expectations in these areas. For example if a team member were to have a 10% increase in their productivity numbers every 6 weeks they would double where they started from in a year’s time.
Staff Meeting Policy
Team meetings are necessary to ensure proper communication and to provide an opportunity to establish goals. The attitude expected at your meetings should be positive and constructive. Include when and where the meetings are held and the proper etiquette to be used.
Career Development and Advanced Training Policy
Your training system assures the future of your business. It prepares new staff for the challenge of working with clients, and motivates established team members to become more productive employees. A staff training system encourages an atmosphere of teamwork. It will produce team members who are consistent in their work and have an understanding of the techniques of their co-workers. Define what education is required both inside and outside of your business.
Client Information
All staff members are responsible for gathering and updating client information. This enables you to effectively service and market to your clients. CRM systems are invaluable in time savings and easy access to specific information on your clients to grow the business customer base.
Extraordinary Client Experience
Define the process for how your clients are to be treated from the moment they walk into your place of business to the moment they checkout and leave. This should include the consultation process, dialogues for recommending your products or services, introducing your new client referral program, and engaging and confirming future business if appropriate. When you have a defined way of treating your clients it will produce consistent results and your clients can see different people within your company and enjoy the same quality experience. You can also secret shop your business to make sure the protocols are being consistently delivered by all.
Employee Performance
Let your team members know how their job performance is going to be measured. This will allow them to focus on the specific areas and apply their skill. Use the following nine performance evaluations examples as a starting point:
Communication Styles
Have you ever spoken with a team member and felt that what you were saying was going right over their heads? You are not alone. Some of our biggest frustrations communicating with others is not being heard correctly or misinterpreting someone else’s message. This is the classic example of relating vs. relatedness. Which means moving from simply observing someone’s communication to truly walking beside them and understanding where they are coming from.
Being an effective communicator takes more than just listening. We have to do so contextually and hear between the lines of our communication partner to understand where they are coming from. That can be a great challenge unless you know what to look for.
When you understand and can recognize another person’s preferred style of communicating you can mirror their style back to them and produce a more positive result and avoid the barriers that breakdown communication, cause frustration, and take away from your personal and professional quality of life and bottom line. This is very powerful especially when used in individual coaching meetings.
Some of the unique qualities of our own communication can be the very thing that stops us from having success when relating to others. These qualities include our focus on people or tasks, pace of communication, being a direct or indirect communicator, and big picture thinking vs. detail oriented just to name a few. An understanding of our natural preferred style opens a window to truly see our own and other’s strengths and opportunities for improvement.
There are four distinct natural preferred styles of communication. Each of us will use our natural preferred style and flex to the other styles when appropriate. In essence we are made up of all the styles and use our natural preferred style as our primary mode of communication.
The communication quadrants are The Pioneer, The Influencer, The Diplomat, and The Fact Finder. Here is an insight into some of the strengths of each communication style.
– The Pioneer is bold, assertive, keeps the focus to get the job done, sets goals and achieves them. They are fast paced risk takers who come up with new ways to do things. They are task focused and very direct. You never wonder what the Pioneer is thinking.
– The Influencer is polished and poised, works well with people and attracts others with their enthusiasm. They are open to new possibilities and have a positive optimistic outlook. The Influencer is great at cheering other people on to reaching their goals.
– The Diplomat makes decisions with thought and appreciates other’s viewpoints. They are very approachable and build trust in a team environment. The Diplomat brings people together.
– The Fact Finder looks at all possibilities when making a decision. They are highly organized and manage their time very well. They are detail oriented and deal well with facts and figures. The Fact Finder brings intelligent viewpoints to conversations.
With this understanding you have the ability to take communication in any direction and produce the desired results and a winning outcome with all four-communication styles. The goal is to be effective no matter where you are at or what your dominant style may be. Once you understand the different styles you are able to mature in your style and expand on your communication expertise.
Your communication right now is a reflection of the current moment you are in. Many factors may alter your style such as emotional being or environment and take you out of your natural style. Adapting out of one natural style can be done. Each individual’s time frame for operating out of natural style can vary.
Through understanding and maturing in your own style you increase your ability to understanding others.
For More information on Communication Styles Click Here
Individual Coaching Sessions
The whole person is coming to work and you need to acknowledge the individual and personal motivations and concerns of your employees to be able to provide the appropriate structure for optimum employee performance. This is where coaching comes in.
Coaching is the “Art of the Question”. The reason coaching works is because you are working side by side with your team members over a long period of time keeping them focused and accountable on reaching their goals. It is shifting from telling them what to do to asking them questions and listening for distinctions that you can use to help them grow. This takes practice and when it is working well it becomes the fastest way for your business to grow.
The coaching process is a simple five step model. It begins with identifying where your team member is now and ends with where they want to be. Your job as their personal Success Coach is to work with them through the middle which is called bridging the gap. The gap includes discovering all the possibilities to get them where they want to be, planning action steps to get them there, and looking at what barriers can get in their way of achieving the success.
Focus and work with your team members on setting goals in the growth areas of your business. Help them practice dialogues and create strategies to support them moving forward. Ask questions about how they are going to achieve the goals you set together and keep asking them until they come up with solutions and ideas on how they will achieve them. Be mindful of the communication styles. Some of your team members will need more time to process, adapt and integrate these strategies into their business game plans.
Coaching works best when you schedule individual team member meetings on a weekly basis. They take about fifteen minutes with each person and create an open space for communication and true connection with each of your team members. If you have a large team, have your managers or department heads support you in the coaching process. Your staff will appreciate you for taking time to focus positively on them.
Motivation Environments
There are two types of motivational environments that work very effectively in moving your team forward. They are incentives and casual motivation.
Incentives
Incentives are the old carrot and stick principle. If you achieve the goal you receive the reward. This works very well in business. As an owner or manager you do not have to outlay funds until results are achieved. Many incentives can be self-funding because of increased productivity. For example whoever has the largest sales percentage increase this week gets a perk. The resulting increase in sales created by the excitement of the incentive far surpasses the cost of the reward.
Keep incentives and contests short and sweet. We live in the land of instant gratification and people like rewards right away. If you draw out contests too long people forget about them and they lose focus and momentum. The best incentive programs are daily, weekly, or at the longest monthly ones. Be wary of starting contests with rules like “whoever sells the most” gets the prize. There are always one or two real go-getters who usually win everything. This can be de-motivating for the rest of your team. Instead look at whoever has the largest increase percentage wise wins the contest. Using a percentage increase allows for an even playing field and everyone has a real shot at winning. A final thought is to use prizes instead of cash so you can deduct them as business expenses and not have to pay FICA taxes as you have to on a cash outlay.
Casual Motivation
This is the most powerful motivational environment you can have in the workplace. Casual motivation is where everyone in your workplace is there because they want to be. In other words when the cats away the mice aren’t playing. This is achieved by really spending time finding out what motivates each of your team members individually. Use a whole coaching approach. Focus on their personal and professional goals and take authentic interest. If you help them to achieve their goals they in turn will help you to achieve yours and everyone wins. It is the little things that count. Acknowledging great work when you see it, making a BIG deal when its someone’s birthday, having special staff night dinners or parties. Another example is when you are on your way out the door and you see a staff member having a challenge in providing service and you put your bag down and pitch in and help them. This is all a part of servant leadership and supports creating a casually motivated environment.
The “Coach Approach” to leading a dynamic team takes a lot of time, dedication, and really listening and responding to your team’s needs. The results are fantastic when you see your people grow and achieve goals that they never could have imagined. The connections you have will be richer and more rewarding. Your emotional and financial bottom line will reflect excellence.
Yours in Success,
Bryan Durocher
Essentials Spa Consulting LLC
Durocher Enterprises Inc.
Phone: 406-863-9448
www.essentialsmedspas.com