Leadership can be difficult. Effective leadership, whether in the finance or beauty industry, often determines a business’s success or failure.
Leadership can be difficult. Effective leadership, whether in the finance or beauty industry, often determines a business’s success or failure.
As a result, salon owners are encouraged to examine the skills required to effectively lead a team and run a successful, long-term business. If you’re curious about salon leadership, here’s a closer look at what it entails, what skills are required, and why trust is possibly the most important piece of the puzzle.
What Does Salon Leadership Look Like?
Salon leadership can come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Entrepreneurs within the hair, beauty and wellness industry are breaking ground in their respective fields, from landing a new client through effective client communications to finding innovative ways to increase salon profitability.
There will always be ups and downs in business. How salon owners and independent stylists respond to these changes demonstrates their leadership abilities. If your business is having problems, remember that you, as the leader, are a reflection of what you could be doing better or differently.
This self-reflection, however, can be extremely difficult for salon owners who are already under intense pressure to succeed. When things don’t go right, try not to take things to personally. Whenever someone says something, say “How can I do it better?”
Top 5 Leadership Skills Required by Every Successful Salon Owner
The ability to receive feedback openly is an important quality of effective leadership, but it is far from the only skill required to lead a team. If you’re having trouble leading your team, here are some of the most essential leadership skills that every successful salon owner requires.
1. Communication
Communication is a critical skill for leaders in any business, but especially in the service industry. If salon owners and independent stylists want to keep their clients and team members for the long term, they must maintain constant and consistent communication with both. Customer retention and client satisfaction can be aided by effective communication skills. Communication skills help leaders to define your goals for team members clearly. It also helps understand their goals and desires and solve any concerns they may have. Effective communication skills also help foster an open and good rapport between leaders and their teams, which increases productivity and efficiency.
2. Delegation
Nobody can run a business by themselves. As a result, delegation is a necessary skill for leaders in order to avoid burnout and ensure long-term success. Being a great leader involves leveraging all of the strengths of your team in order to complete specific tasks. Done effectively, delegating tasks and projects to the team can show you a lot about your team’s capabilities and talents.
In the salon industry, delegation can take many forms. While many business owners hire additional stylists and employees, automated systems can be used for tasks such as client bookings, cancellation requests, and promotional emails.
3. Passion
Leaders must be passionate if they are to inspire both their team and their business. Doing what you love entails not only enjoying what you do, but also sharing your enthusiasm with your team and even your clients. Passion eventually leads to mastery and success, in large part because you are always thinking and working on the thing you are passionate about. Most successful leaders don’t have a job – they have a passion.
4. Time Management
One of the greatest challenges new leaders often encounter is learning how to manage their time, prioritise work, and be fully present for their team. It’s not always a high priority skill for leadership development, but it should be. Leaders must not only understand the importance of delegation skills, but they must also have a firm grasp on time management. While the two are closely related, leaders require time management skills to ensure that all tasks are completed on time—including delegated and automated tasks.
5. Trust
Trust is an essential component of effective management and is one of the most under-appreciated leadership skills. When it comes to building confidence as a salon owner, it really comes down to trusting yourself and trusting others. When you trust your employees, you empower them to own their success. When they own their success, they can better push through adversity, take responsibility for their performance and results and enhance their own leadership skills. That is the most important thing. Leaders must not only foster a trusting environment, but they must also practise it themselves.
If salon owners want to be successful, they should cultivate strong relationships with the following two groups.
Your Team
As a salon owner, you most likely have a team that helps with various aspects of the business, such as stylists, administrative staff, and even marketing professionals. Leaders must have a level of trust with their team in order to effectively delegate tasks to team members. You’ll be more receptive to feedback if you trust your team and your decision-making. As a result, you’ll be the person who gives everyone what they need to succeed.
Yourself
While this may seem self-evident, leaders must be able to trust themselves in order to run a successful business. Learning to trust yourself can be really difficult, but even the most successful leaders struggle with this. Accepting so much feedback, opinions, and other forms of information from others can cloud your own thoughts and decisions, this is a common source of self doubt. While leaders should be open to everyone’s ideas and feelings, they must also trust their own judgement in big-picture, high-stakes situations.
Begin Leading Your Salon Effectively
Leadership abilities are not something you are born with, but they can be developed. Just remember to be honest and fair, and treat everyone as you would like to be treated yourself. To be a good leader you must inspire action, be optimistic, show integrity, support your team, communicate at all levels, and show confidence and appreciation for your team’s loyalty. There are numerous resources available to any salon owner who wishes to develop these essential skills. The Locate Your Look community, for example, is a fantastic source of information, advice and support.
Join the Locate Your Look community to take the first step toward becoming a leader in the hair, beauty or wellness industry!
If you work or run a business within the hair, beauty or wellness industry and would like to know more about how you can earn an extra stream of revenue from the ‘Your Look Club’ register your interest and we will be in touch.
Kerrie Humphrys PTLLS – Founder of Locate Your Look
