3 Mindsets That Kill Staff Retention

Do you ever wonder why your talented team members keep leaving or your spa staff retention is low?

Poor staff retention is a red flag that there’s work to be done not just with your leadership style but also with your own mindset. It's easy to play the "blame game" and shift responsibility to a new hire when they get a customer complaint or blame a long time team member who has suddenly shifted their behavior and you don't understand why.

As much as you’d love to not deal with your part of the equation, it’s critical that you, as a leader, see where you play a part in the issue first.

3 Leadership Approaches That Hurt Your Spa Staff Retention

1. The Hands-Off Approach – With the Hands-Off Approach, the thinking is that the bulk of the work is done with the recruiting and hiring. You put the new team member through an orientation, show them how to do a few of the "signature" services, and then put them to work. The mindset here is that the new hire should know what they are doing, and you don't have the time to babysit them. You expect them to get into the service room and everything should run smoothly.

   Having a hands-off approach means you are not valuing in-depth training and coaching and supporting your team. There will be team members that if they feel like they are not getting enough direction or guidance and support and will not be interested in working in your spa business for very long.

2. The Hot Mess Approach – The Hot Mess Leader is disorganized and always surrounded by drama. Having a hot mess for a boss can be extremely frustrating, especially if you are a team member that is talented, has experience and really wants to work with the clients and further their own career. If you can’t get your sh*t together, you’ll loose strong performers.

   But more often than not, like attracts like and the "hot mess" leader will attract hot mess employees. This gives me the stress sweats just thinking about it!

3. The Dictatorship Approach – The dictator is usually very organized with their business, very clear about what their vision is, and very clear about how they want their business to run. Although this type of leader may have all their ducks in a row, the dark side of this mindset is moving from highly organized to control-freak.

   This approach can show up as things like micromanaging and not giving a certain level of trust to team members. It is important to trust that once we have trained a team member properly and they have the protocol they can figure things out on their own. Make no mistake, I’m not suggesting you keep quiet when you see course correction is needed, I’m suggesting you let your operational systems kick in after training and support via 1:1 meetings, daily huddles, yearly reviews and, if necessary, your disciplinary system if coaching isn’t working. Sometimes we need to let a team member fail a little bit so they can course correct and move forward, the right way.

You can have systems and protocols up the wazoo, but if you are not using them correctly because of your mindset, you are going continue to derail your success with staff retention.

Your staff relies on your leadership. 

Take a moment to ask yourself “what kind of leader am I?”, and then get to the real question - “Is this the kind of leader I want to be? “

If you are struggling with your leadership style and are not sure where to start, reach out to me and we can chat about how I can help you set up your system, then put them to work as you embody the type of leader you really want to be.