The meetings all the best salons have

The right meetings educate, motivate, and align your team. Propelling them to perform better.

The wrong ones sap you and your team of energy and waste time that could otherwise be spent with another customer. Or maybe enjoying some red at home 🍷

It all depends on what meetings you have, and how they are executed.

In this article, I want to share with the meetings the best salons owners I know swear by.

The 1v1

To be a great salon leader, you need to help your people grow.

The 1v1s is where you’ll do exactly that.

The 1v1 provides you, and the staff member joining you, with a safe place where raw, honest conversations flourish.

Without any of the bad stuff that can accompany such conversations, of course.

What to talk about

Everything goes in the 1v1s.

Whatever your team-member wants to talk about, they should be allowed to talk about.

Whatever you want to talk about, go ahead.

But to make the most out of the 1v1s, I recommend you never miss:

• Learning how the team-member is doing at work

• Giving feedback that you think will improve this individuals performance.

How to conduct a 1v1

The 1v1s should be a monthly affair, and don’t have to take more than an hour. Just book a monthly recurring meeting in your calendar so you don’t forget.

Need a great calendar to keep track of both meetings and appointments? Check out NoonaHQ - it’s free forever ✌️

I recommend starting the meeting by asking questions.

Giving your staff members the opportunity to speak first builds trust, and in my experience makes them far more open to feedback later in the meeting.

Feel free to add some questions about the AORs as well - if you use it as your accountability framework.

After you’ve given them the chance to speak their mind, it’s your turn to give your feedback.

But don’t forget to start with a praise.

Preparation

All 1v1s need preparation, but it doesn’t have to take too long.

You simply need to decide what questions you want to ask, and what feedback you want to give.

I recommend spending more time thinking about the feedback, and to put particular care into how you want to phrase it.

In my experience, everything can be said as long as it is said in the right way.

Template

Get your 1v1 preperation template here.

The weekly kickoff

A weekly meeting?

Hell yes 🤘

Culture needs constant reinforcement.

Goals need constant reminding.

It’s crazy what 15 minutes can do.

What to talk about

Culture, culture, culture.

Goals, if you have any.

And whatever else you want to improve.

Product selling going slow? Talk about how you’ve managed to do it in the past

Do you want staff members to offer everybody ☕️ when customers arrive? Tell them a story about how great personal service is at the heart of your business.

Or are you grateful and happy for the people around you?

Tell them, and help them feel grateful and happy as well.

How to conduct the Weekly Kickoff

First thing every Monday. 15 to 30 minutes max.

Gather the team in the same place. The waiting room often works great.

If you have a TV somewhere, you could also do it near that if you want to have a slideshow. I’d actually recommend using some slides to make it easier for you to hit on the points you want to hit.

And if a customer comes in early for their appointment, great!

Unless your talking about something hush hush, customer will love seeing how much care goes into the work that’s being done in the salon

Preparation

This ones needs a fair bit of preparation every weekend.

But that’s the life of an entrepreneur. If you aren’t at least working for 1 or 2 hours every weekend, you’re probably falling behind.

Set up your Kickoff slide presentation. To make it easier for yourself, you could create a template and base all slideshows on that.

And then simply do the presentation 2-3 times for yourself to rehearse what you want to say.

This might sound daunting to begin with, but after a few times you’ll get the hang of it.

And as a result, you’ll become so much better as a public speaker!

Template

Get your Weekly Kickoff template here

Quarterly Post Mortem

Business is hard. People are messy. Clashes are bound to happen.

But not all clashes get resolved. Instead, they simmer and sometimes even get worse with time.

A quarterly Post Mortem gives all of your people the chance to share their feelings with the rest of the team, and to release their build up of steam.

What to talk about

Everything that went great.

Everything that could’ve gone better.

How to conduct a Post Mortem

These things take time. So scrapping the entire before or after lunch might be necessary here.

I recommend doing the Post Mortem on a Friday afternoon, and to schedule a team celebration afterwards to give the quarter that passed some well deserved closure.

The meeting itself is then quite simple. Armed with pens and papers, it’s done in four easy steps.

1. Give everybody five minutes to write down what went well in the quarter. Encourage people to give praise where praise is due

2. Going around the table, each participant reads out loud one thing they wrote from their post its and puts in on a wall. You go around the table until everybody has shared all their thoughts.

3. Give everybody five minutes to write down what could’ve gone better. Here, name calling is strictly forbidden.

4. Do the same as in step 2, but during this stage you should follow up each point with a simple question: How can we make sure this won’t happen again?

Simple, but extremely effective.

Preperation

Find a lot of pens, and buy some post-its.

Other than that, and a brief explanation of the concept of the Post Mortem that should be given at the beginning of the meeting, not much more is needed.

Template

Get your Post Mortem template here

Anything else?

After having talked to hundreds of successful salon owners, these are the meetings I think work the best across the board for salons to keep team performance and morale high.

But, when it comes to meetings, not every team needs the same kinds.

At the end of the day, you have to be the one that decides what meetings your company would benefit most from.

As always, if you feel like I missed out on some great meetings, feel free to reach out to jonhilmar@noona.is

Best of luck 🤗

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