Dear Bosses 1 (a letter from your employees)

Dear Salon Boss…. The next few blog posts may well be the most important you’ll read this year for your salon success…

Why, well in bite sized bits I’m going to pop excerpts from a letter that many employees would like to write to their salon bosses but don’t… 

This may or may not apply to you … well in most cases ALL will not apply to all, HOWEVER I bet SOME of what you’ll read over the coming posts WILL apply to you, it’ll resonate right to your very core… and that’s what I want it to do. 

I want it to move you, I want you to squirm a little bit (or a lot!) when reading the comments and sentiments, because quite frankly we can ALL be better at getting the best from our teams and for our teams – after all, it’s them who are a big part of our key to success… 

enjoy…

Dear Salon Bosses

There’s a reason we quit our jobs.

To be frank, it kinda sucked ass toward the end there. And a little before that too. It wasn’t totally your fault, but we just didn’t feel like we could be creative in the salon anymore, which was sad, because that’s what we live for. We know this kind of whining doesn’t help much. And though we’re

Dear Bosses
There’s a reason we quit our salon jobs.

still a little bitter about the whole working-for-you thing, we do appreciate how hard your job must be.

It can’t be easy to lead something as fragile as creativity.

Looking back, we probably should have helped you more at the time, but telling you how to do your job seemed harder than quitting. Sorry about that.

This letter contains everything we should have told you but didn’t. We hope it will make up for our mistake.

We work for more than just money.

Everyone’s got to pay the rent. But that’s not why we show up every day. We show up because we like making things. Especially beautiful things. And useful things. And things that matter.

We show up because creativity is its own reward. But if we go home feeling like we gave much more than we got, you can bet we’ll soon be looking for a better deal.

Here’s how you can give as good as you get:

How about a hug?

We’re not mathematicians. We don’t look up the formula and then arrive at a right answer. In fact, there is no formula, and there is no right answer. But still, to do the job right, we have to put our whole selves into the work.

It’s a lot like being naked in public: Will anyone like what we’ve got to show?

We’re not asking you to kiss our asses or anything. That would be pretty awkward. We’re just asking for a little affirmation. So if you make it a habit to tell us what you like about our work, we can promise you that our work in the salon will only get better.

If you’re not used to giving effusive, heart-felt praise, here’s a little refresher:

“Holy-f*?$%ing-doodle-dandy! You are goooood.”

“I dub thee: Sir Kickassalot.”

“Damn, you’ve got a hot body. Of work!”

“Here, these are for you. (Hand employee your pants.)”

“You must be channeling Jesus, because you just saved my ass.”

Or just say “Thanks” and mean it. We promise, it’ll make lots of stuff better.

To be continued… (next time: Fill ‘er up and Encourage accidents in the workplace!)