Intro: Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hair stylist? Like you got into this industry to make big things happen?
Maybe you’re struggling to build a solid base and want some stability. Maybe you know social media is important, but it feels like a waste of time because you aren’t seeing any results. Maybe you’ve already had some amazing success but are craving more. Maybe you’re ready to truly enjoy the freedom and flexibility this industry has to offer.
Cutting and coloring skills will only get you so far, but to build a lifelong career as a wealthy stylist, it takes business skills and a serious marketing strategy. When you’re ready to quit just working in your business and start working on it, join us here where we share real success stories from real stylists.
I’m Britt Seva, social media and marketing strategist just for hair stylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
Britt Seva: What is up and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Britt Seva, and today we’re going to talk about the five communication styles and how to master them. I’m really excited for this episode. It’s very much an inspired episode. It came from an Instagram post I actually saw this morning when I was doing my morning scroll. Not stroll, scroll. Who relates? It’s from an influencer named Ask Vinh, and I actually don’t even want to call him an influencer. I want to call him a voice of our time.
I really like what Vin speaks to. To me he’s incredibly educated, a fantastic speaker, and I really like a lot of the concepts he shares. He’s a very provoking thought leader in my opinion.
If you want to check him out, look up, Ask Vinh, A-S-K-V-I-N-H, on Instagram.
This post specifically says, “This is my message to the world. You can be technically brilliant at what you do, but if you cannot communicate it well, people won’t truly see you for your gifts and for your talents.” Well, if that’s not the gosh-darn truth.
There’s this video that he shows that goes along with it, and the video clip is from a keynote that he’s giving somewhere. He says, “There’s a lot of people in this world whose education, whose knowledge, whose skill is a 10 out of 10, but their communication is a three out of 10. That’s a recipe for failure.”
It was like, whoa! Such a punch to the gut, but also true. I think that’s so true. As he said it, it brought me so much clarity. It explained to me like, wow, this is why so many people end up so frustrated. They know that they are talented. They know that they’re capable. They know that they’re driven. They know that they have so much to share with the world, but they can’t find the words, or they have the words, but they don’t know how to express them, or they know how to express them, but not in a way that other people relate to. That’s got to feel so frustrating.
It’s almost like being a prisoner of your own thoughts, because you have so much to say, you have so much to share, but the vehicle in which to convey those thoughts and ideas and messages in a way that others will understand is something completely different.
I don’t think there’s conversation around this and so the reason why I wanted to talk about this is because these are skills you’re going to use with your clients, you’re going to use with your peers. If you’re a salon owner, you’re going to use these things with your team. Your team is not stupid. You might just not be communicating to them properly, okay? Skills you can use with your family, with your friends, with everybody.
When we look at people who struggle to communicate, often they’re mislabeled as socially awkward or they’re just quiet. Sometimes those things are true. I’m not saying nobody’s socially awkward, but what I’m saying is a lot of times it’s that we don’t understand their communication style.
One of the things that I think that I’ve gotten good at is what’s called style flexing. Style flexing is possible when you understand all of the communication styles and you learn how to adapt your style to meet the needs of the person you’re communicating with.
People have caught me doing this before, and it’s funny. They’ll say, “I don’t understand. When you talk to me, you’re very direct and you tell me how it is. But then you go over there with so-and-so and you’re sweet and nice.”
I say, “Yes, because look at how you’re talking to me right now. You’re being direct. You’re telling me exactly how you’re feeling. You’re telling me how my actions made you feel. We’re having a very transparent conversation, and you feel good about it, so I can communicate with you that way all day long and you can communicate with me all day long like that. We’re good. If I talked like you’re talking to me right now with that person over there in the corner who you think I’m being too soft with, they would go home and cry about it. It doesn’t make them soft or weak. It means they don’t have the same communication style that you do.”
So when people say things like, “Well, that’s not fair,” life’s not fair and humans are wired differently. The more we can understand concepts like this and flex our communication and learn how to better communicate with others, the happier everybody will be.
I want to dig into the five most prominent communication styles. There’s probably more like 15 or 20, but none of us listening to this podcast are trying to be clinical psychologists. We’re just trying to be stylists, salon owners, effective humans, and I think learning the five major ones is enough to get us there.
At a glance, the five major communication styles are going to be assertive, aggressive, passive-aggressive, submissive, and manipulative. Let’s go through all five, and I’m actually going to start with aggressive because I think this is one of the ones where people are like, “Oh, I’ve met people like that,” like it’s an obvious one.
Aggressive communicators are often labeled as intimidating. And by the way, I think aggressive can have a negative connotation to it. This is not a negative communication style. I believe aggressive communicators are direct. For me, I like direct communication, so it’s okay for me. Aggressive people, it’s not like mean people. It’s not like, whoa, an aggressive dog. It’s not the same like that. Aggressive communication can be very effective. Often leaders are very aggressive communicators.
Aggressive communication style is often labeled as intimidating, willing to achieve goals at the expense of others. They are out to win. They’re often seen as unpredictable, and they often settle into a position of authority as others choose to meet their demands to avoid confrontation.
Has anybody met somebody like this?
If you are an aggressive or you’re working with somebody who is an aggressive, I want to give you some skills to learn to communicate really effectively with that communication style.
Number one, aggressives are confident and like to be given the opportunity to win. They like to win. If you want an aggressive to be in your corner, set them up to win. They want to impress you.
That’s what’s confusing is a lot of people are like, “Well, the aggressive people want to take me down.” Nope. Aggressive people have a very strong desire to be winners. When you can figure out a way to mutually win with an aggressive, you’ll both be very happy.
These personality types are often misunderstood as being harmful, but many overachievers and top performers are aggressive because of their drive.They’re not willing to settle for loss, so they feel like they have no choice but to be aggressive.
Aggressives need their voice to be heard even if action isn’t taken. Aggressives are often talkers, and this is one of the things I’ve definitely learned as a leader. Generally speaking, people don’t need solutions. They need to feel seen and heard.
Have you ever been in a room with somebody, you had a really bad day, and you’re explaining what happened during your day. They’re just like, “Okay, well, here is what you need to do,” and they give you a bunch of advice, and you’re like, “You giving me advice right now is just about the worst thing you could have done. I don’t want to hear your advice. I want you to listen to me and understand and just say that you hear me,” right?
Aggressives are often very much wired like that. They don’t need you to cave to their demands or jump when they ask you to. They want to be heard. Saying, “I hear you. I got your message. Let me work on this and I’ll come back to you,” perfect for aggressives.
Or just say, “I hear you and I feel you on that.” Often that’s enough. It’s not that they’re trying to be demanding or pushy. They have this innate desire to have their voice and their thoughts heard.
Aggressives won’t settle for the average and to be a top dog. They’ll be your most loyal top performers as long as they’re given room to grow.
Leaders are often intimidated by top performers as they feel their authority is being questioned, so if you have somebody in your space who’s an aggressive—I definitely managed aggressives before, and when you are not confident in these communication styles, it does feel very threatening like, “Oh, you’re coming for me,” or “You think you can push me around.” I’m not an aggressive, but I also don’t get pushed around by aggressives anymore because I know how to handle them and that’s part of the goal.
Aggressives don’t like to be told what to do, but can convince your entire salon of a new plan so long as it’s something they believe in.
Aggressives can be a real ally for you. When you think about if you’re trying to do something new in the salon and you’re like, “I don’t know if everyone’s going to love this,” if you can get the aggressive on your side, they will sales pitch your concept to every single person, so getting them in your corner is huge.
Aggressives often soften one-to-one and are open to in-depth conversation, which should happen regularly. Aggressives like a lot of one-to-one. Because remember, they like to be heard. They like to be seen and heard. They want you to listen to them. Creating space for that.
Often an aggressive in a one-to-one setting is sweet. You’ll see their heart. You have to remember they’re achievers. They’re out to win. They want to make you happy, like the most loyal dog you’ve ever had. They want to just make you so proud. With all that being said, creating the space where they can do that.
You should always be calm, nonemotional, and levelheaded when talking to an aggressive. If you get overly emotional, they unravel and then they start to see you as weak and that’s not the direction you want to go in.
When you’re working with an aggressive, to sum it up, they ride hard for the people and the things and the organizations and the systems and the structure and the ideas they firmly believe in. They can take things to the finish line. They are achievers through and through. They don’t need the soft stuff. They don’t need the mushy stuff. They’re people you call straight shooters.
Often aggressives are very successful, and people say it’s because they’re intimidating and no one’s willing to cross them. No, it’s because they’re willing to fight and do whatever it takes to reach the finish line.
If you’re in a salon and you have aggressives, they can be your number one team members so long as you learn to work with them.
Same with clients. If you have clients who are aggressives, you need to match that energy. Don’t let them bulldoze you. You need to get on that level with them.
Let’s go to the other side and the other side is submissive. Submissive would be the complete opposite of the aggressive. Submissive avoids any confrontation. They can be seen as a human doormat. They find difficulty in taking responsibility for decisions. Very indecisive. They like to yield to somebody else’s preferences. “What do you want to do? What would you like? I don’t care. It’s up to you.” Those are all submissive answers.
Here’s the dark side of the submissives. They blame others for events and they generally have a strong victim mentality. They are inexpressive of their feelings and desires. They’re quick to complain, but slow to take action and come to a resolution, and they’re most often underperformers.
Think about the cycle of the submissive though. Think about being in their mind: “I’m so nice. I don’t cause any problems. I go with the flow. Everyone can do whatever it is they do and no one cares about me.”
You can see how this would go straight to that victim, underperformer, human doormat, problematic because they feel like they’re doing the right thing, they’re so sweet, they’re trying to be adaptive and everything is great, but that doesn’t feel good, so there’s all these negative repercussions that come from that.
Mastering the submissive. Submissives are often ticking time bombs. You have to be very careful. Encouraging a submissive to speak to you in confidence about what challenges they’re facing without any judgment will encourage loyalty. Affirming that their choices are solid is helpful. Letting them know, “I want you to make a decision, and I want you to trust that decision. I want you to see how you have good instincts and you can make this work.”
Respecting their preference to keep the relationship more surface level while offering connection is key. They don’t want to go deep and vulnerable with you. It’s too scary. It’s too raw. They’re not there. Versus an aggressive is like, “Let’s get into it.”
Remember, I shared that example at the beginning. You can be real straight up with an aggressive. This submissive is the person crying in the corner, where if you use the wrong word and you say, “I’m struggling with your performance right now,” oh, they’re going to quit on the spot, versus an aggressive is like, “Break it down for me. What am I doing?” A submissive is somebody who’s right on the edge.
Assistance in making an action plan will make a submissive feel supported.
Remember, they don’t like to be a decision maker.
If you have a submissive that you’re working with, whether it be a client or a team member or a family member, sitting down and making a plan. Think about if you’re consulting with a client who’s a submissive—we’ve all consulted with this person who is like, “Yeah, whatever you think. Oh my gosh, I do love that color,” everything is happy. That doesn’t make any sense.
When they’re just going with the flow or they say a lot of, “Whatever you think. You’re the professional. I trust you,” we all know those are red flag words at this point, right? When someone’s saying that, I would pull up a stool and get on their level and be like, “This is your hair, and I’m here to work this through with you, but let’s make a plan together.” It’s like we go back to the beginning and I say, “Okay, when you first came in, this is the picture you showed me. Let’s go back to that. Let’s unwind all the suggestions I made. Remind me again, what is it about this picture that you like?” Slow it down. Sit down. Make a plan together. Let them feel deeply understood.
That’s how you’re going to work well with that submissive.
Then let’s go to aggressive’s cousin and aggressive’s cousin would be passive-aggressive. I think you probably know as well as I do, passive-aggressive has a pretty negative connotation. Nobody wants to be described as, “You’re so passive-aggressive.” It’s never going to be a compliment.
Passive-aggressives are two-faced. They’re pleasant to people to their faces, but poisonous behind their backs, rumors, gossip, sabotage, et cetera.
Often, toxic stylists fall into this category. They’re indirectly intimidating in a way that can often be brushed off as a misunderstanding. Like, “Oh my gosh, no, you just didn’t get it. That’s how we joke together. That’s just how we talk.” All of those things are passive-aggressive statements.
They’re often seen as being kind on a surface level, but more malicious or manipulative in small groups or in certain situations. They like to be in control, and they have an easier time controlling a group of two or three than a group of 10.
Remember, I told you that aggressives can convince a group to follow them, can convince a group that this is a good idea, champion behind me. They’re driven. They’re confident. A passive-aggressive is different. They are manipulative with one or two or three people and try and stir the pot. They’re unreliable as they often say one thing, but do something else. But then remember, it goes back to those misunderstandings and brush-offs like, “Oh, okay. Well, when you said that, I thought you meant this, so I think maybe you said it wrong.”
No accountability. Quick to complain, but slow to take action to come to a resolution. They often struggle to achieve success without support.
Like the submissive, passive-aggressives need a lot of help if they’re going to get to the finish line. The leader should be their greatest resource and confidante. Time must be taken to connect with those who are passive-aggressive so that they know their voice is heard and understood.
Extra care must be taken not to give private communication to a passive-aggressive team member as they’re often not trustworthy. Remember, they’ve got that malicious, manipulative bit at their core, which is different than a manipulative communication style. We’ll get into that in a minute.
You have to be careful with these people. With an aggressive—you can trust an aggressive. You can trust a submissive. A passive-aggressive, you can’t.
The passive-aggressive wants to make big things happen, but needs a lot of handholding and guidance to make it happen. If you have somebody in your place, space, world who’s passive-aggressive, generally speaking, there’s not a lot of longevity with that communication type. We need to figure out a way to negotiate them to something that’s more constructive. But understanding when somebody is passive-aggressive is a really good place to start.
If you have a client who’s a big gossip and comes in and all they want to do is gossip about their friends, they’re probably passive-aggressive. You have to be careful with that person. Be careful what you share with them. They’re the person who will tell you that they love their hair and then go leave you a one-star Yelp review. That’s a passive-aggressive.
This is kind of a scary communication type, so keep an eye out for people where you’re like, “This feels like…” You know how when people say it feels too good to be true, it probably is? Passive-aggressive almost all the time.
Then we have the assertive. Assertive is where we want as many people to be as possible. Assertives achieve goals without worrying about hurting others because they’re so self-driven. (Now, that statement at surface level sounds negative, but hang on to it because we’re going to come back to it.)
They’re protective of their own rights and respectful of others’ rights because they don’t see it as just themselves. They do show good empathy, assertives do. They’re socially and emotionally expressive. You can be an introverted assertive, but you don’t struggle to get your point across or in a social setting, you’re able to adapt and communicate.
No matter what question somebody asks you, you’re able to answer it with confidence. That’s an assertive.
Makes own choices and takes responsibility for them, so high accountability. Then ask directly for needs to be met while accepting the possibility of rejection.
Assertives are interesting because they have the mindset of the worst that can happen is a no. It’s okay. Rejection rolls off their back at this point. It’s not so scary.
When we’re mastering the assertive, assertives are confident and self-aware. They can come across a bit intimidating just like aggressives do. However, they are so skilled in their communication style that if you can match their tempo, I mean, the click is brilliant.
They know their strengths and weaknesses and always play to their strengths. They’ll admit to you—you’ll ask them to do something and they’ll be like, “Oh, that’s not my wheelhouse,” and there’s no ego attached to it. No worries. Versus an aggressive is like, “You better believe I can work that out.” It’s different in that, versus assertives are like, “Oh no, it’s just not my bag.”
Assertives won’t allow themselves to be pushed beyond their beliefs and aren’t interested in compromising their vision for life. Assertives aren’t quick to sacrifice their beliefs to make life easier for anybody else. It’s like get on my level or get out is the assertive mindset.
Assertives need to have their opinions heard. While you don’t always have to take action on their suggestions, they need to feel valued and praised for their innovation, similar to aggressives in that one. It’s very important to lean into the connection element of transformational leadership when managing and leading an assertive. Transformational leadership is something we talk about in Thriving Leadership, it’s one of my programs, and this is where a lot of these concepts are pulled from.
I mentioned that the assertive achieves goals without worrying about hurting others because they’re so self-driven, but it’s not from a malicious standpoint. It’s more like a “Get out of my way. You’re either on this train with me or you can get off at the next station.” It’s not like, “Well, if I do this, Sophia is going to be sad.”
It’s like, “Okay, well, then she might be sad for a while.” It’s not from a place of malicious. It’s like, “Yeah, but I’m going to do it. That’s unfortunate for Sophia.” It’s more from that place of confidence. I know what I want. I’m going to get it. I’ll do what it takes.
Last but not least, we have the manipulator. If you guessed that the manipulator is probably the worst of all, it is. Manipulators have low self-esteem or low self-confidence, a victim mentality who rallies others to support their cause.
Remember that the person who was submissive also had the victim mentality, but they’re stewing in their own victim mentality. A manipulator rallies a team around it. Outward displays of emotional unhappiness including tears, sulking, negative attitude, et cetera. They ask indirectly for their needs to be met. “I sure would like it if we were able to skip the holiday party this year,” or whatever it is.
Do you know who’s a manipulative? Do you know Eeyore from Winnie-the-Pooh? Total manipulative. “Oh my gosh, he’s sad again. We should rally for him,” and he’s got complaints about everything? Manipulative.
Making others feel obligated or sorry for them. They like to rally a pity party.
Mastering the manipulator. Manipulators need to be gently urged to get to the root cause of the issue beyond the surface-level triggers. There’s always a deeper root cause and until we can uncover the deeper issues, the manipulation will continue.
You got to call a manipulator out and be like, “When you complained about the holiday party the other day, it appeared that you were trying to rally other people behind it. I can’t have that kind of negative energy here.” You have to get assertive with them. You have to tell them. They’re not going to feel good because you are battling their communication style, but you’re also showing that manipulation is not tolerated in your place and space. It’s like throwing water on the fire. The fire’s not going to like it. The fire’s going to fight back, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to happen.
Manipulators can also release many of their negative tendencies when they feel more in control, confident, and heard. Again, this goes back to if you make people feel seen and heard, most of these issues resolve themselves. Take the time to listen to what a manipulator is saying without having an emotional response.
Even saying, “I hear you. I hear everything here. I need a bit of time to digest all of this. Give me 48 hours and I’ll come back to you.” Let them feel seen and heard. But the tricky thing about talking to a manipulator, have you ever heard about being gaslit? They’ll make you start to question your own thoughts. You go into the conversation thinking one thing, and then you’re like, “Wait a minute. What? What?” Often they’ll throw new facts into the mix and then you’ll be like, Okay, maybe I did get it wrong,” and you know what? The reality is maybe you did get it wrong. But until you take a step back and really think through, “Is it me or is it them?”, you won’t know.
Here’s an example. How do I do this while protecting everyone’s identity? There is a social setting that one of my children was involved in. It’s not the salon my daughter works in. I’ll just take that off the table immediately. But there was a social setting that either my son or my daughter was involved in, and they were having a real challenge with another person in this social setting, a challenge where I ended up crying and screaming about it. I was infuriated. I was next level. It wasn’t a petty issue. It was like, “I’m coming for somebody.” I was very livid about it.
I reached out to a mutual friend who knew the person who was involved in the situation, and I was like, “I’m not even going to say names, but there’s somebody that one of my kids is having an issue with. What do you know about this?”
The mutual friend responded back to me and said, “Let me guess,” and they dropped the name of the person who’s definitely causing problems. I was like, “You nailed it.” I was like, “So clearly you know that this person maybe doesn’t have good intentions.”
They were like, “Watch out. That person is toxic, trouble. Everybody they’re associated with is dark.” I said, “Okay, thank you.”
Here’s what you should know about me. My approach is if I have an issue with somebody, I am coming to you and we’re talking about it. Spoiler alert, I’m somewhere between the aggressive and the assertive. My natural communication style is the aggressive. Every day I wake up trying to be the assertive. I really do. Knowing that my natural tendency is to be the aggressive, if I have an issue with you, I will call you. I’ll show up at your house and we will talk about it. I don’t let it fester. So I told this person, I said, “I’m going to tackle it. I’m going to go there. I’m going to bring it up. We’re going to talk it through.”
This mutual friend was like, “Do not bother.” She was like, “I’ve been there. I’ve been where you are. You’re going to go there. You’re going to be made to feel like you’re crazy, like you don’t know what you’re talking about. That your child’s the actual problem. Everything’s backwards. You are misled in the situation.” She was like, “I walked this journey, and then I went home and had a conversation and thought it through and belittled my child over it.” She goes, “And then two days later, it hit me that I had been totally manipulated by that person.”
She said, “And now that you’re coming to me telling me that you’re having the exact same issues that my person had with this person, I know for a fact that that mutual friend of ours is the manipulator.”
And they are.
There are people who—I don’t even know if it’s intentional, they literally can’t see their own fatal flaws. No self-awareness. Ultimate victim mentality. They are convinced that everybody else in the world is out to get them.
This is a very, very scary personality type. You don’t want this kind of person in your building if you’re a salon owner. You need to take the time to listen without having an emotional response. Don’t get upset. Don’t get emotionally involved. Just roll with it and think about it later. Give the manipulator a small gesture of appropriate positive feedback.
That’s the thing: manipulators are hard because you almost have to feed the beast. You have to be like, “Thank you so much for everything you just said.” You almost have to eat it when you’re talking to them and that’s why this is not healthy communication. It can’t be sustained.
Assist manipulators in making a success plan and remind them of the tools available to ensure their success.
Some of you have had consultations with clients who are manipulators. You know how you can tell when a client comes in and they say things like, “No stylist has ever been able to get my hair right”? I guarantee they’re the manipulator personality type and they will twist every situation and every story to be the victim.
Is this making sense now? Where then the stylist starts to question their own truth of like, “Oh my, what? That didn’t even happen in the building.” Have you ever been there when somebody says a story and you’re like, “That’s not what happened though?” Manipulator.
You want to look out for red flags with clients, with stylists, with team members, with friends, with family, all of these things.
Like I mentioned just a moment ago, we should all be working towards being assertives. Assertives is the healthiest communication style. It’s the most adaptable. If you can become an assertive—which like I said, I’m not a perfect assertive, I’m a natural aggressive working to be assertive every day. Assertives are really good at flexing to all of the personality types, understanding each and how to handle them.
I hope you walk away from this episode with a little bit more understanding of how people operate the way that they do with the understanding of the fact that most people are good. They just need to be communicated in a way that makes them feel seen and heard and coached to get to the place where they can be assertives along with you. If somebody’s a submissive, breathing life into them and letting them know, “Your ideas are good. Believe in yourself.” You can, if you’re an industry leader, coach your clients, coach your team to get to a place of all being assertive communicators. And when you look at salon dream teams, that’s exactly what they look like.
Y’all, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
