Intro: Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hairstylist? 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 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 hairstylists, 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 we’re going to dive into some leadership coaching today. I’m really excited. My team and I had this awareness that we don’t talk about salon leadership and ownership stuff nearly enough on the podcast. And it’s probably the thing that I am the most effective, experienced, trained in. It’s where I spend most of my time, and it’s not something I talk a lot about. And so I’m going to really make a commitment to try and be better about.
This is a total side note and sidebar, if you’re watching this on YouTube, you’re going to get a chance to see me totally extensionless. If you didn’t know that our podcast episodes go up on YouTube, now is a great time to check. If you’re curious, you can check us out at Britt Siva on YouTube. We upload most, if not all, of our podcast episodes there. And I’m on just a little hair journey and I’m trying to embrace the extensionlessness. I’ve been taking hair supplements and using really great hair care. So just on a personal note, if you want to see what your girl looks like without extensions, treat yourself.
So I wanted to explain the backstory of this episode and share why I decided that this was so important. So I got a DM earlier this week from a salon owner. I actually woke up to it, so I assumed she had sent it pretty late at night. And she was like, “Britt, I have to reach out to you. I had a really rough day in the salon yesterday and I’m not sure where to go from here. I got into it with one of the other stylists on the floor.” And she’s like, “Not many clients realized what was happening, but a lot of the staff did. And it didn’t go well and it turned a little ugly and I am nervous to go into the salon today. What is my best course of action? Just things did not go to plan at all and it’s not how I would want to be communicating with my team. How would you recover from this?”
And I shared my advice of what I would do in that kind of situation. And she was like, “Thanks. I hear you. I think what I’m going to do is go in and just let the team know I’m at my breaking point and I’m super stressed out and I have a vacation coming up and I really just need to get to that benchmark and then I’ll be in a better place and space. And that’s why I reacted the way I did. I’m just so burnt out. And if I explain where I’m at, hopefully they’ll understand.” And I was like, “No, please don’t do that.”
Just never, that’s not how we would approach that kind of situation. And I said, “You know what? I bet you are burnt out and I bet you are exhausted and I bet you’re emotionally overwhelmed and thank goodness you have time off coming up. And all of these things, I totally agree, and I can completely empathize that that was not how you wanted things to go. And I have certainly had those moments and those days, so I get it.” But the reason why we don’t go back and tell our team, “Listen, I’m just in a hard spot, give me grace.” Is the lesson I’m going to teach you today. So if you don’t know, now you know, the company that I’m the CEO of is not called Thrivers Society, it’s not called Thriving Stylist, it’s called Flourish Salon Business Development.
And I established the company officially, legally in 2015. It’s when I stopped just solo consulting salon owners and really formalized my business. And I have 16 full-time employees who work for me. So a huge portion of my job is leading my team. And that’s the thing that nobody gets to see. Y’all see me making Instagrams and speaking on stages and teaching classes and stuff like that, and I do all of that, and I love all of that, and that’s certainly what got me here. But if you talk to my team, the leading my team is the thing that I have to do the most. And it’s the most challenging work I’ve ever done. It’s my life’s work. Nothing will be harder than being an incredible leader. If you’ve ever tried to lead a team, you know exactly what I’m talking about. And so because of that, I am constantly working on my leadership skills and trying to say, how could I have handled that better? What could I have done differently here?
And in doing so, I have learned to read a lot of business and leadership books. A lot of them, hundreds. And I will say probably four-fifths of the one I read, I’m like, “That was just okay.” And then there’s that 20% where I’m like, “This is changing my life. I have to keep this book forever because it’s completely changed my perspective. And this has made an impact on my team.” So how do I decide if a book is worth it or not? I’ll read it and I’ll try some of the concepts and it’ll either be a pass or a fail. And it could be argued though that maybe I’m not applying the concept right or maybe my team’s just not into it. Sure. But I think just like anything else, not all advice is good advice. The book I’m going to be referencing today in this episode is called The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. And this is one of that 20% of reads where I was like, “Wow, this is a real game changer for me.”
It’s written by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman and Kaley Klemp. So if you’re looking for it, check that out. We’ll do the Amazon link in the show notes here as well. But I want to share with you one of the lessons that really clicked in for me because it shifted my perspective on why salons and/or businesses can become drama filled. Why some people do seem to be bad apples. What causes tension? We talk about always having good culture, positive culture. We’re a family, good vibes only. What causes those things to go south? And sometimes we even say, “We’re a family. That’s why there’s drama. Families have drama.” That’s not that cute or funny. And so what we want to do is whenever possible, create an environment that will attract the best and brightest to come and work for us and to retain great team members. And one of the strategies that this book uses to help leaders understand how to cultivate a truly positive team environment and a truly effective working team is their concept of presence versus drama triangle.
Now, I’m actually going to explain this a little bit differently. I’m going to call it the peace circle versus the drama triangle. Only because this is an audio training and I think sometimes when I explain a concept with a visual that you can picture in your mind as I’m explaining things, it just makes it a little bit more sense. This is a pretty complex topic and I think having that visual attach is going to help you. So I’m calling it the peace circle versus the drama triangle. But in 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, it’s presence versus drama triangle. Okay. So first of all, let me explain what the drama triangle is because once I learned what it was, I was like, “Oh my gosh, this has existed in the business I own today. This has existed in the salon that I worked at. This existed for me at the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay, my first adult job. This has existed in some form or many forms in every single company I’ve worked for.”
So I know it to be true. And once you hear it, you won’t be able to unhear it. So the idea is that most leaders spend 70% or more of their leadership time navigating aspects of the drama triangle. 70%. That is way too much time to be dealing with and managing drama. Drama is fueled by the need to be right, fear, adrenaline. It’s just fun and it fires us up. Blame on others versus self-awareness and reflection. The blame game, we’ve definitely seen people do that. Deflection. And then attempts to highlight others’ poor performance to mask their own poor performance. When I saw that example, I was like, “Oh my gosh, I can think back to…” I won’t say which work environment I worked in because I don’t want to make it too obvious. But I was like, “Oh, I know the person who did that exact same thing.”
Would point out others’ flaws and meanwhile I’d be like, “Wait a minute, did you see what you did last week? But we’re talking about what this person did over here. Hello, let’s take a look at yourself before. People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” Sometimes that’s so true. And so what this book and what this guide is saying is when people choose to create drama, perpetuate drama, gossip. Gossip is a form of drama. There is no healthy gossip. Let’s not be confused about that. There’s either constructive conversation or you’re talking gossip, you’re talking about somebody behind their back in a way that’s not constructive. It’s either constructive or it’s toxic. There’s not a whole lot in between. If you’re telling a story, it better end on a positive high otherwise it’s toxic gossip. No matter how fun it is. Adrenaline was one of the factors. It’s not healthy and it’s going to create a really negative environment.
So people call it, “We’re just venting. This is just water cooler talk.” Why aren’t you venting to the person who can do something about it? And that’s what this drama triangle talks about. So in the drama triangle, there are three different characters. There’s the hero, the villain, and the victim. And sometimes all of us are all three of these. In any given company, I’m not asking you to listen to this and be like, “Oh, okay, I’m the villain.” I have honestly been the hero, the villain, and the victim. So it just depends on the day, the circumstance, the situation, the players. But when there is drama, when there are issues, these are the characters that are involved. So first is the hero. And the hero is often the leader or the head of something, the person who is going to be the fixer. The person who’s like, “I really am good at this kind of stuff. I’m good at navigating this.”
They work to create temporary relief when problems arise. So a Band-Aid giver, the boo boo fixer. They don’t want anybody to feel bad and they seek peace. So if you are somebody who just seeks peace in general, you’re somebody who just doesn’t like conflict and you try to just smooth things over. I’m a Libra, I love balance. We can fall into this hero role very easily. We do things like saying, “Oh my gosh, that’s hard for you? Okay, no worries. I’ll take that off your plate. I’ll just do that for you. I don’t want you to have to suffer. Oh, that’s too much. I totally get it. I’ll just take it on. I’ll just take it on. I’ll just take it on.” Or they do things like, “It’ll be okay. I’ll smooth this out for you. Let me navigate this. It’s okay. You know what? I know how to talk to that person. Don’t you worry about it. I know she does get that way. Let me just take care of this for you.”
That’s what heroes try and do. They seek value in being the fixer, which gives them a dopamine rush. And it’s the short term feeling of I’m good at something. That’s what heroes are seeking. Then there’s villains. And villains are blamers. So blamers can blame themselves, others or the entire team or organization as a whole. Blamers can also blame the people being served. So the clients, the customers. Has anybody ever heard the joke? I definitely heard this made in the salon from time to time. “This place would be great if it weren’t for the clients.” Do you know what I mean? Where it’s like you have a handful of bad clients and you’re like, “Wow, if it wasn’t for the clients.” Which ironically, they’re the ones who keep the wheels turning, they keep the lights on in this joint. But blamers will blame themselves, others, the team, the clients, the customers. Which stirs up drama, it stirs up negative feelings, creates a negative working environment.
Villains have a victim mentality. So they’ll say things like, if they’re going to blame themselves, “I should be able to do this by now. I should be able to work harder. My circumstances just make it so hard for me. It’s so much harder for me than it is for everybody else. I’m at such a disadvantage. I wish people would go easier on me.” That’s the villain. They also sometimes deflect. So if they’re choosing to blame the team or others or the customers or the clients, they’ll say things like, “Well, it’s your fault because you don’t do things the right way or he doesn’t do things the right way. So now my life is harder because Joe doesn’t do his job the right way.” Or, “They just don’t get it. You just don’t get it.” Or, “They’re doing it all wrong. He’s doing it all wrong.” Or, “They’re what we should be concerned about right now, everybody’s so focused on me, but if you look at them over there.”
That’s the villain. A blamer. Always looking to cause negative energy, point fingers, massive blamer. Then we have the victim. So we all have heard of the victim mentality. Victims believe life is happening to them. I have many a podcast that share the true reality, we are all in the driver’s seat of this lifetime. Make no mistake about that. We can pull plugs, jump into new vehicles, take big leaps and chances anytime we want to. I quit my job $30,000 in debt, not sure how I was going to make it in order to build this business. Was that scary? Yeah. Was my husband a huge fan of it? No. Did our families think I was going to destroy the life we had built, which was shaky at best already? 100%.
Nobody was like, “Yeah, Britt, go for it.” That was not the kind of support that I had. But had I not made that leap of faith, I would not be here now. But victims don’t think that way. They think life is happening to them. They’re a victim of their circumstance. Woe is me. A person, condition or circumstance doing something or not doing something that is causing the victim pain. So external conditions, external circumstances are making it impossible for the victim to succeed. Everything is wrong. So it could be the economy, the salon, the clients, the color line we have, the training we offer, the schedule, the color of the station. It literally could be anything. Essentially they feel powerless and a victim of their circumstance. They did and always have done a 10 out of 10 job, everything else is wrong. You know those people? I certainly know those people.
So when we look at the hero, the victim and the villain, they’re in this constant trifecta cycle to see who’s got it harder. “I’ve got it the worst. No, I’ve got it the worst. No, it’s the hardest for me. I’m so misunderstood. I’m just going to keep working more and more and more to fix things and make it better.” But then of course, the hero at the end becomes a victim themselves. Remember that salon owner I was talking about who was like, “I’m just going to go in and tell everybody that I’m burnt out.” Because they’re seeking empathy. They tried to be the hero so long and then wore themselves down, so now they can no longer be the hero, now they need to be the victim. And then somebody else in the salon is going to have to come along and be the hero and be like, “No worries. We all understand. Let’s make this okay for you.”
And so it becomes this cycle of everybody just trying to keep the wheels on. And they call this the drama triangle in the book and in the teaching. But I want to say, I don’t even want to keep using the word drama because I think when we hear drama, we think gossip. I almost just want to say negativity. Just negativity in general. So this is the salon negativity triangle. It just becomes a cesspool of let’s see what happens tomorrow. And it’s like everybody’s just waiting for things to get worse. Everything’s waiting for it to get nastier. And this can just go on for years and years and years. And we can still say things like, “But at the end of the day, we all love each other. At the end of the day, we’re doing our best.” Or we can choose to adopt the opposite, which is going to be the peace circle.
So with the peace circle, the victim chooses to shift to creator. So remember the victim was, woe is me. Everybody’s making it hard for me. My circumstances make it impossible. The color of the stations is wrong. That’s the victim. The victim chooses to shift to a creator mindset. So they choose to take responsibility for their life and their future rather than be a victim of the situation or circumstance. Remember I talked about getting in the driver’s seat, making the leap of faith, saying, “Yeah, this might be my reality, this might be my circumstance, but I don’t like this anymore. So what am I going to do to make a change to it?” Creator. You have to create something new, create a new reality for yourself. They identify the issue and say, “These are the areas I feel like I’m not thriving in, so can we make a plan for me to improve on these things?”
And that’s the critical thing is that you’ll notice that when we are shifting to these new personas in the peace circle and moving away from the drama triangle, there is a massive amount of personal development, self-accountability, self-awareness. It forces everybody in the organization to stop pointing fingers and to stop gossiping about others and to take a good look inside themselves and say, what can I do to become a part of the solution? The other thing that creators do is they stop complaining openly to others about what is happening to them and they choose to instead be in the driver’s seat of creating their own reality. So they worry less about looking externally, blaming others and they say, “But what about me? What piece of this can I own, should I own? And how can I create a new reality for myself?” The villain chooses to shift to be the challenger. So challenger by definition is somebody who questions the status quo. Takes a look at the current reality and says, “Yeah, but what if it could be different?”
Have you heard me in the last year talk about the invitation to get curious? It’s something I’ve been obsessed over. And it’s really served me well. Whenever I hit a roadblock, whenever I have a hard conversation in my personal life, in my professional life, in my business, when I’m looking at a spreadsheet, I choose to step back and instead… I’m a hothead, by the way. I have a real short fuse. If you ask my husband and my kids, they’ll tell you about it. So my natural tendency is I’m pissed, watch me light up. Instead, I’ve chosen to say, “Okay, why am I mad? Why are you mad?” And the invitation to just get curious and instead of have a snap reaction and to instead be like, “Wait a minute, let me just understand this for a second.” I can’t tell you how well that has served me. If there’s one life change I’ve made in the last year, the choice to get curious is the best one I’ve made without a doubt.
So they challenge the current situations and systems, but with positive energy and solutions rather than pointing out the problems. So one of the things… We just hired on a new team member to work for us in the last week. She’s a little dreamboat. And one of the things I said to her is she was like, “How do you feel about meetings?” And I was like, “Totally good for meetings, but if you schedule a meeting with me, don’t do it in the blind. Don’t say, can we talk in five minutes? No, we can’t.” What I want to do is I want you to say, “Here’s the challenge. I’ve got three solutions. Can we talk about it?” That’s something a challenger would do. So when you look at villains, they point out the problems. Here’s a problem, there’s a problem, he’s a problem, she’s a problem, they’re a problem.
Challengers are like, “Okay, listen, we’ve got this issue going on. There’s a few different ways that I feel like we could overcome it. What do you think?” That’s something a challenger would do. So more constructive conversation around solutions rather than focusing on the problem. They have specifics and clear details about what would make things better and doesn’t leave the pressure on anybody else to guess or figure it out. I’m going to say that one more time. Has specifics and clear details about what would make things better and doesn’t leave pressure on anybody else to guess or figure out. Any other leaders in the room. You’ve sat down with a team member or several team members and they’re telling you something that’s going on and you’re like, “Okay, what can we do to make this better?” And they’re like, “I don’t know, but I can’t take it.”
Oh my gosh. So if you’ve never been a leader, when I say that kind of conversation makes it so leaders can’t sleep at night, do you know why? It’s not because they’re mad that they have to do work. It’s that the target is invisible, it’s intangible. So you’re pissed, maybe you’re crying, you’re upset, you’re telling me you’re at your wits end. And then I ask you what a solution would look like and you say, “I don’t even know.” What am I supposed to do with that? I’m just supposed to keep guessing until I get it right? And it’s overwhelming, it’s confusing. So that’s what a villain might do. A challenger would be like, “I don’t know the perfect solution yet, but here’s a couple steps I think that would be in the right direction.” Okay, then I can take action on that. So choosing to be a part of the solution.
Here’s the hardest one and the most critical one, the hero becomes the coach. So the hero throws away the box of Band-Aids and does not want to be the fixer anymore. Doesn’t say, “Oh my gosh, you’re in pain. Let me take that off your plate. Oh my gosh, you’re overwhelmed. Let me make things lighter for you.” They’re not the mommy of an infant. That’s not the job of the coach. The coach instead chooses to guide people to a place of self-understanding or empathy or understanding the situation at large or understanding the why behind decisions or circumstances. They get curious. That curious word again. And they get great at asking questions that help people to come to their own conclusions and solutions. This is something that I’m really big on.
To my team, if you’ve been in a hard situation with me, you’ll notice I ask a lot of questions. I choose to listen and understand versus saying, “Well, this is what you should do. That’s what you should do.” And when you’re a coach, when you ask great questions, yes, you learn more about the situation, but the person you’re asking learns more about themselves. And that’s really where the magic happens in leadership. Because you’re supporting them, you’re guiding them, you’re elevating them, you’re giving a skillset forward and you’re helping them to deeply understand themselves. That’s the difference when we look at this peace circle. They see team members as fully in charge of creating their own lives and seek to simply support them in their individual achievements and life’s joy. I think that’s important too. I think with heroes, and this is speaking from experience, with the hero persona, we’re like, I want to make everybody happy. People pleaser. How do I make everybody happy? The coach is, how do I make you happy?
And the coach really looks at, yes, the health of the organization is important, but if five of the teammates are unhappy, then the organization is unhealthy. So yeah, it’s about creating peace. But until I guide those five unhappy people to a place of content, whatever that looks like, whatever that solution has to be, ain’t nobody going to be happy because we’re going to be stuck in that drama triangle. So we say, “But what about you? What needs to happen for you? What’s going on with you that’s making you feel this way?” This is why I talk about sometimes I have issues with salon coaching programs that try to put everybody into the same box. Everybody needs to hit the same goals. Everybody’s working towards the same destiny. No, they are not. And the more we understand our team as individuals, and the more we look at, okay, how can I just make sure everybody in their own little being, in their own little zone, in their own little reality, in their own set of goals, feels content? Man, that’s where success lives.
So what this book says is that if you can shift what they call presence, I called it the peace circle, but they called it presence. The team will be more engaged, energized, positive, and best of all, profitable. And that’s what we want y’all to have. So I hope this has just gotten your wheels turning. Now the next question is, okay, this is great, but how do I get my team to buy into it? One of the things I’ve learned is it starts with the leader. It starts from the top. And for me, I’ve been choosing to evolve as a leader since probably, I think I had my first person that I was leading when I was 20. So a really long time. Decades. And it’s something I’m looking to always get better about. And one of the things I’ve learned is the change has to start with me.
Even if I’m the one who has to suck it up and be the only one doing the work for three months or six months or a year or 18 months. Ultimately, I’ll reset the room and reset the tone and reset the expectation. And if I’m choosing to be the coach and not the hero, and I’m choosing to find solutions, not point out problems, over time people will realize, wow, when Britt does that, things go pretty well. And you’ll be amazed at how over time people start to adapt as well. By the way, most people seek peace, not problems. And if you have somebody in your building, place and space who seeks problems, thrives in victim mentality or villain mentality, if you cannot get them in check, they must leave. You heard of the saying, a bad team member poisons the well? I don’t want to work in a place that’s poisoned and your team members probably don’t either.
So if you’re looking to attract the best and the brightest, if you’re thinking about how to retain stylists. When I talk about stylists who go to studio suites, very few of them are like, “I went to the studio suite to make more money.” I’m telling you very few. Most of them are like, “I was sick of the drama. I was lacking leadership anyway, so I might as well do it on my own. And I wanted a place of peace.” When you talk to them, “I wanted to be in control, I want to work my own schedule and I wanted to have peace.” Over and over and over. This can really be a game changer for you. So check out 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. I hope this has been a good one. And as I always like to say, so much love, happy business building. And I’ll see you on the next one.
