Uncover
Your Staff's Potential:
Coach to Success
Salon Today June 2000
Joanne Jordan, has
some advice that she suggests you give to the person you have chosen
to be your education director or member of your education team.
Jordan says the
best trainers are people who have very good coaching skills. Great coaches,
and therefore great trainers, not only possess good communication skills,
she says, but they've also developed a language that carries with it
the greatest positive impact. "As coaches, your on-staff educators have
many roles. They are cheerleaders and advocates for their students,
and they believe in them without reservation.
But in order to
ensure they are on the right track, your educator must first establish
that their trainees are open to being coached.
Here are some questions
your coaches should get answers to before starting their education programs:
- Is the staff
ready to learn new ways of doing things?
- Is the staff
ready to make a lot of changes?
- Is the staff
willing to stick with the training even when it gets tough?
These are good questions
your educators should be asking themselves about the staff, says Jordan,
because it will help the education program succeed if your trainers
have a sense of what to expect from their students.
"These questions
are also important because your educators should know what they are
getting into before accepting the job," continues Jordan. "It is your
responsibility as the owner to make them think about what being an on-staff
educator might mean- how it can be very rewarding and very frustrating
at times."
"Not everyone
is meant to be an education director," she says. "Sometimes
a trainer is only effective under the guidance of great leadership."
As for how to handle
the issue of paying your educator, Jordan recommends owners convert
educators to a straight salary as opposed to adding a small salary to
their existing commission. "I ask my clients to take into consideration
the scope of their investment. I say, 'Ask yourself what this person
enables your salon to be or become.' Essentially, it all comes down
to what value an owner puts on an in-house trainer."
