5 Top Tips for Managing Your Staff

Hello, friends.

I'm Amanda Barr.

And I'm Rebecca Lou Brennan. And welcome to Dance Principals United, the podcast.

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This is the Dance Principals United podcast.

Well, hello friends. I hope you are super amazing and having an awes awesome week. I have the incredible Nathan with me today. How are you, Nathan?

Really good, thanks. Beck. We were just chatting before we hit record on all the things that we think we're going to have planned for school holidays right in New South Wales here for us as parents at school holidays, not just as studio owners. We're talking here and we have these grand notions of all the things we're going to get achieved in school holidays. And then look, to be honest, a lot of the times it just turns to right.

It does. I have said to my kids, now I'm recording a podcast, you need to be quiet. But I am not making any guarantees. It's really hard.

It is super, super hard. Look, we were joking last week. So our school, our girls go to like the local Anglican school, but we get an extra week of holidays in this. Exactly right. And then we're like. Because we're like, oh, should we go away? Like even just like down the coast or something, Just like break it up. We're like, no, we've just moved into the new place. We've got to like do some stuff around here. Then by 9:30 last month, first day of the holidays, 9:30 in the morning, they were already at each other. We're like, man, we should have just gone away.

But I don't know if going away makes it better though. Like, I don't know if it's really fixed. It's just taking your problems to another place, isn't it?

Sometimes. Sometimes maybe. But yeah, we, we went down to like just, just down the coast an hour or so just to a caravan park or something, just so they can run around and just like, you know, just, just, just let out some of their energy. But here we are struggling through can't, can't really be too woe is us, can we? We're doing okay, but we didn't want, we didn't want to whinge about school holidays today. What about is look in Studio Growth Club, we're doing Leadership month at the moment. Our DPU strategy session yesterday was all about staff and particularly helping our studio owners through maybe some staff challenges or issues that they're facing and look, just a few of the conversations we've opened up around that is we know that it's an area that studio owners need help with. Right. So we just want to jump on today's podcast and jam about all things staff and, I guess, some strategies for how to effectively deal with them. Right?

Yeah. My favorite thing to jam on, Nate. My favorite. I'm so. I'm so passionate about this because I feel like it's the thing that gets pushed to the side by the majority of studio owners, and it should be, in my opinion, their number one thing. Because your staff is your studio, and if you're not managing them, it's not the studio of your dreams, because they will just do what they want to do. And I think as studio owners, we need to start taking responsibility for that, Right?

Absolutely. And stepping up to be the leaders. Like, if you're a studio owner, you've chosen to be the business owner, you've chosen to be the leader. You're taking that next step from being a teacher, which, like, we know pretty much every studio owner starts out as. Right. And it's that progression for yourself. So if you're stepping up into that, there's lots of amazing things that come with running your own studio, but one of them, and you can either sort of embrace it and that helps your studio thrive and that stepping into leadership. But if you don't embrace that, then it can be really tough for you to be running your studio, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And something that I said to the SJC members yesterday, and what I want to say to our listeners today is every single time something goes wrong in your studio, and the example I kept using was you get to the concert and one of the teachers hasn't done the dance properly, it looks terrible. The kids aren't going confident with it. And it's our nature to then blame that teacher and say that it's their fault. But I truly believe that we have to self reflect as leaders and go, okay, did I check in and watch that routine each week? Did I offer support to that teacher because they weren't coping with it and you could tell that they weren't coping with it? Did I do everything in my power to stop that from happening? Honestly, nine and a half times out of ten, when I self reflect, I can say, no, I didn't. I need to change what I'm doing. And I think that's the thing. Like, it's so easy to blame staff and get rid of them. Blame staff and get rid of them. Whereas we're not actually setting expectations and doing what a leader should do in the first place.

Absolutely. Everybody listening to the podcast, I'm sure knows that I'm a huge Gary V. Fan and one of his big things that he talks about is always pointing thumbs, not fingers. And I'm doing the motions, which if you're watching on the YouTube, I guess you'll be able to see, but the podcast doesn't quite translate. But exactly what you're talking about. Right? Anything. As a leader, the first thing you need to be doing is pointing the thumbs at yourself and reflecting on what you're doing rather than immediately pointing the fingers at your staff members. Because so often, what are the kind of things that sometimes you reflect on? Beck? Like if you've had that issue and you've reflected, like, where's often the first thing that you go to when you're having that first reflection?

Well, the first thing that I would do, like. You mean look into myself? Is that what you mean? Yeah, yeah. Oh, I just look at what I've. Well, if it was the concert idea, for example, I probably, like I said, haven't watched that teacher enough, haven't done that. I'd go to the teacher and speak to them and ask how I can support them more. I think that's a big thing that we don't do. We just. Something goes pear shaped and we just kind of walk away from it and complain about it. And then I'd work out a strategy on how to train them better so that that doesn't happen again. And I think that's the process that people need to go through. You know, where did you go wrong? How can I fix it? Where were the holes? And let's work together to fix it. And if you support your staff like that and if you're willing to help them and train them, you might find that that staff member who maybe messed up that time now becomes your very best staff member of all time.

Absolutely. As the, as the boss, as the CEO, as the leader in your business, the buck stops with you on everything, right. On everything good, but also everything not so good. So we've got to make sure. Yes, super, super important. I think that's tip one, is to make sure that you're always reflecting as a leader and that any problem that comes up, the first thing you need to be doing is reflecting. What have I done to not help this or to get this situation to where it is? And what can I do to help support my staff member to fix it? Tip 2, I would love to get your thoughts on Bec is not being afraid of confrontation. Because too often and we keep like we deal with help so many of our members through staff issues, from quite small staff issues right up to pretty big scary staff issues, if we're honest a lot of the time. And quite often when we dig all the way down into ends up being, I think because they've been afraid of that confrontation. And rather than nipping issues in the bud when they're possibly one or two out of 10 issues, they've waited to deal with that situation when it's now an 8 or a 9 out of 10 situation. So. And a lot of it comes back to, like I said, being afraid of that confrontation. You always talk about that, that's something that you've really worked on, that you used to be that person that ran away from the confrontation. And we get, I think we get too much that we always think of connotations, this big negative thing. Right. But it doesn't have to like there's healthy confrontation and it can be a real positive. So how do you, I guess approach that confrontation with your staff and nipping those issues in the bud?

Yeah, look, I definitely was that person, Nath, who I didn't even talk to my staff, let alone, you know, go and confront them when things went wrong. I think for me now I deal with things pretty much straight away. That's the biggest thing that I've taught myself to do. Because when you dwell on things for too long, and I'm not saying to not think about it, I'm not saying to go in hot headed, but I think it is important to pick up the phone, call that person and just say, hey, we've had a complaint, we've had an email. This has happened, what happened. And having that relationship where you call them straight away makes things a lot easier. The other thing that I've really implemented is I have a one on one with every single staff member every single term. And because I'm having that one on one because I'm watching what they're doing, because I'm giving them feedback, it just makes those conversations easier. Whereas if you don't have that time with them and you don't really talk to them and then the one time you are talking to them to call them to say, hey, we've had a complaint, it's a lot harder. So building that, making the time for that. It does, it's. It was hard. Like I did it the last week of last term, Nath, we had project release, I had concerts, I had open Week there was a lot going on and I still booked those one on ones in because it's so valuable and important and it was amazing, you know, I got so much out of it. I found out what staff needed. I got to see, you know, where they were at with things. It was incredible.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think like you said, like it's, it's an investment, right? It's an investment of time and it's that easy thing to constantly, to push down and push away within those, those one on ones. How long are they for your studio, for each of your teachers and are they, is it a paid meeting for them?

Yes, everything I do is paid. It's a half hour either on zoom or in person depending. So I just put a calendarly booking link. They book in and then we just catch up. But some of my staff, like one of my circus teachers, I don't see because the day that she's there are my days with my family. So it's very rare for me to see her. And also, you know, it's just that craziness that happens. So I hadn't really caught up with her and it was really good that I got that time to catch up with her. She kind of teaches a bit later in the night when I'm not there and just she's loving it and loving pause and all the things. But it just really helped me to have that relationship with her. And then if there was a complaint, it makes it easier.

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm sure there are people sitting there thinking, oh gosh, like all of this sounds like expensive, right? As well. Like if you're paying them, because we've talked about lots that you like, your big staff training days that you have is a paid thing that you're paying them, you know, you've got a big team. So paying all of those team for an extra 30 minutes, like I can understand studio owners maybe listening along here thinking, oh gosh, this expense, like it just keeps racking up. But I guess trying to, I want to push back on that a little bit and I'm sure you will as well. But it's also really expensive to lose staff members and to be constantly having to bring new people in and invest in training them up. And there was a saying that I've always sort of resonated with that people always think, you know, oh, but what if I, what if I invest all this time and money into training them and they leave. But then the flip side is, what if you don't invest in training them and they stay. And that's always sort of resonated with me that you end up with these teachers that just don't progress, don't advance, aren't buying into your values. What are your thoughts on that one?

Well, my thoughts are in no other industry would you have to work, go to a meeting, go to a training session and not be paid. And I think that's the key. Like, we just have to be professional about it. Also, if you want your staff to value you and your studio and what you do, then paying them, to me, is the absolute most important thing. It's interesting. I just had something come up yesterday where my two rockstar new circus teachers, I just love them, are taking our kids to their very first circus comp next weekend. And one of them. Yeah, and they've organized it all and done everything right and like, obviously checked in with me about it, but it's so exciting. And one of them said to me, hey, we've got the circus comp next weekend, so totally fine if you can't pay us, but I'm just wondering if we could charge an admin fee for the day because we will be there with the kids for seven hours. And I. I really appreciated the message, but I was like, okay, I'm paying your full teaching rate. I appreciate both of you so much, and I just want to say a huge thank you. I'm not going to be there that weekend. And they're doing that all on their own. They've organized it. They've been doing extra little rehearsals like they are. But look, it's. It'll be an expensive day for me, but it's important for me to value them and for them to feel valued. So they keep doing that wonderful work for me.

Yeah, absolutely. And look, I think that touches on, like, the. The flip side of that is what we see a lot of studio owners get caught out on. So you've, obviously, because you have that professional relationship with all of your staff, because they know that you're approachable and contactable and that you always discuss these things with them, that they've approached you before, like, even though you were obviously going to be paying them anyway, that they've asked that question beforehand. Because where we see a lot of studio owners get frustrated is that teachers would do something like that. Like, I know we've talked. I've talked. I was talking to a studio owner a couple of weeks ago where they had staff members turning up to solo comps off their own bat. Like, the studio owner hadn't asked them to because it's like, it's a lovely thing. But she's like, like, I don't need you to go. It's not, it's not like something that's adding to our business at this point in time. And with the amount of soloists this person had at their studio, it's not realistic to be able to send a teacher to every single soloist. But then the teacher tried to invoice them for going to that, to that solo. And I think sometimes by not being approachable, by not being able to open those conversations before, these things happen quite often. Right then that's where studio owners are quite often getting burnt. So how would you maybe deal with that situation? Because it's one that keeps coming up and up again when teachers, if teachers maybe would spring those sorts of things on you.

Yeah, look, I've had this happen to me multiple, multiple times. And I think, first of all, you've just got to be really clear and learn the lesson and go, okay, guys, in the next staff meeting, guys, if you are going to go to a competition, you need to let me know. I've explained this to my staff before. Like, I, I want them to go to comp to see what the standards like 100%, but when it's happening over and over again, it's not great. So they need to just let me know so that I can budget appropriately for it. So that's how I'd explain it to the staff. I would still pay that staff member, Nath, because they have gone and I would just say to them, look, thank you for going. I appreciate it. However, that is expensive for me. So just let me know when you need to go or if you want to go for your own self to see what the standard is. Great, let's work out a day rate or whatever you decide to do. But yeah, it's tricky and I, I have staff do it all the time. I even had staff turn up to my pep rally that I didn't know were coming, which is fine, but same thing. It's like I just had to say to them, oh, you didn't. I didn't know you were going to come today. Always really important to let me know when you're coming to things so I can budget appropriately. You just got to have that conversation with them.

And I guess that probably ties into something that I know you're huge on is setting those expectations. And that's where having, like your, you know, you. I know you have them. Is it every term or every two terms that, like, the full staff Meeting to be able to set those expectations, to be able to say around, hey, like solo teachers, we're doing great work. Amazing. Just so you know. You know, if you do want to go and support Amazing where we're at, I can't afford to, whatever that looks like for your studio. Like maybe you want to pay them to go to three comps a year or four comps a year or something like that. But just so you just so everybody knows where those expectations are right around everything. I'm just. I don't know why I'm fixating on this solo thing. Maybe because it just came up. But having clear expectations around everything stops those little surprises, right?

Yeah. And I think that's the biggest thing that we find, Nath, is that people haven't set the expectations strongly enough in and around everything that every staff member is doing. It's something we dived really deep in yesterday with SGC members and it was such a great session. But it's just that self reflection again of. It's like, you know, you see a teacher on their phone whilst teaching a class or sitting in a chair whilst teaching a class and you're like, I can't believe they sit in the chair whilst teaching. Have you told them that that's an expectation at your studio or when they give the dance an inappropriate piece of music? Now I can't believe they chose that music. Did you tell them that that's your values within your studio and that you don't want that type of music to be played or danced to or. You know, it's. The more expectations you give them, the more they are going to do what you want them to do in your business. And it is your business. I think too many times we just expect that the acro teacher is going to teach acro perfectly because they're an acro teacher and the ballet teacher is going to teach perfectly because they're. Because they're a ballet teacher. But there's so much more to it than that and you need to really train them in and around what you want. What are your expectations? How do you want those classes taught?

Amazing. Amazing. So, so far we've gone through our top tips around this. Pointing thumbs, not fingers. So making sure that we're taking ownership and leadership when things go wrong, not being afraid of confrontation, making sure that we're having consistent communication with our staff and that they know how to approach us as well, setting clear expectations. And then you sort of just touched on this. But I think it's a really important fifth point is Having really clear studio values that you're consistently communicating with your staff. Like, what are some of like your studio values that you've got at pause?

Family, you know, and like things go into family, like not having too many comps on through the year because we value their family time. Making sure that everyone has uniform on because we, we want everyone to feel equality within the studio. So there's lots of things that go underneath that. Integrity is probably my most important value within myself and my team. And what integrity is, is if you mess up, that's fine, just come and tell me. And we work through it together. And just being us as staff members, being honest with each other about every part of the business, that's really important to me. Also us being honest with parents, you know, it comes down to that. So we've got our big values and then we've got lots of little things underneath it that my staff know and other ones always age appropriate routines and costumes is a drop down in. In our family one, I think. So we are really clear on those and we've got. We go through them at least once a year. So we have forward staff training sessions where we bring everyone together four times a year. And at least one of those sessions, usually the first one is me going through those values because we always have new team members also always good to remember what they are. But I think as a studio owner, you have to be so strong in what you want in your business as well. And, you know, not just in your values, but how you want every class to be run, how you want every child to feel in that class. All of those things are going to really create your business for you. And if you're not strong in it, you will get wavered by other staff members or by parents and you'll never really have that strong foundation. I don't know if I'm making sense with that, Nathan.

No, absolutely. And what I love about the values that you've got at pause is that I think there's a real art in making these things simplified rather than we see sometimes people have got like. We can definitely see what they're trying to communicate and get across with their values, but there's just too much. Right. They're too wordy. And the more word. And this is something that I've really learned from Amanda, is that sometimes when we overcomplicate these things, there's too much wiggle room and there's too much room for interpretation and not enough room often for you as the leader to shut things down that maybe aren't with that. So like, if one of your values you were talking about was age appropriate music and costumes, it's just so short and simple. Right. And so if you've got a teacher that brings you a song or a routine that you're a bit about, you'd be like, hey, I'm really sorry. That just doesn't align with our value of age appropriate music. So we're just going to have to find something else. It just makes those decisions so much easier. Right. Rather. And what's your one around concert? I love that one as well.

Around, like concert is that every single child is equally seen and valued. Because with concert, what I find is what I say is in competition, we put our best foot forward. In concert, it's everyone has a turn. And I really feel that that's so important because every parent is paying the same amount of money. Every child deserves to seen. And we want to make every child feel special. No matter who they are. Whether they're the kid that's, you know, flapping around in the back or whether they're that amazing kid at the front, they all should be equally valued and seen. And we try and give them something that they can have that's a special thing. So the kid that's maybe not as strong a dancer and not as confident, they might get a special part where they get to just mouth the music or have some sort of a moment so that, you know, it's really important for them to feel special as well. So that's probably our biggest one around concert. Unless you had another one that you were thinking of.

No, that was it. Because what I think it helps as well. It helps you give ownership to your teachers to make decisions around that as well. So things like, you know, like we know that concerts sometimes can get a little bit crazy or things sometimes go wrong. But if your staff are really clear on your values, then like if that kid misses the routine on the day or something like that, then the staff member's thinking about the solution to that already. Well, now, hang on. Our main value isn't to run the most professional amazing show that's ever been seen to mankind. It's to make sure that every student feels seen and valued. So what we're going to do is we're just going to run that, that little preschool dance again to make sure that everybody has that experience. I think that sometimes having those values more simplified helps our staff so much to make good decisions as well.

Yeah, absolutely. We just had three preschool concerts last weekend and we made the choice this year because we've got big preschool classes now, Nath. We've got about 22 kids in most of our classes. So we made the choice to actually swap the lines over, which is tricky with preschool. But the staff really practiced it and I could see on stage that they worked really hard to get those kids. Not that it is really that big a deal, there's only two lines, but we wanted to make sure that every child was in the front at some point in the dance and, you know, it's little things like that that mean a lot to parents, I think, and that just making that extra effort and thinking about your values when you're doing that stuff can really be a game changer.

Yep, absolutely. Absolutely. Look, as always, Beck, we've gone. We just thought like, oh, this might just be a quick one. But we sort of like keep, keep or always just keeps running away. I don't know if it's you or me that keeps talking, but look, I think that the top five things we talked about was obviously making sure that we're taking ownership of everything in our studio, that we're not being afraid of confrontation, that confrontation can be a positive and healthy thing in our business as long as we are nipping things, using it to nip things in the bud at that one or two out of 10 before the eight or nine out of 10, making sure that we've got consistent check ins with our team, that we've got strong expectations and that our staff all know our values. If you can really focus on, especially if you're like New South Wales and you've got a couple or week and a half left of holidays, I think checking in on all of those five things will really help not only like your team, like come up and rise up to the next level, but will also stop issues coming up. Right?

Yep, absolutely. And you know, even if you just do one of these things, even if you just do your values and share them with your team, that is going to be a game changer. Write down your expectations of this term. That is going to be a game changer. Like do one of them, if not all of them. But I think, yeah, that, that constant check in the dealing with stuff, I'm so passionate about it, Nathan. That's why I can talk about it forever. But you know, really self reflect on how well you are being a leader because that is what you're there to do.

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much as always for listening everybody. If you haven't already, we would so, so appreciate if you give us a like or a follow on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're listening. It would mean the absolute world to us. But as always, we, like I said, so appreciate listening and we will chat to you again next week. Thanks everybody.

Thanks. Bye Bye.

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