Ask the experts: How should I be developing my senior therapists to prepare for a managerial role?

Professional Beauty GCC magazine speaks to Laura Carrick, director of business and leadership training company, InFlow International. 

How should I be developing my senior therapists to prepare for a managerial role?

Firstly ensure she has the correct personality profile and attitude to deliver what you need her to do in the role. This is one of the most overlooked aspects of promoting someone. Understand that everyone can lead, we each do it in a different way. When someone tries to lead in a way that is different to their natural leadership style, or try to employ your idea of how they should be leading, this causes disharmony and stress in a team. Draw up your job description first and see what types of activities you will require her to do. Will the role be motivation-based or more marketing-based? Focused on treatment creation, or operational procedures? Each of these tasks requires a different skill base. If you have a mixture of tasks, then rank the most important to you – perhaps you need your salon manager to handle the staff members, as you would prefer to be innovating and creating. In this instance, I would start to send my senior therapist on courses that work on “soft skills” such as listening and motivating; courses where she gets to understand people. An NLP (neurolinguistic programming) short course would be excellent for this purpose. If you want her to be doing more reporting or costing work, then ensure she understands the basics of finance and management accounting. There are great courses, such as Finance for Non-Financial Managers; that provide the basics.

Read the Ask the Experts' feature on page 30 of the December issue of Professional Beauty GCC magazine here.