So often I hear, Sarah, how do I get my staff on the same page as me? How do I get them to act like I do? Well, that’s what we’re going to chat about today.
How do you get your staff to work off the same page as you within your dance or theatre school? They are freelancers, so how can they be as invested in your business as you?
So I have a saying in my membership (Scale your Studio with The Den Info HERE) hire right, train better. Now you want the right people. Working for you. Working with you would be a better saying. From the very, very beginning. Now, that’s all about the process that you go through, and I teach (as a dance business coach and mentor) a 15 step process on that. Yeah, 15. 15! What, Sarah? Are you crazy?
No! Because you have to hire right. You hire the right person. Now, I’m going to take the assumption that you’ve got the right person working for you, and move on to What it is you then do to make sure that they are actually working on the same page because let’s face it. We’re all individuals.
Everybody’s got their own ambitions, their own wants, their own dreams, their own idiosyncrasies and ways of working. But your school has its own set of values, its own set of rules, its own set of way of doing things That you need them to get on board with. So the first thing to remember here is nine times out of 10, you’re going to be working with freelancers, which means by the nature of their job, they are at liberty and you want them to as well, to work for other people because that’s what they do.
They’ll work a bit here and they’ll work a bit there. Now a really good freelancer will go, I have this hat on for this dance school and I have this hat on for that dance school. And that’s only if the freelancer understands that each set of dance schools that they work for has a different set of values and a different way of working.
Now that will all depend on whether the dance school owner has done any training with them about those values. Or whether they are just an experienced freelancer that gets that they’ve got to switch it around when they come in and out just through their life experience and the number of years that they’ve been teaching.
But these are all massive, massive assumptions. I don’t like assumptions because they tend to come and bite you in the, yeah, because you just think, oh yeah, it’s just all gonna work fine and then it doesn’t work fine and then everything hits the fan and it’s like, whoa. So avoid that by doing some training and having some clarity for that freelancer on what it is that you need them to do within your own school, because you don’t want to dampen their creativity.
(Note – Sarah is a dance business mentor with a management qualification)
You don’t want to dampen their, um, their way of doing things. Because every freelancer that works for you will have a certain way of teaching or will bring in a certain set of exercises or expertise that will elevate the experience that your children are getting. And you could sit back and actually learn from this person and go, Oh, I like what they’re doing there.
Yeah. How does that work? And how that whole conversation and you bring that into your class, it helps you as well. It brings that variety and that, um, differentiation of expertise within your team. However, they still have to abide by your rules, regulations and values. So this is what it boils down to realistically, is once you’ve got that person working for you, and they could be an administration staff, they could be a front of house person, they could be a teacher.
Okay, it’s, it’s irrelevant. They’re all going to need a degree of training. It’s, step one is about you laying out your expectations. What it is, You expect to see of this freelancer. What is it you expect to not see of this freelancer? So that they have these boundaries that they can work within. That they say, actually, this is not appropriate.
So, for example, let’s say that you have a teacher come in who is doing overly sexualized movements for a younger age group. Something I’m quite… I don’t like, all right? Never have it in my school and I wouldn’t expect somebody coming in to do it with my students. However, if I hadn’t told That freelancer, that that is my boundaries.
This is what is acceptable and this is what is not. Then how are they to know that they shouldn’t go full on into a, you know, full on commercial class when they need to maybe tone it back a bit? And then I go into class and I’ll go, Oh, that’s not appropriate. And they go, Oh, but this is what I do everywhere else.
That communication, there has been a breakdown in that communication. And it’s because you haven’t said to that freelancer that these are our values. We don’t agree with. That. Therefore, we don’t do it in our school. And so, if this is part of your style, A. Are they the right teacher for the school? B. Can they tone it back?
And if they can’t tone it back, then they’re not the right teacher for the school because they don’t align with your values. But that should have come out in the hire process rather than the training process. Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense. So, expectations have to be really, really clear.
So, if you expect them, and this would be fairly standard, to do a register, and that you expect that register to be checked, Um, halfway through the class for any latecomers because ultimately it’s our fire regs as well, right? So we need that register up to date from a health and safety legal standpoint.
That has to be right. So you expect your teacher to do it at the beginning and then a quick check at the middle or an assistant could quick check it in the middle latecomers have been marked in. If that’s what you expect, and you, you know, you get to the end of the night’s teaching, and you say to the teacher, right, where’s your registers?
Or you look on your database, and you go, the registers haven’t been done. Where’s the registers? Oh, yeah, I forgot about them. Oh, I think I can remember. Yeah, maybe it was this person, maybe, and you’re like, Have you told them? Have you told them this is, this is what you expect them to do? And have you also told them that this, the reason why?
Because sometimes, you know, they, they just don’t twig. Yeah, they’ll come in and they’ll teach and they’re excited about teaching and then they’ll go home and they’re like, oh, registers. Yeah, maybe they’ve had a stressful day. I don’t know. Sometimes they don’t twig. But you have to tell them. So what are these expectations that you are asking of the people who come in and visit and teach or work for you, but not on a maybe long term, not a long term basis, but maybe they’ll recover, or maybe they’re just a new teacher, or maybe they need reminding.
Yeah? Make sure your expectations are clear. Number two, their input. Now I mentioned this a little bit earlier about they’re gonna bring in different sets of skills for you, but their input will actually be really, really good. You know, if they are struggling to do those registers then You know, instead of saying, you must do those registers and, you know, ask them, okay, I can see you’re struggling to do the registers.
So why? What, what’s, what, where’s the disconnect that maybe, you know, there’s no signal. Yeah, so can you get an offline version of their registers that they can do? And you can go back to pen and paper if need be. Is there a different solution? Or I’m just not finding time to do it when those people come in.
So is it something they can delegate to an assistant? Or a front of house person that can support them. I’m just not remembering, okay, is there somebody, even if it’s somebody in the class, like, especially if it’s an older student who, who’s their job every year, every class to go, registers, to give them a prompt.
How can you solve that problem for them? But you won’t know it’s a problem unless you ask them, you know, maybe they have a better way of delivering the children at the end of class. Maybe they have a better warmup. Maybe they have something that they just think, Oh my God, I do this. elsewhere, but you don’t do this, but it works really well.
Can I tell you? So having that open line of communication with them would actually make them feel more valued and part of the team, but also it might help you improve, your systems. It also might alleviate any frustrations that you have with that member of staff, not being on the same page as you.
They might not be on the same page because something, there’s a disconnect that they’re not doing this one thing and it’s frustrating you. They keep forgetting and they’re getting annoyed because you’re getting frustrated. Whereas that small conversation of, okay, this isn’t happening and it hasn’t happened a couple of times, but this is really, really important and needs to happen.
So therefore, how can we collectively, me and you, make this happen? And it opens up a whole other. conversation and way of dealing with that person. And the last one, feedback. Now I know feedback can make, make you sometimes feel a little bit like, uh, um, but it’s absolutely crucial. It’s absolutely crucial that you get it, especially from your members of staff.
So that how is your communication? How is your feedback generally to her? Is she getting the praise? Is she getting, any notes from you at all? Or, is it radio silence? So, getting that feedback from your member of staff is really crucial. What is it they need? What is it they feel unsure of?
Do they know what to do if the fire alarm goes off? And they’re like, well, no, I don’t. All right, well, then that’s something I need to teach you, isn’t there? That’s something we need to go through just so that I know that You know, um, things like that, getting that feedback from them, just again, nurtures that relationship you have with that person, and then they go and feel supported, they’ll feel like they are part of a team, and that’s what you want to start to try and do, is bring these freelancers with you guys.
together to feel part of a team. So even though they’re off working for all these different ones, when they come to you, they’re part of that team and they’re a valued, an important part of that team.
I teach the 15 step hire right sequence in my membership. Come and join! More info Click HERE
