(Spoiler: That’s Usually the Wrong Question.)
Teréze Taber
There’s a moment that happens in almost every salon team at some point.
Someone says something like: “They just don’t care enough.”
And someone else quietly thinks: “No… they just care about different things than you do.”
The longer I’ve spent in salons, the more I’ve realised that most conflict isn’t actually about bad attitudes, laziness, or people being “wrong.” Most of the time, it comes down to something much simpler…and much more human than that.
People are operating from completely different definitions of success.
The tricky part is that those definitions are often invisible until friction starts happening.
One stylist thinks success means building a fully booked column and making great money. Another thinks success means leaving work emotionally balanced enough to still have energy for their family at night. One owner values speed, growth, and momentum. Another team member values calmness, connection, and a low-conflict environment.
None of those definitions are wrong. But when nobody talks about them openly, people start unconsciously judging each other through the lens of their own definition. And that’s where salon culture begins to fracture.
At Behind the Brand, this is actually one of the biggest pieces of work we do inside salons. On the surface, salon owners often think they’re bringing us in to solve communication issues, culture problems, accountability struggles, or team tension. But more often than not, what we uncover underneath all of it is misalignment. Different people. Different internal scorecards. Different ideas about what matters most. And because those definitions have never been made visible, everyone starts protecting their own version of success instead of collaboratively building one together.
“They simply had completely different internal scorecards for what “being successful” meant.”
I remember years ago seeing tension build between two very good stylists. One was incredibly driven financially. She loved productivity, efficiency, upselling, and pushing herself. The other was deeply relationship-focused. Her clients adored her, her retention was excellent, and she created an incredibly emotionally safe experience behind the chair. But underneath it all, both of them quietly believed the other was “missing something.”
One viewed the other as lacking ambition.
The other viewed her teammate as overly transactional.
Nobody was actually saying these things out loud, of course. But you could feel it in the energy. Tiny comments. Frustration. Misunderstandings that seemed too emotionally charged for what they really were.
And the truth was: neither stylist was wrong.
They simply had completely different internal scorecards for what “being successful” meant.
That’s something I think we massively overlook in teams. Every single person walks into a salon carrying invisible beliefs around success. What deserves praise, what deserves criticism, what makes someone admirable, or what makes someone disappointing.
Those beliefs are shaped long before people join your team. Family upbringing, previous salons, money experiences, social media, confidence, burnout, survival patterns – all of it contributes. One stylist may have grown up believing hard work means staying late no matter what. Another may have learned the hard way that burnout nearly destroyed their mental health, so now they fiercely protect balance and boundaries.
Both are responding to life experience.
But in salons, we often accidentally reduce these differences into simplistic labels: Lazy. Intense. Too emotional. Too money-focused. Too sensitive. Too driven. When really, what we’re often looking at is misalignment, not morality and this is the distinction that matters.
Because when we frame things as “right versus wrong,” people get defensive immediately. They protect themselves. They double down. Communication shuts down because nobody wants to feel judged. But when we shift the conversation toward alignment and misalignment, everything softens.
Now we’re no longer asking: “Who’s correct?”
We’re asking: “Are we actually moving toward the same thing together?”
That’s a completely different conversation.
Now, of course, I want to be very clear here – there are genuinely toxic people sometimes. Not every difficult dynamic is simply a misunderstanding. Some people operate from a deeply self-focused definition of success where there is no real room for collaboration, accountability, empathy, or bridge-building. In those situations, culture work becomes incredibly difficult because healthy teams require some level of shared care and mutual responsibility.
But honestly? In my experience working across many salons over many years, that’s far less common than people think.
Far more often, what I see are good people operating from completely different assumptions, values, pressures, and fears – without the language or structure to understand each other properly. And once those conversations happen, things can begin to change.
I think one of the biggest mistakes salon owners make is assuming everyone naturally understands the emotional direction of the salon. But unless success, values, standards, and expectations are spoken about clearly, people will always default back to their own personal interpretation.
And personal interpretation varies wildly. I’ve seen salons where the owner believed they had created a “high-performance culture,” while the team quietly experienced it as pressure and emotional unpredictability.
“unless success, values, standards, and expectations are spoken about clearly, people will always default back to their own personal interpretation.”
I’ve also seen salons where owners were trying so hard to create a “nice” environment that nobody felt safe enough to have honest conversations, because any tension immediately felt uncomfortable. Again – neither approach came from bad intentions.
But both created misalignment because there wasn’t a collaboratively understood definition of success acting as the team’s compass. That word – compass – is important. Because defining success as a team isn’t about forcing everyone to become identical. It’s not about removing individuality or expecting everybody to value the exact same things in the exact same order. It’s about creating shared direction.
It’s deciding:
– What matters here?
– How do we communicate?
– What do we protect?
– What standards do we uphold?
– How do we want people to feel in this salon?
– What are we building together?
Without those conversations, teams drift into emotional guesswork. People start scanning constantly:
– Am I doing enough?
– Am I disappointing people?
– Why does this feel tense?
– Why do I feel unseen?
That uncertainty is exhausting. Ironically, what most people actually crave isn’t perfection. It’s clarity.
The healthiest salon teams I’ve ever seen aren’t conflict-free. They’re simply more aligned. They have language for things. They know how to repair tension faster because the team understands the bigger picture they’re trying to protect together.
I remember doing an exercise once where every team member was asked to define success in one sentence. The answers were incredibly different.
One person said financial freedom.
Another said peace.
Another said confidence.
Another said creative fulfillment.
Another said flexibility and time with their kids.
What was fascinating wasn’t the differences themselves. It was watching the room suddenly understand each other differently. You could almost feel the judgment leave. People stopped seeing each other as difficult or wrong, and started seeing context instead. That’s the power of this work.
And this mental shift is one of the most transformative things we teach through Behind the Brand. Because once teams stop viewing every difference through the lens of right and wrong, they become far more capable of collaboration, accountability, empathy, and growth.
Final Thoughts
The goal is not to eliminate differences.
The goal is to bring them into the light so the team can consciously decide:
What is our shared definition of success here?
What is our compass?
What are we collectively moving toward?
Because once a team has that, decisions become easier. Communication becomes clearer. Boundaries feel less personal. Accountability feels less threatening. People stop fighting to be “right” and start working to stay aligned.
And in my experience, alignment will always build a stronger salon culture than perfection ever could.
Teréze Taber
Co-founder, Behind the Brand Agency