I want to talk to you about hearing and listening. It’s something that I was thinking about the other day, when I was, funnily enough, my wife was talking to me. And I suddenly thought, am I hearing what she’s saying to me? Or am I listening to what she’s saying to me?
Because they are two different things, and any of you married out there will know exactly what I mean. And it made me think about it concerning consultation in the salon because you can hear what someone says but not always be actively listening to what they are saying and this can have a profound impact on the haircut you get..
Because we’re all overwhelmed with information these days, and incoming information all the time, I think, as a people, we are starting to try and find as many shortcuts, excuse the pun, as they can, to get to where we need to go as efficiently with as little effort as possible. Because we’ve got social media, we’ve got, mobile phones which often means communication can be efficient but not consistently effective.
The danger as a hairdresser is if you take that verbal efficiency at face value and only hear what people are saying; however, don’t listen.
Then the scenario can occur that a customer can end up with an incredible haircut but not the one they wanted
So what’s the solution?
As I said earlier, go beyond hearing what people are saying and listen to what they are meaning.
People’s lives are so busy these days that you almost need to draw them back into the moment. And that sounds very deep. But if you think about your own life, I think you’ll realise possibly, what I’m saying is that we’re always moving, moving, moving, moving, moving, and sometimes it’s like just pulling people in a gentle way back into the moment.
It’s almost like you are enabling customers to get a clear idea of what they are saying, and this only occurs if you are really listening and interested enough to find out the meaning of what they are saying.
In my opinion, the most significant area in any hair salon is that of consultation.
Because if there’s a miscommunication, or if you’re both hearing each other, but you’re not listening to each other, and the responsibility is on the hairdresser to make sure that is happening, then that’s where potentially things can go amiss, and go wrong.