When tension builds between spa colleagues, focus on the work and the behavior involved. Clear responsibilities, respectful conversations and reliable follow-up give a manager practical ways to address everyday conflict while keeping the guest experience in view.
Boundaries And Expectations
First of all, you as a manager have a pre-emptive role to play in limiting the amount of opportunity that drama has to raise its head in your spa.
If you establish job role boundaries and both job role and team role expectations early, everyone will know what they have to do, what they can do, and what is beyond the limit of their authority and expectation.
You always want to allow people to innovate, absolutely – but within their lane whenever possible.
Crossing into the lane of a fellow team member is where you begin to build drama, because the team member whose lane you’re crossing into may know their role perfectly well, and may feel your incursion into the role as an imposition, or may wonder whether you’ve been instructed to get into their business by management, breeding discontent both between peers and between staff and management, without any reality to inspire the dissatisfaction.
Let’s take a look at some anti-drama strategies that can help your spa stay drama-free.
Create A Psychologically Safe Workspace
Make it possible for people to ask questions, acknowledge a mistake and raise a concern without being mocked or dismissed. Listen to the concern and explain how it will be followed up.
Support still includes clear expectations for behavior. The HSE guidance on working relationships includes sharing relevant information and responding to unacceptable behavior. A respectful workplace needs both a way to speak up and a consistent response when a problem is raised.
Be A Caring Human Being, As Well As A Manager
What do caring, and human management look like?
Ask what support would help with the work, listen carefully and follow through on agreed actions. Respect a colleague’s choice about how much personal information to share.
Check in consistently, including after a difficult shift. Be specific about what went well and what needs attention, and give the person time to explain their perspective.
Explain Your Expectations
Be clear from the word “Go” about what you expect of individual staff and teams. In addition to your culture of psychological safety, inculcate a culture of positive guest experience and teamwork.
If your guests leave happy, the chances are high that they’ll make your staff happy, and they’ll make you happy.
If members of your spa team are having difficulty with the culture of the positive guest experience, make sure they know you’re there to help – and be there to help them.
We’re all only human – sometimes, the work of making everyone else happy just feels like too much work and too little happiness. Be there to help them over any bumps in the road.
Be there for the rogues, too. The people who know the way you want things done, and decide to go their own way. They can cause all kinds of stress and broken communication chains with their colleagues in your spa if allowed to bump into the furniture and each other too often.
Be there, hear them, and help them find a positive way to synthesize their will and your vision for themselves, their colleagues, and your guests.
Refocus Your Team Of The Goals At Hand
There has to be a vision behind any successful spa business. It can never really be about just making money off your guests. There has to be a purpose behind it all, something your staff can connect with, work towards, and feel a part of.
Working every day can sometimes take the shine off that, or blunt it at the edges. Every now and again, get your team together in a fun way to refocus on themselves, the team, and the vision behind the work. This can also help them feel valued by and connected to you as their manager.
Navigate Around – Or Through – Any Conflict
Even if you have a workplace brimming with psychological safety, positive aspiration, shared goals and effective communication, guess what? You’re still going to have conflicts from time to time.
You have to be able to handle it, and you have to be able to take the heat out of conflict, rather than adding your own managerial-level heat into the situation.
Take a moment to prepare for the conversation. Choose a suitable place, keep your language calm and describe the issue without labeling the people involved.
From there, focus first on facts.
Notice what’s really happening, process it, and where possible, use an open approach to invite discussion and viewpoints. Say you’re noticing some things happening, and invite comments on what you’ve noticed, to get a sense of how others in the conflict view things.
Listen to those other viewpoints. Whether they seem valid to you or not, take them on board as the viewpoints through which others are looking at the situation you’ve noticed.
Once you’ve listened and absorbed their viewpoints, mirror their viewpoints back to them, so you can check that you’ve understood what they’re saying and seeing.
If there are differences between what you think they’ve said and what they think they’ve meant, this will allow them to surface.
Once their viewpoint has been understood, explain your view of the situation. Only at this point should you try to do this, once they’ve had a chance to speak out their frustrations or issues, and felt heard.
At any time before this, putting forward your views can seem like cutting them off or smothering their experience of a situation with your managerial dominance.
Finally, renegotiate, resolve, or release. That means you have to weigh the intent of however many parties are involved in the conflict, including sometimes your own, and attempt to balance them to find a fair solution.
Attempt to reach an agreement with the staff involved, so that everyone can feel heard, their frustrations or grievances aired in a way where it doesn’t feel like they’ll get fired for speaking up.
Try to find some resolution to go forward together in a better mutual understanding, under which resolution any hatchets can be buried and the team vision can be re-established. You’re aiming to draw lines under conflict, and plant communication and teamwork in its place.
Review whether the agreed changes are working. For wider operational issues, use the staff productivity guide to identify other parts of the work that need attention.
Use a practical manager check-in
A check-in gives you a place to address small operational tensions before they become a repeated pattern. Use it to understand the work, clarify expectations and agree on support. It should not become an invitation to discuss absent colleagues' personalities.
Start with a neutral observation: “The room handoff was late twice this week, and reception wasn't told.” Then ask what happened. Listen to each relevant person's account privately where appropriate, and distinguish what you observed from what you have been told.
Use these questions to keep the conversation useful:
- What was supposed to happen, and what happened instead?
- Was the responsibility clear to everyone involved?
- Was any information, time or equipment missing?
- What action can we agree on, and when will we review it?
Name the support you can provide. It might be a clearer handoff, access to supplies or time to practice a new process. The HSE support guidance includes access to the resources people need and regular constructive feedback. Praise a specific helpful action as well as addressing the problem.
For an ordinary scheduling disagreement, an action might be: “Reception will confirm room readiness with the shift lead before offering an extra slot.” Record who will do what and revisit it after the team has had time to use the new process. If the same problem returns, check whether the arrangement was practical and understood.
Do not treat serious concerns as routine personality clashes or pressure people into a group reconciliation. Follow the appropriate reporting process and involve the person responsible for handling the concern.
Keep team development connected to the work
Team-building does not have to mean an event outside work. A short practice session on a difficult handoff can give colleagues a shared way to handle it. Ask the team what needs practice, explain the purpose and leave space for feedback on your own decisions.
Use the eight spa management habits to reflect on your approach. For wider planning, connect these conversations to staff retention and the expectations you discuss in spa recruitment interviews. The same expectations should be recognizable after someone joins the team.
