‘Build a Strong Team, so you don’t know who the boss is’.
Powerful that quote, isn’t it?
When it comes to operating your Health Club, fostering a winning culture full of thought leaders is something that can define and determine all your tomorrow’s.
If you genuinely get this right, your staff will work with a smile on their face and care passionately about what they do, your members will feel the positivity and keep exercising, membership payments will be rarely missed, referrals will be on tap and the word of mouth about your brand will remain positive.
When culture goes wrong, it has the opposite effect. Your staff members look disinterested, this is reflected by the general club atmosphere, members begin to look elsewhere as they see gaps in the customer experience that is being offered, your referral business dries up and all of a sudden you face the prospect of being put out of business.
Thankfully, there are ways that you can form a strong team and it comes from building a winning culture full of leaders. In this post, I’ll cover just how to do that.
1. Know your values.
Your values are the lifeblood of your business. You must define them and continue to reinforce them.
Every decision you make should come back to your values, every communication sent out must be in line with them, every staff workshop or training session delivered needs to mirror them and every recruitment choice needs to stand by them too.
For example, if one of your business values is optimism, your emails must not appear pessimistic and threatening. Your training sessions must be hosted by people who are upbeat and energetic and have nothing negative to say. You should only recruit people who can demonstrate that they are hopeful and confident about the future.
If one of your business values is trust, your policies must not come across like you are micro-managing or restricting your staff in any way as you want to show that you respect them. Your staff workshops must give everyone a voice, and activities should work on building trust. You should not keep secrets from your employees for too long and be extremely clear with your vision, and lastly, you should not employ candidates who may show signs of dishonesty or lack of trust in the early interview stages.
Your values are your moral compass, whenever you are lost and don’t know which way to turn, you must look to them. Only by operating within this manner will you instil a better culture, and with this, your personnel will know how to manifest themselves at all times.
2. Know your WHY?
Once you’ve got values, you need to understand what your purpose is.
What do I mean by this? Aside from making money, why do you exist?
With most Health Clubs, they say they want to ‘transform people’s lives’, but you can go deeper than that. Your purpose is what should inspire your employees to turn up to work, not just the money.
Why not try and instil a purpose like – ‘we are here to make every single person who walks through our door a little bit happier, whether that’s based on improvements in their physical appearance or through better mental health. Happiness is at the heart of everything we do, and we exist to make people feel that little bit better in their lives, only then will they see life-changing results.’
If we use the above as an example, everyone working within your company will know exactly why they are doing their job and will make an effort to actively encourage fellow staff and members to feel happy upon each and every interaction.
By having a purpose like this, it will make all the day to day jobs within your Health Club that little bit more satisfying and with that, you will start to see leaders develop within your organisation alongside a positive company culture.
3. Know Your GOAL
Health Clubs should always have a mission, they should know where they are now, where they want to be in a years time and where they see themselves in 5 years time.
So, whether you want to remain a successful independent or become the largest gym chain in Europe, this goal must be established.
But within those missions, you must set clear goals. See the questions below which show how you can set clear, measurable goals with appropriate time-frames.
How many members do you want to achieve across each location in the next 6 months?
By the end of the quarter, what percentage of your membership base do you want to be actively visiting your gym at least twice a week on a regular basis?
How many units of supplements do you want to sell per each gym per month in order to make your secondary spend initiatives worthwhile?
As you create your goals, ask yourself questions like the above which help you decide whether they are clear enough.
By defining your goals, it really does make it a hell of a lot easier to say YES or NO to all those other opportunities which arise along the way. By simply asking the question ‘Does this tie in with our mission or not?’, you can clearly see if any move is the right one.
As Rene Moos pretty much stated in the recent FitNation conference, when it comes to business, it’s better to take centre stage on the podium in one area rather than being the overlooked bronze medalist in several areas.
What I believe he means here is Health Clubs can often get distracted by the latest trends in fitness and we can just as easily get blindsided by our own ambitions at times to be a master of all trades. If you know your goals, it’s much easier to stay on track. That’s not to say you shouldn’t innovate, but only when it is aligned to your wider goals. Again, by adopting this approach of knowing your goals, it ensures your leaders stay on track in their train of thoughts and further strengthens your teams focus.
4. Invest in the development of your team
All your employees ought to want to be a part of a successful Health Club.
Through better development of team members, you will undoubtedly achieve more success.
First and foremost, look at your Personal Trainers. They are the lifeblood of not just your Health Club. Members are using your facility to achieve health and fitness goals and it is the gym floor where they spend 90% of their time. Whether your operation is fully staffed or runs on a self-service basis, the staff your members will spend the most time with are your Personal Trainers.
Unfortunately, from my experiences, it seems that many Personal Trainers are qualified by taking on their Level 2 fitness instructor and Level 3 PT course but after that, they are then left to their own devices with very little opportunities for development- this is not how it should be.
I believe every Health club should not only have a National Fitness Manager who supports Personal Trainers and represents the core values of the company, but I also believe there should be regional roles employed within larger sites, with the aim to bridge the gap between the ‘Head Office’ communications of a health club and the gym floor of each facility.
If you ask me, the title should be something along the lines of Regional Fitness Experience Managers and their duties should be to provide workshops to Personal Trainers centred around maximising member experience and working towards the companies values, purpose and goals. The Manager of each club must then also ensure that messages ‘from the top’ are conveyed to their Personal Trainers and that the action points from such workshops are actively being carried out in your club. Without such a focus on experience, a fitness team will always be lacking a cutting edge and you’ll start to see leakage within your culture and a lack of leaders where it matters – on the gym floor.
Of course, it’s not just Personal Trainers we should look at, if you are a fully staffed club, also think about other areas of employment, such as Sales Staff, Front of House Staff, Club Managers and even Housekeepers. How are they being developed, recognised and incentivised?
5. Hire and Fire to the Values, Purpose, and Mission
I kind of alluded to this earlier on, but it’s definitely worthy of going into more detail about, so here goes.
When you know your core values, your purpose, your mission and your goals, the rest should become easy, but sadly, problematic team members can leave you sidetracked. Don’t allow this to happen – fix your recruitment process!
If you just ask basic interview questions about a candidates’ experience, you’ll never really know their true personality.
Why not delve deeper and aim to find out more about their character and how they may align with your values and purpose. For Personal Trainers and Group Exercise Instructors, get them to perform demonstrations with your team members or willing gym members as part of the interview process – this will allow you to see who is right for the job more than any formal interview will.
This demonstrative approach is carried out in the education profession to determine who would be an effective classroom teacher, it’s also done within the food and beverage profession to judge who would be a sufficient bartender, so perhaps it’s time the fitness industry moved with the times and were a little more careful and observing in the recruitment process.
Before you recruit for each role, think about what qualities each team member should have so you can clearly outline what you’re looking for. Later down the line, if you find that a team member doesn’t fit your ethos, unfortunately, as much as it pains me to say, it may be better to show them the exit door rather than trying to change their attitude.
The concept of ‘Will vs Skill’ is a powerful one when it comes to deciding the underlying issues behind an employee’s below-par performance, I firmly believe that the issue is skill-related then your company must provide the support, direction, appreciation and tools for the employee to become better, however, if the issue is ‘will’ related then unless a clear shift in attitude and behaviours is made sharpish, you’re only going to keep facing the same problems. In other words, it’s much easier to teach someone a skill than it is to change their whole attitude and demeanour.
By consistently hiring and firing based on your values your employees will represent your culture on a daily basis and will thus become better leaders. If you hire and fire based on other factors such as experience and performance, you will override the importance of your culture and see the positive effects dwindle.
6. Enjoy the journey
Whatever you do, don’t forget to have fun along the way. Building a successful fitness chain with the right employees is not a straightforward task, but if everyone is always stressed out and complaining about how hard life is, you’ll probably be going against your companies culture, (unless your values are to have a ‘win at all costs ethic’ and under the umbrella of that value you highlight that ‘complaining is acceptable, as long as it leads to success’) which is not what you really want.
As a leader of your Health Club, you have the opportunity to make magical moments and memories for your team, even by doing the simple things such as a Pizza Night on the last Friday of every month, paid for by the company, will help keep your staff motivated. You should never ever underestimate the power of team social events. Do whatever it takes to reinforce the culture!
Closing comments on creating a Strong Team
As Rene Moos, the owner of BasicFit said, building a strong team is necessary to ensuring business success.
Great things in business are not achieved by one person, but by many people. With greater culture, leaders will emerge, and with more leaders, the more your culture will be protected, maintained and reinforced.
How many leaders do you have in your Health Club? Where are the gaps? Follow all the points in this post and you’ll no doubt see your business soar.