LEAD THE TEAM
2 Mary Parker Follett
Try“ power with,” not“ power over.” Long before collaboration became leadership-seminar vocabulary, management thinker Mary Parker Follett distinguished between exercising power over people and creating power with them.
That distinction travels remarkably well to a spa. Ask practitioners what makes turnover between treatments difficult. Let the front desk help redesign a troublesome booking process. Talk to attendants before reinventing locker-room procedures.
The person closest to the towel warmer may know more about the problem than the person closest to the top of the org chart.
PUT IT TO WORK: Before solving your next operational problem, ask the employees who encounter it every day what they would change.
3 W. Edwards Deming
Before blaming the person, interrogate the process. Deming’ s work transformed thinking about quality by
focusing attention on systems rather than simply blaming individuals when something goes wrong.
That makes him a useful imaginary consultant for spas where appointments routinely start late, booking mistakes keep recurring or the same supply shortage somehow qualifies as a surprise every Friday.
Another reminder to“ be more careful” may not fix a process designed to produce mistakes.
PUT IT TO WORK: Identify one recurring error and map what happens immediately before it. Fix the system wherever possible instead of adding another reminder, memo or meeting about“ accountability.”
SERVE THE GUEST 4 Abraham Maslow
Start at the bottom of the pyramid. Self-actualization sounds lovely. But first: Where’ s the restroom?
Maslow’ s famous hierarchy offers an unexpectedly useful guest-experience checklist. A guest who is cold, thirsty,
LEAD THE TEAM
PULSE n NOVEMBER 2026 17