The 3 Things Your Teachers Tell Me When You're Not in the Room

Before every onsite VIP day I run, I send the studio owner's team an anonymous survey. It's the fastest, most honest way to read the real culture of a studio, because owners are usually too close to see it themselves. And after doing this at studio after studio, I've noticed something: the same three pieces of feedback come up almost every single time. If you've never asked your teachers what they actually want from you, there's a very good chance they're feeling these three things right now.

What is an upward feedback survey, and why does it matter?

Upward feedback survey: An anonymous survey that lets a team give honest feedback to the person who leads them.

About a week before I arrive at a studio for a VIP day, I create an anonymous survey and have the owner send it to their teachers. The questions are simple: What is it like to be a teacher at this studio? What do you want more of? What do you want less of?

Here's why this matters more in our industry than almost any other. Most studio teams are part-time. Your teachers are mostly there because they love it, not because of the paycheck. Managing a part-time, passion-driven team takes a completely different leadership skill set than managing ten full-time employees who show up for the money. If you opened a studio without ever being trained to hire, lead, or grow a team, an upward feedback survey is one of the best tools you have to find out how you're really doing as a leader.

These are the three patterns I see every time.

1. Your teachers want more feedback on their teaching

The number one thing teachers ask for is more feedback on their classes. Once you finish your certification, there isn't a clear path for continued mentoring. You're mostly left to figure it out alone. So when teachers join a studio, they're quietly hoping someone will help them keep growing.

This does not mean you need to be in every teacher's class every week. It means your team is hungry to get better, and you can use that. The key is giving feedback in a way they can actually absorb. Here's the simple framework I teach:

1. Take the class. Pick a class on your schedule you haven't experienced in a while.
2. Name three specific things you loved. Not "great class." Say what landed. "That third song made the flow feel weightless." "The way you cued the twist, I felt it exactly where you said I would."
3. Give one thing to work on. Just one. You might leave with a list of ten. Pick the single most important one. Confidence. Sequencing. Cueing. Music. One clear thing.
4. Follow up in two weeks. Go back to their class. Did the one thing improve? That follow-up is what turns feedback into actual growth.

The rule of thumb: three to four pieces of positive, specific feedback for every one piece of critique. Overwhelm a teacher with twenty notes and nothing changes. Give them one and follow up, and you build a team that's visibly getting better. That kind of studio is magnetic to the A-player teachers you want.

2. Your teachers want more continuing education

The second pattern is just as consistent: teachers always ask for more workshops, trainings, and continuing education credits. Teachers want feedback so they can grow, and they want learning opportunities for the same reason.

This is also one of your strongest retention tools. Think about why a great teacher chooses to teach at your studio over the one down the street. It usually isn't pay. It's that you bring in top talent for them to learn from, you host workshops that give them access to training they couldn't get on their own, and you give your most knowledgeable teachers a platform to share what they know.

Here's how to make it doable without blowing up your time or your profit:

• Set a continuing education budget at the start of the year. Decide what you'll spend on workshops, guest experts, and trainings, then stay inside it.
• Aim for one continuing education event per quarter. Four small things a year is plenty. Sometimes the leadership team delivers it for free, since you're already on salary. Sometimes you pay a guest expert out of the budget.
• Keep it optional. You don't have to make attendance mandatory. Who shows up, plans their calendar around it, and takes you up on the offer tells you exactly who your all-in teachers are.
• Let your feedback tell you what to teach. If you keep giving the same note about playlists or musicality across your team, that's your next workshop. Now you're knocking two birds with one stone, spotting a need and meeting it with training.

You probably already have the talent in-house. Who on your team is great at sequencing, or anatomy, or building a playlist? Give them a workshop to lead.

3. Your teachers want more communication about the business

This is the one that surprises most owners. Every single time I run this survey, teachers say they want more communication about the business side of the studio.

Your teachers want to know the vision, and then they want to know where the business actually stands in reaching it. They want to know your membership goal, how many new members you gained last month, how many you lost, what attendance should look like in their classes, and which marketing and sales campaigns are running.

Here's the fear that stops owners. A client I recently visited asked me directly: what's the downside of sharing this? The unspoken worry is that if teachers know the numbers, they'll do the math, figure out what the studio makes, and ask for raises. In my experience, that almost never happens. What happens far more often is your teachers say, "Thank you, I wanted to know this. I want to help you grow."

A few important distinctions:

• You can't over-communicate, but you can communicate badly. I have never walked into a VIP day and heard "the owner over-communicates." But scattered group texts and one-off reminders get lost. Streamlined, organized communication does not.
• You decide what to share. I would not send your full profit and loss statement to your team. But your membership goal and your progress toward it? That's usually safe and motivating. Teachers rarely see your rent, utilities, or marketing spend, so they don't have the full picture, and that's okay.
• Pick a real channel. A monthly team meeting. Quarterly meetings. An email plus a teacher signage board near the front desk where they can catch up while checking students in. Choose what fits your studio.

If you've ever wished your teachers would sell or market for you, this is the missing piece. It's nearly impossible for a team to care about goals they've never been told. Communicating transparently is what makes your teachers want to help you hit them. It also means planning ahead as a CEO. If a Fourth of July promotion is coming, your teachers should hear about it in early June so they're ready.

The simplest move: just ask

There are dozens of things I could pull from these surveys, but these three patterns are the ones I see most. And the real lesson underneath all of them is this: if you want to know what your teachers want, ask them.

We do it anonymously for a reason. Feedback can sting, especially when you know the teacher and you have history together. That's why a neutral third party collecting and delivering the results works so well. But you don't need me to start. You can build a simple anonymous survey, read it with an open mind, and support yourself in how you receive it.

Your teachers are already trying to tell you what they need. The only question is whether you're set up to hear it.