Your assistant supports you – they look out for your business and monitor your relational, emotional, and physical health.
But how can you support your assistant? How can you help them do their best at work and feel great doing it?
Support You Can Provide:
1. Provide The Tools And Resources They Need
Working as an assistant can be challenging. Feeling equipped alleviates pressure, boosts confidence, and increases productivity. Does your assistant have the equipment and training they need to do their best work?
Provide tools:
Tools may include:
- Team communication platforms (Slack, Teams, etc.)
- Password managers
- CRMs
- Their own email address
- Shared drives (Google Docs, Onedrive, etc.)
- Company phone extension
- Scheduling platforms
- Billing platforms
- Wordprocessing software
Provide training:
How do you find time to train your assistant? If you find the time, do you have the curriculum to teach them? Do you feel like you have the specialized knowledge to provide the most up-to-date information?
If not, No worries! At Superpowers, we train the industry’s top Executive Assistants, and now we are happy to share our training with you.
With a Superpower Membership, you can provide your assistant with many of the same benefits our Superpowers Assistants experience.
Already have a Superpowers Assistant? They’re already receiving that support!
Let us handle the training process:
Our training includes:
Superpowers University – A 3-day training intensive covering essential technical and soft skills for EAs
Continuing education resources – Training resources for continued growth after Superpowers University
Proven Playbooks – A growing library of practical guides to help your assistant seamlessly manage your daily business activities
Masterclasses – How-to videos presented by fellow EAs.
Monthly cohort meetings – Structured peer-to-peer discussions designed for continued growth, accountability, and encouragement.
Slack community – A space for sharing ideas, best practices, and problem-solving techniques.
Coaching – One-on-one calls designed to equip your assistant to anticipate your needs and work proactively. Ongoing for the first 90 days – as needed after that.
Quarterly learning events – Join your assistant and learn from leaders in the entrepreneurial community.
Monthly Focuses – Each month, your assistant selects and completes a training module on a specific high-value skill.
Go to the source. Ask them what they need from you. Here are a few helpful questions:
“How can I help you feel prepared for the tasks I assign?”
“Are there any areas where you need more resources?”
“Are there any areas where you feel underprepared?”
“What kind of tasks do you feel you excel at?”
2. Convey Your Confidence in Them
As a business owner, you greatly impact how your assistant’s view their own performance.
Give them opportunities and responsibility. Acknowledge specific strengths that qualify them for the task you are delegating. Communicate that you believe they can and will do the job well. Let them lead the relationship and make decisions for you.
3. Communicate Realistic Expectations
Scale-up their responsibilities gradually, building off previous skills and successes. Once they have run 5 miles, they can run 10, but asking for 10 upfront can be overwhelming.
4. Praise Their Successes
When we acknowledge good performances, the team benefits in three ways:
- Their confidence grows
- They see an incentive for performing well
- They are able to easily identify what behavior is appreciated by their leadership
- Other team members are also able to identify what actions elicit praise
Follow these guidelines:
- Be Specific: Explain exactly what they did well: “I really appreciate how you got the conversation rolling in the brainstorming meeting yesterday. Your comment about using recycled paper opened up the conversation and got others talking.”
- Be Timely: Don’t wait to acknowledge them. Respond quickly to show that you see what your team is doing and you value it.
- Praise them in front of others: Your employees want you to see their efforts, but they also value the opinions of their colleagues.
5. Thank Them
“Thank you” may be the two most powerful words you can utter today.
Support You Can’t Provide (By Yourself):
Executive Assistants occupy a unique place in a company’s organizational structure. They rarely have direct colleagues with whom they can share their challenges, questions, and ideas.
Who can help your assistant navigate assistant-specific challenges?
Other experienced assistants! With the Superpowers Membership, you can support your assistant through our community of top-performing Executive Assistants and coaches.
1. Assistant-Specific Coaching
Learning alone is a slow process, and the learning curve for an assistant is steep.
Luckily, Superpowers Assistants don’t have to figure everything out on their own; our coaches accelerate their growth by providing accountability, correction, and help.
Each of our Superpowers Assistants regularly sit down and chat one-on-one with our experienced coaches. These conversations eliminate many of the obstacles and inefficiencies of learning alone.
What might have taken years to build alone takes just a few months with Superpowers Coaching!
2. A Community for Assistants
In our Superpowers Community, assistants are equipped, challenged, and encouraged through:
Monthly cohort meetings – Each month, we provide assistant cohort meetings. These cohorts provide an ideal environment for sharing ideas, discussing challenges, and building relationships with other assistants.
Each cohort highlights a specific topic or skill, and assistants discuss their practical experiences with implementing it.
Slack community – We also provide a digital space for sharing ideas, best practices, and problem-solving techniques among top-performing Executive Assistants.
We find assistants often need an answer to a question in a pinch. Maybe they need a recommendation for a reliable contractor, a formula for conducting discovery calls, or help navigating a new software program.
With the collective experience of our top-performing assistants, the answer to your assistant’s question is often just one channel message away!
Conclusion
We hope you’ve gained a few ideas that will help you support your assistant!
Interested in our Superpowers Membership? Looking to find a high-performing assistant? We can help with both – feel free to sign up for a discovery call! We’re happy to answer questions and equip you with the information you need to make the best choice.
