Your Executive Assistant supports you and makes your life easier – but how can you make your assistant’s life easier?
Here are 5 high-value habits that will help your assistant help you:
Define and refine your communication
Communication is the centerpiece of any relationship. When your communication is frictionless, your entrepreneur-assistant relationship will be frictionless.
As soon as possible – definitely this week – sit down with your assistant and ensure you have a strong mutual understanding about:
Means of communication: What lines of communication should you and your assistant be using? Should your assistant use different tools for different situations? Email for non-time-sensitive issues? Text messages for emergencies?
Set up a daily connect: This daily touchpoint provides:
- Up-to-date information on any unexpected events or updates
- A specific time to communicate with each other so nothing goes unaddressed
- An accelerated understanding of each other
Times: Clarify with your assistant what times are appropriate to call and text. Allow them to share their boundaries, too. Detail your different ground rules for emergencies and day-to-day communications.
Once you have defined your communication, refine it. Test and see what works for you and your assistant – prioritize smooth communication above all else. It should be the first priority. Build on your strategy with effective communication tricks that work for you.
Equip them for success
Ensure they:
- Have access to
- Are aware of
Their resources: Starting a new position can be nerve-racking. Being aware of available resources alleviates pressure, boosts confidence, and increases productivity.
Provide information on:
- Best-practices
- How-to guides
- Tools (and tutorials about those 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
Their Team: Create a culture of support in your company.
- The assistant position is a unique one with no direct counterparts. Take time to ensure they feel comfortable and familiar with the rest of the team, not isolated.
- Ensure they know who they need to go to for what. Who do they go to for designs? Who do they ask about purchases?
Give them full visibility
Your assistant needs full visibility into your life and practices. Don’t hold back or cut corners when building trust and understanding between you and your assistant. Here are some essential practices:
- Explain not only the WHAT but the WHY. If your assistant understands your values and how you make decisions, they can make better choices for you and represent you with peak precision.
- Ensure they have access to ALL your calendars – personal and professional. This helps them help you in a holistic manner, ensuring you never doublebook or neglect anything – personal or professional.
- Be honest with them about how you are feeling, so they can help you find a healthy balance in your schedule.
- Tell them what is working and what is not – solve your problems and optimize faster (just make sure you’re not too abrasive with feedback).
Your assistant is there for you – even more than for your business. Let them be the one professional connection you can be transparent with. It will make your assistant’s life easier – and yours, too.
Give them assistant-specific support
As mentioned before, assistants occupy a unique space in a company. They face unique challenges and have few or no close counterparts in your organizational structure. Like most entrepreneurs, you probably don’t have the time to develop and provide assistant-specific educational resources and coaching.
At Superpowers, we provide the easy button! With a Superpowers Membership, your assistant can build their skills through our unrivaled Curriculum, Coaching, and Community.
Curriculum: Our training intensives, masterclasses, continuing education resources, playbooks, and learning events equip your assistant to exceed your expectations.
Coaching: Reach your goals sooner! Our one-on-one coaching accelerates your assistant’s growth by providing personalized accountability, correction, and mentorship.
Community: Your assistant doesn’t have to do it alone. We provide a community for sharing ideas, best practices, and problem-solving techniques among top-performing Executive Assistants.
Let them lead the relationship
We have a saying at Superpowers: “You are the boss, but your assistant is the leader in the relationship.”
Give your assistant full permission to keep you and your life on track. They can help you get more done when they have complete freedom to confront you about inefficiencies, make scheduling decisions for you, manage your correspondences, and remove delegable tasks from your to-do list.
Your assistant is your efficiency specialist. When they are free to point out weak points in your approaches and introduce solutions, they can help you maximize your time.
Here are a few specific permissions to give your assistant:
Your Task Filter: Give them permission to audit your to-do list and remove low-value tasks.
Your Liason: Allow them to represent you in correspondences, meetings, and task delegation.
Your Personal Coordinator: Allow them to schedule your appointments, identify unproductive behaviors, and provide all-around feedback and coordination for your work life.
You make your assistant’s life easier and your life easier when you focus on managing your company and they focus on managing you.
Conclusion
These are 5 high-impact habits you can began implementing to make your assistant’s life easier as they help you.
Are there any habits you’ve found valuable in your relationship with your assistant? Feel free to share them below.
Haven’t found your ideal Executive Assistant yet? We pride ourselves on training and equipping the industry’s top-performing assistants.
If you’re in the market, we are happy to talk through the process with you on a quick 30-minute call. We focus on equipping you to make the best hire – whether it’s with us or someone else. Sign up here today.
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