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From Conflict Management to Conflict Curiosity

Apr 30, 2024 | About Athena, Accountability, Delegation, Getting Started with an EA, Mental Health, Productivity, Remote Work

What is the best way to avoid or manage conflict? I hate conflict as much as the next person, but there is an interesting paradox here. If you get interested in the conflict or issue, then a lot of the fire or fury can quickly be taken down a notch. People tend to press their issue until they can get it heard. So, if you can get yourself interested in finding, being available for, and listening to issues, then it is likely you will have less conflict to deal with, and the issues you do have will get resolved quickly.

If the angry person feels like they are being listened to, they soon find they don’t have as much to say. It is disarming for people when they are met with an opportunity to be heard. This does require that we as leaders must muster the courage to be interested and to listen. We all know what Ted Lasso would say! “Be curious. Not judgmental.” Easier said than done. Like most leaders and business owners, I just want the problem to go away. But similar to a Chinese finger trap, you must get into it, to get out of it. 

One of the many valuable things I learned from my business coach, John Barron, is that my job as a CEO is to be up in the crow’s nest. Up in the nest, I’m looking out ahead to see if there is any smoke, so any fire can be put out quickly. I’m looking for roadblocks and icebergs. I’m also readily available to my managers for the topic of issues! I’m a big open welcoming space when it comes to issues. Why? Because that’s my job! I’m the Issue Monster (think Cookie Monster, my GenX friends).

When all is going according to plan, my managers can run this company well. They need their CEO when issues arise. So, I cannot be frustrated or annoyed with them when they bring me issues or conflicts.

A warning: If you do not nail an issue shut, it will return. Somewhere, somehow, someway, it will return. And you will know in your heart of hearts, “Ya, we didn’t fully resolve that issue. We just made it go away.” If you do the real work to resolve the actual issue, it will be nailed shut and you can move on. Don’t forget to take your Lessons Learned with you!

  • Conflict comes with anything worthwhile (no matter how right you think you are, there will always be people who disagree, and some who will even bark about it. Remember high school? Life is still like that sometimes.)
  • If you want no conflict, surround yourself with staff, clients, friends, and family who 100% agree with you all the time (now there’s a boring life with no richness).
  • Sometimes the only way out is through (and it is often the fastest).
  • What you resist persists (if you want the problem to linger, keep avoiding actively resolving it, but continue to talk about it a lot.)
  • As a leader, if you are proactively looking for potential issues, guess what? You will find them. (but the good news is, you found them before they found you!)
  • The longer a client or a staff member goes without hearing from you about an issue, the more they believe what they think to be true about you or the situation. (Their view quickly becomes the “truth” for them.)
  • Resolution is better than the right or perfect outcome (you may not like what you have to do to resolve the issue, but you will get the reward of the issue being resolved. Said another way, “better done than perfect.”)

Gina Cotner, CEO, Athena Executive Services

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Are you interested in learning more about hiring your own Virtual Executive Assistant? Click here to schedule a free consultation with us.

 

 

 

 

Your Time and Your Health

Feb 27, 2024 | About Athena, Delegation, Mental Health, Productivity, Uncategorized

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”

– Henry David Thoreau

We all know that rest and sleep allow our body and mind to recover, rejuvenate and heal. Studies have shown how important this is. Experts have published articles and papers about the increased levels of productivity and satisfaction with one’s work when you allow yourself to take brain breaks throughout the day. People who do high intensity activities for their workouts know the importance of stretching and recovery time. Yet with all of this knowledge few people seem to schedule and honor times in their calendar for rejuvenating their mind or their body, their mental or emotional wellness.  The more you demand of yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally, the more you need to refuel and rejuvenate those parts of you.

Great Executive Assistants design a life for their executive that is the kind of life that a person would want to wake up and live! Left to our own devices as business owners and executives we will be awful with ourselves. We overbook ourselves. We try to keep squeezing one more thing into the day. But when somebody else, who has our best interests in mind, goes about designing our schedule, they do a much better job! Sometimes your assistant is the only person who knows or cares that you leave the office at a decent hour.

Rejuvenate yourself. Get yourself fed. The world needs more people like you! The world does not need the exhausted version of you. You at your best, is a gift to the world! If you can’t trust yourself to schedule and honor living a balanced life (however you define that for you), then turn it over to somebody who will support you in that. If you think a more balanced life is truly not possible for you, we should talk.

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Interested in learning more about hiring your own Virtual Executive Assistant? Click here to schedule a free consultation with us.

 

 

 

 

Delegating: Take the Risk and Be Surprised

Feb 8, 2024 | About Athena, Business, Delegation, Financial Advisor, Productivity

I have been doing a lot of podcast interviews lately. (Thank you, Your Expert Guest.) It has given me the opportunity to speak to many different audiences and communities, from architects to bookkeepers, to women lawyers and moms running businesses. I particularly like the podcasts with spicy titles like one I did last year, “Permission to Kick Ass”.

I usually am asked for our “origin story”, or “how Athena came to be” and frankly that is a fun story that makes me smile every time I share it! Then the Podcaster and I usually dive into conversations around the VA industry. What all is out there? What is there to choose from?

We explore some of the challenges people deal with in deciding whether or not to hire a VA, and I am very frank and transparent in my answers. 

On a recent podcast I dove a little deeper into the topic of delegation. I wanted to start to share about where I found access to real freedom in my life. By freedom, I mean more time for me to do the things I most enjoy in life, or more time to spend where I am needed most, or in the areas that are the highest and best use of me and my talents. Previously I had been talking about how to delegate, all while saying to myself in my head, “Ya, this is good. People should delegate stuff and get things off their plate, but what they really need to do is this.

So, what is the this that I think is the big deal? It involves delegating for sure, but this is graduate level delegation. It can be discovered in the kind of delegating and partnership that you find with someone that is beyond giving them tasks and projects to do. Beyond making sure invoices go out on time (and yet, that better happen!), beyond just regular updates to your CRM and booking your travel.

I was being interviewed by Davina Frederick of Wealthy Woman Lawyer and I started talking about delegating thinking. I thought to myself, “Well, let’s just go there and see if I can start to speak somewhat intelligently about this.” Again, this is where I think the real freedom lies.

Yes, the graduate level delegation is delegating thinking. Consider saying to your assistant (or someone who reports to you) something like:

“Go think about this please.”
“Go research this and tell me what you think and what questions you have.”
“What questions should I have?”

The other graduate level delegation skill is to delegate an entire process or project, knowing that your assistant or whomever is working for you, doesn’t know much about the topic. And perhaps neither do you! Rather than me doing the initial research to figure something out and then delegating smaller pieces and parts of the next steps, I give the entire project to someone. After I explain what I think I want and what I’m after (having done very little research myself) I then say, “This project is yours. I know you’ve never done this before, and neither have I. No problem. You please dive in. Lead the charge. Do some initial research. Let me know what you learn, what you think, what you see next steps might be and then let’s talk.”

After this, the project is theirs. It belongs to them. Now I work for them. Now I work for my assistant. My job is now to be a useful, valuable, responsive team player.

Once they get me educated on the basics about a topic (such as possible new payroll software, how to self-publish a book, or how to charter a yacht for a week, or different options available around the United States for personal wellness retreats, or any number of things I have wanted or needed to do and know nothing about), now I have more useful questions and concerns and ideas. They also need answers from me. So, I drive up more questions. I also give them answers to what I can and then off they go to continue managing and driving the project. The project is again theirs. I’m there to help them win at what they are doing, rather than them here to help me get what I want done.

I hope you’ll now experiment with delegating thinking or, delegating whole projects and systems that “they” can then own while you become the support staff.

This whole idea does not have as much to do with the caliber of assistant that you have, as you might think it does. Some of you are thinking, “Well yeah, if I had a more senior person to delegate to, someone with more business knowledge and acumen, I might be able to do that.” Au contraire.

When you delegate more than you think someone can handle, or more than you think they are equipped to do, you will find out what they really are capable of! They may not be able to do 100% of what you have asked, but you may find that they can accomplish 90% and previously you would have bet they could only do 70%, but you got surprised while discovering that they are more capable than you thought.

So… go experiment…and get surprised!

– Gina Cotner, CEO, Athena Executive Services

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Interested in learning more about hiring your own Virtual Executive Assistant? Click here to schedule a free consultation with us.

 

 

 

 

What Does an Assistant Really Want to Do?

Jan 30, 2024 | About Athena, Accountability, Business, Delegation, Getting Started with an EA, Productivity, Remote Work

What FEEDS a high-caliber Executive Assistant? 

They want to be of Service to you!

You may think to yourself, “Really, they want to do this stuff that I absolutely do not want to do?” Yes, they do. “Really, they want to book my airline tickets and send out birthday cards? They want to help me iron out this issue with payroll, and look into better software to use for project management?” Yes, they do.

Not only do they want to do most all of those tasks and projects that you would find mind-numbing, annoying or soul-sucking, they want to do them with Excellence! They are after Excellence, I promise you. Nothing empowers an assistant more than knowing they “crushed it”!

What feeds them is you investing in them. This is, you helping them help you. You may think, “If I have to help them, then why am I even giving them this task to do?” Why? Because the direction and support you give them this week, will be the foundation for what they do next week. Next week you’ll feed them with a little more direction and support, and it will build on what they received last week. This week they will have new questions. Smarter and wiser questions.

Each week you’ll feed your assistant a little more direction and support. Then, exponentially, week by week they will become more and more valuable. Next month you will be able to say three sentences to them, and that task will get done, and it will get done the way you want. Why? Because of how well you invested in them last month.

Help them help you!

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Interested in learning more about hiring your own Virtual Executive Assistant? Click here to schedule a free consultation with us. 

 

 

 

 

Delegating: Take the Risk and Be Surprised

Sep 13, 2023 | Accountability, Business, Delegation, Getting Started with an EA, Productivity, Remote Work, Uncategorized

Athena CEO Gina Cotner was recently interviewed by Davina Frederick of Wealthy Woman Lawyer. The conversation moved into a discussion around delegating thinking:

I thought to myself, “Well, let’s just go there and see if I can start to speak somewhat intelligently about this.” Again, this is where I think the real freedom lies.

Yes – graduate level delegation is delegating thinking. Consider saying to your assistant (or someone who reports to you) something like:

  • “Go think about this please.”
  • “Go research this and tell me what you think and what questions you have.”
  • “What questions should I have?” 

The other graduate level delegation skill is to delegate an entire process or project, knowing that your assistant or whomever is working for you, doesn’t know much about the topic. And perhaps neither do you! Rather than you doing the initial research to figure something out and then delegating smaller pieces and parts of the next steps, you give the entire project to someone. After explaining what you think you want and what you are after,  you can then say, “This project is yours. I know you’ve never done this before, and neither have I. No problem. You please dive in. Lead the charge. Do some initial research. Let me know what you learn, what you think, what you see next steps might be and then let’s talk.” 

After this, the project is theirs. It belongs to them. Now you work for them. Now you work for your assistant. Your job is now to be a useful, valuable, responsive team player. 

Once they have done this initial research or an even deeper dive, you can start providing answers or asking more detailed and educated questions to partner in getting what you want done, DONE. This kind of partnership with your EA is an invaluable tool that will pay off huge once you get into a rythym! 

When you delegate more than you think someone can handle, or more than you think they are equipped to do, you will find out what they really are capable of! They may not be able to do 100% of what you have asked, but you may find that they can accomplish 90% and previously you would have bet they could only do 70%, but you got surprised while discovering that they are more capable than you thought. 

So… go experiment…and get surprised!