Enjoy this article which we agree with so very much. “Your ability to distinguish urgent and important tasks has a lot to do with your success.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, “What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”
“It takes too long to explain what I want done!” Have you ever had that thought?
“I know I should delegate this, but it will take me longer to explain how to do it then it will take for me to simply do it myself!” You are correct. You are absolutely right. So why bother? The only reason to bother and invest the time it will take to delegate something really well to somebody is for the investment in your future.
If you invest the time upfront (and to be clear, it’s an investment of your time, and that is an important resource) you will begin to give yourself a new kind of future. A future where the next time you delegate this task, you’ll have less to explain. And a little less the next time. Then finally, you don’t have to explain it at all. You can simply say, “Please do this.” And you are now no longer the person having to do that task or project. You have freed yourself because of the investment you began to make last month or last year.
The sooner you start investing, the sooner you will free yourself of that task or project that is not the best use of your time or your mind, so you can do the work that contributes to your company, your home, or your organization.
Like the author of this article, our team has been working remotely since the start of our company, almost five years ago. Working from home is a benefit and advantage for our contractors. Our team of virtual Executive Assistants stay connected via bi-weekly strategy meetings and regular check-ins.
How have you adjusted to the world of working from home? Do you see this continuing for yourself and/or your teams?
This article offers up some practical tips on how to stay focused, work through any distractions or loneliness, and be less stressed and more productive.
What does it take to manage people remotely? As the founder and CEO of Athena, that’s all I’ve ever done. We didn’t “transition” our business to a “work from home” business. That’s been the primary benefit for our staff right from the beginning. With the pandemic came many articles about managing remote workers. I particularly like this one from the Society of HR Management.
Item #7 in this article talks about being connected with your people and that is more important now than ever. Frankly, it was always important, but we could skate by without putting much effort into it in the past. Knowing and empathizing with whatever your remote workers are dealing with is critical in these times. As someone who has always had staff who work from home, I have always been interested in what’s going on at home. Why? Because that’s the environment in which they are working (for me and our clients). It gives me a sense of how hard or easy it is for them right now to be working from home.
Staying connected to your people is an ongoing job. You can’t assume that how they were last week is how they are this week. People and their circumstances are always changing. As a leader it serves you to always be interested in what your people are dealing with in life and with their work. If you have more attention on listening than speaking, you’ll be amazed what you will learn.
Read the full article at SHRM.ORG
Recently, Gina delivered a workshop at the amazing Empower 2020 Summit for Assistants, put on by our friends at Base.
Here is an excerpt from the discussion on what it takes to truly be a high-caliber executive assistant:
I’ve noticed that assistants tend to be people pleasers. Who are my people pleasers? Be proud! You do not want people to be upset or frustrated. That is upsetting and frustrating for you, my people pleasers. And sometimes we pay a little too much attention on making sure somebody’s not going to be upset, which then reduces your power and effectiveness.
A very professional and confident way of avoiding having people get upset is to manage expectations. What do I mean by that? Let me illuminate something about the power of “expectations” in general.
Let’s say it’s midnight and you’re in the mood for a piece a cake from your favorite bakery. Do you get your car and drive to your favorite bakery at midnight and then get upset and frustrated because they’re closed? No. Why? Because you had NO expectation that your favorite bakery would be open at midnight.
So when you have an expectation, of somebody or something, and that expectation goes unmet, you will often find yourself upset, frustrated, or annoyed. This is true for most of humanity. Unmet expectations make us mad, frustrated, and upset.
So, knowing that and being wise about that, you can avoid people getting upset and frustrated by making sure you’re always setting, resetting and level-setting expectations. As you can imagine, this process will also bring your executive certainty. It may not be “good news”, but it will be certainty. Certainty and Facts always prevail over just “good news”.
I can tell you as an executive myself, and a business owner of a rapidly growing company, I would much rather have the truth and the certainty about something (even if I really hate what the truth is) than for somebody give me some half truth, hoping I won’t be as upset. When somebody gives me the straight scoop about something, I can continue to Captain the ship. I will figure out what to do next. That’s how I got where I am in life. That is how I built a very successful company very quickly.
And many times, the straight scoop involves re-setting expectations. “I said those three things would be done by Friday but given that hot item that just came up this morning, those three things will be done next Monday.” No need to even apologize! That is the actual, current, real status of things right this moment. If your boss has an issue with that, they will let you know. They may have no issue with it at all.
The 10 things your boss gave you yesterday and the 10 more the day before, are not all going to get done by tomorrow. You want to be the planner and author of the expectations.
When you reset expectations, it also ensures that I, as the executive, am not going to get blindsided. I’m not going to be surprised that something isn’t done, or isn’t progressing in the way I was expecting. Then if it IS really important to me – that thing you just told me won’t get done until next week – I now have the opportunity to do something about it. I can re-prioritize what is on your plate. I can get you more resources. I can go to work on it myself. I can delegate it to somebody else. I have options and can continue to Captain my ship.
The other great thing that happens when you reset expectations, is that then YOU are not panicking. “Oh my God how am I going to get all this done?” You’re not going to get it all done. You stop, re-plan, and re-set expectations, and then get back to being a Rockstar.
This moves your brain out of “overwhelm mode” and gets you back to being effective, professional, and high-performing. Back in your zone. In your sweet spot.
Yes, Bill Gates, I agree. “Success isn’t binary.”
Is the opposite of Success, Failure? No. Success is incremental. Are you learning lessons along the way? This is key. And this has been the key for our company. Certain clauses in our Master Service Agreement are there now because of a lesson learned.
Why does every virtual Executive Assistant at our firm have a Performance Coach? Because we learned lessons from being too distant from our contractors and staff.
Why do we invoice on the same two days of the month regardless of the day of the week? Lessons learned.
How we do everything at our firm isn’t perfect or even “the right way” but many great structures are in place that keep us stable and growing, and they got there from a lesson learned.
