executive assistant

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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Perception vs. Reality

Sep 28, 2022 | About Athena, Accountability, Business, Delegation, Financial Advisor, Getting Started with an EA, Productivity, Remote Work, Uncategorized

We will always take the opportunity to sing the praises of our high-caliber Executive Assistants. The role of an EA is so much more complex than many people realize!

This article gives some great examples of the types of things an EA actually does – and the perception vs. reality problem many EAs face in today’s workplace.

“In today’s global world, EAs who work for C-suite executives are referred to as the right arms to leaders, the backbone to companies, and the face of the company culture.”

Read the entire article at Harvard Business Review.

Moving from Delegating Tasks to Delegating Thinking

Aug 10, 2021 | Accountability, Business, Delegation, Getting Started with an EA, Productivity

I’ve been expanding my knowledge and abilities around delegating in this last year. I consider myself an expert delegator in many ways, but there is always more to master and new things to discover. I’ve been moving myself from simply delegating well-defined tasks and projects to a world of Delegating Thinking.

I got off a call today that I had to force myself to cut short. I said to this person, “I need you to do the critical thinking on this and then send me what you’ve got.” We were working on an agenda for a meeting. I gave him some areas and ideas to think from and I noticed he kept asking me questions. I was pulled to want to stay on the line and keep answering his questions. He would have happily and expertly executed my thoughts and put them on paper in a way that I wanted. But what I really wanted was his thinking mixed with mine. I realized in the moment that the more questions I answered for him, the less of his thinking I would get.

There is more to be found about this in this article, plus other valuable ideas for how to get more out of delegating.

Harvard Business Review article, “You’re Delegating. It’s Not Working. Here’s Why.”