GET REAL
Donna's blog on coaching, leadership, and lifeAdministrative Assistant as Strategic Partner
To create that top-notch working relationship between you and your assistant, and have it work in a way that’s ideal for both parties is truly an art. The Administrative Assistant profession, like no other, runs the gamut relating to roles, responsibilities, and status. The role offers a blank canvas for all kinds of possibilities, levels of support, and opportunities.
Most important to the foundation of the executive and assistant relationship, are the interpersonal dynamics in the partnership, how highly you both value the partnership and business results, and how clearly you have both worked to set expectations and standards for the relationship.
There are multiple strategies that you can take to help you and your assistant elevate and fine-tune your support of one another. Here are just a few strategies that may help you get started.
• Position and jump-start the shift.
Talk with your assistant and let her know that you’re taking the time to think about how she might become more of a strategic partner. To start, ask her to schedule a meeting for the two of you in a week, where she’ll come prepared to discuss at least one area where she feels the relationship is going really well and one area where she feels you can both improve communications and/or increase your support of one another. Let her know you’ll come prepared to offer her the same. Prepare for the meeting and be ready to listen, compare notes and discuss. Once you meet and have the discussion, identify one action that you both agree to collaborate on. Set a reasonable target date when you can both evaluate and discuss your successes and challenges in taking that action.
When the time comes to evaluate, and if all’s going well, keep discussing and adding best practices that you both agree are well-worth trying. To start, the change may be minimal such as: You might agree that your AA’s new responsibilities include recommending specific changes to your calendar based on what she sees as your upcoming demands and travel times. Or, you might agree on texting versus email under specific circumstances, etc. Your agreement may relate to a larger responsibility such as: Your assistant taking over your expense report, or managing a budget, or taking the lead on a committee or department initiative.
• Meet with each other one-on-one formally, and often. Keep each other informed.
In addition to your on-the-run conversations and on-demand communications, schedule regular one-on-one meetings (10-15 minutes) where the two of you have the uninterrupted opportunity to discuss upcoming demands, expectations, and needs, from both perspectives. These meetings—and your focused discussions with each other—should be treated as a priority and take place at least twice a week. If you’re primarily on-site, every day may not be too often to meet. If you’re generally off-site, adjust accordingly. Ask your assistant to come prepared to your meetings with a checklist of what she needs to discuss and you’ll do the same. And if your scheduled one-on-one cancels for any reason, ask her to reschedule, ASAP.
When I ask executives what their number one goal is relating to support from their assistants, they say they want their assistants to “anticipate” more. The surest way for an assistant to anticipate your needs is to keep her consistently well-informed!
• Periodically explore changes or expansions in your assistant’s role and responsibilities. Expect your AA’s role to continue to evolve over time.
To start, ask your assistant to prepare and document her thoughts about the following. Schedule a time for the two of you to discuss.
– Where specifically does she feel she may be ready and able to expand her responsibilities to best support you?
– If she’s swamped in a particular area of detail, what are her recommendations for specific strategies that will allow her to eliminate some of the pressure and increase her availability? And, how can you best support this?
– Where does she feel she may need more mentoring or training?
The answers to questions like these will provide a basis for exploring how you might go about coaching, developing, or providing training for your assistant, which will increase your contributions to each other’s success.
• Appreciate and recognize your assistant’s contributions to your success.
We all know a simple thank-you goes a long way. However, highlighting an individual’s specific contributions to your success during a thank-you is more powerful. In addition to the traditional or typical thank you card or gift-giving during Administrative Assistant month, you may want to take the time to give something that is especially chosen with your strategic partner in mind.
Notes: Early in my career, before entering management, I spent several years as an Administrative Assistant. I served as Secretary to Sales, and then Executive Assistant to the President, in a telecommunications company, and as a Legal Secretary and Office Manager in a law firm. I’m very grateful for those years where I learned so much about business, service, and building relationships. In the earliest years of my consulting business, I specialized in providing management and communication skills to administrative assistants in varied business environments. I still sometimes have the opportunity to serve as a consultant to executive and assistant teams, to help them elevate their strategic partnership—which is what prompted me to offer a few ideas here. Interestingly, 95% of Administrative Assistants in the US are female. I have met and read about men who are thriving in the Administrative Assistant role. Whether male or female, the right person in an AA role with the right set of skills, can create their own career path, and catapult an executive’s ability to be successful.
(Btw, in this post, I’ve written as though I’m talking to the person in the executive role. However, if you’re in the assistant role, and you’re looking to increase the level of your service and partnership, I encourage you to take the lead and the initiative, and recommend these joint strategies to the individual(s) you support.)
Strong Decision-Makers Strike a Balance Between Asking and Telling
Strong leaders make tough and effective decisions, promptly. For others, the fear and risk of making the wrong decisions may slow their ability to decide. Meanwhile, indecision may chip at their confidence to offer direction, often when direction is needed most.
Soliciting feedback from colleagues and advisors—or employees who may be significantly impacted by a decision—can be a good and strong practice. However, the practice of soliciting too many perspectives before making a decision, can stall progress and sabotage successful outcomes.
Here are a few key points that may help move decision-making along, and strike the crucial balance between asking and telling:
– Note the areas, relating to your decision, where you’re confident in your direction. If you can isolate the area(s) of indecision, you’re less likely to be crowding your thinking or decision-making process with needless information.
– Ask yourself the following questions. If you answer yes to all of them, chances are you’ve done your due diligence, and it’s time to step up and make your decision.
o Have you carefully reviewed the related data and/or feedback that you’ve already solicited?
o Will the decision you’re leaning towards generate a strong business impact if successful? If so, are you prepared to explain the value?
o Are you prepared to manage the outcome if it’s less than successful?
o Are you prepared to build in target dates for evaluating interim outcomes in the event there may be a need for a shift in direction?
The balance between soliciting the opinions or perspectives of others, and arriving at a decision based on your business experience, confidence, and leadership is crucial to you, your organization, and the people you lead.
Another Look at Building or Rebuilding Trust
Originally published in the Democrat & Chronicle, Sun, Feb 26th, 2017
3 Simple Ways to Build or Rebuild Trust
By Donna Rawady
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Trust is at the core of any successful relationship. At work, when we trust someone it fosters confidence in their discretion, integrity, and decision-making.
You may think that to establish trust, you need to demonstrate or deliver something highly impressive or noteworthy. In reality, it’s your daily interactions, communications, and behaviors that build trust. Although trust takes some time to build, and can be tough to rebuild when it’s broken, it can be strengthened through small incremental efforts.
Here are a few behaviors that can have a high impact:
1. Deliver on what you promise. Be cautious of promising more than you can manage, or promising an outcome over which you may have little-to-no control.
Here are a few examples of where you would have full control over follow through on a promise:
o I’ll get back to you with an answer, either way, by mid-day tomorrow.
o The minute I have approval to communicate the direction we’re taking, I’ll call a meeting and keep you all informed.
o I’ll serve as an advocate for your budget request.
2. Maintain the esteem of others. Whether you’re talking directly with someone or you’re talking about someone in their absence, do your best to regard your leaders, colleagues, and employees. Avoid spreading negative information or negative assumptions about others. If you’re required to be in a discussion about a performance issue relating to another person, avoid judging the behavior. Stick to the impact that the performance may have on business or organizational standards or objectives.
3. Uphold confidentiality, as appropriate, and as agreed upon, at all costs.
Building trust is not always easy, but it is simple. If we want to be trusted, we need to be trustworthy.
Exploring a Reorganization? Think “ideal” team.
Here’s a great way to explore your next reorganization…..Focus on the ideal roles and responsibilities of the new team. At first, avoid taking your existing employees’ strengths and/or weaknesses into consideration. If that sounds cold, I assure you it’s not. It’s a way to fully explore your best organization while avoiding barriers relating to existing talent and/or limited resources.
As you’re exploring the new infrastructure, ask yourself these questions to help you stick to exploring the “ideal” team:
– What leadership and support roles are needed to move the new organization forward?
– What specific skills, knowledge, and experience will each role call for in the new organization?
– What skills and/or knowledge are crucial to each role and which skills and/or knowledge may be negotiable or transferable?
Once the ideal roles are defined, then it’s time to take a close look at the individuals and talent you currently have to fulfill those roles. You’ll be better-equipped to identify strong matches and/or where there may be skill gaps.
The skill gaps will offer a guide to an individual’s professional development and coaching plan. Or, they might disqualify someone from being considered for a role. This will depend on how wide the gaps may be, or how transferable the needed skills are.
Ultimately, you may decide to adjust a role to best fit a highly-valued employee who is making significant contributions. Or, you might adjust the org chart to best suit the ensemble of talent and resources available to you in your existing organization.
Whatever the outcome, you will have fully explored your options. You’ll have a handle on your team’s current and future development needs. And, with your chosen team in place, you’ll be free to focus on further maximizing the success and outcomes of the new organization.
Are you leading an organization? Checklist to help you maintain that crucial bird’s eye view.
Your ability to maintain a comprehensive view of the organization you’re leading is crucial. It’s a bird’s-eye view that will enable you to guide, facilitate, strengthen, and grow the business.
Healthy organizations have leaders who:
– provide strategic direction
– set expectations and require accountability for performance
– maintain their understanding of where the strong and weak links/talents are
– identify, coach, and maximize talent
– delegate effectively (without micromanaging)
– engage employees in problem-solving
– swoop in, as needed, and promptly return to the helm to guide and facilitate success
In the midst of incredible pressures to perform, making it a priority to maintain your bird’s eye view will increase your ability to lead and succeed.
3 Ways to Breathe Life Into Your Business
There are myriad factors impacting the success of a small business, whether it be new or well-established. The success that small business owners or any business leaders experience is in large part due to energy: the energy behind their passion; the energy to sustain consistent efforts towards a longer-term goal; and the energy to maintain a genuine service attitude with their prospects, customers and associates.
Here are three ways to breathe life into your new or existing business:
1. Ignite (or Re-ignite) your passion.
If you’ve ever experienced the passion behind a start-up business or new venture, you know that it was palpable. In fact, if you were to think back on any time when you were fully engaged and accomplished great things, your passion was certainly at its core. Passion drives your vision, your confidence, and your actions. Passion will continue to drive you and your business successfully. Many things in life can impact your level of passion negatively, including personal loss, health, family circumstances, business slumps or simply the lack of stimulating change, to name a few. When you find yourself lacking passion, you may find you’re less effective and the day-to-day charge of running your business and/or leading others can become a chore. What can you do about it? Here are a few quick tools that may help you find or reclaim your passion:
– Be honest with yourself about your waning passion.
– Explore your options to the fullest. Write about them. Write about your dreams, and your worst fears. Explore how an imagined change in your work will impact different facets of your life and the lives of those you love. As you explore, if obstacles present themselves, ask yourself: What if this obstacle wasn’t here? Then what would I want to do, and how might I go about it? Seeing your options explored beyond your perceived challenges will provide you more information to help you better drive your decision-making. Through a fearless and risk-free exploration of your options, you’ll either renew a sense of passion for what you’re currently doing, or you’ll clarify your desire or need to make a change.
– Share your state of mind and ideas with people you trust and get a few other perspectives, ideas, and best practices.
2. Focus on short-term activity versus long-term outcomes.
In order to start a new business or grow an existing business, there’s no denying it’s crucial to have clarity around your long-term revenue goals—your ideal, break-even, and unacceptable levels of business performance. That being said, consider this approach:
-Instead of focusing on outcomes, focus on consistent current activity as it relates to the outcome. For example, you may find that you’re focusing on or stressing about the revenue you’re going to generate or lose based on whether you land a proposal. A more productive question may be about what specific, however small, action you can take today that will move you forward, towards your more comprehensive marketing goals. It’s the old “plant enough seeds and some will blossom” analogy. Sometimes you may find that the return may not come directly from where you placed your energy, but you can count on a return nonetheless. The bottom line is, business growth is most robust when you’re putting energy out daily and consistently.
3. Demonstrate a genuine service attitude.
Take the time to send an article of interest to a prospect. Offer your expertise to a colleague in need. Go the extra mile for a client. Maintain a genuine service approach and your prospects and customers will gravitate towards you and what you have to offer.
These three doable strategies provide you the opportunity to take action today. Breathe energy into your business goals….Energy in, revenue out.
Random Thoughts About Leadership and Life
Every so often, I add to my list of the lessons I’m learning, or the random thoughts I’m having, based on my experience in the field. The list reflects what I see as common behaviors or circumstances at work and in life that either contribute to successful, or unwanted, results. Here’s my latest update:
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Random Thoughts About Leadership and Life, by Donna Rawady, published in the Democrat & Chronicle, Rochester, NY, on Jan 10, 2017.
As I write this, 2016 is coming to an end. With every year we gain experience and add a few more lessons learned. Here are a few random lessons I’ve learned that continue to ring true in my experience. Wishing you all a healthy, happy, and successful 2017.
– Assertive accomplishes a great deal more than aggressive, and engagement always beats intimidation.
– Stress makes us less productive at work, and less accessible to our loved ones.
– Mutual respect and a service attitude are what builds and maintains successful working relationships. This is true no matter what role we hold in an organization or business relationship.
– Effective organizational change management requires a clear vision and consistent reinforcement. It also requires a fair amount of rolled up sleeves and elbow grease.
– We all make mistakes. It’s best to acknowledge them, take responsibility for them, and move on.
– As leaders, if we promise more than we or our teams can deliver, we can break down trust. Yet, if we promise small doable steps and then follow through and deliver, we build trust.
– A leader’s success is often measured by an organization’s profitability. What’s more important are the strategies behind the scenes to keep the profitability sustainable.
– As leaders we’re often baffled by someone’s lack of accountability. Yet, we seldom ask ourselves why we allow it.
– The most successful leaders maintain a perfect balance between business acumen and communication skills.
– Struggling to make sense of something when stressed or stumped is rarely productive. It may be clearer tomorrow.
– It’s important to listen to our gut. It may be trying to tell us something we already know on some level.
– Integrity always matters.
Happy Holidays! —Enjoy the good stuff even in the midst of tough stuff.
Happy Holidays, 2016! Thinking about my mom this afternoon. She passed peacefully in early November. I’m naturally experiencing a mix of emotions this holiday season, which reminded me of holiday wishes that I posted in 2013. They rang true for me then, and still very much do. So I thought I’d share them again.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Enjoy the good stuff…even in the midst of tough stuff. Originally posted Dec 26, 2013.
This is a time of year when we may experience an interesting dichotomy of emotions. We might find ourselves thinking about all that we have to be grateful for—family, friends, our health, or just being alive. At the same time, our memories or expectations of holiday cheer may heighten our feelings of sadness over the changes in our lives—loss of loved ones, struggling elders, challenging family dynamics, a loved one’s ill-health, and/or career-related stress.
I thought it a great time to share what I’ve been reminding myself and my loved ones of lately. When we find ourselves feeling burdened by difficult circumstances, whether they be during the holidays or occurring in life in general, we can still choose to enjoy the good stuff. It may be as simple or momentary as a ray of sunshine warming your face through a window, or a few hours free of any immediate responsibilities, the thoughtfulness of a friend, or an afternoon with family. Or, it may be that well-deserved vacation or the warmth of your own home or a lasting friendship.
Today, I offer my gratitude to my readers, clients, colleagues, friends and family with these wishes— Every happiness and success in the New Year and seize the opportunity to enjoy the good stuff, even when you find yourself in the midst of tough stuff.
A reminder for the times . . . Emotions are louder than words.
I began using the phrase “Emotions are louder than words” many years ago in my work. This phrase reminds us of the importance of maintaining our composure if we want to influence others when we’re addressing a concern. If we express negative emotions, even subtly, others may focus on our “attitude” instead of what we’re saying. We trade the opportunity to be heard for the possibility of being judged and dismissed.
It doesn’t take much to shift an opportunity for a rich conversation to an altercation or a lasting covert conflict. People may stop trying to understand each other. They might avoid each other for an extended time until resolution seems unlikely. We’ve all seen this happen in the workplace.
We also may be experiencing similar dynamics over the last few weeks. Friends, family members, and fellow citizens are emotionally charged with polarized political views. And we’re finding it difficult to have healthy discussions.
If you want to be heard, minimize those loud emotions, because it’s probable that no one is hearing you above the noise. Here’s one way to do it. Write your uncensored frustrations down for your eyes only. Re-visit your writing a day later. Highlight only those areas that focus on the business case, or the mutual benefits to you and the person(s) you’re planning on talking with. Then base your discussion on the highlighted points. It’s a start anyway.
Whether you’re at work, at home with a loved one, or engaged in a political debate on line, consider this. If you’re preparing to address a concern or debate an opposing idea, focus on mutual respect and the mutual benefits of a positive outcome. Minimize your emotions and maximize your impact.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
This article was originally published in the Democrat & Chronicle, Rochester, NY on Dec 4/5, 2016.
Leaders—Explore your role relating to accountability
There’s a delicate balance between encouraging people to feel free to explore, own, and implement their own strategies, and understanding when there’s a need to set specific requirements relating to necessary deliverables. One of the most significant factors for leaders in balancing these two approaches is identifying the leadership style needed based on the levels of competence, experience, and capabilities of the people they lead.
Failing to clearly communicate and require specific expectations around roles and responsibilities — within an agreed upon timeframe — can easily lead to significant performance issues, and disappointment. This is a common and consistent missing link to desired and successful outcomes — as is the absence of any clearly stated consequences if the person is unable to deliver within that time frame.
As leaders, when we’re strategizing our role in successful outcomes, or we’re up against a performance issue with direct reports, we must ask ourselves:
• Have I been clear about the non-arguable expectations and deliverables?
• Have I set specific target dates to review required progress toward the objectives?
• Have I clearly stated the business impact and consequences (i.e., shift in their role, adjustment to compensation, termination) if the employee is not able, or equipped, to meet the expectations or objectives within stated time frames?
• Have I followed up frequently enough to ensure that they’re having successes, and am I aware of their specific challenges so that they’re getting the support and coaching they need to be successful?
Of course your direct reports also have a responsibility to ask you for clarity relating to their role and responsibilities. Yet, the simple, yet loaded, question remains: As a leader, when dealing with a performance challenge of unmet deliverables, have you stated the end-goal as a request or a requirement?
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
(This content, written by Donna Rawady, was originally published in Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, October 24, 2016—Titled: “Leaders, explore your role with accountability”)
GET REAL 