Being Confident as an Executive Assistant

Speaker 2 · 0:10

The Leader Assistant Podcast exists to encourage and challenge assistants to become confident, game-changing, leader assistants.

Jeremy · 0:21

Hey friends, just a quick note from our sponsor for this episode. Office Otter automatically makes tasks from your Slack, email, or text messages. If you're like me, you wear a lot of hats as an EA, and I'm sure you struggle to stay on top of emails, Slack, Zoom calls, and the one million tabs you have open. So you get to the end of your week and you think, what did I even do this week? Well, Office Otter helps you centralize your messages, prioritize your tasks, and track your performance. Their co-founder Cheyenne shared her story in episode 134 of this podcast. You can check that out at leaderassistant.com/134 to hear her story and how she decided to launch this tool for assistance. But in the meantime, sign up for free at officeotter.com and start unloading that mental checklist. Again, sign up for free at officeotter.com. Welcome to episode 137. You can check out the show notes at leaderassistant.com/137. Today's episode, I'm going to be sharing an excerpt from my book, The Leader Assistant, Four Pillars of a Confident, Game-Changing Assistant. You can catch the full book at Amazon or Audible or Barnes and Noble, wherever you like to enjoy books. Today's excerpt is actually a clip from the audiobook, which you can find at audio.leaderassistant.com. This portion of the book is chapter five. That chapter is called Confident, and this is where I talk about how we as executive assistants, administrative assistants, and other titles in the administrative professional field can be confident. And I'm not talking about a shallow confidence. I'm talking about a deep-rooted confidence. So I hope you enjoy this excerpt from my book. Again, you can check out the full audiobook at audio.leaderassistant.com or the paperback or digital ebook at amazon.leaderassistant.com. I hope you enjoy it, and we'll talk soon. Chapter 5. Confident. An assistant becomes a leader by building confidence in him or herself. Confidence is built by will and determination to be the best, personally and professionally. A willingness to work with and learn from others and the support of others in and outside of your organization, or networking. Rebecca S. Executive Administrative Assistant in Greenville, South Carolina. As an assistant, you're in contact with the most confident and powerful people in your company, city, industry, and for some of you, even the world. How can you expect to lead if you lack confidence in your ability to get the job done? Game-Changing Leader Assistants are confident. I'm not talking about a lifetime movie, music pumping, I am awesome, I am strong, I am brave confidence. What if you're not strong? What if you aren't feeling brave in a given moment? What if you fail today, tomorrow, and the next day? I'm also not talking about an arrogant, narcissistic, I do what I want, and I don't care what you think confidence, like when I'm driving. Hey, leaders should own their own dirt, right? Or like that time I was at a grocery store with a girl I was trying to impress and I ate a strawberry off the shelf, claiming, hey, free strawberry samples. They were not free samples and I did not impress the girl, in case you're wondering. What I'm talking about is a deep-rooted, humble confidence. An unwavering belief that you have what it takes to figure things out and a forgiving grace for yourself if you don't figure things out. Your confidence naturally will take a hit when you face an unexpected glacier. If you doubt your ability in those moments, you're not alone. The most confident people in the world have doubts whether they admit it or not. I've spent more than half my working life as an EA. I've worked with celebrities, professional athletes, billionaires, and C-suite executives at Fortune 100 companies. You'd think I'd be extremely confident anytime I meet a high-level executive. But there are days I question whether I've got what it takes to ask for extra sauce at Chick-fil-A. There are times I'm confident in my skills, but I'm not confident in my ability to communicate well. Other days I doubt my talent, but not my worth as a person. Some days I'm confident and assertive at work, but when I get home and have to manage my boy's bedtime routine, I lose all confidence. So how do we strengthen our self-assurance? Develop a deep-rooted, humble confidence. Experience is one way to start. No matter how old or new you are to the assistant role, find someone with more experience and more confidence, and ask them to help you grow. It can be as simple as grabbing lunch with a fellow assistant to share tips and tricks, as well as trade horror and success stories. You could also reach out to one of the many amazing assistant coaches on LinkedIn for professional development to help you gain confidence. Conferences and online courses can help you become more assured in your role as well. But experience, coaching, and training will only get you so far. The key to unlocking a deep-rooted confidence is to remember this. You are a valuable human being no matter how good or bad you perform at work. Until you latch on to this powerful truth, you will lack confidence. If you don't remind yourself of this fact on a regular basis, your confidence will fade as you let the ups and downs at work affect you on a deep, personal level. But Jeremy, I don't feel valuable. I get it. I don't feel valuable all the time either. So what destroys our confidence? The lies we've been told and the lies we tell ourselves. Don't believe the lies. What lies have you been told that you've held on to as truths? Maybe a teacher in high school said you'd never amount to anything. Maybe a coworker said you were incompetent. Maybe your dad didn't encourage or believe in you. These statements can be tough to shake, but they don't define you. The lies you tell yourself are another confidence destroyer. Lies like, I don't have what it takes, or I can't do it as well as Susan can, or they won't listen to me. These lies wreck your confidence. In fact, they're so powerful, you might not recognize the truth when you hear it. Think about the last time you received a compliment. Did you respond with gratitude or dismiss it, telling yourself it was undeserved? Almost every day, my son Silas says I'm the best daddy ever. I know I'm likely not the best dad ever, so at first I would respond with something like, I doubt it, but I do my best. Then I thought about how he means it. To him, I really am the best daddy ever. But I was unwilling to hear it. Even worse, my response was teaching him to reject compliments or kind words from others. So now I simply say, Thank you, sweetie. When someone says something nice about you, own it and say thanks. Don't let the negative lies in your head drown out the positive truth. Another example of a lie in my life was the seemingly small but powerful thought that I'd never be able to enjoy dining at nice restaurants because I'd always be worried about paying my bills. This lie I told myself was heavily influenced by my family of origin. I grew up in a family of six, and my parents never made much money. Sure, we had food on the table, clothes on our back, and a roof over our heads, but we rarely went out to eat, we shopped at Aldi and Payless Shoes, and we only went on vacation if we had a cheap or free place to stay somewhere within driving distance. The pro was I learned a lot about saving money, keeping a budget, and not buying things I can't afford. The con was it took me a long time to learn that it's okay to splurge every now and then. Eleanor Roosevelt said it well. No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. This goes for the lies you tell yourself, too. Counseling has helped me process the many ways my family of origin impacts my confidence to this day. Some people attach a stigma to counseling. Oh, you must be really messed up if you're seeing a therapist. But that's simply not true. Mature people who want to grow and improve seek help in many forms. I highly recommend seeing a good therapist or counselor if you've never seen one. You can't fight back against the lies in your mind or the lies from others without outside help. A Leader Assistant's confidence is not fueled by pride. It's fueled by humility. Serve the Work Dorothy Sayers, an English crime writer and poet, wrote an essay called Why Work? I find her ideas in this essay fascinating to think about as they relate to how we can be confident in our role. In Why Work, Sayers says a worker must serve the work. This sounds like a recipe for burnout, but hear her out. The moment you think of serving other people, you begin to have a notion that other people owe you something for your pains. You begin to think that you have a claim on the community. You will begin to bargain for reward, to angle for applause, and to harbor a grievance if you are not appreciated. But if your mind is set upon serving the work, then you know you have nothing to look for. The only reward the work can give you is the satisfaction of beholding its perfection. The work takes all and gives nothing but itself, and to serve the work is a labor of pure love. It is the work that serves the community. The business of the worker is to serve the work. If you're serving the work as opposed to angling for applause from your executive, you won't feel as defeated or be as negatively influenced when your executive doesn't appreciate your amazing work. Your confidence will have deeper roots. You'll no longer do what you do to be recognized. Instead, you'll simply seek to do great work. Are you placing your professional confidence in what your executive says or the quality of your work? When you ask for a compensation increase, will you base your business case on your executive's subjective opinion or on the objective data showing the quality of your work? Be confident in your ability to figure things out and be kind to yourself if you can't. Your value as a human being, no matter what happens at work, and the quality of your work, not the amount of accolades you receive. Let's shift our focus to humility, the deepest and strongest root of your confidence as a game-changing leader assistant. Game-Changing Questions for Self-Reflection Reflect on your confidence by considering these questions. Where do I lack confidence? In what environments do I feel most confident? Am I confident in some areas but not others? Why? Do I work to receive recognition or because I enjoy the work?

Speaker 2 · 13:49

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Jeremy · 13:53

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