How to be a Future-Proof Executive Assistant

Jeremy · 0:00

Assistant, you are a leader. As an assistant, you constantly face obstacles that hold you back from accomplishing your career goals. Whether it's a job change, shifting deadlines, a micromanaging executive, a toxic coworker, a high-pressure project, or an intense negotiation with a vendor, the administrative profession is not for the faint of heart. If you're looking to maintain the status quo and be just an assistant, this podcast is not for you. But if you want the confidence and ability to conquer the challenges that most try to avoid, then you're in the right place.

Speaker 2 · 0:47

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

Jeremy · 0:59

Hey friends, thanks for tuning in. You are listening to The Leader Assistant Podcast. I'm your host, Jeremy Burrows. And for this episode, I'm going to share an excerpt of my audiobook. My book is called The Leader Assistant, Four Pillars of a Confident, Game-Changing Assistant. This book and audiobook, there's also a digital ebook or paperback version. So whichever medium you like to soak in your books, you can do so. But The Leader Assistant outlines four pillars. Embody the characteristics, employ the tactics, engage in relationships, and exercise self-care. These pillars will help you rediscover your passion for the profession and become a confident, future-proof, game-changing leader assistant. If you neglect even one pillar, you'll head for burnout, stagnation, and anonymity. You are meant for so much more. Are you ready to be the leader assistant the world needs? In this episode, we're going to listen to chapter 7, which is titled Future Proof. You can check out the entire audiobook or paperback or ebook at amazon.leaderassistant.com to read or listen to more of the book. Chapter 7, Future Proof. A leader assistant is calm, confident, astute, and uses their emotional intelligence to great effect. Alison Kay, personal assistant, London. Are you prepared for the artificial intelligence or AI revolution? Should you be scared your job is going to be replaced by AI someday? Yes and no. Have a healthy fear, i.e. reverence and respect, of AI and other technology, but don't let it keep you up at night. More and more tasks are handled by machine learning algorithms and automated software. If you ignore this reality, you might not survive the AI revolution. We're a long way from being fully replaced by robots, but AI is infiltrating a growing number of industries and rapidly changing the way many of us work. For example, I'm an assistant at Capacity, a SaaS company in St. Louis. Our secure, AI-native platform helps teams do their best work by automating key processes and reducing support ticket load. Our chatbot sits on top of the platform with state-of-the-art natural language processing so you don't have to know the precise way to ask for what you need. You just ask. If a coworker wants to know when my executive, our CEO, is free next, they can ask Capacity. If I'm on vacation and my executive is traveling, he can ask Capacity for his airline rewards information, or he can ask for his plumber's phone number if a pipe bursts at his home. Did you notice something? The tasks Capacity handles aren't ones that typically bring us joy and excitement. Imagine if you could spend more time solving real problems and creating amazing products instead of answering the same mundane questions over and over. If you want to be a game-changing assistant, you can't let the fear of being replaced by AI paralyze you. Instead, explore how you can use the AI revolution to make yourself more valuable. Seek out tools that give you more time at work to do what you love and what really drives results. Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Assistance I literally watch the AI revolution unfold at the desk across from me, and it can get overwhelming at times. You probably feel the same way when you read the latest article about artificial intelligence automating jobs. My executive puts it bluntly, automate before you're automated. But there's good news. AI will never replace humans. In fact, the future of work is not AI versus humans. It's AI plus humans. It will continue to increase our capabilities and productivity. However, though AI might not replace you, it could make your specific job obsolete. So be on the lookout for ways to re-skill and up-skill throughout your career if you want to be a leader assistant. For example, I know a long-time assistant who became a knowledge management expert at her company during a major re-org. It was a perfect example of embracing the need to re-skill. The following four tactics will help you automate and prepare for the future of work. 1. Be an early adopter. The first way to future-proof your career is to learn about and use new technology as it becomes available, or even better, before it becomes available to the rest of the world. Be an early adopter. Get your hands on the latest software and tools that can help you with some aspect of your job. How? Sign up for free trials. Join beta tests. Or apply to be a guinea pig for your friend's new project. Maybe it's exploring an AI platform like Capacity that can schedule meetings, automate onboarding processes, mine policy documents, and answer FAQs. Maybe it's testing an automation tool that can help you quickly audit your executives' time so you can be more strategic with their schedule. In Chapter 10, we'll look at tracking your executives' time. Or maybe it's something as simple as using Google Assistant, Alexa, or Siri to set reminders. Whatever it is, be on the hunt for opportunities to use technology that's shaping the future. If you aren't sure where to look for opportunities to be an early adopter, start by educating yourself. Take a course on artificial intelligence. Listen to a podcast dedicated to machine learning. Read books and articles about the future of work. If you'd like some guidance, I put together a guide at leaderassistantbook.com forward slash bonus. This will help you kick off your AI learning adventure. Two, develop your emotional intelligence. Keeping your human-only skills sharp is another way to future-proof your career. You might be up to speed on all the latest and greatest software, hip to modern business tactics, and crushing it with your leadership skills. But how emotionally aware are you? Can you control the way you express your emotions? Are you able to process the varying emotions you feel? Can you handle relationships empathetically? What have you done to develop your emotional intelligence? Here are some game-changing tactics you can employ to cultivate your emotional intelligence. Respond, don't react, to conflict. To react is to let your emotions get the best of you. When you react to conflict, you say something you'll regret. To respond is to control your emotions, consider the situation, and think about what you're going to say before you say it. When you respond to conflict, you put yourself in the other person's shoes and thoughtfully share your opinions or suggest a solution. My dad and I like to face conflict head on. Growing up, we would yell at each other, talk things through, work things out, and by the end of our heated conversation, the conflict typically would be resolved. One of my former executives dealt with conflict in this way, too. If we had a disagreement, we'd react to it ASAP, sometimes loudly, work through it, and move on. One day, Meg and I were in the middle of a disagreement with her parents. Instead of responding to that specific conflict in a calm and collected manner, I did what I had grown up doing. I let my emotions get the best of me and lashed out at my father-in-law with my opinion and a few choice words. As you can imagine, my reaction did not invite my in-laws to engage in further discussion. I didn't resolve the conflict. I escalated it. A blow up like this would have sparked a genuine conversation with my dad or former executive. With my father-in-law, it built a wall between us. In other words, I was not emotionally intelligent in that moment. I was quite the opposite. Game-changing, confident, leader assistants learn to respond to conflict at work, not react. Be intentional with your vocabulary. Do you think about what you're going to say before you say it? Do you consider whether your words are constructive or destructive? Is your vocabulary vague and full of complaining, or are you specific and helpful? For example, there's a difference between saying your coworker is a bad team member and saying, You know, when Jeff shows up late to most meetings, it communicates to the rest of the team that he doesn't value us or respect our time. Be intentional and thoughtful with your vocabulary. One way to practice this is to write out what you're going to say before you say it. Then read it out loud to hear how your tone comes across. Process your emotions. The ability to process your feelings is critical to developing emotional intelligence. Unfortunately, I'm terrible at this. I have a tendency to bury my emotions instead of questioning why I'm feeling them. If I'm sad, I shrug it off and tell myself to get over it. If I'm angry, I lash out without exploring why I felt the need to lash out. Meg and our counselor have helped me become more self-aware by encouraging me to question the motives behind what I say and do. Why did I gossip about my coworker at lunch or send that scathing email? Was it because I wanted attention? If so, why did I want attention? Or was I afraid to talk to them directly because I have a fear of conflict? Processing my own emotions is still a battle for me, but discovering and naming the motives behind my emotions has helped me develop self-awareness. Be empathetic. Processing your emotions will help you practice empathy toward others. If a coworker is struggling to produce, put yourself in their shoes. Did they recently experience a difficult personal event? Did they just get a new supervisor? Are they simply having a bad day? Empathize with others. Robots will never know what it's like to be human. They'll never be able to feel your pain, experience your joy, or know how badly you miss a loved one. They'll never be as intuitive as an emotionally aware human being. AI won't ask how your elderly father is holding up after his hip replacement. A chatbot won't be sensitive to the fact that you were crying in the break room because your cat died. A robot can't offer you a ride when your car breaks down. Okay, maybe in some places it can, but you get the idea. Treat humans like they're people who matter because they are people and they do matter. When companies look to trim their headcount during a recession, they'll first look at productivity and business impact. But when they're forced to choose between two equally productive team members, they'll pick the more empathetic employee nine times out of ten. Three, look for the right problems and suggest solutions. The next way to prepare for the future of work is to look for problems others have yet to solve. As an assistant, you see the good, the bad, and the ugly in your organization. You can complain about what's wrong and let other people figure things out. Or you can use the unique vantage point you have to identify problems and suggest solutions. If you are a self-motivated problem solver who constantly brings solutions to the table, you won't be replaced by AI someday. But being future-proof is not just about solving problems. It's about identifying the right problems. In fact, it's more valuable to suggest the wrong solution to the right problem than it is to provide an amazing solution to the wrong problem. But how can I identify the right problems, Jeremy? I'm glad you asked. Start with what keeps your executive up at night. What are they concerned about? Look for ways you can alleviate those concerns. Shift your focus toward the issues on their mind. In Chapter 21, I share several questions you can ask your executive that will help you pinpoint problems worth solving. Time spent addressing the wrong problem is a waste of time. But repeatedly failing to conquer the right problem is sometimes the only path to progress. Thomas Edison famously said, I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. You might as well find the solutions that won't work to help your executive more quickly discover the right solution for the right problem. Four. Be a revenue generator. If you want to be future-proof, be one of the best salespeople in your company. Always be on the lookout for ways to impact the bottom line. If your company fails to increase revenue or raise enough money, you and your coworkers will be out of work, so don't sit around waiting for tasks to hit your inbox. If you've never seen yourself as a revenue generator, it's time to change your perspective. This still applies to you if you work at a nonprofit, by the way, so don't skip ahead. Future-proof assistants lead by example and get those around them excited to help their company grow. If you're not excited to help your organization grow, and you don't believe in what they're doing, figure out why quick. There are a few ways to step up your sales game. First, know your company's mission, vision, and sales pitch, like the back of your hand. If you don't know it, invite yourself to sales meetings so you can soak up the info. Learn how to give the pitch yourself by reading all the onboarding guides for account executives. Read the fundraising prospectus your executive just asked you to send to potential donors. The goal is to confidently and succinctly describe your organization's mission and or product to a stranger on an elevator or to that business owner friend who could be a future customer. Speaking of friends who run a business, I sourced and helped close our Young Startup's first multi-year contract with a company run by a friend of mine. I'm not sharing this to gloat. I'm sharing this as a challenge to you. Who do you know that could benefit from your company's product or service? Take them to lunch and see what happens. If you believe in what your organization is doing, why not share it with your network? Second, grow your influence to increase your company's brand awareness. One of Capacity's sales team members sent me an email from an assistant in my network. This assistant was going to delete a sales email she received from Capacity, but because she follows me on LinkedIn and appreciates what I do for the assistant community, she forwarded the email to her executive. My influence directly helped our sales team. In Chapter 20, we'll look at ways you can grow your influence and, in turn, build trust and credibility for your organization's brand. Another way to step up your sales game is to study the psychology of sales. Learn to listen to and understand a potential customer's pain points. Be ready and able to clearly articulate how your company's product is uniquely designed to solve their problem. Learn why people buy, not just what they buy. To begin your quest to become the best salesperson in your organization, read top sales resources like my friend Mike Weinberg's amazing books. If you want to be future-proof, start seeing yourself as a revenue-generating member of the sales team. It's always nice to have sourced or even closed a few deals when it comes time to ask for a raise. There's nothing like directly impacting a revenue increase to improve your fellow team members' job security and support your case for a salary increase. Not to mention when a recession hits and your company is forced to cut costs, they're going to think twice before letting go of a revenue generator. To recap, here are four ways to future-proof your career. Be an early adopter. Develop your emotional intelligence. Look for the right problems and suggest solutions. And be a revenue generator. Your future is in your hands. You can wait until your company automates most of your job, or you can creatively figure out how to use AI to automate the repetitive, manual processes you manage day in and day out. You can then gather real data on how much time and money you're saving your executive and the company. Not to mention, you'll be freed up to focus on higher-value work. So don't sit on your hands while the world moves forward. Embrace the future of work. Five Things a Robot Assistant Can't Do I'm a practical guy who likes examples, so I thought I'd close this chapter with a list of five things robots will never be able to do for you, at least not at the same nuanced, intuitive level that you can. Run a meeting on your executive's behalf. Recognize that your executive is running out of steam and needs a few days off. Call a client. Kindly explain to them how your company screwed up and answer any questions they have. Give a genuine hug to a coworker who just lost their dog to cancer. Make an intuitive decision about which applicant to hire based on a five-minute in-person interaction. Do you want to position yourself amid the AI revolution? Be more human. Game-Changing Questions for Self-Reflection. Reflect on how future-proof you are by considering these questions. What problems have I identified at work that I could propose solutions for in the coming days? How have I developed my emotional intelligence? When was the last time I reacted instead of responding? Do I see myself as someone who can directly impact the bottom line? If not, why? Which manual processes can I automate in my work? I hope you enjoyed this chapter from my book, The Leader Assistant. Be sure to check out the entire book or audiobook at amazon.leaderassistant.com. Talk to you soon.

Speaker 2 · 22:34

Please review on Apple Podcasts. goburrows.com