Annie Croner on Becoming the Calm in the Storm

Jeremy · 0:00

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Annie · 2:36

Hello. I hope your week is going really well. Today, we are talking about being the calm in the storm and developing sturdiness in your role. So, I first heard of this sturdiness term as it relates to parenting. I follow this amazing social influencer. I cannot remember the name off the top of her head, but she did this bit on Instagram and she talked about becoming a sturdy parent. And it got me thinking about us and our roles as executive assistants. Of course, we are not our executive parents. That's not what I'm saying here. Not at all. But if you know anything about me, you know that I hear concepts in another realm of my life. And then I like to bring it into our role as executive assistants. I like to bring it into our realm and then modify it so that it suits you and will suit your relationship with your executive. And I've actually been thinking a lot about this lately, and how we show up and how we show up affects our executives. So I just want to talk about sturdiness in our role. So what does sturdiness look like? It looks like staying in your emotional lane and not ingesting someone else's state. So say your executive is super gung-ho about something. He's really upset about something. He comes in super red-hot and charged. And what ends up happening normally is that we ingest that energy and we ingest his state of being and we ingest that anxiety. And then we aren't thinking straight, our executive isn't thinking straight. We're just kind of in this pool of confusion and frustration and anger and anxiety. A sturdy assistant stays out of that emotional pool that our executives are in. This is challenging for a lot of us because most of us are really empathetic. Most of us can look at our executives and know what they're thinking at any point in time. I'll never forget, you know, with my last role, I would be clicking away at my computer and I'd be feeling super anxious and I would pause and I would just stop for a minute and I'd be like, where is this coming from? And then I'd have like this aha moment. This is not even my anxiety I am owning right now. This is my executive's anxiety. He's upset about something, he's frustrated by something, he's stressed out about something, and I am experiencing his anxiety or I'm experiencing my own anxiety, but it's kind of related to what he's going through, right? So I would gently hand that back to my executive, knowing that I'm going to be better served if my mind is clear. If I'm able to keep my mind and my head space free from his state of being in this moment, then I can hold space for him and think clearly towards a solution for everyone. Okay, so that's kind of what sturdiness looks like. It looks like being the calm in the storm. I really want you to think about being the anchor that's anchored way down to the depths of the ocean, holding our executives at the surface level, holding them. And the only way that we can actually do that is if we stay in our emotional lane and not in just someone else's emotional state. Okay, so it was really owning what's ours to own and then gently handing back what isn't ours to own. And that way, we are able to think clearly, we're able to actually use our reasoning brain instead of our mammalian brain, which kicks into gear whenever there's heightened sense of anxiety or stress or nervousness. Okay, this is so important because sturdiness will actually help you show up more strategically for your executive. If you are in the pool with your executive and you guys are splashing around and you are anxious and you're feeding into each other's anxiety, it's really going to be hard to show up strategically on their behalf. Sturdiness will also keep you out of people-pleasing territory because there again, you're only owning what is yours to own, which are your thoughts, your feelings, your actions. You can never own what is somebody else's to own, which is their thoughts, their feelings, their actions. So staying out of that people-pleasing territory really owning what is yours to own for sure. If you made a mistake and that's maybe part of the reason why your executive is experiencing a lot of anxiety or stress or maybe a contributing factor to how they're showing up, I will also just say as a side note to that, that how your executive chooses to show up is up to them and how you choose to show up is up to you. There's nothing that you can do to make I'm using air codes around that. Make your executive show up any one way. Only thing that we can do is create a circumstance for someone. How they decide to show up for that circumstance is up to them. I have had executives show up extremely frustrated by things I've done in the past by mistakes I've made. Then I've also had executives show up from a place of total grace and compassion. Also owning what is yours to own can go a long way in really taking back control of what is yours to own, but not taking on what is theirs to own. So sturdiness will keep you anchored in what you can control and release you from the things you can't. Sturdiness will help you also hold space for a frustrated executive while simultaneously showing up in service of them. Now, I do want to give a disclaimer here. If your executive is being verbally abusive, if the executive is really playing the blame game really hard, you also don't have to take that. You can also set a parameter for yourself that is just a hard pass, right? But you always get to decide how you show up for any situation. I'm going to say that again. You always get to decide how you show up for any situation. Adopting the sturdiness and letting yourself be unshakable is a great way to take back control in a way, not control of you or, no, I'm sorry, not control of them or even the situation, but take back control of what you can own. Take back control of those things that will empower you to make decisions for yourself and for the executive moving forward. Now, how do we actually become a sturdy strategic business partner? How do we actually become a sturdy assistant? My first strategy for you is to decide to serve the work and not your executive. I know I say this all the time. I really do. But serving the work is your best bet always. We show up in service of the work, not your executive. That way, when our executive is thinking very narrowly about a certain situation, we actually have a broader picture and we have a cleaner viewpoint, a cleaner vantage point than they do because they are very emotionally wrapped up in whatever is going on at the moment. I can think of several examples, but I'm not going to go into any of them here. I go into them with my coaching clients and things like that. But I think for the sake of anonymity today, I won't go into them now. But if you decide to show up to serve the work and not your executive, that will not only serve your executive at a higher level because then you stay out of the people-pleasing territory, then you stay out of just wanting to fix it and make it all better for your executive, and you have a bigger picture of what's actually going on. And when you decide to serve the work, your contribution will no longer be based on the whims of someone else's short-sightedness or mood. Can I get an amen, right? You're serving the work, your contribution will be made on the long game, okay? You're going to be looking at the long game, you're going to be looking at what's actually serving for your executive instead of what is making them happy in the moment. Another kind of strategy for how we can show up sturdy in our executive assistant roles is to look at the data, not the drama. I'm going to go into this in more detail next week, but oftentimes when my clients bring me a situation, there is so much drama around the situation that the data gets clouded. What were the words that were actually said? What data points can you take away from that? And how can you leave the drama behind in order to show up more sturdy in your role for your executive and in service of the work? And last but not least, the last how, the last bit of information on how to be a sturdy assistant, is to always have your eye on a solution. We can always be solutions oriented for people, even if we aren't going to be the boots on the ground solution for them. This is something else I say a lot. So if you've been listening to the podcast a lot, you will have heard this as well. In addition to serving the work, you will also heard this. Having your eye on a solution is a great strategy for showing up sturdy because we aren't swayed by the waves. We are the anchor. We are sturdy. We are solid. And so therefore, we're going to be able to see a solution a lot clearer than even our executive will, especially at first, especially as things are going down. Right? So really make sure that you are staying in your lane emotionally and not ingesting someone else's emotional state. This is going to go a long way and becoming a sturdy assistant. And also, I don't know about you guys, but I just don't have any mental capacity to even go to the dramatic place. Like I just don't have time for it. I don't give that stuff any air because I genuinely just choose not to. And also, it's such a time suck. It's such a time waste. Not to say that I don't get wrapped into my own drama from time to time. Or, you know, thinking about a situation in a way that isn't serving me. For sure, I do. I'm a human as well. But I think when it comes to parsing out my emotional state with someone else's emotional state, I've gotten really good at staying in my own lane for the most part. Not 100% even at that. But I've gotten really good at staying in my own lane and only owning what is mine to own. So that's how we become sturdy in our roles. So a goal of mine for this year, my coach told me or actually she was sharing on a podcast herself that she wanted to become someone who was very hard to offend. And I love this so much. I've actually kind of adopted this as a goal for myself as well. I don't want to be offended easily. So whenever somebody's like, well, you know, Annie, you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think from now on in the moment, like my goal is to just kind of own what is mine to own in that moment and be like, you're absolutely right. I do A, B or C, right? And I don't even fight back on the thing that they may have missed. I just kind of let them be wrong about me and move on because that's part of becoming a sturdy human even. It's just to like not be offended. This one is a work in progress for me. I am totally type A, I can run red sometimes. And so I really am working on what it looks like for me to just not be offended and have that sturdiness. I'm not saying that I don't want to have conviction about something because I love that I'm a passionate person and I love that I have convictions about things. But in terms of being offended, I think that there is a difference between being offended or choosing to be offended and having a strong conviction about something. So I'm kind of playing around with those ideas in my own life right now. If you want to play around with those ideas as well, I would encourage you to give it a shot. Let me know how it goes. You can email me at Annie at Whole assistant.com and let me know. Okay, guys, that is what I have for you guys today. I hope that you can be the calm in the storm for your executive. I hope that you can be the calm in the storm for your colleagues and coworkers. This is a concept that I've not always been good at, but the more I practice it, the easier it becomes. And the more I look at the data and not the drama, the easier it becomes to be that anchor and that sturdy, sturdy person. Feel free to email me at Annie at Whole assistant.com if you've got questions. Be intentional, be whole. That is all for now. Please review on Apple Podcasts. gobullos.com.

Jeremy · 16:16

Hey friends, my best-selling book, The Leader Assistant, has a companion study and discussion guide to go along with it. It's called The Leader Assistant Workbook. Now, you can buy the Kindle ebook version of The Leader Assistant Workbook on Amazon, or you can go to leaderassistantbook.com and get a printable PDF version of the workbook. This version has all the space and margin in between the questions that you can write your own answers and take notes with, so it's a great way to print it out and keep track of your discussion and study guide notes. Again, go to leaderassistantbook.com and click on Workbook to check out The Leader Assistant Workbook.