Annie:
Welcome to The Whole Assistant Podcast. I'm your host, Annie Croner. I'm a former assistant who's passionate about our profession, and I'm also a certified coach who's invested in your success. You've come to the right place if you want to know what it looks like to stand in your power and achieve success as an assistant, without overwhelm and burnout. Now onto today's episode. Hello. I hope your week is going really well. It is.
Annie:
May, you guys. I cannot even believe it. This year is almost halfway over, and if you're listening to this in real time, I have an opportunity for you. So back in January, I hosted my free masterclass: Embrace Your EA Badassery - Three Steps to Developing Your Strategic Partnership. I'm going to be hosting that masterclass again next week. So on the 8th and on the 10 May, at various different times, I'm going to be hosting this masterclass. So please check it out.
Annie:
You can go to wholeassistant.com/partnership. I'm going to be sharing three secrets to developing your strategic partnership. I realize that strategic partnering is really top of mind for a lot of us, and the strategies that I share in this masterclass will change how you work. They really will. If you will actually implement what I'm going to share in this hour long masterclass, it can absolutely revolutionize your career. I've seen it time and again with my clients. I've seen it time and again with people who I've gone in and done trainings for. So please, please register for this masterclass.
Annie:
It is free. But that does not mean that the information I share is not valuable because it is super packed with information on how you can develop your strategic partnership. I actually go through the process of laying out a building, and that's kind of the analogy I use for this masterclass. So please check it out. Okay, again, wholeassistant.com partnership. I'm going to link to it in the show notes below. And 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.
Annie:
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. Now, 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 world 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.
Annie:
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, 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.
Annie:
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 is 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.
Annie:
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 ingest someone else's emotional state. Okay, so it's really owning what's ours to own and then gently handing back what isn't ours to own. And that way we're 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.
Annie:
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's yours to own, for sure. Like, 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. All right. There's nothing that you can do to make.
Annie:
I'm using air quotes 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. And I have had executives show up extremely frustrated by things I've done in the past, by mistakes I've made, and then I've also had show up from a place of total grace and compassion. Right? And also kind of 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.
Annie:
If your executive is being verbally abusive, if the executive is, like, 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 gonna say that again, you always get to decide how you show up for any situation. So adopting, like, 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. Okay, 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.
Annie:
But serving the work is your best bet. Always. We show up in service of the work, not your executive. And 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 people pleasing territory, then you stay out of, like, 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.
Annie:
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. Your 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 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.
Annie:
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 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.
Annie:
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.
Annie:
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, I'm 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.
Annie:
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.
Annie:
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's 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.
Annie:
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 [email protected] and let me know. Okay, guys, that is what I have for you guys today. I hope that you can be the calm and the storm for your executive. I hope that you can be the calm and the storm for your colleagues and co workers. 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 decide to serve the work, the easier it becomes.
Annie:
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. So please feel free to email me at [email protected] if you've got questions. Also, guys, there's a link down below to ask a question for the ask any anything portion of this podcast that I want to develop. I've also been receiving questions via email as well that I may reach out to the people who are asking and just ask if I can answer the question in a podcast episode. I get lots of people reaching out to me on LinkedIn, DM's, and whatnot, so stay tuned for that. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to work those in, but I certainly would love to because I want to make this the most valuable podcast for Executive Assistants. And please, please register for my masterclass, which is going to be May 8 and 10th, which is "Embrace Your EA Badassery - Three Steps to Develop Your Strategic Partnerships".
Annie:
You can go to wholeassistant.com/partnerships or partnership? Sorry, no us or click the link in the show notes to register and I hope you all have a wonderful day. Be intentional. Be whole. That is all for now. I help assistants apply the concepts I share on this podcast. If you're ready to take your growth deeper and you're curious whether working with me in a coaching capacity is right for you, please email me at [email protected] to schedule your complimentary discovery call.
