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 for overwhelm and burnout. Now on to today's episode. Hello and welcome back to The Whole Assistant Podcast. How are you doing today? I am really excited to be talking about the number one barrier to a more strategic partnership. But before I get started on that, I just want to mention that we have two sessions left of Embrace Your Badassery - Three Steps to Develop Your Strategic Partnership.
Annie:
So Friday the 10th, which is tomorrow. If you're listening to this podcast on Thursday as it comes out. Tomorrow at 10:00 a.m., there is a session, and then I've actually open up an additional session next week, Thursday the 16th at twelve Mountain time. So please feel free to sign up for either one of those sessions. You're gonna have so much fun. I have hosted this masterclass in the past. It's always been a blast. There's lots of engagement, lots of fun.
Annie:
I have a giveaway that I'm doing at the end, so please, please join us. Okay, I'm going to link to the sign up for this masterclass in the show notes, or you can go to wholeassistant.com/partnership. That's whole assistant with a t.com/partnership to register. Okay, guys, so what does a strategic partnership look like anyway? If we're going to be talking about the barriers to a more strategic partnership, it may be a good idea to actually look at some mile markers or benchmarks for strategic partnering. And the first, like benchmark that I would assign to strategic partnering is alignment with your executives priorities. Now, I know it's hard for us to align with our executive, our executives priorities if they themselves are unsure of what their priorities are. I've also created a resource for this. It is my strategic planning session guide, so please check that out.
Annie:
If you go to wholeassistant.com on the front page just right there, you'll be able to sign up to receive my strategic planning session guide. This guide is going to help you get clear on what your executive's priorities are, because it's actually going to walk your executive through the process of prioritization for himself or herself or themselves. Okay? So please check that out. It's a really great tool. I've heard nothing but good things from this resource and it's completely free. So please check that out on my website on the front page. So that's the first thing. If you really want to show up as a more strategic business partner, you're going to have to know what your executives priorities are.
Annie:
And once you find that alignment, then you're going to be able to hold them accountable for, for when they want to add things or when they want to change things up. And you can have that conversation about what will need to be deprioritized in order to make this new thing a priority. It's just such a great way to strategically partner with your executive is to find that alignment with your executive's priorities. The second kind of way that strategic partnering looks is that you are strategically using your time. So you cannot be everyone's yes person. And when we first start out in these administrative world and in these administrative roles, we just want to be helpful. Most of us anyway. I know, I certainly just wanted to be helpful.
Annie:
I was willing to handle anything that anybody put on my desk at the time I was working as a receptionist, so that made a lot of sense, right? Like, I was really low on, really low on the totem pole, even in the admin world in my office. So I was happy to help with anything that anybody needed. But as you kind of move up the ranks and as you move into more of an executive assistant role, you cannot keep saying yes to everybody. And the reason why you can't say yes to everybody is because it draws attention away from that strategic partnership that you're trying to develop with your executive. It draws the attention away from his or her or their priorities. Right. So being aware of those things is a really good way to just check in with yourself, do a bit of an audit on your time. Are you using your time in the most effective and efficient way? Are you strategically managing your time and your energy, too? Not just about time, it's also about your energy.
Annie:
And are you being protective of your energy with your role and in your role? All good things to consider when we talk about strategic partnership and what a good strategic partnership looks like. Another kind of benchmark for strategic partnership is that you're the boots on the ground, but your head is up. And by that, I mean that you're doing all the things for sure for your executive and you're managing everything. You're managing his calendar, you're managing his life more, more often than not these days, it seems, and you're really thinking strategically on his behalf or their behalf. So that's really good. That's really awesome that you're doing all the things, but then we also need to raise our head to look down the road. It's like, okay, what's coming next? What is going to be requested, requested or required of me next or my executive? What are the things that are coming up next for him? How can I partner with him in a way that will support him and also kind of loop me in on what's going on in his or her world? So being aware of those things in terms of your strategic partnership is a great way to really level up and add more value to strategically partner with your executive. We can totally be the boots on the ground and we can have our head up, too.
Annie:
So now that you've kind of established what a strategic partnership can look like, there are many other qualities. So feel free to insert your quality of choice under the strategic banner, if you will. There's lots more we could go into around strategic partnering. I actually have an entire day training that I bring into companies to talk about strategic partnering, so there's just tons more that we could cover with regards to the ins and outs of what a strategic partnership can and does often look like. But the number one barrier to a more strategic partnership, in my opinion, having coached a lot of people at this point, having coached a lot of executive assistants, is convenience for yourself and others. So, for example, it's often more convenient in the moment to do something ourselves that is best suited for someone else so that we don't have to take the time to teach them to do the thing. This is especially true if you have moved on from your role, but not from your company. So say you get a promotion and you moved on to a higher level role, and you still have these things left from the old role that are kind of residual and you haven't actually trained the proper person to do them yet, and so you just keep on handling the lower level items.
Annie:
That is what I'm talking about when I say we would rather do something ourselves instead of taking the time to teach. It's kind of like the whole thing around. If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a meal. If you teach a man a fish, teach a man to fish, you feed him for life. So really consider all the things that you have on your plate, what is best suited for someone else to be doing, and how can you get over the convenience factor of doing it in the moment and play the long game so that you can create more bandwidth for yourself to show it more strategically for your executive. I think another kind of piece of all of this, when we talk about convenience, is feeling the discomfort of saying no is also incredibly inconvenient. It has been for me, anyway, like, in the moment when I am confronted with something that is either a boundary item for me or it's a parameter that I sat around in my time and energy, and somebody bumps up against that more often than not, instead of actually holding to that and experiencing the discomfort of that, we do the more convenient thing and we give in to that. So I had Lucy Brazier on this podcast several weeks ago.
Annie:
At this point, it was probably, man, it was last year, I think, and we were talking about this very thing, and she brought up a good point. She said, if you do something three times, then it is yours to do for forever, because what you're doing is you're training people that you're willing to do the thing. And so if you do it three times, it's really going to be hard to give it back. I'm not going to say it's impossible. I certainly coached people who have been doing things they shouldn't have been doing, and we've kind of found that realignment, and we found that more strategic alignment with our executive, and it's worked out really well. So I won't say that that's, like, hard and fast, but just pay attention. Are you showing up strategically for yourself and for your role, or are you giving into the convenience of doing something just because it's asked of you? So typically, what this results in, by the way, is you trying to do everything instead of the most strategic thing or things. We're kind of going back, and we're, like, being more tactical, and we aren't showing up for ourselves in a way that's serving us and serving our role, and we aren't showing up more strategically with what we say yes and what we say no to what we're doing instead is what we've done really early on, which, of course, is our comfort zone.
Annie:
Like, if you're used to, if you, like me, worked your way up through the ranks in the administrative world, and you started out as an administrative assistant, where you're supporting a team, or you started out as a receptionist, where you're helpful to everybody, it can be really easy to go back to that place because it's comfortable. It's incredibly uncomfortable to show up more strategically because it's incredibly uncomfortable for a lot of us to say no in order to make space for the more strategic way of thinking in a more strategic partnership. Okay? So that's one thing that it can result in. Another thing that this can result in is resentment and frustration. So I always pay attention now whenever I'm feeling resentful, because that's an indicator to me that I haven't used my voice in some way. I haven't spoken up for myself. There's some misalignment there for me. And so I don't want us to override our resentment and frustration, which most of us are very, very useful to doing.
Annie:
And at a certain time in my past, at a specific time I'm thinking of in my past, I was very good at overriding resentment. I was extremely positive person, almost to the point of being, like, the toxic positivity type person, where I'd be like, it's okay, I've got this. I'm gonna pull myself up by my bootstraps. I also come from a western town here in the US where my great grandparents actually helped settle the town. So, like, I I heard all these stories of grit and, like, tenacity and perseverance and, like, you pick yourself up and you keep on going, and that is all really good. And I still love that past in me. I still love that, like, example that was set by the people who came before me. And it has served me well in so many areas.
Annie:
But one area that I really had to work on was allowing myself to really pay attention to emotions and feelings that were totally in service of me, but I totally wanted to override because I was feeling totally uncomfortable in them, feelings like resentment. So now when I experience resentment, I actually pay attention, like, okay, something's off here. What's off? How can I reset? How can I, like, re navigate this? How can I pivot a little bit and use my voice, if necessary, so that I stay clean in my work and I'm not experiencing resentment, and I give things back to people that I should not be owning. So just pay attention. Pay attention. Pay attention to how you're feeling if you're experiencing some resentment. I would do a little digging. Okay, so then what do we do to get over this whole thing of convenience versus strategy? Essentially, my first strategy for you guys is to allow yourself to be inconvenienced so that you can play an excellent long game.
Annie:
Okay. It is going to be inconvenient to level up. It is going to be inconvenient to manage your mind more effectively so you can show up more strategically. It just will be. And it'll be extremely uncomfortable, and you're just going to have to allow for all of it so that you can play the long game and set yourself up for success and also set your executive up for success as well. Okay? So that's the first thing, is to just get comfortable experiencing discomfort. It doesn't mean anything has gone wrong. It doesn't mean that you're off base, doesn't mean any of that.
Annie:
It just means that in order to grow, we often have to push ourselves outside of our comfort zone. And in order to really level up, in order to really show up more strategically for our executive and in our roles, we are going to have to kind of play the edge of our comfort zone, and we may have to speak up and use our voice. And look, I will say that in the past, when I've spoken up and used my voice, it hasn't always come out eloquently. It hasn't always come out gracefully. I think there are even some tears involved a time or two. It doesn't have to look any one way. It doesn't have to be perfect. But if you can actually allow yourself to sink into that discomfort and actually allow yourself to put your foot out there and to raise your voice, or to use your voice when necessary, it will serve you so much better long term than staying silent and staying in frustration and resentment and playing a smaller game.
Annie:
Okay. I want big lives for you guys. I want amazing careers for you guys. And in order to actually achieve that amazing career, we're gonna have to play the long game, and we're gonna have to experience that discomfort and also just know that discomfort is how we grow. It's so true. If you can get good at feeling uncomfortable, you can achieve anything. I've actually started to lose weight. I'm on this weight loss journey.
Annie:
I want to lose eight pounds and for my baby weight a couple years ago, and I have been really eating very unconsciously. Like, I've not been really aware of what I've been putting in my body. I've not really been mindful of what I've been putting in my body. So in order to remedy this, I've decided to create food protocols for myself, and I'm going to decide 24 hours in advance what I plan on eating the next day, just so that I know that I'm making that decision intentionally and with my prefrontal cortex and that I'm not just making a decision on autopilot. Right. I have to tell you, though, it is incredibly uncomfortable because I've gotten so used to, in the mornings making myself I make the best eggs, making myself some scrambled eggs with cheese, and I also put in some pico de gallo, and I also, like, have some sourdough bread. And it's, like, been a glorious time of eating this amazing food in the morning. And ultimately, it's not serving me because it's not getting the result that I want to get right.
Annie:
So now I have an apple with peanut butter in the morning. I really like to focus on how can I get more plants in my diet. I realize that peanut butter is not plants, but an apple is. So I'm trying to really be mindful of those things and how I want to set myself up for success long term. And there is just an incredible amount of discomfort because when I go to reach for that apple and cut it up and get my peanut butter or whatever, my brain instantly goes to, you know, you could just make the eggs. It's just one meal. It's not a big deal. You'll be fine.
Annie:
You'll still be able to lose the weight, still be able to. Da da da. And while that may be true, and I totally believe it is, I really want to create those new neural pathways in my brain, and I really want to reset how I think about food and my relationship with food. Okay? So discomfort is the key to success. I have to allow myself to be okay with wanting something that I can't have. And, look, I actually allow for it. I'll actually. I will actually tell myself it is okay that you want this right now.
Annie:
It's totally. And we don't have to take action from that place. And you made this decision in advance because you knew it would be best for you. I'm not going to say that my protocols are crazy either. Like, I still allow myself some fun things and some treats and whatnot, which I have done a lot of work around perfectionism and not showing up from a perfectionist place, but from a really good place that feels good in me and feels doable. Right. And largely, this is just an experiment. So I'm going to see, like, how much weight I lose eating this way, and then if.
Annie:
If I need a tweak or modify something, I totally can. But discomfort is a big part of that process. It's. It's a part of the process for me with my weight loss, and it's probably a product of your process for you with leveling up and strategic partnering. Discomfort is a part of the game, and so when we actually allow for that discomfort, that's where the magic happens. Okay, guys, so this is what I have for you today. The number one barrier to a more strategic partnership is convenience. Look at your lives.
Annie:
Look at your careers. Ask yourself if you're giving into something out of pure convenience or how you can show up for yourself more strategically, how you can show up for your role more strategically, how you can show up for your executive more strategically, and then, like, pick apart. Why the convenience matters so much and how can you even use strategic thinking in order to overcome the convenience factor? Okay, guys, that's what I have for you guys today. 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.
