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 through overwhelm and burnout. Now onto today's episode. Hello. So today I'm talking about creating baselines for success. So I've just noticed a lot lately that a lot of us who are in the new role, we're trying something new.
Annie:
We're just trying to connect with our executives or trying to make things work. We tend to be really, really hard on ourselves instead of viewing each new experience or each new attempt as creating a baseline and then building on it from there. So I just wanted to pop in here today and just share a bit about how to create a baseline for your success and maybe how to reframe some of the perfectionist thoughts that we're having in order to create success for us long term. And also in order not to not spin out on all the mistakes we made, on all the flops, on all the imperfect ways that we tend to show up. Okay, so this is going to be a very stream of consciousness post or episode today. I have a very skeletal outline of what I plan to cover, but I just wanted to note this for you so you can maybe bring this into your awareness in your work as well. So what is creating a baseline exactly? I view creating a baseline as releasing the expectation that things will go perfectly the first time out. I am in the process, and I have the privilege of walking several clients through new working situations.
Annie:
They have landed a new role. They find themselves working with a new executive, and perhaps their last role wasn't an ideal role. Perhaps their last role was really challenging. And I just noticed the first time they plan a board meeting, the first time they plan a meeting at all, or something goes wrong, they tend to beat themselves up. And I don't want this to happen to you guys or any of us, really. I think that the first time you do anything, it may not go perfectly or smoothly. Right. So you're trying to get your executives buy in.
Annie:
You're trying to get to know your executive. So I'll share a story about this. Back in the day, I was working for this executive, and he was traveling internationally, and I'd just been working there for like, a month or two. He was starting a new round of fundraising, so he was traveling to the Middle east, and on his way back, he actually, this is my last role. He was actually an ER doctor. And so there was a flight that went awry. It didn't go awry, but there was somebody on the flight who had a heart attack. My executive had to step in and help.
Annie:
And so by the time he landed, he was exhausted and he'd asked me to book a room close to the airport. And so I did, and I used his points. I figured he probably want to stay in one of his hotels where he gets points. And then he got there and was very upset because there was a hotel actually attached to the airport. And I didn't know that that would be his preference. I thought for sure that he'd want the points because in my previous role, the person that I supported would have definitely preferred the points over having it be actually at the airport. And so he sent me this very frustrated text. And I just remember having this epiphany moment where I was like, there would be no way for me to know that.
Annie:
I would know what moving forward to Google, whether or not there was a place at the airport. So he just replied back and I said, this is kind of part of what it looks like to learn to work with someone. I will know moving forward that you don't prefer points, you prefer convenience. You know, I'm learning your preferences. Still, that's a good example of me creating a baseline for myself in that role because I was very, very new to it. And I think a lot of us tend to beat ourselves up, and I could tend to be hard on myself, too. Don't get me wrong, I have several examples of me being really hard on myself as well. But I do think it's really important that especially when you're learning somebody new, or especially when you're in a new role, or especially when you're doing something for the first time, that we just look at the data and we create that baseline.
Annie:
Creating a baseline is also a data gathering mission. It really, really is. So I just want to bring some awareness to this because I think a lot of us tend to beat ourselves up. We tend to berate ourselves, we tend to talk down to ourselves when the reality is that we now have new information, we now have new data, and we can carry that data forward into any other situation and reassess from there. And I think it also is a good reminder to just keep those lines of communication open as well. And I will also say that when it comes to planning things like offsites, especially because everyone has their little piccadillies. Everybody has their preferences, all of that that you may not get it right for everyone all the time, even if you're getting it right for your executive, even if you're meeting the standard, people may still be displeased. And that's when we want to show up to serve the work and not our executives.
Annie:
That's when we want to show up for ourselves from a place of, of understanding, recognizing that not everybody's gonna be 100% happy 100% of the time. And what I love about creating a baseline is that once we have the data, we can solve for any issue that comes up, and we can go back and tweak the process. We can do a postmortem. And even if it's just with ourselves and assessing what went well, what needs improvement for next time, and then guys like I always like to harp on, we're gonna go back and adjust our process. We're gonna look at this from a procedural vantage point so that we don't make the same mistakes in the future, and so that we are incorporating that new data moving forward. Okay? So we just want to be aware of those things. We also want to be aware of what's working and what isn't, so that we can essentially improve upon our baseline. I see this a lot when I'm talking with other entrepreneurs, and I have the privilege of being a part of a mastermind, and I was just a part of a group of coaches who got together and just share information.
Annie:
And it comes as no surprise that oftentimes when we're launching a new product or putting something else out in the world and we're doing something new and scary, that it doesn't quite go according to plan. I remember the first time I launched the leveled up assistant. I only had one person register, and it's got incrementally better from there. But I needed to create that baseline for myself. I needed the data to know how to tweak, to know how to improve, to know how to improve my messaging, to know how to improve and deliver what people actually wanted to hear and learn about. I needed to create that baseline for myself. And now I've got multiple people signing up every round, and it's lovely. Everybody has to start somewhere, okay? And I think that often our perfectionism gets in the way of this.
Annie:
We throw up our hands and we want to quit or we just want to give up, but that's not actually going to serve you. And looking at it from a perfectionist vantage point isn't going to serve you. How we want to look at it is I'm going to create my baseline with this new thing that I'm trying. And then from there we can improve and iterate and then we do it again and we're like, okay, this went well. This thing needs tweaked and so we can keep iterating and improving, but we can't do that if we are super frustrated with ourselves and all our mental energy and all our mental power is going to toward beating ourselves up. Okay? So we just want to bring some awareness to these things. And also, I just want to talk about creating baselines for ourselves because I don't think that many of us view our work from this vantage point. I also think it's really important there again that you improve your systems.
Annie:
So instead of doing the same thing next time we're actually going to go back and tweak our systems and tweak the SOP and tweak and iterate in order to solve for the problems. Now there again, the chances of you making everybody happy, especially for group offsites or group meetings or whatever, is probably going to be pretty slim to none. And that's okay, too. I don't think that the expectation should be to make everybody happy all the time. I think the expectation should be to meet the guidelines of the meeting and to make sure that everybody was well taken care of and comfortable, even if they may not have liked the location or the hotel or whatever. And you can always tweak the hotel later, especially if your executive is like, that's just to know. The hotel is just to know. Working with these people is just to know.
Annie:
So just pay attention to those things and also know that I don't think it's actually our job to make every single person happy all the time. That's just an unrealistic expectation. And actually feeding into that expectation can serve to, first of all, drive us crazy for sure. And it can also serve to kind of feed that perfectionist monster. We tend to want to do everything right, but there is no actual right most of the time. I think that there's a huge benefit of releasing the perfectionism and actually looking at the data and then assessing the data. And both of those are really great benefits to creating a baseline for success and also not spinning out on perfectionism. So that is what I have for you guys today.
Annie:
I know it's really short and sweet, but I just wanted to name this. I've seen this come up a lot recently in my coaching, and so I just wanted to give you all some encouragement with regards to trying something new and different to create a baseline for your success. 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.
