Annie Croner [00:00:01]:
Welcome to the Whole Assistant Podcast, where assistants come to embrace their badassery and discover how to show up more strategically for their careers, their executives, and most importantly, themselves. I'm your coach, Annie Kroner. Join us as we dive into the skills, strategies, and mindset that will help you unleash your full potential. Let's go. Welcome back to our series on the strategic business partner. Partner, the book that I am launching on November 5th. Throughout this series, I'm giving simple wins you can take away from the book to give you insight into what the book is about and my thought leadership in our space. If you are interested in getting your hands on the book and getting a signed copy via preorder, you can order your signed copy now by going to wholeassistant.com/preorder.
Annie Croner [00:00:53]:
Or /book-bundles. I'm going to put the link down below for you to grab your book and grab your copy. There are also some other goodies I'm going to be bundling together, and so check out all the deals you can get throughout this month inside of Empowered Seed, inside my membership, all those sort of things. Or just get your hands on the book via pre-order. I also am offering enterprise pricing for orders of 10 or more, so if you want to order your group of executive assistants at your office the book, you can totally do that. So you can go ahead and email me if it is 10 or more, and I will gladly give you the 10% discount on however many books you want above 10. Or you can just click the link below to order your signed copy. And if you are local to Denver, please join us on November 5th in the evening.
Annie Croner [00:01:44]:
I'm gonna be hosting a book launch party. At the Clayton Club in Cherry Creek. There are going to be drinks, there are going to be hors d'oeuvres. It's going to be a great time, but space is limited. So go to wholeassistant.com/roc. I'm gonna link to that as well. And I'm also going to link to a virtual training that I'm gonna be hosting with Jeremy Burrows the day after the launch on November 6th. And this is for those of you who are not local to Denver or who cannot otherwise make the in-person launch event.
Annie Croner [00:02:12]:
Please come to that. There's gonna be giveaways. It's gonna be fun, collaborative. There's gonna be a lot of people there. And so please check out that link below as well. Okay, onto the topic for today, which is 3 simple tactics to keep you in strategic alignment with your executive and with the overarching work that you do. What do I mean when I say strategic alignment? What I really mean is aligning yourself with the work, the highest and best use of your time at the office, as well as aligning yourself with your executive and their priorities. And when I say aligning yourself with your executive, I don't mean doing what they say to do just because they say to do it.
Annie Croner [00:02:59]:
I'm a firm believer in working clean, which means showing up to serve the work and not your executive. And using our unique vantage point to offer value, to provide strategic insight to our executives, and to really help them thrive as well as execute on the priorities that they have been given in the business. Okay, so that's what I mean when I say strategic alignment. It really is a combination of aligning with the work and aligning with your executive, and using your unique vantage point to show up strategically. At the workplace in your role. So the first strategy I have is to start every day by asking yourself the question, given my executive's priorities, what is the highest and best use of my time today? What is the highest and best use of my time today? Now, we, there again, we are taking into account our executive's priorities. We also know what our own priorities are in the scope of our work and whatnot. And not always do those align, your executive's priorities and yours, but they often do.
Annie Croner [00:04:04]:
So really getting clear on what your executive's working on, what the priorities are, what their KPIs are, where they are driving the business currently will help you to stay in that strategic alignment. What often happens though is that we get stuck in the weeds, we get stuck in whack-a-mole energy, we get stuck in our inbox and with everybody else's requests, and we lose sight of that alignment piece. So to bring yourself back to alignment, asking yourself the question, given my executive's priorities, what's the highest and best use of my time today, is a great strategy for staying on track and making sure that you are in strategic alignment as you go throughout your day. The second strategy is very simple, but I have struggled with this strategy for a long time, and that strategy is to give yourself the first 15 minutes of your day. And the purpose of that is to plan and then execute. But if you're anything like me, when you sit down to your desk, you just want to go. And the thought behind that is I can either spend 15 minutes planning out my day, or I can just get to work on executing. And while it may be tempting to execute, I have found that I often lose sight of the priorities when I don't set myself up for success first thing in the morning.
Annie Croner [00:05:21]:
So Really, we want to use that first 15 minutes to get our bearings on our day, to go through our inbox to see what has shifted or moved or changed, because oftentimes priorities will shift and move from the previous evening or over the weekend, and we actually need to get our bearings with regards to what's being asked of us today and all the priorities and all that we have on our plate. And then we also want to organize ourselves. We want to get organized and maybe put tasks in our Task tracking system. I'm a firm believer in Trello or Planner, and what this will help you do is this is going to be really paramount to keeping you out of that whack-a-mole energy. And I know that sometimes I'll be working and I'll get to the end of my day and I'll be like, "What did I actually get done today?" And that was because I didn't actually show up for my day with intention. So this one is really helpful in helping you show up with intention, knowing what you're going to execute on. Of course, as things come in, we shift and morph and do that sort of thing throughout our day always. But if we can start out with an intention for what we want to accomplish that day and really align what we're working on with our executive's priorities, that can be very helpful in keeping us in strategic alignment with our executive and those priorities.
Annie Croner [00:06:34]:
And last but certainly not least, the last and final tactic is to pause before saying yes, especially if you are being asked to do something from a colleague. That doesn't fully align with your role, or that's maybe adjacent to your role or outside of the purview of your role, oftentimes we feel this pressure to give an answer in the moment instead of saying something like, oh, can I get back with you in a few on that? I need to figure out how that would affect my priorities for the day or whether or not I have the bandwidth for it. Let me think about it just for a few minutes and I'll circle back. And here's the thing, guys, we can totally be a resource for others without having to be the boots on the ground person actually actioning on the thing. that's being requested of us. And I think we often lose sight of that. Another thing to consider too is your motivation for wanting to say yes. Are you saying yes to this thing because it is the highest and best use of your time and energy? Are you saying yes to this thing because you're afraid of not coming across as someone who's not a team player? Are you saying yes to this thing because you want to get the dopamine hit of having saved someone or having taking something off of someone's plate and getting the accolades and getting the attagirls from that person? What is your motivation for saying yes? And if it's anything other than this is the highest and best use of my time, or perhaps something like this is where I wanna take my career and having this experience would help me get there, then I would have you really consider maybe giving a tactful no.
Annie Croner [00:08:11]:
And my favorite way to say no is, The affirm, deny, affirm method. And now this method I have used a lot, and it was not my idea. I first heard of this method on Amy Porterfield's podcast. She was interviewing someone else, and I cannot for the life of me remember who it was now, but it was brilliant. And I remember where I was. I was driving in my car when I first heard this method of saying no, and I remember exactly where I was on the road on the way to the office that morning. And, and how this looks is you want to start out with a very clear yes. So say I've been asked to contribute to my kids' bake sale and I don't have any bandwidth for that.
Annie Croner [00:08:47]:
I may say something like, oh, thank you so much for bringing this to my attention, and thank you so much for asking me, I feel honored. Then you want to give a very clear no. Unfortunately, I don't have the bandwidth for that right now. And then you want to follow up with another positive note. But please keep me posted on how the bake sale goes. If I can buy anything from your bake sale, I want to know that too. I'm happy to support in another way. And this is really helpful for us as executive assistants because we often have all the knowledge so we can share that knowledge without actually having to action on the thing we're being asked to action on in that moment.
Annie Croner [00:09:22]:
So really pausing before you say yes, giving yourself permission. I'm also giving you permission to do this, to say something like, can I circle back in a few minutes? Or I need to assess how taking this on is gonna affect the other priorities. Or even having a discussion with your executive and being like, hey, so-and-so asked me to do this. Is this in alignment with where we're headed as a team, you and I? I'm feeling crunched for time. I'm feeling crunched for bandwidth. I said no to this person. Looping in your executive can be really helpful when it comes to these conversations with other people asking you to take on tasks because they can have your back as well. We can get buy-in from our executives so that we aren't taking on too much.
Annie Croner [00:10:05]:
And so that we are really in alignment with our priorities and so that we stay in the place of strategic alignment with our executives and with the company priorities and with our own priorities as well. I'm a big fan of actually prioritizing your self-care, of actually making sure that you are building in breaks throughout your day. Other self-care strategies, you're going to your yoga class, you block out time to be able to actually execute on those things that fill you up and bring you joy so that when we show up to the office, we can actually be effective. Without burnout. Okay guys, there are 3 simple tactics and strategies for you. Your power move for this week is to implement one of them, not necessarily all 3, especially if you are not accustomed to working in this way, but just pick one, maybe the most challenging one, and implement it this week. And please email me at annie@wholeassistant.com and let me know how it went. That is what I have for you guys today.
Annie Croner [00:11:05]:
I will see you next week for our 3rd episode on the Strategic Business Partner series, and I look forward to speaking with you then. That's all for now. If today's episode gave you language clarity or just a quiet, oh, it's not just me, I am so thrilled you're here. If this podcast has been helpful for you, the easiest way you can support the show is by taking 30 seconds to rate and review it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. This helps more assistants find this work. And if you're ready for ongoing support, guidance, community, and growth that actually fits into your life, Empowered Seat is where we continue this work together. It's affordable, flexible, and designed for assistants who are done white-knuckling their careers in isolation. You can learn more and join at wholeassistant.com/empoweredseat or click the link in the show notes below.
Annie Croner [00:11:55]:
And until next time, go embrace your badassery.
