The Executive Assistant (The Good EA) Part 3: Major Do’s and Major Don’ts

There are many changes that must be made for yourself and for the company when an Executive Assistant is hired. It would be pretty foolish to bring an EA onto the team only to keep everything the same. Yet as silly as it may be, Team Leaders do it all the time. If you’re going to bring someone onto the team to assist you, you have to make space in the organization for them to do it.

Knowing what you need help with and what you’re going to take on for yourself is vital. There are a lot of Do’s and Don’ts to working with your EA, but for the sake of keeping this post brief, I’ll only focus on my top “Major Do” and “Major Don’t”.

Major Do: Plan to Delegate - The key is to PLAN to delegate; it’s easy to delegate, but doing so for productivity is not so easy. Any leader can show up to work and start telling people what to do, but a wise leader will spend some time planning what tasks to assign to The Good EA.

A wise leader will delegate the tasks that can legally be performed by The Good EA, along with the kind of tasks that slow the leader down from performing income producing activities. Delegating is hard for some because most people simply don’t put enough thought into it. They simply show up and start giving unclear orders and expect the best results.

Major Don’t: Micromanage - If you’re going to spend your energy looking over someone’s shoulder every 5 minutes, then you may as well do all of the work yourself. Of course you want to hold your EA accountable, but you don’t want to over do it. Your EA will never become good if you’re not giving them the opportunity to make mistakes.

The Good EA is the one that’s supposed to be doing the micromanaging. The Good EA understands that at times, the team leader must be treated like a 2nd grader on a school morning.

• Are you up?

• Are you on schedule?

• Don’t be late!

• Do you have everything you need?

• What are you doing for lunch?

• Do you have your work?

Below are a few other honorable mentions when it comes to the Do’s and Don’ts. You’ll discover more Do’s and Don’ts as you grow with your EA if you’re paying attention; Do Pay Attention.

• Do Have a plan / Don’t try to wing it

• Do learn how your EA communicates naturally / Don’t hog the conversation; listen

• Do trust your EA / Don’t attract negativity to the company by worrying every 5 minutes about whether or not the EA will “get it right”.

• Do follow up with your EA on a scheduled and consistent basis / Don’t go days without following up; a Good EA will generate several updates in the course of a day!

• Do reward your Good EA / Don’t think that compensation is enough for A Good EA; do show them that you care.

• Do expect for The Good EA to make mistakes / Don’t over react when a mistake is made.

Whether you’re an Executive Assistant or Team Leader, I do hope that you find this information useful. Until next time, Make it a great day!

~Matthew