How much of your day do you spend in reactive mode, responding to urgent things that pop up in the moment? Chances are, a lot of it. If you’re ready to stop being the bottleneck to your own success, it’s time to think about hiring an executive assistant. Instead of constantly putting out fires or responding to requests, you can step into strategic-thinking mode.
In a moment, we’ll dive into how to leverage an executive assistant in a full-fledged ops support role. But first, let’s explore why this is so important.
The Business Case for an Executive Assistant
Think about the opportunity cost of all the tedious tasks you’re handling. Learning to delegate many of them to a trusted executive assistant (EA) will let you tap into your full capacity as a leader.
By letting your executive assistant handle the details, you’ll clear space to focus on the big picture. As your EA learns the business, they’ll gain an in-depth understanding of what makes it tick. They’ll understand all the steps involved in project completion and daily operations. While you focus on strategic planning, decision-making, or enhancing your leadership skill set, they can concentrate on these daily functions.
An EA is more than a support staff member — they’ll play a core role in scaling your business. A good executive assistant is a strategic business partner who acts as the backbone of the organization, keeping operations running smoothly. A skilled EA acts as an extension of the leader by influencing outcomes, handling important communications, and anticipating needs in advance. As you learn how to effectively use your executive assistant, you’ll realize greater and greater benefits for the business.
Because an EA handles such a broad range of tasks, being a creative problem-solver is crucial, as the American Society of Administrative Professionals says. A good executive assistant proactively looks for solutions to daily challenges rather than waiting to be told what to do. They’re highly resourceful, leveraging their strong relationships with different staff members, along with their knowledge of the business and its tools, to get the job done well.
A good EA also presents a professional image that reflects on you and the company. In terms of language, tone, and promptness of communication, they’re always on point. Plus, they’re highly organized, balancing a wide array of tasks each day while managing their time efficiently. And they’re always receptive to feedback, striving to become more effective as they learn the needs of the business.
Now, let’s discuss how to implement a development plan for executive assistants as they transition into an ops support role.
First Steps: Developing an Executive Assistant’s Capacity
Development for an executive assistant begins with training them to understand how you work. Then, you can take steps to gradually increase their responsibilities over time.
Create a Leadership User Manual
Adam Bryant introduces the idea of creating a user manual in The Leap to Leader: How Ambitious Managers Make the Jump to Leadership. Basically, your user manual can state your communication preferences, quirks, and working style — all the most important things that your employees should know about you as a leader. This can be a one-page summary (or a couple of paragraphs), or it can be a bullet-point list.
You can also ask everyone on the team to create their own user manual. As you and your staff get to know each other, it’s a way to shorten the learning curve, as Bryant says. He poses helpful questions like these to get the creative juices flowing:
- “What drives you nuts? What are your quirks?”
- “How can people earn an extra gold star from you?”
- “What might people misunderstand about you?”
- “What strength of yours can also be a weakness or problematic in some contexts?”
Sharing your answers to these questions will help your EA better support you. Also describe your preferred communication style and which platforms you prefer. All of this will make you more predictable as a leader, which improves relationships and teamwork, Bryant asserts. “When you’re predictable, people can focus more on the work, rather than worrying what kind of mood you’re in that day, or whether you will always be changing your mind about what you prefer,” he explains.
Hold Sync Meetings
In sync meetings, discuss your executive assistant’s priorities for the week, outlining any emerging needs. In your first sync meeting, nail down what your EA’s core duties will involve, creating a daily workflow around them. Here are a few additional topics to cover:
- Specify timeframes for completing essential tasks.
- Talk about your scheduling preferences, so your EA can manage your calendar effectively.
- Discuss how you prefer to communicate with clients, so your EA can follow this protocol. Outline a process for responding to emails, sharing examples and a template.
Schedule these meetings into your calendar. Holding sync meetings each week is a small investment of time that will pay huge dividends. It will help your EA understand what to prioritize and how you want common situations to be handled. Use these sessions to provide feedback and answer questions as well.
Build Trust Over Time
Increase your EA’s responsibilities gradually, not overnight. This has worked extremely well for us at ia Blueprint.
Hannah, who first joined us as a VA but has stepped into a supervisory role, now oversees an accounting process for a couple of large insurance groups. She also takes a lead role in designing and updating basic policy procedures and then training employees in how to use them.
Over time, you might trust your executive assistant with responsibilities like these:
- Evaluating process improvements
- Researching technological solutions
- Managing projects or teams
- Preparing agendas and materials for high-level meetings
- Checking in with team members about their progress
- Leading staff meetings
- Designing presentations
- Producing reports
As your EA grows more proficient in core duties like scheduling, they’ll have more time for higher-level responsibilities like these.
Add Support Staff as You Scale
As your EA’s taskload grows, consider giving them an assistant who can help manage it. The assistant can handle tasks like email sorting and scheduling, while the EA tackles higher-level duties.
For instance, Hannah oversees our hiring process for new VAs, and another employee named Lei reports to her. Lei supports her by handling tasks like reviewing incoming applications, tracking candidate status, and sending follow-up emails.
Provide Management Training
Professional development for executive assistants can ultimately include leadership training. As you trust your EA to manage others, offering the right support will ensure they succeed. This could include a workshop on management skills (virtual or in person), as well as ongoing coaching in your weekly check-in meetings. Share pointers on how to lead meetings, mentor others, and manage projects.
As you learn how to effectively use your executive assistant, you’ll see them taking more initiative to solve challenges, streamline processes, and keep operations running smoothly. Continue providing the right training and coaching to help them keep tackling higher-level responsibilities.
Examples of Leveling Up an Executive Assistant’s Duties
Xie, my executive assistant, provides a broad range of operations support. The versatility of her skill set makes her indispensable to our daily work. She takes the lead on our marketing, coordinating with other team members on these plans. She also handles some of our video editing, produces text for social media posts, ensures all posts are uploaded, and communicates with another video editor who focuses on longer-form content. Another staff member now reports to her, assisting with these tasks.
Xie manages my schedule and takes care of daily operations when I step away, too. When I go to conferences, she handles all the paperwork, keeping me updated about anything important.
She also oversees our website, CRM, and automated tools that streamline our work, making sure everything is functioning smoothly. On a daily basis, she sorts emails efficiently, reviews and responds to them as needed, and keeps tabs on automated replies to make sure everything looks good. She reviews web content to make sure it aligns with our talking points. She has an excellent understanding of our core values, mission, and vision, which informs everything she does.
We find that CEOs gain back an average of 10–20 hours per week after hiring an executive assistant. Then, as their EA grows increasingly more efficient, they start seeing even more impressive returns in terms of what the business can accomplish. As they learn how to leverage an executive assistant to their best advantage, they realize greater and greater benefits.
Imagine if you could be prepped for all your meetings 24 hours in advance. If your entire inbox could be processed every day. If your scheduling efficiency could increase by 60%. These aren’t unusual results, by any stretch — they’re typical of what our clients experience when they hire an executive assistant through us.
Further, because EAs are so efficient and organized — and have their finger on the pulse of the company — they can often identify areas for improved organizational efficiency before a leader can. Listen to your EA when they bring up ideas like these. Invite their insights. Since they understand how things work in such detail, they can often spot potential process improvements before anyone else can.
Do you need to hire a new employee to find the right executive assistant? Not necessarily. You can also train an existing virtual assistant to step into an EA role. It may feel like a leap, but for a person with the right skill set, it’s a natural progression — many assistants aspire to level up into an EA role. Follow a clear development plan for executive assistants to help them gear up for the role. Alternatively, you can hire someone who already has an EA background.
Want to discuss what an executive assistant can do for your business in more depth? Reach out to set up a discovery call. Whether this is your very first hire or you already have a robust team, a virtual EA can help streamline your operations and ramp up your efficiency as you scale.