3 Principles for an Excellent Assistant (for Executive Assistants and Virtual Assistants)

Increase your value, solidify the importance of your position, and outperform the average Assistant.

Stuff on a desk. Presumably an assistant's workstation.

I can’t take credit for the following information. In 2017, I began working with an excellent Executive Assistant who developed these principles. She viewed her role as an honorable career, not merely a side-job, which she took seriously and constantly help herself to a high standard.

Anticipating her eventual offboarding, she worked with me to develop an EA Playbook. My customized version (now a 40+ page document) is a resource to expedite the onboarding of a new assistant, outline my preferences, and highlight expectations. It has saved countless hours, headaches, and mistakes.

My playbook has grown and evolved over the years, but these were her opening words. They have remained unchanged. It punctuates the power and impact an excellent Assistant can provide.

(I made two modifications to improve readability and make it more broadly applicable. I changed my pronouns (he/him) to the more gender-neutral “they/their”. I also simplified “Executive Assistant” to “Assistant”, knowing that non-executives would benefit from this level of support as well.)

Refine Your Mindset

Becoming an excellent Assistant means getting inside the head of the leader you are serving to anticipate needs, intuitively handle situations in the way they would, and improve their overall productivity and work competence. It goes far beyond simply checking off tasks you’re given without mistakes. You want them to “look good” (professional, equipped, competent) in every interaction they have with those both within and outside of their organization. You aid this by ensuring they are fully equipped for every meeting and interaction by keeping the calendar orderly, adding agenda notes when needed, and anything else you can think of that will set them up for success.

In order to become an excellent Assistant, your first object of study is the person you are serving. You should be asking….

• Do they want me to ask questions or default to action?
• Are they a morning person or evening person?
• When during the day/week are they most focused? Does that time need to be spent in solo work or in critical meetings?
• What are the biggest pain points they are feeling right now? How can I address these?
• Do they like meetings back to back or do they need margin to adjust their focus?
• Do they prefer in-person, video-call or phone calls for meetings?
• Do they keep their phone on silent? If I have a non-urgent question, how should I contact them? What about urgent matters?
• Do they use their calendar as a to-do list or place for reminders? Or do they only want previous commitments to show up on their calendar?

This list is not comprehensive. There are many more questions like this, but these should get your wheels turning about the type of information you need to know. If you are someone who can hold this in your head, that’s great. If you need to make a reference sheet to track what you learn, do that.

One of the primary ways you can serve your leader with excellence is to serve as a gatekeeper to their time and mental capacity.

Protect Their Time

In guarding time, this means upholding the intentions they have communicated regarding booking appointments, troubleshooting calendar sticky spots, and brainstorming new ways to ensure they are getting the most out of their working hours.

• When is the earliest in the day they will take a meeting? When is the latest?
• How many hours a week do they intend to spend in meetings?
• How many hours a week do they need “heads down” time to work on critical projects?
• Who/what is important enough to cause them to accommodate in a full week? Who/what is the first to get bumped to the next available time in a week that is too full?
• Are there meetings that they need to be scheduled each week/month/quarter/year?

When you’re first getting started, this is the most important area to master.

It is extremely helpful to have the leader you are serving indicate in their emails (or whatever communication tool you use) asking you to schedule a meeting the importance and urgency of each meeting. This can also be used to communicate when a meeting falls completely outside of calendar norms (such as evening or weekend meetings).

Expand Their Mental Capacity

This takes a lot of different forms as an Assistant and is one of the key ways you will make yourself invaluable to the leader.

• A good Assistant doesn’t just send talent options she has researched for contract work. Instead, she will first consider the options and offer a recommendation of which she would choose and why, or how she weighs the pros and cons of each option. You have lightened the mental load of decision-making, by enabling the leader to defer to your recommendation if that suits them. The more you can get inside their head and know how they would respond and make decisions, the better you will become at offering recommendations.
• A good Assistant doesn’t just order flowers when asked. Instead, you mark important dates (such as anniversaries and the birthdays of people closest to the leader) on your calendar, set a reminder for yourself, and reach out a week in advance to confirm the details (budget, date of delivery or pickup, etc.) for ordering flowers. You have lightened the mental load of remembering key dates.
• A good Assistant will communicate progress throughout a project, even if progress is slow. This removes the mental weight of having to check in on a delegated project and will build trust and rapport in your quality of work.
• A good Assistant doesn’t come back with a “no”, but always with a “no, but….”.
• If asked to order a product that is no longer available, come back with 2–3 comparable product options. Doing this removes the mental load of researching a replacement product.
• If asked to book a restaurant that doesn’t take reservations, come back with 1) information on how busy the restaurant tends to be that time of week/day and 2) comparable restaurants that do take reservations. Doing this removes the mental load of problem-solving, by offering the information needed to make a decision.
• If asked to book an appointment first thing in the morning on a specific day and that time isn’t available and it looks like it could be a few weeks before a morning appointment is available, respond by giving options: “Would you like me to book this apt a few weeks out so we can get it first thing in the morning, or would you prefer me fit in your schedule as soon as possible even though it may fall in the middle of the day?” Doing this gives your leader the context needed for them to easily make a decision that matches his priorities.
• A good Assistant won’t hesitate to offer a recommendation on how to improve on a process or approach to a project, particularly if it will save time or other resources, all while knowing ultimately the decision will fall to the leader you are serving. This enables the leader to uplevel their work processes, without having to put mental work into brainstorming solutions.