Skip to main content
Tag

high profile executives

Woman Assistant

Tasks You Should Be Delegating to an Assistant

By Corporate Culture, Leadership

A study by Harvard Business Review shares that senior managers and executives work in excess of 60 hours per week. The study also suggests that most executives spend large portions of their weekends and vacation time working as well. Admittedly, senior executives have a lot to do—investor meetings, managing teams, planning, crisis management, project tracking, email triaging, etc.

With increasingly fewer hours to spend on personal development and with family, time can often feel scarce. Putting in long hours can feel like the solution, but it isn’t. Throughout the day or week, executives spend time on tasks that do not require their specialized skill set and eat into their productivity. These can be accomplished by an assistant instead.

Let’s look at the tasks an assistant can execute on your behalf, so you can prioritize the things that truly matter.

What Tasks Should You Delegate To Your Assistant?

Here are some of which you could delegate to your assistant.

Managing Emails

Do you regularly check your emails to ‘stay on top of things?’ While it may seem like the least time-consuming activity, a study conducted by McKinsey Global Institute suggests that an average of 13 hours a week are spent checking emails!

A large percentage of emails clogging your inbox is just promotional or spam, and having an assistant to sort through them allows you to focus on important tasks that require your active attention.

Bookings and Reservations

If you travel frequently and spend hours searching for accommodations, the best deals on flight reservations, refunds, car rentals, etc., then perhaps it’s time to consider delegating these tasks to an assistant. An assistant can make all your reservations ensure that your travel and food-related preferences are met, and your itinerary is optimized so that you can focus on your meetings and relax in your downtime.

Organizing Appointments and Scheduling Meetings

Organizing appointments and scheduling meetings is another task that requires more attention than necessary. Constantly updating your calendar, searching for openings to schedule meetings, re-scheduling previously set appointments—these are tedious tasks that genuinely don’t require your attention and can easily be handled by an assistant.

Research and Reports

Most senior executives spend an unnecessary portion of their time collating data and making reports and presentations. An assistant can take the burden of research off you, irrespective of whether you want information on the background of a particular client or if you wish to gather data for a meeting. Yes, assistants are trained to be adept at research, and you can make informed decisions without spending hours sifting through data based on their findings.

Personal Errands and Support

Your assistant can handle multiple personal errands for you—from booking doctor’s appointments to scheduling children’s birthdays, shopping for presents for important occasions like birthdays, anniversaries, house warming parties. Assistants can also help you stay ahead of overdue communication, check on aspects such as car repairs, manage your social media, and more.

Managing everything alone is a Herculean task, but it doesn’t have to be. An assistant’s support can be crucial to taking small-but-significant things off your plate, ensuring your day goes smoothly. Work with us today—we make finding the proper support for you easier.

Read More

February 9, 2022
Woman Executive

How Top Leaders Manage Their Time and Increase Impact

By Corporate Culture, Leadership

According to Allan C Stam, the Dean of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, leadership is the art of getting things done. And while many leaders are adept at resource management (people, money, etc.), they struggle to find time to get things done.

Experts suggest that a time audit, time management measures, focus on sustainable productivity, along with a reduction of phantom workload can help people get things done efficiently and eliminate workplace stress.

While there’s no universal formula, here’s a list of five strategies to help leaders manage their time well and increase their impact.

How Leaders Manage Their Time Efficiently

Senior executives will agree that leadership is a mix of clarity, purpose, knowledge, and fortitude.

Here are some ways you can maximize your impact.

Plan Realistically

You can’t plan every second of every day. Things are bound to go wrong, and plans will change. This is normal. This is life.

And while we can’t control everything, we can create efficient schedules to increase our productivity, set deadlines to remain focused, and deal with procrastination-triggering stress wisely. Other strategies to consider include goal setting and downtime—starting early and frequent breaks—which can help increase productivity levels.

Prioritize Purposefully

Do you feel like you don’t have enough hours in the day to complete everything on your list? Then maybe it’s time to revisit how you prioritize.

Ask yourself these questions so you can be more purposeful when prioritizing:

  • Is it important or urgent?
  • How long will it take?
  • How much effort will it take?
  • Can you delegate it to someone else?
  • Is this expected of you, or do you want to do this?
  • Would someone in your team perform a task more effectively than you?

If you can assign tasks that do not require your active attention to someone else, you can focus your time and energy on being more productive.

Delegate

A “can do” attitude is a valuable attribute, but a “can do it alone” attitude is not. Leaders have teams for a reason—each team member has a strength or skill that makes them valuable, and leveraging these strengths helps leaders better manage their time. Should executive-level help be required, hiring an executive assistant is prudent.

Assistants can be gatekeepers, email organizers, calendar setters, stand-ins for meetings, researchers and more. Simply getting the right kind of help and delegating tasks that don’t require your expertise and time can bringa degree of efficiency to your day.

Find Your Rhythm

By “find your rhythm,” we mean pay attention to how your individual productivity works:

  • What motivates you?
  • What hours of the day are you most energized?
  • What environment helps you focus better?

Once you understand the optimum conditions that boost your productivity, you can maintain these conditions. This way, you can remain consistent in your work.

This also expands to discipline. Motivation comes and goes, but a disciplined schedule will keep you on track for success.

Boundaries Are Important

Even the best planners can feel overwhelmed if boundaries aren’t established and maintained. Overpromising or taking on too much can lead to delivery shortfalls and unintended consequences such as client dissatisfaction. Leaders can exemplify sustainable productivity by being realistic about how much can be achieved, saying “no” when appropriate, and reinforcing boundaries.

Better time management is key to personal growth, goal achievement, and creating a productive work environment.

Being a leader entails shouldering many responsibilities, and we at understand that it isn’t easy. We can help you find an efficient assistant so you can delegate by design and get the maximum out of your time.

Read More

February 2, 2022
executive assistant recruiter

Are You a Great Boss?

By Corporate Culture, Leadership

Are you a great boss?

Think carefully about your response. Your answer to this question matters significantly, especially when you’re hiring an executive assistant. In our work connecting top executive suite talent, we’ve learned that A-list executive assistants know precisely the type of boss they’re looking for.

We’ve also discovered that the interview is reciprocal. While you’re interviewing for your next assistant, the EA candidates we send out are interviewing you. They’re gauging whether you’re the type of person they want to work for.

And they’ve told us what characteristics they want to see in their next boss.

7 Characteristics of a Great Boss

As much as executives may share similar communication and management styles, each person is uniquely different. Your beliefs, experiences and values can affect how you manage your employees.

During an interview, executive assistant applicants try to identify your strengths and weaknesses as a way to gauge whether their skills fit your leadership style.

Great bosses are known for:

  1. Communicating frequently, honestly and with transparency. They don’t play “gotcha” games, and they state positive or negative facts without blaming or yelling. They provide honest feedback and give specific praise.
  2. Distributing the workload equitably. They don’t overload the employee who never complains about having too much work, and they don’t play favorites by letting others have a lighter workload. They also don’t micromanage.
  3. Putting together exceptional teams. They find and retain the best and brightest employees, which improves the skills of all team members. The camaraderie experienced among team members keeps them together, and they become stronger as a whole.
  4. Avoiding blame. Their approach in righting a wrong is to identify the challenge, correct it and move on. They’ll hold employees accountable, but they don’t look for fault.
  5. Finding greatness in those who work with them. The best bosses recognize and reward employees for work done well. They also make sure their employees have the training and development opportunities to excel and move forward in their careers.
  6. Demonstrating integrity. They are professional and honest – the kind of person employees trust. They also build trust by doing the right thing for the right reason. If they say they’ll do something, they follow through.
  7. Showing compassion for others. They understand that employees have lives outside the workplace. They’re sympathetic when personal needs occasionally infringe on the workday, possibly allowing for remote work options when an employee has to keep a sick child home from school.

Being the type of boss people want to work for comes down to managing your own emotions before you manage anyone else. That means treating your colleagues and employees with respect as well as valuing their opinions and work.

When you create an inclusive and supportive corporate culture, you’ll discover that the best executive assistant will want to work for you!

Read More

January 27, 2022
CEO

What Sets the Best CEOs Apart from Others

By Leadership

As the leader in any organization, the Chief Executive Officer holds an exceptionally visible position of power and influence.

The CEO’s job includes setting the mission, visions, and goals, motivating the executive team, collaborating with stakeholders, representing the company and its values, and developing a solid work-life balance.

How does a board find someone who can execute these tasks flawlessly?

As it turns out, the board can’t because perfection doesn’t exist. It isn’t even preferable. Instead, hiring boards should consider these five characteristics.

  1. Education and Experience

Many boards tend to seek out leaders with degrees from prestigious universities. There is little correlation between the stamp on a sheepskin and the recipient’s ability to lead an organization.

What does matter, however, is the CEO’s willingness to learn and apply their knowledge and previous skills to help to make decisions.

  1. Personal Characteristics

Many people identify extroverts as the best CEOs because they are charismatic leaders. In reality, introverts perform better in this role, quickly meeting or exceeding their goals.

While confidence may land a candidate a CEO position, it does not affect job performance.

CEOs are willing to confront others when necessary. They don’t hide from challenges; they meet them head-on. Those who excel in their roles focus on meeting their goals – and winning.

  1. Best CEO Decision-Making Habits

CEOs who can strategize and make decisions quickly excel over those who do not. 

The reason is simple: executive-level leadership requires decisiveness. CEOs must make decisions confidently, even when there’s little time to respond to developing situations. Making a mistake is preferable to making no decision at all.

Those surrounding the CEO prefer consistent and immediate decision-making to uncertain delays.

  1. Getting Buy-In from Others

Those in the top position in a company seek feedback and gather diverse viewpoints. These viewpoints may shape the CEO’s decision, but the decision is based on facts rather than popular opinion.

Top CEOs prefer to hire people with the skills they may be lacking; these employees often become trusted advisors.

  1. Strategy-Building Skills

Not everyone can see the big picture, but that’s what the CEO does. This role requires eagle-eye acuity for envisioning how all the parts work together. Those who work with CEOs often describe them as:

  • proactive proponents of change for the right reasons
  • committed to thinking long-term
  • trustworthy individuals who follow-through
  • positive and predictable
  • makers of bold moves

Not everyone has the skills and mindset to be a CEO. To be the best at the top position in any company requires a unique set of characteristics. As it turns out, no one thing defines a successful CEO. The most successful, and ultimately the best CEOs, are a combination of everything.

Read More

November 24, 2021
Executive Interviewing

Executive Interview Tips To Help You Shine

By Interviews

Before preparing for an executive-level interview, it’s always a good idea to think about how it will be different from interviewing for an entry-level position. First, the questions will add another degree of difficulty because hiring managers determine your potential in the post.

Next, if you want to shine, you have to communicate your leadership skills, ability to implement change and cultural fit to the organization. Use these tips to prepare for job interviews.

Executive Interview Tip #1: Conduct Research

Some basic interviewing rules can still be applied, like dressing the part and researching the company. Competence and confidence are crucial to making a positive impression at these high-stake interviews. And the more research that you do in advance, the more confident and competent you will be.

Look at its website, press releases, and social media accounts to learn about its history, leaders, and other trends. Researching can also help you learn about the background of those people interviewing you and discover any standard connections that can help you stand out.

#2: Practice Difficult Questions

Since executive-level interview questions are more geared toward determining your ability to lead teams, preparing for some more challenging questions is essential. The odds are good that you will be asked some variation of these questions:

  • What is your leadership style?
  • How would you encourage an unmotivated team?
  • What is something that you would change about this company?
  • What is the most challenging part of being an executive?
  • What are some of your weaknesses?
  • How do you create and improve core competencies?
  • How do you conduct employee evaluations?
  • Why are you the strongest candidate for this position?

Create an engaging story and provide specific examples for each question highlighting your management style and strategic vision. This will help give the interviewer insight into your thought process, attitude and priorities.

#3: Ask Insightful Questions

Perhaps the best way to demonstrate your knowledge about an organization and interest in the job is by asking thoughtful questions. Don’t hesitate to ask why the position is available and how they measure success to confirm it’s a good match for you too. Then, inquire about the most significant issues that the organization is currently facing.

The key takeaway is that the hiring process will be more intense for highly compensated roles like these. Executive interview tips we listed here can aid you in overcoming potential challenges so you can show you are the most confident, competent candidate on the market.

Read More

October 13, 2021
C-LEVEL SUPPORT

Tips for Onboarding Top C-Level Support

By Corporate Culture

The fall in the rate of US unemployment tends to give employers headaches regarding recruiting hardworking and talented employees for their business. This is not because of the rigorous exercise of recruiting the best candidate for the job, but the low rate of unemployment which gives job applicants numerous options.

And since workers now have more options in the workforce, it is evident that an effective onboarding process is an essential factor in the recruitment process. Onboarding a Top C level support may look demanding, particularly with the status quo of the workforce.

But an effective onboarding process will help the employers hire a candidate that can uphold the organization’s values and promote the company’s brand. Effective onboarding will also guide employers to hire a high-functioning Top C level to accelerate the business team’s goals and objectives. Overall, we have simplified the tips that can help you onboard Top C level for your company.

Be Clear about the Responsibilities of the Role within Onboarding

Communication and information are two vital tools when onboarding an employee for a role in an organization.

The first duty of an employer is to state clearly the responsibilities or tasks of the job applicant. This will allow them to have better insight into what to expect when they accept your offer.

A company should also be apparent to the candidates about the company’s norms and policies. This is because some employees leave their new jobs after a few months when they find the working conditions of their new jobs unattractive.

Arrange a Meeting with Employees

Aside from discussing the roles and expectations of job candidates, facilitating an interactive session with the employees within the onboard process is also an essential factor. During the meet-and-greet session, the employers and the employees get to know each other.

The meeting also creates an avenue for employers to ask the employees some questions. This is an inquiry method that employers use to know some details about the personality traits of the job candidates. The inquiry also helps you evaluate the employees’ reputation to know if such workers will be committed to your organizational goals. This interactive session marks the beginning of the business partnership between the employees and the company.

Train Employees on How to Administer and Use the Organization’s Tools Responsibly

An effective onboarding process includes training the new team members to use the organization’s tools and resources to facilitate productivity, and how well team members can handle a company’s tools determines their job performance.

Thus, it should be a matter of utmost priority for employers to train their new team members to achieve their objectives. By training the employees how to use the tools and resources, you are helping them be productive and become influential members of the organization.

Assign the Employees a Mentor

The new team member must be assigned a training guide or mentor to navigate them through the complexities of their new job. This method creates an internal networking team between the new team member and the supervisor and helps the new employee have a professional relationship with the mentor.

As an employer, you have a lot of work to do in onboarding top C-level support employees. When you take the right step and make the proper preparation, you will get the best result possible for all parties involved.

Read More

September 22, 2021
Woman CEO

Traits of Transformational CEOs

By Corporate Culture, Leadership

In the search for a new CEO or another C-suite executive, many companies want to find a transformational leader. There are certain characteristics of a CEO that help the company move through a transformational process or major change.

Transformational leadership involves the leader working with teams outside of their immediate self-interests. This allows the leader to identify necessary changes and create a vision to guide the transformation with their influence and inspiration. Transformational CEOs will execute this change together with committed members of a group.

Even if your company doesn’t currently have any major changes planned, hiring a transformational CEO allows you to prepare for unexpected changes. It also allows for continuity of leadership. The following are traits of transformational CEOs to look for during the recruiting process.

Honesty

Transformational CEOs should be honest and have integrity. These traits allow them to get others to trust them immediately, encouraging others to follow their lead. This, in turn, means that team members naturally want to follow the CEO’s guidance during the change.

Innovation

Innovation is an essential part of any major change in a company, making this another essential trait for transformational CEOs. These executives also push their team to be innovative. Specifically, they push for smart innovations that focus on offering solutions to customers’ problems.

Curiosity

The innovation that drives transformational CEOs does not have to come purely from their intelligence. It is more important that they are curious than being the smartest person in the room. This curiosity allows them to inspire the greatest minds in the company.

Ability to View Complex Problems at Multiple Levels

Transformational CEOs work to guide the entire company through changes, which require them to view problems at every level. They need to have the ability to view complex problems from various perspectives. For example, they will evaluate an issue from their perspective as well as those of the competition, current and future employees, customers, and the board.

Modesty

The ability to have multiple perspectives is not just in the case of issues. Transformational CEOs can do this regularly. They can listen to customers and gain insights into their needs. This ability gives the company marketing advantages.

Being Go-to Sources

Because of their ability to gather multiple perspectives, transformational CEOs become go-to sources for anyone looking for insights. These include peers, competitors, customers, and even the media.

Having a Model for Success

Transformational CEOs have an established model for success. They have used this model in the past and can explain it in a way that makes it seem simple, even to those who are unfamiliar with it.

Spotting Great Talent

Transformational CEOs also have the ability to spot great talent. They can recognize the passion, talent, and skills in people they come across and know how to put that to use for the company. This reduces the number of new talent companies has to recruit during a transformational period

Read More

September 8, 2021
Executive Retirement

Adapting to Executives Facing Upcoming Retirement

By Career Guidance, Corporate Culture, Leadership

Retirement is something that impacts small, mid-size, and big businesses alike. It can be difficult for some leaders to give up control over something they’ve worked so hard to build. Approximately 12 million Baby Boomers also happen to be executives and business owners, and most of them will be eligible for retirement in the foreseeable future. Yet, close to half of CEOs still don’t have transition plans for when they leave. Below are some potential exit strategies that can help businesses maintain value and adapt to executives facing retirement.

Develop a Plan

Perhaps this is the best advice that executive recruiters can offer to owners and leaders considering retirement. Rather than continue working in the business, start working on it by focusing on other responsibilities that can help grow it, like marketing. The decision to either sell the business or transfer ownership to current employees gets more accessible when the right employees are hired and appropriately trained. Then, organizations should model a plan similar to this for managing the wave of retiring workers.

  1. Decide organizational goals. Surveys and focus groups are effective ways to discover what the needs of employees and the company are.
  2. Determine what you want from employees. Do you want to promote internally for C-suite positions or recruit external candidates? Even though external candidates tend to have more experience, employment data suggests that they are more likely to be fired than those hired from within.
  3. Aggressively promote the succession plan. Ensure that employees understand eligibility by holding educational meetings.

 Recruit Successors Earlier

It’s easier for organizations to prepare for retirements than other forms of turnover because they can usually predict the who and when. Multilevel succession plans can help small businesses develop talent to hedge against executives retiring. Alternatively, companies can partner with C-level recruiters to hire a successor as soon as possible to shadow the outgoing executive and gain knowledge transfer.

To Retire or Not to Retire

For those executives unsure if now is the right time to exit the workforce, some red flags can help. For instance, retirement might be the best option if you’re not passionate about what you’re doing or don’t feel challenged anymore. Other people opt for retirement for personal reasons such as health, family obligations, etc. Some industries are evolving so rapidly that businesses could benefit from fresh leadership.

A strong succession plan is the best way for businesses to overcome the wave of retiring executives. It should combine transparent retirement policies and internal successor development programs. Otherwise, recruiters are yet another valuable resource that can help you adapt.

Read More

August 18, 2021
Customer Service

C-Suite Executives Affect Customer Service

By Career Guidance, Industry Trends, Leadership, Training

Companies are well aware that delivering strong customer service is essential to customer satisfaction. It affects a company’s reputation, as well as the average lifetime value of customers or clients.

One aspect of customer service that is not always as obvious is the impact that C-suite executives have on customer service. To maximize customer service, C-suite executives should consider the following steps.

C-Suite Executives Should Focus on Employee Engagement to Promote Customer Service

Satisfied and engaged employees tend to deliver better customer service. As such, savvy C-suite executives listen to their employees and encourage feedback. Research shows that companies with higher ratings for customer experience tend to have more engaged employees. They also tend to have more collaborations with HR.

Essentially, engaged and happy employees have a higher willingness to resolve customer issues. They will go out of their way to deliver the best possible customer experience.

C-Suite Executives Should Encourage Meaningful Connections

Another action that C-suite executives can take is to ensure that the company uses social media channels and reviews to create meaningful connections with clients. C-suite executives who incorporate this strategy will notice that consumers are more emotionally engaged with the brand. Research has shown that high engagement translates into more sales.

C-Suite Executives Should Integrate Silos

C-suite executives should also take the time to address any silos, or isolated divisions, within their organization. There are several aspects to this. To begin, silos reduce the level of employee engagement, as employees in siloed departments may not feel as appreciated.

Additionally, it is nearly impossible to ensure consistent messaging when there are siloes within a company. This is crucial, as customers will have an improved experience if messaging is consistent. Consistent messaging ensures that your product design team can deliver what the sales or marketing teams promise. Inconsistent messaging can lead to confusion and disappointment.

C-Suite Executives Should Understand Their Audiences

Any C-suite executive hopefully realizes that their marketing team must understand the audience to appeal to them. However, more than just the marketing team needs to have this understanding. The product design team needs it to create products that customers want.

Most importantly, the C-suite executives need this understanding themselves. C-suite executives are in control of the overall direction of the company. To move the company in the direction that your customers want, you must understand their needs and goals.

The C-Suite Can Include a Chief Customer Officer

The actions of all C-suite executives can affect the customer experience. That being said, many companies have chosen to have a Chief Customer Officer (CCO) who focuses on this. In the case of a CCO, other C-suite executives keep the elements of this list in mind at all times, but the CCO focuses on them.

Read More

July 7, 2021

3 Reasons Why You Should Hire the Unconventional Choices

By Career Guidance, Industry Trends, Leadership, Training

The benefits of new perspective are innumerable. However, to make a real difference in a business, hiring one nontraditional candidate probably won’t suffice. Companies must proactively seek this type of candidate every time.

Unconventional Choices Expand Your Talent Reach

Strict instructions for the type of hire you are looking for can limit your talent pool. Today, many job seekers hire someone to post their resumes for them. Basing the hiring process on how a resume looks and reads could mean you hire someone that isn’t who you thought they were.

Looking for a candidate with a specific degree or years of working experience in a similar field, for example, automatically closes out the opportunity for the unconventional choice. Instead, expand your reach and begin looking at resumes focused on your company’s values rather than only job experience in the field.

Often, you’ll find someone with transferrable skills and a passion for continuous learning that will open your business up to a whole new world of creativity and work ethic.

Bringing New Ideas to the Table

The unconventional choice is someone with a diverse or different background from what your company traditionally seeks in a new hire. Hiring someone based on their potential opens up the business to a fresh and unique perspective. They can more easily think “outside of the box” because they have experience solving problems differently.

Thus, the unconventional choice can potentially:

  • Cut down project times
  • Create new solutions yet to be thought of by anyone else
  • Increase worker efficiency
  • Encourage other workers to test the limits of creativity

Unconventional Choices Help to Diversify Your Customer Base

Your employee base should be equally or more diverse than your customer base. A diverse employee roster means the potential to form relationships with every type of customer increases. This is especially true for any business that deals directly with the customer.

Maybe the unconventional choice has experienced highs and lows that your other employees have not. This background gives them a greater opportunity to connect with different customers because they have direct experiences with their issues.

This type of thinking also impacts advertising and sales. For example, an advertising idea could connect with the customers in ways that the traditional employee can’t because they don’t have the same experiences.

According to Harvard Business Review, hiring random people for the job in hopes of diversifying your company won’t produce benefits on its own. You must have a strategy in place. Focus on getting to know a new hire’s potential and deciding how that potential best fits the company.

These changes can all help boost your business in different ways because you took a chance on the unconventional choice.

 

Read More

June 30, 2021
Close Menu