My goal is to walk you through how to boost your virtual assistant's morale or team's confidence. When it comes to running a routine or managing a virtual assistant, one of the things they might start to notice as things have a grind or items are the same day-to-day is the morale might be down. It could also be just as your company's hitting a rough patch. If climbs come in as they usually do, morale might decrease, and people might need more motivation to keep going. So I will share some tips and things you can do and apply to your company to help boost that morale.
SOCIALIZE
Even though you are all remote and working independently, if you are all online daily, socializing sometimes can be something other than setting up a Zoom meeting. You could also check in on your team daily. It's checking in so you can start figuring out what different things motivate them. Or things can raise that morale. Once you start asking questions and getting to know your assistant or team better, you can put incentives to give them the kind of tasks that will inspire them to get going or even know what the gaps were on this project. That's why they're using dictation. Most of the time, when it comes to employees losing motivation, it's because they need to know their goals or how to reach them.
It might be a loss that they were working forward. So give them a check-in, like, “How are you doing?”, “Do you need anything that can help you feel like, Okay, yeah, I need this, or I need that?”. Even though they have a lot of things handled, there might be a few things that they still need to voice out that they need to be able to keep going. And speaking of socializing, you can do a whole goal-setting exercise. So this is something I do with our executive assistants to Excel, where I help them go through. What were your goals if you were feeling this way? So first, I focused on their personal goals, and then I wanted to connect them with their work goals.
For example, if someone has a savings goal, I'll explain that if they hit specific KPIs, they will be able to get a raise. If we can finish this project, I'd be happy to give you a raise because there'll be additional ROI (return on investment) inside the company, which I can afford or provide you. So it's just giving them directions for where they need to go because they can see where the goal is and where the future lies so that they can keep going even without me managing them as much.
FOCUS ON YOUR VA'S STRENGTH
Once you've done goal-setting, after you've set your goals, you know exactly where to go to focus on your assistant's strengths. If we get stuck doing the things, we don't want to do anyway, refocusing on that can help us. For example, “Oh yeah, you're good at graphics. Okay, here are a few tasks that you can do.” You can set aside these tasks and give this to someone else, making sure that it's more than just you working on things you like the most. It's also helping your assistant focus on their strengths so they can feel empowered to keep going and feel like this is their zone of creativity or expertise or whatever other way people call it is motivating them.
When you don't know a person's strengths, look at their recent weeks and the things they're proud of in their life. For example: Hey, I did this for work, or if they're not that kind of person, you can ask them what they've been spending time on lately and how they've been feeling while doing it. This will tell you their strengths and help you help them grow in those areas. For example: If we found that your assistant was working on something that wasn't helping them grow or wasn't right for them, we could talk about what else they could do or what else they might enjoy working on. By doing this, your assistant can focus on their strengths and keep growing as an individual.
PROVIDE TRAINING
Once you've determined your strengths and goals, you can start focusing on developing them further by giving them training. This could be developing further knowledge, or it could be giving them new abilities. Sometimes, when we feel stuck or unmotivated, we need a new perspective on how to do things. Giving your assistant new resources or inviting over a speaker can help them see things in a different light.
ENCOURAGE THEM TO OPEN UP WHEN NEEDED
Next, encourage your team members to be open with you. For example, at the end of every weekly meeting, I tell my team that if anyone has any questions, I'll stay after everyone leaves so they can talk to me as needed. We also have monthly coaching calls where they can ask me for feedback if they need it. This creates opportunities for them to speak up whenever they want—even if what they want to say isn't important right now. They know there's always a way to tell me what they're thinking or feeling, making them more comfortable sharing their ideas.
BE SOCIALLY AWARE
Next, be aware of what that person is feeling or going through. Sometimes when someone's morale is low, or they're not motivated, something else is happening in their life. It might not just work; they might love what they do for you. But if other things affect them—family issues, personal problems—it will affect everything else. So check in on them: “How's the family? What's stopping you from getting to where you want to be?” Or even just asking, “How's this? How's that?” If you hire people from another country, ask about what's happening there.
If that's the case, then they might be politically active or affected by a change in their country. You're generally more aware of what it is that they might need to motivate themselves to reset so they can see where they need to go to keep going.
DON'T OVERWHELM THEM
The most important thing to remember is not to overwhelm them. One way you can do this is by assessing their current actions and setting priorities. It could also just be checking in on them and asking if the tasks they cannot complete now are the most difficult ones they're working on. For example, perhaps they need to work harder on the right thing. So you want to ensure that you are removing any other obstacles or helping them in any way you can. As a manager, your job is to guide your people and not do their jobs for them. So check in on their task list, check in on their project, and offer your help whenever it makes sense.
SHOW APPRECIATION
To boost morale, praise and show your team that you appreciate them. One way to do this is by saying, “Hey, I saw you did this amazing thing. Did you hear that? This client and that client were blown away. Do you know that this person loved what it is that you did? Just being able to give them that praise of like, Hey, I love that you did this, will help them feel appreciated, that their work is actually something of value instead of something that they're putting out into the universe, and no one even cares.”
Take the 2xYou Scale You Scorecard now to see which part of your business needs a boost: 2xyou.com/scorecard