Wisconsin Virtual Assistant Learning with Laughter

Today's lesson: You can't overcommunicate with a client when you are Virtual. Keep it consistant and continuous.

When we provide virtual support through our Virtual Assistant businesses, there is a certain amount of disconnection we can feel. We need to remember all of our survival skills learned in Corporate America. Ask yourself the following: What would I have done in this situation at my corporate job? Those skills still apply. Some examples: Why did we send emails to the person in the cube next to us instead of yelling over the lovely burlap wall or better yet, getting up with finally a reason to walk around? We sent emails for the paper trail, didn't we? We need to remember these same tactics while on our own. Here's a better one, our client calls us and asks us to follow up on something. What would we have done in Corporate? We would have sent our client an email detailing what he/she wanted wouldn't we? We should continue those practices. If your practice is such that you are getting constant redirection, etc. your mode of communication needs to change, but still that communication needs to take place. A progress report at the end of the week highlighting the sticky points during the week would be a good idea.

So here's my experience. My first job out of college (this job provides such great material) and my Boss' Boss, "Napolean" for obvious reasons was so freaked out about losing our contract with Navy Sea Systems Command, he would flap the pink message pads in our face yelling "We're all going to get pink slips!" It just wasn't a good day unless I got yelled at by this guy. One day, he stormed my office flapping the "pink slips" and my Issues Log I do for my client yelling about how I didn't take my job seriously and my joking will get us all fired. Hmmm I never played games with my work, only on irritating demeaning bosses. I asked what was wrong truly confused and he kept ranting about how our unprofessionalism would get us all fired (while he is screaming in my office). Trying to calm down this 50 year old man (I was 22) was not easy. Gee, what did I do wrong? It must have been really bad. My Issues Log impacted about 40 hulls of a Navy Surface Combatant! It got distributed all the way up to Admiral level! On my Issues Log I documented the Date, Name of the Issue, Issue Description, Status and Point of Contact for each issue. If I was assigned an issue, my initials "GSK" for Gretchen S. Koehler were listed as Point of Contact and so on. Well, here's what he said: "I can't believe you all think this is a big joke. How can you do this, we will all get fired! What are you thinking? Look here, GSK - General Store Keeper, you think this is a big joke! What is the matter with you?" Um yeah. I let him rant uncontrollably for as long as I could stand it and then I enlightened him.

The Lesson: If we would have had consistant communication, this would have never boiled over like that.

Take care!
Gretchen Koehler-Swaney
Prairie Business Partners LLC
http://www.prairiebusinesspartners.com/