At Base, we believe executive assistant goals should always be discussed with your executive. Why? Because you’re an extension of your executive! Without you, it would be impossible for your executive to manage all the responsibilities that come with running a business. Beyond simply handling office tasks, you’re ready and willing to wear whatever hat is needed—whether it be travel planner, HR, procurement, or wherever your executive needs strategic support. .
With that being said, the most valuable executive assistants (EAs) are those who fully understand just what their executive is trying to accomplish. Spoiler alert! This can only happen if you link up with your executive and learn their strategic goals. Developing a relationship with your executive where you can sit down and create objective, measurable goals together will set you both up for optimal success.
Learn more about setting executive assistant objectives with your executive and how Base can be your guide through the process.
Take Initiative
When it comes to goal setting for executive assistants, it’s important to make sure your goals, the goals of your executive, and the overarching goals of your business are in alignment. It can be difficult to excel in your career when you aren’t even sure what objectives you should be shooting for—this is where advice from your executive is pivotal.
Take the initiative and schedule that meeting! We promise you won’t regret it. While it may seem intimidating at first, remember that this is the best way for you to invest in yourself and your career as an EA. The more you can get to know about your executives’ wants and needs, the more easily you’ll be able to create executive assistant goals that wow your executive.
Come Prepared
If you want to stay one step ahead of your executive, show up to your meeting with a list of performance goals for executive assistants. This will show your executive that you’re serious about planning objectives and have taken the time to understand what the business needs the most.
You can share ideas and work through your list to find some common goals you can work towards together. Coming prepared and providing a few executive assistant goal samples will highlight your value as an EA and let your executive in on your executive assistant OKRs.
Strategize Together
You and your executive will want to approach goal setting strategically and with the “SMART” acronym at the forefront of your minds. Are you working together to create specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely goals?
To ensure you and your executive engage in a big-picture discussion that takes your goals, your executives’ goals, and the goals of your business into account all at once, you’ll want to consolidate planning into the following five-steps. This process will not only work to engage your executive but putting your heads together will ensure you’re both working towards the same goals:
- Mission: Define your team’s goal for the quarter. This can be an overarching objective or something that’s more time-based (quarterly, yearly, etc.)
- Strategies: What are the strategies you and your executive will execute to achieve your mission?
- Activities: What activities will you need to perform in order to drive those strategies? Try to think of at least one activity to match each strategy listed.
- Obstacles/Risks: What are the potential obstacles that could stand in your way of success? How will you pivot to overcome them?
- Measurements: How will you be able to tell your efforts were successful?
Leveraging Base, assistants can report on the progression of their goal. This is done by creating a custom Digest template based on you and your executive’s goals and workflow. See how here. Our free 30-Day Challenge was created to help you better align to your executive’s goals through using Base Digest, and you can sign up for that here.
Stay Motivated
While it’s easy for EAs to put their personal goals aside to cater to their executives’ needs, it’s important to remember that these initiatives will help you excel in your career. Don’t hold yourself back! Stay motivated and dedicated to achieving your executive assistant goals. You deserve to level up in your career, and the right executive will see your potential and work with you to ensure you grow and thrive as an EA.
Do you want more goal setting, planning, and project management resources? Join our community of nearly 3,000 assistants, and subscribe to our YouTube channel!
