I recently started potty training my two-year-old twin daughters and what an experience that has been! I will spare you most of the details, but it did remind me of several traits I use daily being a Virtual Assistant, that I was also able to use to help us all survive potty training. Here are a few.
Being Observant and Maintaining Accuracy
Being observant and maintaining accuracy are essential skills for a virtual assistant because they help build trust with the client. We listen to our clients, observe what their frustrations and struggles are and then we do our best to find a way to help them. We also do our absolute best to maintain accuracy. Of course, we are human and mistakes happen, but we take pride in helping our clients by being accurate!
These are also necessary traits to have when potty training. In the first few days of training my girls to use their potty, I had to watch them like a hawk. I quickly learned that this was all foreign to them and they had NO clue what to do in the potty world. Keeping a very observant close eye on them helped them succeed which then helped build their trust and encouraged them to keep trying!
Adaptability
Being adaptable is something our clients count on. We partner with our clients to help their business thrive. That means we work with them when unexpected changes happen, when deadlines are moved up, when their business goals change and shift directions, and our favorite, when their business is growing and thriving which means success and may increase our workload!
This was a trait I naively wasn’t expecting to have to use while potty training. You can call it wishful thinking, but I actually thought that my girls would just “figure this out” and we would have a rough week learning it all but then they would be set! Not the case. Adaptability was something I had to use right away! I quickly learned that my girls were not going to just “figure this out,” they were both motivated by very different things and I had to change my approach about 50 times.
Resourcefulness
One of the perks of being a Virtual Assistant is that we get to experience, learn, and explore a lot! Our clients all bring different tasks and “problems” that we get to help them with which means we get to learn new things or research solutions all the time. If we don’t know the answer to one of our clients’ questions (because we definitely don’t know EVERYTHING) there is a really good chance we know where to direct them or how to help them find the answer.
As I mentioned above, things did not go as blissfully as I had hoped with our potty training so I had to do some research! I used my resources, asked for ideas, and came up with new plans daily – sometimes hourly in those first few days!
Time Management Skills
This is a trait that I have used in pretty much every area of my life. Prioritizing tasks and managing our time well is one of the main reasons we are able to have as many clients as we do. I personally use programs like Asana and Toggl to help keep myself organized, tasks prioritized and keep track of how long each task takes me. Learning how to manage time well for our clients helps them because we can get more work done for them and we don’t feel overwhelmed which helps us focus more on our responsibilities!
I wasn’t joking when I said I used this trait in every area of my life. In those early potty-training weeks, time management was key. Making sure we were never away from a potty for too long, making sure we accounted for the extra time it would take to go anywhere while we took care of potty issues before we left, you get the point.
Reliability
Would you want to work with someone that you had to constantly remind to do things, double check their work or follow up with regularly to ensure things were being taken care of? I’m going to guess that would be a NO! Being reliable is not only another one of our most important traits, it’s also one we take pride in. We understand that our clients count on us, and we take being a reliable partner for our clients very seriously!
Now, imagine if I was not very reliable while potty training my girls. If I was too busy working or cleaning to be fully available any time the shrieking “I need to go potty!” was heard. Well, we can all assume I would still be greatly supporting the diaper industry.
Alyssa Vellia
Project Manager
803-324-9844