When I was in the corporate world I worked with some incredible people, but the particular company I worked for had a lot of transition. Not necessarily turnover but transition – many people moved around from position to position. I always knew the people that I would have the most struggle with were those that had to constantly point out all the things that the person before them did wrong.
Transition is something we all encounter in a variety of areas of our business, like moving to another vendor for services like webmaster, graphic design or virtual support. We also encounter transition with our mindsets when we make that shift from hobby to business owner or from being a five figure business owner to a six figure business owner.
Transitioning from one virtual assistant to another could be very tumultuous, especially if you had been with your previous assistant for a long time. Most of us get used to working with someone in a particular way and we naturally feel out of sorts when that is no longer is the case.
Be patient and clear in your communication of what you expect, but more so understand what they expect. If you can over communicate when you first begin working with a new assistant, that’s even better.
Be realistic also, if you think that things aren’t going to fall through the cracks at first then you are truly fooling yourself and if your new assistant tells you that nothing will fall through the cracks ever then run. There is no way that will be true and if someone is trying to convince you of that then it should be red flag for you.
Most importantly, don’t follow your list of expectations with where and why your previous assistant fell short in meeting them. Creating this kind of competition with a ghost will almost certainly set your new assistant up to fail. We will always be wondering what you will say about us when it’s time to transition again.
