What professional development means to this virtual assistant

When I was employed in the corporate world, I had yearly development targets for myself and my teams, from memory this was 10 days a year.  I remember thinking I can’t spare that amount of time and I can’t loose my team for that amount of time out of the office (there were some I could’ve happily sent everyday!).

Imagine my surprise when I recently added up all the time I had spent on my professional development over the last 12 months and it totalled in at 113 hrs!  Initially I thought there was a formula error in my spreadsheet but after checking and a good old calculator the number was true.

I’m not sure why it didn’t feel like a vast amount of time I’d spent, perhaps it was because I’d broken it into smaller chunks of time, but realistically I think it’s down to the fact that every single bit of development that I undertook added value to either my business or myself.

Some of the training was mandatory (in my eyes anyway) such a GDPR as I felt it was important to get this right and not wing it, it also massively benefited my customers. Predominantly the remainder was through choice, my choice at wanting to perform better within my business and wanting to add additional value to the services I provide to my customers.

Some of the development was “job focussed” for example topping up my skills on PowerPoint and Excel to utilise their full potential, it has also saved me a lot of time carrying out tasks, and so that I could practice my freshly learned skills a couple of my customers have a nice new PowerPoint template to play with.

Systems focussed training wasn’t necessarily about learning new software but reviewing and changing my internal systems to make client on-boarding, reviews and associate on-boarding easier and another time saver.  There was a new app that I started using to manage my workload more effectively too.

The biggest chunk of my development has been spent developing my business brain and learning to switch from being the Doer to the CEO. Listening to podcasts, working my way through specific virtual assistant training. Participating in mastermind days to work on my business, planning for the future, looking at my vision, setting goals for the future, breaking those down into smaller ones and reviewing what I needed to learn and do in order to achieve those.

I’m very privileged to have the opportunity to work with a Coach, as well as having some customers who are coaches and management consultants, they motivate me to be better and they’re great for bouncing ideas off of.

Having access to people like this is amazing, I’m lucky to be on the receiving end but having spoken to an array of my customers’ clients, for feedback purposes. The difference coaching has made to those individuals has been immeasurable.  Having a safe space to air your thoughts, concerns, problems and crazy ideas is really beneficial, think of it like having a huge brain dump and the paper magically putting it in order for you. They don’t give me the answers but make me look at it in a way where the answer appears.

Reflecting back on the past 12 months and the 113 hours of personal development – what is the key message I want to share:

I have loved upgrading my knowledge, learning new skills, gaining valuable experiences and feel excited to share that with my clients, and to answer the question; Yes, I do think you need professional development, I’m motivated to do better all-round because of it.