Your Management Approach Is Important To Hire The Right VA
Congratulations! You have finally decided to hire a virtual assistant. That’s probably one of the best decisions you have made. So, what’s next? Shopping around for a VA that suits your needs and style.
The first step before hiring a Virtual Assistant is to determine your management style. This is important as it helps you decide who you are going to hire. The “who” alludes to the kind of person you would be comfortable working with, as it honestly is an alliance.
A few pointers to keep in mind while determining your management approach:
- Educate yourself about the different kinds of management methods
- Identify your leadership style
- Determine the personality types that complement your management approach
The different styles of leadership are often grouped into a few different types. Keep in mind that your style might not perfectly align with any one of the types and may perhaps, overlap with a few others. It’s possible that you may change your approach depending on the people you’re dealing with. Irrespective of what it is, you will make successful alliances if you recognize them.
Leadership Styles
here are many different styles, but I would like to focus on six of these that researchers have found to be the most effective. It’s also important to consider the kind of teams that are involved for leadership styles to be effective.
Participative
A Participative style is a democratic approach of leadership where the leader often seeks the opinions of the team members and trusts them to act upon them. The team members work together with the leader to make decisions. Employees in this kind of leadership feel valued and perform better as they feel motivated. This style works better in well-established teams where the members trust each other. This style is not suitable for newly formed teams or teams with people who don’t like making decisions.
Authoritative
A Directive or Authoritative Style is one of the most common styles in which the leader sets the direction and defines the structure of the mission. The objectives are clearly defined and the responsibilities, with defined outcomes are delegated to each team member. This style is best suited for crisis management where a leader takes control, directs, and leads the team through it. Whereas it is unsuitable for teams where the leader is less skilled than the employees or if employees like their input is not valued and feel less motivated.
Result-driven
An Achievement oriented or Result-driven style is a consultative style. Meaning, the manager holds discussions with team members for their opinions and input, to finalize or decide. The manager with such an approach assumes that the team members will do their best to achieve the goals. The manager also doesn’t worry about the “how”, as long as the tasks are completed. This can be risky as it could slow down the project and delay important changes from being implemented on time.
Transactional
An Action-oriented or transactional style has defined timelines and leads the team to focus the completion of the tasks. This type of leader is focused on the completion of the project and will often lead by example and hold the members responsible to adhere to the pre-defined completion dates Here the focus is on the achievement of the leader and not much of those of the team members. The downside to this style maybe that the leader might take up too much on themselves, rather than delegate.
Transformational
A transformational style of leadership is a strategic management style where the leader is focused on the bigger picture and long-term goals of the Company. They in turn inspire their team members to do the same. This style supports many types of employees and encourages innovation and creativity. It is well suited for start-ups or organizations that want to see strong growth. The downside of this style of leadership is that the leader might not be very supportive of their employees’ growth as they don’t focus their individual learning curves.
Affiliative
A Supportive or Affiliative style is where the leader displays empathy and is highly approachable. They get up close and personal and connect on a personal level with their employees. These leaders assume their team members which can be a downside as there is a possibility that the leader can be easily deceived as they are perceived to be “pliable”.
Identify your leadership approach
Before you set out looking for your best suited, prospective VA, identify your leadership approach. Check with your peers and employees who you might have worked closely with in the past. They may be able to provide a better picture of you, compared to the one you have of yourself.
Look at the personalities of your top performers from your present or past team. Those are the personalities that complement your management style. Then pay attention to the most difficult one and determine which personalities you don’t work well with.
Although there is no way to guarantee a successful partnership, employing the process of elimination for unsuitable personalities might make it easier.
Different types might clash where the employee who enjoys some amount of autonomy might not be productive in a team with a leader who’s a micro-manager. Or in the case where both the leader and team member have the same leadership style, might not be able to form an effective alliance.
Finding the right fit
Now that you have determined your leadership approach, it’s time to find a Virtual Assistant that will be best suited for your management style. Some information to seek from the prospective VA that could be helpful are:
- Their past favorite projects where they were the happiest, their role in that project and such, which will help you understand their preferences and strengths.
- The environment that they thrive in, methods they employ to get the work done, if they prefer contributing ideas in a collaborative environment over working through a set list of tasks etc.
- Ask them their opinion on qualities you value in a VA – like if they think they have some of the traits you consider important or situational based questions where you ask them about if and how they dealt with it. You could also ask them behavioural based questions.
- Don’t hesitate to ask them questions to figure out any qualities in a VA that might not be compatible with your leadership style. For instance, ask them about their take on extended deadlines or responding to late-night emails.
Conclusion
Understanding your leadership style, identifying your personality traits and how they work with different personality traits are important before hiring a Virtual Assistant or another team member. It’s also important that you are very clear about your management style during interviews so you can let people know what they can expect while working with you. This also helps with filtering, as people might themselves opt out of working with you.
Essentially speaking, the hiring process starts with you understanding your style and personality and knowing the personality types that work best with you which might eventually lead to a successful hire.
