As part of the International Year of the Secretary/Assistant 2014, participating organisations are developing themes for their members in order to raise awareness of Secretaries and Assistants throughout the world… This month is:

The value of team work

The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.
― Phil Jackson

I still like to think of the VA industry as something which advocates “Collaboration not competition” – it’s one of the reasons that SVA exists – a group of VAs got together in order to promote being a virtual assistant to the wider business community.

That said, being a VA can be quite lonely at times…  You don’t have work buddies to talk about last night’s Xfactor with, you might be working from home and not leaving the house all day, as a solopreneur you decide everything about your business.

I’ll give you a prime example: A few months back one of the VAs who works for me had a massive transcription job of her own… The client was screaming for the job and there were, quite literally, not enough hours in the day.  She called me and asked for help, I was able to put her in touch with 2 other VAs who I knew had availability that day and who I’d previously used and was happy to vouch for.   I could have been mean, said to her that she’d have to let the client down – but that gives the client a bad impression of the whole VA industry, and it also means that next time I ask her to turn a document round for me quickly, she’s not going to do it.  Think karma…

That’s my example of great teamwork – what’s yours?