Why Hiring a VA Doesn't Always Mean Less Work for You
IN A HURRY? HERE'S THE BOTTOM LINE
A VA can only take real ownership of your work when they've been set up with a solid foundation, not just a task list. Without documented processes and clear systems, even a great VA gets stuck in reactive mode, and you end up managing them instead of delegating to them. To fix this, you need to follow a phased approach. First, build the foundation with your virtual team (learn the business, organize systems, document processes), and then, you can let your team take full ownership of ongoing execution.
To watch my video on this topic, click here.
GOT A MINUTE? HERE ARE THE DETAILS TO CONSIDER
There's a myth out there that once you hire a virtual assistant or virtual team to support you, everything just clicks into place. But in reality, hiring a VA doesn't necessarily mean less work for you!
Onboarding takes time, and unless you do it right, you’re still going to be micromanaging all of the work. To fix this, you need to give your virtual team true ownership of the tasks you're entrusting them with. That way, you get to have the time, freedom, and mental space you wanted in the first place!
If you’ve tried hiring a virtual team in the past, and it didn’t work out, this is probably what happened:
You hired a qualified VA
You handed them a task list of priorities
You gave them digital access to logins and files
Your VA is off and running!
But weeks into the relationship… or maybe even months… you’re still fielding a lot of questions. You’re still explaining how everything works, how everything in your organization is connected, and what your VA needs to do.
At this point, you’re probably second-guessing your hiring decision, asking yourself, “Why aren’t the dots connecting?!”
The problem is usually not the VA. The problem is most likely what they were set up with (or without) from the very beginning. How well you onboard a VA is going to determine whether that person actually helps you or just becomes one more person that you have to manage.
The "Everything Lives in My Head" Problem
Let's take things back a little bit further, even before we hire the VA.
Many clients, when they start working with us, have everything living in their heads. They've gotten to a point in their business or their career where they are just jamming on all the things! They're great at what they do, and they're naturally moving fast and jumping from thing to thing, with a lot of plates spinning at any given moment. And there might be things living on their desks and scattered across multiple email inboxes, too.
Compounding the problem is the fact that there are often no documented processes, and systems may or may not be organized. There's nothing in a format that would be easy for a new team member to just pick up and run with.
And again, this is not your fault! This is just what happens naturally when you prioritize and pay attention to the most important things you need to do on a day-to-day basis. Documenting processes and organizing systems often gets put on the back burner, and that's very, very common.
But what happens when you try to onboard a virtual team is that all of those things stay stuck in your head. Your new VA can’t read your mind, so they’re dropped into reactive mode. They are given some tasks, given some information, and they're trying to figure things out as they go – rather than stepping into a role or a structure that's already been set up for them.
What This Actually Costs You
When a VA is living in reactive mode, they're trying to help you the best they can, but they can't take full ownership of what you need to do. The problem is simple: They don't know what full ownership looks like.
You’re still the go-between. You're answering questions and checking their work. You're even filling in gaps that they're not even aware of in the first place!
For example, maybe they hand something to you, saying, “It's done,” and you think, “Well, this is probably like 90 or 95% done…” and you end up making a few little fixes here and there before it's 100% complete, in your mind. Your VA doesn’t even realize that they needed to complete a few extra steps to meet your standards. Over time, this gets tedious, you get frustrated, and there's a persistent gap in expectations.
Let me speak to my “Type A” perfectionist readers. You like control, and you like things done a certain way, right?
I need you to know that giving ownership to your VA or your assistant doesn't mean giving up control. It just means your VA is going to see the task through from start to finish, not just the pieces you hand off to them.
This is what I want you to embrace:
You are still the one to make the final, important decisions. You're just not the one making every little decision or giving direction every couple of steps throughout the process.
You should not be the one having to follow up on things or remind anybody what they need to do.
You are not the chief problem solver or the problem seer. Your VA can anticipate where the problems lie. They need to be empowered to flag them and solve them, before you even have to ask.
The result of this approach is that you get more time to manage the results (not so much the actual work itself!)
I recently asked my readers to consider if their businesses can run without them checking in. In that article, I shared that I'd gone to a couple of conferences – including a week out in New York for our Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses graduation – which included a lot of class time.
I noticed that many people at the event had great teams, but they were checking in via email or making phone calls to their teams in the very limited breaks we had, making sure everything was running okay.
The reality is, if you're still the main point of contact, fielding questions and giving direction, you haven't fully delegated; you've just added a helper. That's certainly a stepping stone! But what we want is somebody who can really take ownership of the work you've entrusted to them.
How to Fix This with a Phased Approach
Now, you know you have a problem. So what are you going to do about it?
At Melissa Swink & Co., we’ve definitely experienced this fundamental problem with our clients. To solve it, we’ve created a phased approach for onboarding our clients. And this is something you can absolutely apply to the work you're doing with your own team.
We used to gather a list of priority tasks or projects from a new client, then we’d take that information and begin doing the work. We’d start building processes behind the scenes and checking things off for our clients – but still, we were thrown into that same “reactive mode” I described earlier.
Over time, we found that in many cases we weren't as independent as we would like to be for our clients. We weren't saving them as much time, or we were waiting on them for certain things, and work was slower than we'd like to be able to deliver.
While this didn’t apply to every working relationship, we saw it enough times that we realized that there had to be a better way to set up our team and our clients for success. Here’s what we did:
Phase One: Build the Foundation
This phase covers the first four to six weeks of working with a client. We use this time to build a structure and foundation, to set up the entire relationship for success.
During this phase, we are:
Learning how the business or organization runs
Identifying where work is getting stuck and where the bottlenecks are
Organizing the key systems and workflows so we can truly take ownership of the things clients are entrusting to us
Clarifying recurring responsibilities that need to be done
Taking on a small number of priority tasks for some immediate relief
For example, we might be tasked with launching an email newsletter. Within that four-to-six-week window, we hold weekly working sessions with the client to understand their audience and existing newsletter system (or figure out what needs to be built). We map out the content planning process, including how we'll gather insights from a thought leader for the newsletter.
Once we've talked through the process and goals together, our team builds out those systems behind the scenes, refining anything that was started but not finished, then takes over the work on an ongoing basis.
The same thing could apply to inbox management, where the client shows us, "Here's how my email is organized (or not organized)," and then we build a workflow together so we can take ownership of that inbox.
To further illustrate why those working sessions are so impactful, there's a story I've shared many times over the years: A tale of two business coaches.
There were two phases in my business when I was new to building a team. The first was very early on, when I was preparing to go on maternity leave when my daughter was born. That whole summer leading up to her birth, I worked with a business coach to prepare the business for my absence. He basically tasked me with creating a manual of every day-to-day task I did for myself and for clients.
This was back in 2014, so we didn't have all the AI tools or tools like Loom – or if they existed, I hadn't discovered it, yet. So I spent endless hours that summer writing step-by-step guides, like “open this platform, then click here…” It was exhausting. I made it through, but it was not fun. It stressed me out and was always put on the back burner.
When it came time to really start building the team a couple years later, in 2018, I thought, “I can't go through that again!”
I was working with a different business coach at that time, and she asked what my resistance was to building a team and hiring. When I told her what I had to do last time, she stopped me and said, “No, what you need to do is hire a qualified person who has the experience you need, who is aligned with your values and your work style, and then have them shadow you while you do the task and show them. Then they create the SOP. You walk through it together, maybe make revisions or talk it through, and once that SOP is given your final approval, they own it 100%. They take that task off your plate completely.”
It was such a revelation for me! That was so much easier. And this is the same concept behind the phased approach we now use for onboarding our clients.
Phase Two: Provide Ongoing Support
Once the foundation is clear and in place, the systems are clean, and we have SOPs that have been drafted, edited, finalized, and approved by our client, we're not going back to them with questions all the time. It's very clear for us to know about each task and what needs to be accomplished.
Of course, over time, that relationship continues to evolve and grow, but having those full processes laid out for priority tasks is a game changer.
Our team is then able to step in and take over things like:
Administrative tasks
Operations support
Project tracking
Client communication
Lead follow-up
Inbox and calendar management
File organization
Marketing coordination
We're able to step in fully, where the client isn't leading the way throughout the entire time, and there aren't constant check-ins happening on anyone's behalf.
Again, the point isn't the specific tasks. It's the order. We're building the foundation first, then fully executing with full ownership. The next time you onboard a team member, try this phased approach.
Ask Yourself: What Needs to Change?
Take a moment right now to ask yourself these four questions:
If you want to delegate something, what currently lives only in your head?
If things feel clunky with your VA, did they start with a solid foundation or were you constantly refining things?
Are you still the one everyone comes back to for clarifications and context, even for things you meant to completely hand off?
Are you still the chief problem solver and question answerer?
These questions aren't about what you've done wrong. They point to where the foundation still needs to be built. They’re simply indications that you need to take a step back and look at the foundation that's in place, before continuing with more delegation or team-building.
A virtual assistant can take real ownership when there's a proper foundation and structure in place for them to stand on! When you build that first, the support that follows actually gives you time back.
If you're interested in learning more about how our team works and how we might be able to support the work you're doing, I'd love to invite you to a no-pressure consultation call. I love connecting with other business owners, professionals, and executive directors to learn more about your mission and how we might be able to help.