Maggie Olson is the Founder of Nova Chief of Staff, the premier destination for Chief of Staff education and development.
In this episode of The Leader Assistant Podcast, Maggie shares tips on leading and managing executive engagements, how to prepare briefs, and more.
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ABOUT MAGGIE
Maggie Olson is the Founder of Nova Chief of Staff, the premier destination for Chief of Staff education and development. As the first Chief of Staff to a president at a Fortune 40 company — who led a multibillion-dollar business with 5,000+ employees — Maggie built the president’s Chief of Staff model from the ground up. Maggie has 20 years’ experience leading large teams and has spent her career focused on both customer and employee experience at companies including T-Mobile, Nordstrom, and Starbucks. In addition to operating the Nova Chief of Staff Certification course, Maggie is a fractional Chief of Staff focused on helping mission-driven, for-profit startup founders scale their businesses quickly. In her spare time, Maggie loves spending time outside with her husband, their animals, and their 1-year-old, Max!
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THE LEADER ASSISTANT BOOK
Download the first 3 chapters of The Leader Assistant: Four Pillars of Game-Changing Assistant for FREE here or buy it on Amazon and listen to the audiobook on Audible. Also, check out the companion study guide, The Leader Assistant Workbook, to dig deeper.
LEADER ASSISTANT LIVE EVENTS
Check out our constantly updated schedule of events for admins and assistants at LeaderAssistantLive.com.
JOIN THE FREE COMMUNITY
Join the Leader Assistant Global Community for bonus content, job opportunities, and to network with other assistants who are committed to becoming leaders!
SUBSCRIBE
Subscribe to The Leader Assistant Podcast so you don’t miss new episodes!
You can find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Pandora, and Stitcher.
Join my email list here if you want to get an email when a new episode goes live.
LEAVE A REVIEW
If you’re enjoying the podcast, please take 2 minutes to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts here. Each review helps me stay motivated to keep the show going!
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
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JEREMY: Are you a strategic senior executive assistant thinking about what’s next?
00:00:04.640 –> 00:00:12.740
JEREMY: Whether you’re ready for a promotion or loving the job you’re in, Nova Chief of Staff’s certification course may be just the resource you’re hungry for.
00:00:13.440 –> 00:00:30.080
JEREMY: With over 400 students across 20 countries and rave reviews, students graduate from Nova’s hands-on, self-paced online course with the confidence, knowledge, and power to make the move to Chief of Staff for their executive.
00:00:30.520 –> 00:00:31.820
JEREMY: But don’t take my word for it.
00:00:32.060 –> 00:00:40.960
JEREMY: Visit Leader assistant.com/nova to find countless testimonials, the course syllabus, and lots of free resources to support you in your career journey.
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JEREMY: Thank you.
00:00:47.496 –> 00:00:54.956
<v SPEAKER_2>The Leader Assistant Podcast exists to encourage and challenge assistants to become confident, game-changing leader assistants.
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JEREMY: Hey, friends, welcome to episode 281 of The Leader Assistant Podcast.
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JEREMY: I’m your host, Jeremy Burrows, and today I’m speaking with my friend, Maggie Olson again.
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JEREMY: Welcome back, Maggie.
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MAGGIE: Thank you.
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JEREMY: So we’re gonna talk a little bit about leading and managing executive engagements, and all the things like preparing briefs and engagement recommendations.
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JEREMY: So yeah, love to jump in, but tell us a little bit about before you take it away, why this topic?
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MAGGIE: Yeah, so one of the biggest impacts that an executive support team can have, and that includes strategic high-level executive assistants and chiefs of staff, sometimes other roles as well, is preparing the executive for everything they step into.
00:02:00.730 –> 00:02:19.910
MAGGIE: Chiefs of staff should take it on themselves to ensure that a leader is not stepping into a meeting or getting on a plane or going to an event without understanding what they’re getting into, who’s going to be there, what are the priorities of them being there, what do the other people, like the external folks want from your executive?
00:02:20.710 –> 00:02:40.210
MAGGIE: So we’ll get dive deep into this, but that’s why it’s so important and such a kind of a hot topic for us, both in the Nova Chief of Staff certification course that I run, but also just for Chiefs of Staff and high level executive assistants everywhere to have a strong impact in preparing their executive for whatever they walk into.
00:02:40.230 –> 00:02:41.430
JEREMY: Nice.
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JEREMY: And so is that kind of the definition of an executive engagement?
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MAGGIE: Yes.
00:02:48.090 –> 00:03:01.190
MAGGIE: So I kind of talk about engagements as anything that your leader, and I’ll use the term like president, CEO, business leader, principal, anything that your leader is taking part of and it can be internal or external.
00:03:01.590 –> 00:03:14.610
MAGGIE: So internal engagements would include things like what your president is doing with your own company, where are they speaking at, what groups are they showing up for, and how do they need to be prepared to attend those events?
00:03:15.550 –> 00:03:17.150
MAGGIE: Which employee groups are going to be there?
00:03:17.170 –> 00:03:19.730
MAGGIE: What did he talk about last time or she talk about last time?
00:03:20.110 –> 00:03:21.770
MAGGIE: The list goes on and we’ll dive into that.
00:03:21.770 –> 00:03:33.470
MAGGIE: But this could also be like a high-stakes sales meeting, all hands for their own team, a guest speaking spotlight at a peers’ all hands meetings, company and all company recognition trip.
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MAGGIE: Like, oh, the top 1% of sales employees go to Hawaii every year.
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MAGGIE: You better know every single one of those employees and how they’re performing and why they’re there.
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MAGGIE: So those are the internal engagements.
00:03:46.070 –> 00:03:54.390
MAGGIE: And then there’s the external engagements, which would be anything outside of the company that they are speaking at or need to be prepared to walk into even if they’re not a speaker.
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MAGGIE: So maybe your president is literally doing a Ted Talk.
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MAGGIE: Maybe they’re a guest on a talk show or they’re attending a trade show or they’re speaking at their alma mater’s graduation.
00:04:04.950 –> 00:04:15.770
MAGGIE: Anything your president is showing up for should have some level of preparation and you’ll work with them to understand what that looks like because it can be very different for a lot of different leaders.
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MAGGIE: Maybe they need a brief, maybe they need travel details, maybe they need a script, what to say.
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MAGGIE: And maybe they need photos of everybody at the meeting.
00:04:24.450 –> 00:04:26.570
MAGGIE: Or maybe all they need to know is what time to show up.
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MAGGIE: You have to figure out as a Chief of Staff or high level EA, what are the details that they need based on who they are as a person and what they’re walking into.
00:04:35.650 –> 00:04:39.670
MAGGIE: It’s definitely a partnership between that back office support staff.
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MAGGIE: But essentially, you’re just ensuring that they’re consistently getting what they need and staying on top of everything they’re attending and that you are in the know for everything that they’re doing and showing up to.
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JEREMY: Love it.
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JEREMY: Well said.
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JEREMY: I think that the point that I wanted to highlight that you brought up is that every executive is different.
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JEREMY: Some executives like really detailed, printed out briefs and everything before every big meeting.
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JEREMY: Then some executives just want a really short Slack message with the two bullets on the context of this meeting or this engagement is.
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JEREMY: Yeah.
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MAGGIE: And sometimes that’s all they’ve known, right?
00:05:21.170 –> 00:05:23.410
MAGGIE: It’s like, well, all I need you to do is to text me.
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MAGGIE: And maybe that’s an area that you identify as a place where you can add more value.
00:05:28.090 –> 00:05:30.710
MAGGIE: You know, I think they actually could be a little bit more prepared.
00:05:30.930 –> 00:05:35.090
MAGGIE: I think they went to school, they went to undergrad together.
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MAGGIE: And does he remember that or does she remember that they met a few years ago?
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MAGGIE: There’s opportunities that we can see and find to formalize a bit.
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MAGGIE: But to your point, Jeremy, it’s going to be up to the leader on the true level of formality that they would require.
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MAGGIE: Print out, like you said, branded fonts, formatting, all the things.
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MAGGIE: Maybe that’s kind of the norm in the corporate Fortune 500 world.
00:06:00.550 –> 00:06:06.690
MAGGIE: At a startup, maybe it’s a text with the key details or just an email or a shared OneNote page.
00:06:06.990 –> 00:06:08.070
MAGGIE: It can really vary.
00:06:11.950 –> 00:06:13.470
JEREMY: Well, let’s jump in more then.
00:06:13.790 –> 00:06:27.750
JEREMY: And why don’t you take it away and just talk through how to help our executives be more prepared and how we as executive assistants or chiefs of staff can lead and manage them.
00:06:28.910 –> 00:06:29.410
MAGGIE: Awesome.
00:06:29.430 –> 00:06:32.170
MAGGIE: So we’re going to talk through kind of three components here.
00:06:33.750 –> 00:06:39.370
MAGGIE: The first is overall, just like management of your executives’ engagements and how do we do that.
00:06:40.370 –> 00:06:54.230
MAGGIE: Then we’re going to talk about engagement recommendations and why it’s helpful as a chief of staff to make recommendations for what your leaders should be prepared, not prepared for, but what your leader could walk into and show up for based on their brand and their goals.
00:06:55.390 –> 00:07:04.390
MAGGIE: And then we’re going to dive into kind of the meat of how we prepare briefs and what should be included in a brief that prepares your leader for what they’re walking into.
00:07:05.090 –> 00:07:12.510
MAGGIE: So we kind of touched on this, but for any type of engagement preparation, formality level is going to be like TBD.
00:07:13.190 –> 00:07:14.870
MAGGIE: It’s going to depend on what they’re attending.
00:07:14.890 –> 00:07:18.290
MAGGIE: It’s going to depend on who they are as a person, the formality level of your company.
00:07:19.090 –> 00:07:33.710
MAGGIE: I would suggest playing around a bit with elevating, adding a little bit more formality than maybe what exists now, just to see if it hits right, just to see if it’s helpful to your leader to have a little bit more formal preparation.
00:07:34.350 –> 00:07:42.690
MAGGIE: Just kind of consider where you’re at now, take it up a notch and add value through the elevation of materials that chiefs of staff are kind of known for doing.
00:07:43.410 –> 00:07:45.530
MAGGIE: So the formality level is very, very flexible.
00:07:45.930 –> 00:07:52.250
MAGGIE: We will kind of talk through some scenarios here that are slightly more formal, dependent on what your leader needs.
00:07:52.870 –> 00:07:57.990
MAGGIE: And then the preparation level depends also on kind of what the leader is walking into.
00:07:58.010 –> 00:08:09.190
MAGGIE: So if they’re speaking at an event, they probably need to know a lot more about who the other speakers are and the hosts and who’s listening to them and where they go, what they say, all the details.
00:08:09.590 –> 00:08:20.810
MAGGIE: But if they’re showing up to an event and they’re mostly listening and absorbing maybe other speakers, they probably need the agenda and they need the event overview and maybe there’s a few peers they’re joining with.
00:08:20.850 –> 00:08:28.010
MAGGIE: But it’s really going to depend on how deep the preparation needs to be based on what they’re attending.
00:08:29.070 –> 00:08:30.990
MAGGIE: And then we’ll chat through recommendations.
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MAGGIE: So an engagement recommendation is a way for you to add strategic value.
00:08:37.050 –> 00:08:44.010
MAGGIE: What I mean by this is once you get to know your leader, you understand their internal priorities, you understand their external priorities.
00:08:44.650 –> 00:08:46.630
MAGGIE: Where should they be showing up?
00:08:46.870 –> 00:08:48.370
MAGGIE: Are there conferences?
00:08:48.530 –> 00:08:49.630
MAGGIE: Are there summits?
00:08:49.650 –> 00:08:56.870
MAGGIE: Are there CEO groups that would make a lot of sense for your leader to be engaged with?
00:08:56.890 –> 00:09:01.550
MAGGIE: So from an engagement recommendation perspective, what does this look like?
00:09:01.570 –> 00:09:05.850
MAGGIE: Well, in our Nova Chief of Staff course, we have an assignment that I’ll share.
00:09:06.550 –> 00:09:13.330
MAGGIE: I took this from many real-life scenarios as a Chief of Staff, so this will give a little bit of an insight to what engagement recommendations look like.
00:09:13.350 –> 00:09:30.630
MAGGIE: But essentially, if I continue down this example of a summit or a CEO group, we ask our students in the course to basically research three different engagement options for the CEO.
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MAGGIE: And we give a profile, here’s what the CEO stands for and likes and where they work, and here’s all the things.
00:09:35.790 –> 00:09:44.350
MAGGIE: Now, go and research what makes the most sense based on your leader’s seniority, what they’re into, your company.
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MAGGIE: There’s a lot of things that could be weighed here.
00:09:46.490 –> 00:10:00.090
MAGGIE: And then truly create a document, create a recommendation that reads both kind of as an event brief, here is what the event is, but what’s most important at the top is what your recommendation is.
00:10:00.310 –> 00:10:08.890
MAGGIE: I recommend you attend this, insert here, conference, summit, CEO training, whatever it is, for the purpose of X.
00:10:08.950 –> 00:10:14.890
MAGGIE: And that may be to increase your brand awareness in this key category, for example.
00:10:15.590 –> 00:10:22.210
MAGGIE: But you’re recommending where your leader should show up to, and that can include internal and external recommendations.
00:10:23.070 –> 00:10:26.170
MAGGIE: So as I mentioned, we kind of have an exercise that walks students through this.
00:10:27.230 –> 00:10:32.990
MAGGIE: I think that it’s a very valuable way where everybody’s always kind of trying to figure out, how do I add strategic value?
00:10:33.350 –> 00:10:42.110
MAGGIE: This is a huge way to do that, by kind of driving the car of where your leader shows up to and how they present themselves.
00:10:43.110 –> 00:10:49.450
JEREMY: What’s an example, or could you give us a little bit of a snippet from the exercise that you run them through?
00:10:50.350 –> 00:10:54.490
MAGGIE: Yeah, so we offer three engagement options for students to go research.
00:10:54.890 –> 00:10:58.150
MAGGIE: I think we use the CEO of Instacart, Fiji Simo.
00:10:59.050 –> 00:11:03.150
MAGGIE: So students research the CEO and they research the engagement options.
00:11:03.830 –> 00:11:06.890
MAGGIE: One of the options is the G100 Chief Executive Program.
00:11:06.950 –> 00:11:09.530
MAGGIE: Another is the Yale School of Management CEO Summit.
00:11:09.570 –> 00:11:12.730
MAGGIE: And the third is the Leaders on Purpose Summit.
00:11:13.050 –> 00:11:19.290
MAGGIE: I ask students to choose which one they want to recommend for Fiji and then to put a brief together.
00:11:19.310 –> 00:11:21.090
MAGGIE: And we’ll dive into what briefs look like.
00:11:22.010 –> 00:11:30.370
MAGGIE: That includes an overview of the event and what to expect, what your CEO will get out of the engagement options, what a successful event looks like.
00:11:30.910 –> 00:11:36.090
MAGGIE: I ask for consistent formatting, polished, elevated materials.
00:11:36.110 –> 00:11:42.130
MAGGIE: Maybe that means like your branded colors or use of a logo and something that’s ready to share with your leader.
00:11:42.590 –> 00:11:48.870
MAGGIE: Limit ideally one page, maybe longer if the engagement has some long agendas that you want to include.
00:11:49.770 –> 00:11:52.550
MAGGIE: And then I say, make up the details that you don’t have.
00:11:52.890 –> 00:12:04.150
MAGGIE: Maybe you want to play around with somebody that your leader went to school with and include like three key people that are going to be at the conference and why it’s important to shake hands with those folks.
00:12:04.190 –> 00:12:11.390
MAGGIE: Those are things that kind of make you think outside of the box that if I give all the details in an assignment, it’s just not real life to a chief of staff world.
00:12:12.790 –> 00:12:22.770
MAGGIE: So I ask students to basically submit this engagement recommendation that reads as a recommendation and includes an event brief for what the leader would be walking into.
00:12:25.030 –> 00:12:27.450
JEREMY: Thanks for sharing a little bit of a sneak peek.
00:12:28.170 –> 00:12:29.010
MAGGIE: Totally.
00:12:30.530 –> 00:12:33.650
MAGGIE: So anything else from you, Jeremy, on kind of the…
00:12:34.130 –> 00:12:39.370
MAGGIE: I’m thinking too that for this type of work, I usually recommend a Word document.
00:12:39.810 –> 00:12:42.410
MAGGIE: I’m a PowerPoint lover for other things and we’ll get into that.
00:12:42.410 –> 00:12:52.990
MAGGIE: But for anything that’s text heavy, something like Word or however you choose to display a little bit more text heavy work is probably best.
00:12:53.710 –> 00:13:00.830
MAGGIE: And I usually suggest more bullets, less paragraphs, most important information at the top, simple formatting, clean, neat, easy.
00:13:01.450 –> 00:13:03.810
MAGGIE: But those are some of the things that we talk to students about a lot.
00:13:08.770 –> 00:13:11.290
MAGGIE: Are you ready to elevate your career in 2024?
00:13:12.290 –> 00:13:19.970
MAGGIE: I’m Maggie Olson, founder of Nova Chief of Staff Certification, the first of its kind online course for aspiring and existing Chiefs of Staff.
00:13:20.590 –> 00:13:32.110
MAGGIE: With curriculum taken directly from on-the-job responsibilities, Nova’s self-paced learning modules provides you with hands-on experience so you can feel competent and confident moving into a Chief of Staff-style role.
00:13:32.790 –> 00:13:35.030
MAGGIE: It’s the perfect next step for executive assistants.
00:13:35.770 –> 00:13:40.830
MAGGIE: Head to leaderassistant.com/nova to learn more, grab the syllabus, and enroll today.
00:13:45.110 –> 00:13:45.450
JEREMY: Nice.
00:13:45.630 –> 00:13:47.110
JEREMY: Yeah, and you know, it depends.
00:13:47.590 –> 00:13:50.750
JEREMY: You know, we’re a Google shop, so we use Google Docs.
00:13:52.550 –> 00:14:11.350
JEREMY: And generally, what I will do is I’ll put those briefs in the calendar for my executive, because he likes to just have the Quick Bullets context in the actual invite, so that as he goes to his next meeting, he doesn’t have to go to an external source for the details.
00:14:11.370 –> 00:14:13.750
JEREMY: He can just open the calendar invite, see the details.
00:14:14.090 –> 00:14:18.330
MAGGIE: Yeah, I love that you put that right into the event, the calendar invite.
00:14:18.650 –> 00:14:18.970
JEREMY: Yeah.
00:14:19.130 –> 00:14:19.430
JEREMY: Yeah.
00:14:19.510 –> 00:14:19.830
JEREMY: Yeah.
00:14:20.190 –> 00:14:24.350
MAGGIE: And I’m guessing since you’re all virtual, there’s no paper needing to be exchanged, which is nice.
00:14:25.550 –> 00:14:31.390
JEREMY: It’s one of my requirements to jobs now is that I don’t have to print a bunch of stuff all the time, because I don’t like printers.
00:14:31.750 –> 00:14:33.410
MAGGIE: Yeah, they’re the worst.
00:14:36.090 –> 00:14:36.490
MAGGIE: Cool.
00:14:36.510 –> 00:14:39.970
MAGGIE: So we’re going to move on from the recommendation portion of engagements.
00:14:41.250 –> 00:14:44.750
MAGGIE: I always share when Jeremy and I chat that I’m easy to get a hold of.
00:14:44.770 –> 00:14:51.530
MAGGIE: You can email us at hello at novachiefofstaff.com if you have questions or you want a template, anything like that.
00:14:51.530 –> 00:14:52.770
MAGGIE: We are here to help.
00:14:52.870 –> 00:15:01.230
MAGGIE: So moving on to kind of the management of these engagements and then we’ll dive into the meat and potatoes of the brief.
00:15:01.850 –> 00:15:06.290
MAGGIE: And I laugh when I see meat and potatoes now because I’m a true midwesterner now that I live in Lincoln, Nebraska.
00:15:07.450 –> 00:15:09.510
MAGGIE: It’s more there’s more backing to it.
00:15:10.850 –> 00:15:14.230
JEREMY: So it’s not quinoa and sweet potatoes.
00:15:14.750 –> 00:15:16.190
MAGGIE: It’s still it’s still kale.
00:15:16.210 –> 00:15:18.690
MAGGIE: And yeah, quinoa.
00:15:18.710 –> 00:15:21.030
MAGGIE: Yeah, I wish there was more of that here.
00:15:21.050 –> 00:15:23.610
MAGGIE: But again, I’ll go to Kansas City for that.
00:15:25.610 –> 00:15:26.010
MAGGIE: All right.
00:15:26.030 –> 00:15:28.490
MAGGIE: So managing engagements.
00:15:29.950 –> 00:15:40.470
MAGGIE: This is probably most pertinent to leaders, which I think there’s probably a lot of that are involved in five to ten events, internal and external, across a week or two.
00:15:41.230 –> 00:15:42.810
MAGGIE: So you basically have a lot going on.
00:15:42.830 –> 00:15:53.390
MAGGIE: Your leaders showing up for all hands meetings and peer all hands and gosh, off sites and board meetings and sessions with employees.
00:15:53.410 –> 00:15:57.830
MAGGIE: And then they’re also showing up to external events and shaking hands and speaking.
00:15:57.870 –> 00:16:08.110
MAGGIE: So if you have a leader, if you’re in an environment like this where five to ten events every couple weeks, you might want to consider some type of a what I call a pipeline document.
00:16:08.130 –> 00:16:11.830
MAGGIE: So this would be like an engagement pipeline preparation document.
00:16:13.170 –> 00:16:28.830
MAGGIE: And one way to do this, the way that I teach and recommend is to kind of have an executive view of the doc, which is everything that’s confirmed for the next two weeks or so in one view, and then have more of a working view for everything else.
00:16:28.850 –> 00:16:31.070
MAGGIE: And that could be like the next six, seven months.
00:16:31.090 –> 00:16:33.970
MAGGIE: There’s some things that are TBD we don’t want to lose track of there.
00:16:34.250 –> 00:16:35.610
MAGGIE: But it’s what’s coming.
00:16:35.630 –> 00:16:38.490
MAGGIE: It’s a pipeline view all on one paper.
00:16:38.510 –> 00:16:40.850
MAGGIE: So you’re not clicking through outlook calendars.
00:16:41.550 –> 00:16:46.730
MAGGIE: It’s a little hard to see visibility wise when you don’t have everything in one spot.
00:16:46.990 –> 00:16:59.010
MAGGIE: So this is a way to have a pipeline view of like, here’s the next two weeks, engagement, executive ready, polished, and then a working team view for everything else that could truly be like two or three pages.
00:16:59.270 –> 00:17:02.030
MAGGIE: Do you have experience Jeremy doing stuff like that?
00:17:02.050 –> 00:17:04.350
MAGGIE: Are you guys doing kind of pipelines?
00:17:05.610 –> 00:17:17.710
JEREMY: Yeah, we, I think generally it would be, we do a lot of spreadsheets, little Google Sheets, where we’re tracking information and following lists.
00:17:18.310 –> 00:17:34.830
JEREMY: And then if we’re doing events, like we had an event this week that my CEO went to, and we had a Google Doc that was basically the entire schedule and context, a little more in-depth if, you know, he really wanted to be like, all right, what the heck am I going to?
00:17:34.850 –> 00:17:36.770
JEREMY: And wanted to really dive in on the way there.
00:17:38.790 –> 00:17:41.590
JEREMY: But yeah, it’s, it really depends.
00:17:41.650 –> 00:17:56.970
JEREMY: It really depends on how many team members are involved, how many, how much new, newness to the engagement there is versus kind of regurgitating the same talk track.
00:17:59.030 –> 00:18:00.170
JEREMY: You know, these five events.
00:18:00.750 –> 00:18:02.310
MAGGIE: Yeah, yeah, totally.
00:18:02.370 –> 00:18:10.650
MAGGIE: So if we were to break down the executive view of our engagement pipeline, which is sort of the next two weeks, let’s see everything that’s come in the next two weeks.
00:18:10.670 –> 00:18:13.830
MAGGIE: This is something you could literally hand or send your leader.
00:18:15.170 –> 00:18:20.910
MAGGIE: The things that should be on here are basically any engagements, internal or external, that are confirmed.
00:18:21.970 –> 00:18:25.510
MAGGIE: I like to organize this document so that it includes a few things.
00:18:25.710 –> 00:18:27.090
MAGGIE: One would be the type of event.
00:18:27.750 –> 00:18:39.290
MAGGIE: Ours, you know, are usually categorized, maybe most are usually categorized into kind of a major reoccurring event, an ad hoc one-off speaking event, or a business engagement.
00:18:39.950 –> 00:18:42.210
MAGGIE: Those kind of tend to cover most of the categories.
00:18:42.230 –> 00:18:43.490
MAGGIE: Yours may look a little bit different.
00:18:44.050 –> 00:18:44.930
MAGGIE: So what’s the type?
00:18:44.950 –> 00:18:48.250
MAGGIE: We like to use icons for this to break it up and make it a little easier to see.
00:18:48.550 –> 00:18:49.330
MAGGIE: What’s the date?
00:18:49.510 –> 00:18:50.890
MAGGIE: Put it in chronological order.
00:18:50.910 –> 00:18:52.350
MAGGIE: So the next thing coming is at the top.
00:18:52.750 –> 00:18:53.990
MAGGIE: What’s the event description?
00:18:54.110 –> 00:18:55.230
MAGGIE: What are the details?
00:18:55.270 –> 00:19:00.370
MAGGIE: And these are the most important things that your leader knows, not the details that you and the working team need to know.
00:19:00.570 –> 00:19:01.590
MAGGIE: This is a leader view.
00:19:01.590 –> 00:19:03.470
MAGGIE: So it’s just for that leader view.
00:19:03.930 –> 00:19:06.190
MAGGIE: And then when can they expect the brief?
00:19:06.690 –> 00:19:09.590
MAGGIE: So the engagement pipeline is not a brief document.
00:19:09.610 –> 00:19:16.030
MAGGIE: It’s not in this example, it’s not telling them what their talk track is and who’s going to be there and what the agenda is and all of the things.
00:19:16.130 –> 00:19:18.850
MAGGIE: It’s telling them, keep these, keep this on your radar.
00:19:18.870 –> 00:19:28.570
MAGGIE: This is what you have coming up over the next week or two for the things you have to show up to and be prepared to kind of shine or speak or be very live for.
00:19:29.370 –> 00:19:30.670
MAGGIE: So that’s the pipeline.
00:19:31.030 –> 00:19:38.150
MAGGIE: When you think about kind of the working team view of the pipeline, maybe that’s longer, several more pages potentially.
00:19:38.170 –> 00:19:49.570
MAGGIE: There may be a few different topics, but additional information in here would be who’s the team lead, who’s the brief owner, more detailed next steps, status.
00:19:49.690 –> 00:19:52.810
MAGGIE: Those are things you don’t always need to share with your executive.
00:19:52.830 –> 00:19:56.870
MAGGIE: And I think that takes some time to figure out what are the details we share with our leader.
00:19:56.890 –> 00:19:59.830
MAGGIE: And this goes well beyond this engagement conversation.
00:19:59.930 –> 00:20:03.090
MAGGIE: And what are the details that are just working team?
00:20:03.950 –> 00:20:06.950
MAGGIE: And so hopefully that gives a little bit of light there.
00:20:08.110 –> 00:20:10.570
MAGGIE: So that’s probably it from our engagement.
00:20:10.570 –> 00:20:12.710
MAGGIE: How are we managing the engagements?
00:20:12.730 –> 00:20:20.590
MAGGIE: We’ve got a pipeline view for the leader, and then we’ve got a working team view, and then we can get into the kind of meat of briefs here in a minute.
00:20:21.530 –> 00:20:22.150
JEREMY: Sounds great.
00:20:22.170 –> 00:20:23.050
JEREMY: Yeah, let’s do it.
00:20:23.070 –> 00:20:24.350
JEREMY: This is all good stuff.
00:20:26.030 –> 00:20:26.830
JEREMY: Lots of good stuff.
00:20:26.850 –> 00:20:32.390
JEREMY: I’m sure there will be a lot of people hitting pause and writing down notes and then rewinding and going again.
00:20:33.010 –> 00:20:33.470
MAGGIE: Love it.
00:20:35.530 –> 00:20:36.270
MAGGIE: Okay, awesome.
00:20:36.290 –> 00:20:38.610
MAGGIE: So let’s chat about creating briefs.
00:20:39.390 –> 00:20:43.610
MAGGIE: Again, the purpose of a brief is to prep your leader for whatever they are walking into.
00:20:44.350 –> 00:20:58.790
MAGGIE: We mentioned the level of prep will vary, but I’m going to go through some things to consider in a moment here, and you’re likely only going to choose a few of these things to include in your brief dependent on what the actual engagement is.
00:20:59.550 –> 00:21:05.830
MAGGIE: But as a chief of staff, it’s important to know when I’m talking through this that you may not be the one putting these briefs together.
00:21:06.050 –> 00:21:07.270
MAGGIE: You’re definitely going to be involved.
00:21:07.290 –> 00:21:09.070
MAGGIE: You’re going to make sure your leader’s getting it on time.
00:21:09.090 –> 00:21:11.090
MAGGIE: You’re going to make sure the process has been kicked off.
00:21:11.430 –> 00:21:15.450
MAGGIE: You may set up the process and own it for a while to ensure it’s running smoothly.
00:21:15.970 –> 00:21:18.530
MAGGIE: Or maybe at the end, you’re just finalizing the brief.
00:21:18.990 –> 00:21:23.670
MAGGIE: Either way, a well-done brief requires really strong process and collaboration.
00:21:25.650 –> 00:21:52.750
MAGGIE: For example, if you and we’ll kind of dive in here, but if you are wanting to brief your leader on the most recent sales information about, let’s say your leader’s meeting with another CEO of one of the products that your leader sells, and you want to talk about performance or the last sales meeting, you are definitely going to need to loop in the sales team to get the relevant information.
00:21:52.770 –> 00:21:55.690
MAGGIE: And you may also be working very closely with the EA.
00:21:55.710 –> 00:22:00.010
MAGGIE: You may be working closely with another group that just talked to these folks last week.
00:22:00.350 –> 00:22:02.570
MAGGIE: It’s a very, very strong process.
00:22:02.590 –> 00:22:04.770
MAGGIE: It’s driven by process and collaboration.
00:22:05.350 –> 00:22:07.710
MAGGIE: We get into a lot more of this in our course.
00:22:08.370 –> 00:22:17.470
MAGGIE: But when it comes down to kind of perfecting and practicing briefs, it really, you just need to do it a couple of times and you’ll feel super comfortable with it.
00:22:17.550 –> 00:22:20.150
MAGGIE: So components of an executive brief.
00:22:20.670 –> 00:22:36.830
MAGGIE: We are going to chat through logistics, some things to consider there, third party, things to consider if your leader is meeting outside of your company, relationship with the person that they’re meeting with, and then kind of the responsibility of your leader in the meeting.
00:22:37.510 –> 00:22:38.790
MAGGIE: So let me dive into those.
00:22:39.510 –> 00:22:42.970
MAGGIE: So from a brief perspective, what are the logistics that you want to include?
00:22:42.990 –> 00:22:44.470
MAGGIE: And again, it doesn’t have to be all of these.
00:22:44.850 –> 00:23:08.450
MAGGIE: Potentially date and time of the meeting, key attendee names, audience, if applicable, number of attendees, if it’s an event, agenda, if that’s the type of event they’re walking into, high-level summary of engagement goals, potentially the technology to be prepared with, Zoom, in-person, pre-recorded, music, whatever it is, and maybe some background about this event if it’s applicable.
00:23:08.550 –> 00:23:16.590
MAGGIE: So those are all potential, probably pretty important things to include if it’s applicable for the thing that your leader is walking into.
00:23:17.010 –> 00:23:26.710
MAGGIE: From a third-party perspective, who are the other executives attending and what information is needed to complete a good, you know, small summary of a biography?
00:23:27.430 –> 00:23:31.150
MAGGIE: Which executives are attending the meeting internally and externally?
00:23:31.170 –> 00:23:33.270
MAGGIE: Any personal facts that could be relevant?
00:23:34.490 –> 00:23:42.370
MAGGIE: Company, organization, overview from the other company that we’re meeting with, their industry, their sector, maybe their company size or market cap.
00:23:42.810 –> 00:23:47.530
MAGGIE: Maybe their employee count is really relevant because you’re talking about employee software, for example.
00:23:47.550 –> 00:23:51.310
MAGGIE: It all depends on what your meeting purpose is and who you’re meeting with.
00:23:52.150 –> 00:24:04.950
MAGGIE: Potentially their headquarters location, their company, strengths or opportunities if those are public, and then any key business updates or relevant things in the news that you want your leader briefed for before they walk into a meeting with this third party.
00:24:06.990 –> 00:24:10.530
MAGGIE: Next category here would be our relationships.
00:24:11.490 –> 00:24:16.350
MAGGIE: What are our business opportunities, initiatives, partnership goals, engagement objective?
00:24:16.690 –> 00:24:19.310
MAGGIE: Why do we want these people in our ecosystem?
00:24:19.410 –> 00:24:20.910
MAGGIE: What’s our goal, our business goal?
00:24:21.850 –> 00:24:30.330
MAGGIE: Our company business goal or our individual team business goal might be slightly different than our leader’s business goal with the specific person they’re meeting with.
00:24:30.910 –> 00:24:40.890
MAGGIE: If our CEO is meeting with another company CEO, they may have some goals to be thought leaders in the space and partner there a bit.
00:24:40.930 –> 00:24:44.630
MAGGIE: Our company goals may be to sell X number of products.
00:24:44.790 –> 00:24:50.390
MAGGIE: Both of those things are really relevant, so thinking about what are the goals of the company as well.
00:24:51.010 –> 00:24:56.090
MAGGIE: Current KPIs with the company, last interaction and noteworthy outcomes.
00:24:56.110 –> 00:24:57.090
MAGGIE: When did we meet last?
00:24:57.110 –> 00:24:58.170
MAGGIE: What did we talk about?
00:24:59.790 –> 00:25:04.950
MAGGIE: The lead individuals from our team and their team, managing the relationship.
00:25:05.250 –> 00:25:12.530
MAGGIE: So the leader may be meeting with the CEO, but their VP of product might be the person on the account.
00:25:12.590 –> 00:25:15.050
MAGGIE: Our leader should know a bit about the VP of product.
00:25:15.990 –> 00:25:21.230
MAGGIE: Other areas within our company that the third party may work with could include technology, marketing.
00:25:21.270 –> 00:25:25.650
MAGGIE: So you can kind of see here this is not comprehensive, but there’s a lot of places to go.
00:25:25.850 –> 00:25:32.970
MAGGIE: And I think most importantly and finally is what is the president’s or the leader’s role and responsibility in the meeting?
00:25:33.630 –> 00:25:34.310
MAGGIE: Why are they there?
00:25:34.590 –> 00:25:37.030
MAGGIE: Why does somebody want them there if it’s not driven by themselves?
00:25:37.290 –> 00:25:39.470
MAGGIE: What’s the key message to get across?
00:25:39.910 –> 00:25:45.890
MAGGIE: And if you need to include some script or some bullets around talking points, those should be on a brief.
00:25:47.370 –> 00:25:48.990
JEREMY: Minor detail, right?
00:25:49.010 –> 00:25:50.490
JEREMY: Like why am I at this meeting?
00:25:51.730 –> 00:25:52.610
MAGGIE: Yeah, exactly.
00:25:54.130 –> 00:25:55.470
MAGGIE: It’s been forgotten, believe it or not.
00:25:55.790 –> 00:25:56.470
JEREMY: Right, yeah.
00:25:56.830 –> 00:26:01.810
JEREMY: Well, and then if you can’t answer that question, then maybe they shouldn’t be in the meeting at all.
00:26:01.890 –> 00:26:03.090
JEREMY: And then there you go.
00:26:03.110 –> 00:26:04.130
JEREMY: You saved them some time.
00:26:04.970 –> 00:26:05.810
MAGGIE: Absolutely.
00:26:05.830 –> 00:26:07.110
MAGGIE: Yeah.
00:26:07.250 –> 00:26:15.770
MAGGIE: So I have a final example here for you, Jeremy, of like an example brief that we include in the Nova Chief of Staff certification course if you want me to share it.
00:26:15.950 –> 00:26:16.670
JEREMY: Yeah, that’d be great.
00:26:17.190 –> 00:26:17.510
MAGGIE: Okay.
00:26:17.850 –> 00:26:22.810
MAGGIE: So this is an example of how we are absolutely not using everything that I just went through.
00:26:23.670 –> 00:26:31.670
MAGGIE: It can probably sound a little daunting as I’m kind of reading off the list of all of the things included in potentially an executive brief.
00:26:32.030 –> 00:26:36.090
MAGGIE: So here’s a sample brief of what we teach in the course.
00:26:36.090 –> 00:26:39.950
MAGGIE: So this is a, and I’m just going to describe it as best as I can.
00:26:39.970 –> 00:26:47.250
MAGGIE: This is a marketing meeting between, for this example, Microsoft and TechSI marketing discussion.
00:26:47.730 –> 00:26:52.390
MAGGIE: We have meeting logistics, the date, the time, the Zoom link is in the invite.
00:26:52.490 –> 00:27:01.070
MAGGIE: We’ve got the meeting attendees, TechSI, there’s two people attending, CMO, Marketing Director, Microsoft, we’ve got the EVP and CMO attending.
00:27:01.530 –> 00:27:08.770
MAGGIE: Meeting agenda, we’ve got two o’clock introductions, 2.05 product demo, 2.20 open discussion and Q&A.
00:27:09.310 –> 00:27:17.370
MAGGIE: Meeting summary, TechSI and Microsoft partnership for the product launch in January 2024, et cetera, et cetera.
00:27:17.390 –> 00:27:18.410
MAGGIE: A couple more sentences there.
00:27:19.430 –> 00:27:25.990
MAGGIE: Product launch details, the reason why we product launched and the most recent information would be in that section.
00:27:26.070 –> 00:27:32.970
MAGGIE: And then we’ve got some background information on the kind of the lead on the Microsoft side, the EVP and CMO.
00:27:32.990 –> 00:27:39.550
MAGGIE: We’ve got a link to his LinkedIn and three bullets about the background for this leader.
00:27:39.970 –> 00:27:40.810
MAGGIE: And really, that’s it.
00:27:41.330 –> 00:27:43.610
MAGGIE: So it can look really comprehensive.
00:27:43.630 –> 00:27:44.270
MAGGIE: It can look quick.
00:27:45.170 –> 00:27:50.390
MAGGIE: But that’s an example of kind of where we land across all the options for a brief.
00:27:52.010 –> 00:27:52.450
JEREMY: Love it.
00:27:52.470 –> 00:27:54.990
JEREMY: And we’ll obviously people can reach out to you.
00:27:55.010 –> 00:28:08.730
JEREMY: I’ll put your bio and your all the links and everything in the show notes at leaderassistant.com/281leaderassistant.com/ 281 to reach out to Maggie.
00:28:08.750 –> 00:28:17.230
JEREMY: If you have any questions about any of this or if you want to see some of these examples and learn more about their certification course.
00:28:18.190 –> 00:28:19.390
JEREMY: But yeah, Maggie, that was great.
00:28:19.410 –> 00:28:20.610
JEREMY: Great conversation.
00:28:20.630 –> 00:28:22.350
JEREMY: Great, great topics.
00:28:22.370 –> 00:28:25.570
JEREMY: Super interesting and helpful and practical.
00:28:26.170 –> 00:28:27.270
JEREMY: Appreciate you sharing.
00:28:27.470 –> 00:28:36.550
JEREMY: And yeah, we’ll look forward to hopping on another conversation and talking about some other interesting topics soon.
00:28:37.670 –> 00:28:38.830
MAGGIE: Well, thanks for having me, Jeremy.
00:28:49.470 –> 00:28:51.950
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