*** The Importance of Having a VA Fit into Your Company's Culture

When considering working with a VA, there’s much to think about, and much to work through. One of the most important is how the VA is going to fit into your company’s culture. If you’re a solopreneur, you’ve probably never thought about your company’s culture, but it exists, absolutely.

Whatever is there is probably derived from your personality, and what you value. If your company is small, but larger than a one-person show, chances are the culture is still based on what you value. That being true, anyone you bring into your business needs to be a match to that culture, including any VA you work with.

As much as skills matter, consider that this kind of fit matters every bit as much, and maybe more. This is, after all, the person who is going to be your right hand, and to whom you’re likely to be giving the keys to the proverbial kingdom. Who more needs to be on the same page with you, sharing similar or congruent values and drivers than she? No one, that’s who!

By way of example, at my company, AssistU, one of our core values revolves around grace. It’s incredibly important to me that every person who has a role that touches customers be infinitely gracious. Graciousness cannot be feigned. When it is, it’s immediately felt, or sensed, as being passive aggressiveness, seductive, or manipulative. If our customers and students felt that from anyone on our staff there would be an immediate disconnect for them in their experience of us, and it would be so very upsetting to me. So our need is to find people who aren’t simply skilled at acting graciously, but who are, in fact, gracious. Once we know that’s present, we turn to look at the skills the people have.

If graciousness was key to your culture, you’d need to find a VA to partner with (in the relationship sense, not the legal!) who had that trait. Skip over it, maybe for someone who seems to have better skills, and you’ll absolutely end up miserable.

Skills can be taught. Remember that.

And so it’s not about finding someone with great skills and trying to then get her to morph into someone who fits in, but about finding someone who authentically fits in, and who can also get everything you need done handled—whether she can do it herself or uses someone else to give you the result you’re looking for.. A great VA should absolutely have the ready resources to get it all done—whatever “it” is, so relax on the need to have someone with all the right skills, and instead, focus on fit to find the virtual administrative partner meant for you!