Surrendering to Your Assistant

Updated 4/7/21

Note: This article was originally written in 2003, two years after I launched Heart of Business, and four years into being at least partially self-employed.

Sooner or later you are going to need help. A going, profitable developed business simply has too many tasks for you to do it all yourself, and that’s as it should be.

However, for many of us, we don’t know how to be in right relationship with people helping us, whether they are assistants on subcontract, regular employees, or collaborating colleagues.

A little more than a year ago [ed: “a year ago” means in 2002] I hired Zoe to assist me a few hours a week. Since then I’ve also added Andréa as a systems specialist, and my wife Holly has stepped in with some projects.

The last time I was in a management position I was running a magazine in San Francisco. It was a blast, but it was also very frustrating. Although I didn’t know it at the time, I was one of those “micro-managers,” with my fingers in everything.

Miracle of miracles, the magazine went from being irregularly published with a big debt, to breaking even and coming out on schedule, with improved content and improved layout. In the process I exhausted myself, the staff, and it collapsed shortly after I left.

It is very easy when you have an assistant or an employee to have the focus on you and how they can help you. And this is the obvious, *almost* intuitive way to look at the situation. So, what happens when you do this?

When you are the genuis and your helpers are “the help”, then your assistant becomes another task to manage, adding to your overwhelm, and you lose out on the majority of what they have to offer. You haven’t truly received help- you have just added arms, but your one brain and your one heart is trying to control them.

This is a big reason why many bosses end up feeling like they are running a kindergarten with their employees, and why many employees feel trapped in kindergarten.

The end result is that you as the business owner or manager don’t really get the help you need, whether it’s because you are running the kindergarten, or because you suspect this might happen and feel like it’s easier to just do it yourself. Sound familiar?

Case in point: One client I have is running a retail store, and the store is doing pretty well, yet there are some wonderful opportunities to expand the business. Unfortunately the overwhelm of day-to-day tasks keeps him from exploring them. Why? Because although there are employees doing all sorts of things, there is no one who is trusted enough to handle the really high-level guiding of the store that is needed on a daily basis. No trust = no freedom.

The way out: You must surrender to your employee or assistant. What does this mean, “surrender to your employee?” This concept may frighten you, and runs counter to standard business thinking. But standard business thinking is what got you exhausted and stuck in the first place. Ready to try something new?

To surrender to your employee means that the focus is not on you.

Instead, the focus is on a common shared business goal and you are showing them your need for their help to get there. It means that you place your heart in their hands and you trust in the person you are asking to assist you, that you are vulnerable with them, and that they know all of this.

This is not a needy collapse onto them. This is also not abandoning your own decisions and directions about the business. When Zoe first answered my classified ad, we had a conversation.

I told her, “I’ve done management before, and I’ve been managed before, and it didn’t work very well. I want to tell you directly that I need help. I know where I want to go, and I have some ideas of what I need done. But I don’t know exactly all of how we can get there together. You and I are going to, together, discover how to do this relationship.”

The result of this attitude: she contributes at a much higher level, and with very valuable ideas and input than as a mere assistant. I pay her more than I might someone just doing tasks, but she is worth so much more. She is self-directing. She is self-motivated. And she has told me that I’m the best boss she has ever had. I’m not surprised, she’s the best employee I’ve ever had.

Where we’ve arrived is that I have someone who I can trust, and who trusts me, and together we are both facing the business and who the business is serving, and I’m not needing to “manage” her.

Keys to Receiving Help

• To get help, first you have to recognize that you need help. You are needy. You are perhaps overwhelmed, or burnt-out, or stuck. You can’t do it on your own. Recognizing this you will realize that simply more tasks done won’t change your situation, because in any business the list of jobs is endless. You need a complete change in perspective.

• Start slow– Do not grab an hourly employee and suddenly dump management responsibility on them- that’s the “needy collapse” I mentioned above. Through trusting your heart, find someone already in your organization, or in your life with whom you could start to have this kind of a conversation. You are not looking for the ultimate business partner, yet, but someone to start with on a smaller scale.

• This only works if someone you hire enjoys and agrees with what your business is about. Read Business Heart(tm) More Than Your Category (11/11/2003).

Don’t just hire a warm body to get a job done- it’s far better, and more efficient, to take the time to find someone whom you can trust.

• Most importantly, surrender is not an action step, it is a relationship. It requires ongoing presence, and gives tremendous freedom. If you find yourself worrying about your assistant’s performance, this is a classic example of not being in surrender yourself.

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Exercise: Surrendering to Your Help

1. Start the Remembrance. For those unfamiliar with this, it is to repeat the Name of the Divine, whatever you use to call to the Highest Light, and saying it into your heart. Not with the idea of fixing anything, or healing anything, or seeing anything. It’s just remembering that there is something more than just you in the mix. If anyone has questions about the remembrance, please ask me. It’s fairly simple, but there are easy places that people sometimes get stuck.

2. Begin to feel a place in your business where you need help. A good clue is that you feel overwhelmed by it. Make space for this feeling, and feel your helplessness to doing it yourself.

3. In your heart, look through your organization, through your acquaintances, through your friends, or other professionals. Is there someone you already know that your heart trusts to accept help from, and with whom you would like to begin to work?

4. Feel your strength in your business as well. If someone were to come help you, what can your heart offer them in return? It’s important to feel your strength in another area, so that you don’t simply collapse on them, but can give to them as well.

5. Using the remembrance, what would an honest, vulnerable conversation look like? “I feel overwhelmed dealing with the tasks around marketing, and it sometimes makes me sad and even frightened. Half the time I’m not even sure I’m doing the right things. I need help looking at this, and figuring out how we can best deal with this in the business together. How does this feel to you, and where would you need support?”

6. See what happens from this!

With love,
Mark Silver, M.Div.
Heart of Business, Inc.
Every act of business can be an act of love.

Next steps?

Virtual Retreat April 30th.

We have a Virtual Retreat coming up April 30th, a time to go deeply into your heart and receive guidance and insight around what you and your business needs.

I’ve run nearly 100 of these Virtual Retreats since 2005, and usually they are only offered within our Learning Community. However, this is one of the opportunities for anyone to register, whether you’re a member of the community or not.

See if you want to join us: Virtual Spiritual Business Retreat

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