Key Takeaways from 20th Annual Conference for Administrative Excellence

Once again, we were honored with amazing speakers at our 20^th Annual Conference for Administrative Excellence in Las Vegas. Not only were we inspired but given specific strategies. I want to share with you my big takeaways from a few of the general session and one concurrent session speakers.

Dan Lier, international speaker and best-selling author, spoke on Being the Best You! He spoke about failure with emphasis on shortening our recovery time. His 3 take aways are:

• Manage your mind set when you have had a failure. And beware of the “story” you create from it, which led to . . .
• The Power of Interpretation. Dan said that it is how we interpret the failure that is important. The fact that we failed at something is just that . . . we failed or something didn’t work out like we thought. That’s all there is to it.
• We have to ask ourselves power questions: How? What? Why? What lessons can we learn and move forward as fast as possible.
• BONUS: Dan said, “When you have messed up or things did not go like you anticipated, tell yourself, I had a learning day.”

Mike Song, author of the newly-released book, ZIP! Tips, was amazing. Mike taught us about all these cool robots we have available with our technology that we never make use of because 1) We don’t make the time/don’t have the time, and 2) They are not easily visible. If you know where to look, which Mike showed us where to look, you can become a productivity super hero. His 3 big take aways are:

• We’re not using our technology to its fullest extent. There are robots that will do things for us; we just need to activate them.
• Explore; have fun; search; you will find hidden gems.
• Even if you aren’t a technology whiz, think of yourself as one. You will learn one little ZIP! Tip at a time.

Chrissy Scivique, founder of EatYourCareer.com, enlightened us with her Mind Over Job presentation. Here are her 3 great takeaways. See what you think.

• We create our stories. (That sounds a little familiar to what Dan told us but in a different arena.)
• We all have a little gremlin who can bring us down with negative thoughts. We need to tell our gremlin to be quiet.
• We have about 65,000 thoughts throughout the day; 95% are the same thoughts as yesterday; we repeat negative thoughts over and over. So we have to change the negative thoughts to positive thoughts and repeat those day after day.

Debbie Gross, Chief Executive Assistant to John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems had us laughing with her real-life stories of executive assistants in
Did That Just Really Happen? Debbie shared many ideas with us, but here are 3 takeaways.

• Learn to stop beating yourself up at times or taking the job and yourself too seriously—to laugh at one’s self is great medicine and is reflected back by others.
• Create an atmosphere within your organization that invites less stress, more fun and opens communication channels.
• Start a “Things I’ll Never Do Again” journal along with a “Super Human Feats I Have Accomplished” journal.

That is just a small sampling of the great information we were introduced to at our event. If you would like to learn more from the above experts plus hear from other dynamic speakers and several of my sessions, you can purchase the online conference program now. Take advantage of more than 10+ hours of learning that you can view at your own pace, when and where you choose. You can also play certain sessions repeatedly.

Watch all 14 sessions and get the handouts! Available now.