Kimberly Baker

The best career advice I've ever received is recognizing when good is good enough. I think a lot of times we aim for perfection, and not only can it take up more time than it should, but it puts more pressure on ourselves. Especially in today's society, when we see so many highlights and perfect reels and perfect posts on social media, it's intimidating to try and live up to that standard. And sometimes I think that is in our own heads. It's not necessarily that your leader or your stakeholder wants everything to be exactly perfect. Recognizing when good is good enough is something that I will always work on, and I think it's been great because it's helped me timebox. It's helped me say, okay, you're just spending time on something no one else is going to notice but you. And to still achieve the same results gives me that proof that it doesn't have to be perfect. The font doesn't have to be stressed over, or those tiny, tiny details, as long as I've got all of the things covered.

I am lucky enough that I have been around younger women in the workplace, and I'm inspired so much by them, as much as I even want to advocate and mentor. They teach me so much all the time, and one of the things I admire is the way that they're so confident in being themselves and asking for the right thing and doing the right thing. I grew up in a time where you faded into the background. So I think for any young woman coming into the workplace, it is owning that. Owning your development, because I really believe that no one is going to take care of you the way that you can take care of you. You know yourself best. Bringing your ideas to someone more experienced can help in getting that advice that you need to navigate to reach those goals within the network and within what your resources are. A lot of times, mentors and those who have been in the field longer can point you to different people and different resources to accelerate your goal. Sometimes I think we're afraid to ask, and especially if you are in a support role where you're the one usually taking care of the request, it can be difficult to ask for help yourself. So I think those two things, building your network, not just people who are like you, but those who will also challenge you and those who will champion for you, and just giving yourself grace, those are the things that I would probably point out.

I think the biggest challenge and area of opportunity is finding a way for the industry to become consistent about job titling, job salaries, and responsibilities. Even 10 years ago, there seemed to be more of a push about the strategic partnership that assistants provide, moving away from the traditional transactional, task-oriented role into being that proactive and being into the details, being into the research. Now, with AI, it's definitely quickened that. I can easily scan things and get a summary and get that to my executive a lot faster. I think that's something that a lot of assistants are afraid of, that it's going to automate them out of a job, but I firmly believe that if you train yourself on those resources, those are the folks who are going to be at the forefront and the valuable assistants and partners their executives going forward.

One of the values I learned here at Hyper is do the right thing always, and I think I pride myself on being kind of the pulse check of any team that I'm on. I once explained it to an executive that employees are going to talk to your assistant like a bartender. They're going to say something to me differently than they would to you. They're checking your reaction, they're checking what they're saying and carefully crafting the way that they say it, whereas with your assistant, it's more of a sounding board. It's a way to just kind of get it off their chest. So a lot of times I find myself in the middle of those things where employees just feel comfortable enough, and thankfully I'm approachable enough that they trust me in confidence. I have found a way to be able to relay those concerns or risks, and even wins. When I notice that a team has done really well, I make sure to tell our executives to send them a kudos or recognize them in the next meeting. Sometimes it's things where I don't use a name at all, but it's more about calling out the risk. If I do not keep their confidence, I will lose it, and they will not come to me, and we will not be able to say, hey, the team is feeling down. I had a particularly tough situation here at Hyper, and it just didn't feel good. I hesitated and really thought over whether to even bring it up in a check-in. Thankfully it all ended up well, but one of the things that my leaders told me at the time was sometimes when you do the right thing, it doesn't always feel good. We still have to do it. It's not comfortable, but we still have to do it.