Must Have Cognitive skills

High Level Cognitive Skills

Memory

Cognitive skills occupy a vital role in an individual’s overall development, as they include some of the brain’s core functions such as thinking, reading, learning, retaining information, and paying attention and are used to solve problems, remember tasks and make decisions. All this affects the quality of our learning and performance.

One of the most important cognitive skill an executive assistant should have, and build is Memory:

Memory/Long-Term

What it does: Enables you to recall information stored in the past.

Common problems when this skill is weak: Forgetting names, doing poorly on tests, forgetting things you used to know.

Memory/Working

What it does: Enables you to hang on to information while in the process of using it.

Common problems when this skill is weak: Having to read the directions again in the middle of a project, difficulty following multi-step directions, forgetting what was just said in a conversation.

As executive assistants / Virtual assistant we are walking breathing octopus with six arms and two legs as it refers to how much juggling we are required to do almost all at once in very limited time. And keeping track of these many tasks can be difficult, now we can rely on calendars and other application to help us properly organize our daily tasks, but the power and reliability of our memory cannot be spoken of enough.

As executive assistants we are the front-line officers and getaways to our executive and top management we work for, for every new client or important personnel that comes around they go through us first and your memory will serve you in this regard as it will come of as rude when you have to ask for their names even after the third meeting. As opposed to when we are quite familiar with clients and executives, a strong memory helps to cultivate a better relationship which will in turn help and make carrying out our duties.

Having a strong memory also sets us apart from the ton, the ability to remember intricate details enables us as Virtual assistants working with various clients to exceed in our dealings.

A strong memory helps us to remember and know our clients and their stories and businesses. Cause we have to juggle about four or more clients with different businesses varying from food businesses to travel agencies, logistics, all these require us to do different specified tasks as the businesses are not in any way similar, a good memory will help us avoid mistakes by doing the wrong assignment for the wrong business. This will not only be difficult to resolve especially once it has been publicized but it also questions our professionalism and make our clients question if we can actually deliver on promised services and our efficiency at large.

We have little to no room for errors as we have to protect not just our business but also our clients.

Listening is a cognitive skill built on learned behaviors, and it is important that as Virtual assistants we learn this cognitive skill as it is very important, it might be laughable thinking listening should be learnt ,as we believe we all do since we are not hearing impaired. But it takes a lot more and taking time out to practice listening without reacting immediately and also giving room for the other party to finish before responding if there is a need too.

The time dedicated to practice might seem long but it is necessary if we are to be successful.