Have you ever felt like you were just performing a role rather than thriving in it?
If that sounds familiar, we want you to know something: you’re not failing. You might just be in the wrong seat.
In this post, we’re walking you through each component of GWC and why it’s important to get the fit right. By the time you finish, you’ll have a clearer picture of where you stand and how to move forward.
What Is The GWC – And Why Does It Matter?
We talk to a lot of VAs, and one of the things we hear more than almost anything else is this: “I thought it was just me.” When something about a role feels misaligned, the assumption is usually that it’s personal, that there isn’t enough effort, that the attitude isn’t right, or that they’re not working hard enough. So they push through. They make it work. And they get quieter about the thing that’s bothering them.
We don’t think that’s the right answer. And we’ve built our matching process around a framework that says so.
GWC comes from the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), and it’s one of the lenses we use when we think about placement and team health. The idea is simple: for someone to truly thrive in a role, three things have to be true at the same time:
A team member has to Get It (G). They have to Want It (W). And they have to have the Capacity for it (C). Not two out of three. All three.
What It Means to Be in the Right Seat
We use GWC to give everyone, our internal team members, our matched VAs, and even our clients, a language for honesty. Because we’re not trying to fill a seat quickly, we’re trying to find the right one.
Being “good” at your job and being in the right seat are not always the same thing.
Competence is about capability, or what you can do. Fit is about alignment, and whether your natural gifts align with what the role asks of you, day after day. As a VA, you can be technically capable of managing a client’s inbox and still feel something draining out of you every time you open a laptop. Another VA might be newer and still learning certain tools, but comes completely alive in a role that fits their wiring. We’ve seen both, and we’ve learned to pay attention to the difference.
GWC offers a three-part way to examine that honestly. And we believe that clarity, even when it surfaces something uncomfortable, is always a gift. Knowing the truth about where you are is the only way to move towards a role where you can truly use your gifts to serve others.
The Three Questions: Gets It, Wants It, Capacity
Each component of GWC asks something different. Here’s how we think about each one, based on EOS’ principles.
Gets It: Do You Understand This Role at a Gut Level?
Gets It is about understanding a role from the inside: the why behind what you’re doing, the pace, the texture of the client relationship, the unspoken expectations that don’t show up in any job description. It’s an intuitive comprehension that goes beyond following instructions.
Gets It is different from Gets It Eventually. The VA who Gets It doesn’t just learn the job over time; they grasp it from the beginning. When a project shifts, they anticipate what that means downstream. When something isn’t on their task list but clearly needs to happen, they see it before anyone asks.
When Gets It is missing, it usually shows up as friction that’s hard to locate.
Things keep not quite landing. Feedback comes in that’s difficult to act on. There’s a feeling of always being one step behind something you can’t see. We want to be clear about this: that experience is not a moral failure. It may be a wiring mismatch! Wiring mismatches are real, they’re common, and they’re not a reflection of your worth. They’re providing information about fit to help find a better one.
Ask yourself: When you’re in the flow of this role, does it make sense to you instinctively — or do you find yourself constantly reacting to what’s asked rather than anticipating it?
Want It: Do You Actually Desire to Do This Work?
Want It asks whether you genuinely desire the work itself. Whether a full day in this role pulls you toward it or quietly pushes you away.
There are a lot of things to like about VA work: the flexibility, the ability to be present for your family, and the extra income that gives your household room to breathe. Those are good things to want, and they’re legitimate reasons to be here. But they’re different from wanting the work. You can deeply desire the life a role makes possible without actually wanting what the role asks of you each day. And over time, that gap becomes hard to sustain.
Ask yourself: If the pay and flexibility were equal across ten different roles, would you still choose this one? What parts of this work do you find yourself doing even when no one asks?
Capacity: Do You Have What It Takes Right Now?
Capacity is the most season-sensitive of the three, and it’s the one we see misread most often.
We think about Capacity in two dimensions. The first is skill-based: do you have the tools, the knowledge, the experience the role requires? The second dimension is bandwidth: do you have the emotional, mental, and practical capacity to show up for this role the way it needs you to right now?
What matters is being honest about which kind of Capacity gap you’re dealing with. Skill gaps and bandwidth gaps call for different responses, and neither one means you’re done. They mean it’s time for an honest conversation with yourself about what God wants for you, your family, and your future career.
Ask yourself: If this role came fully resourced (right tools, right hours, right support) could you do it well? And is there anything about your current season that’s making it harder than it needs to be?
How to Score Yourself: The GWC Self-Assessment
We didn’t create GWC — that credit goes to Gino Wickman and the EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) framework. But we’ve adopted it as one of our core internal tools at VAUSA to make sure every person is in the right seat. It’s shaped how we hire, how we support our VAs, and how we think about fit conversations when something feels off.
The self-assessment works best when you treat it as an honest conversation with yourself rather than a test to pass. For each component (Gets It, Wants It, Capacity)
You’re rating yourself yes, somewhat, or no. If all three are yes, you’re in a good seat! “Somewhat” is a completely honest answer, and often the most useful one. It tells you exactly where to look more closely.
Here’s what we’ve seen different combinations tend to mean.
- Gets It: Of the three, this one is the hardest to build because it’s less about what you know and more about how you’re wired. If your answer is no, a different kind of role might be a better fit.
- Wants It: Staying in a role out of inertia doesn’t serve you, and it doesn’t serve the client who deserves someone genuinely invested in their work. A no in this area is an invitation to get honest about what you actually want.
- Capacity: A no here opens a follow-up question: which kind? Skill gaps and bandwidth gaps are both workable; they just have different paths forward.
What to Do If You’re Getting “No” Answers
If you’re landing on no for one or more components, don’t stress. It’s not a closed door! It’s a starting point for honesty with yourself and a signal that something needs to change.
The first path is to address the gap directly. If you’ve found a specific skill or area of experience that’s missing, what would it take to build it? Is that something you want to pursue?
The second path is to look at whether the seat could be redefined. Roles aren’t always fixed, and sometimes the most useful conversation is the one where we look together at what’s working, what isn’t, and whether there’s a version of the role that actually fits (or a different role entirely that would).
The third path, the one that often takes the most courage, is to acknowledge that you need a different seat altogether. Hear us when we say this: this isn’t failure! Staying in a role that’s wrong for you doesn’t serve your growth, your client, or the calling you’re trying to live out. Moving toward a better fit is one of the most honest things you can do.
We also want to name something directly: for military spouse VAs, pivoting is complicated in ways that go beyond career preference. When income matters, and your family is counting on you, the idea of making a change can feel irresponsible, even reckless.
But here’s what we keep coming back to: Proverbs 3:5-6 doesn’t say trust your own assessment of the situation and figure it out. It says: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” That promise doesn’t have a career exception. It includes the hard, uncertain, what-if-this-doesn’t-work moments too.
We’re not saying a leap of faith means ignoring practical realities. It doesn’t. But we are saying that clinging to the wrong seat out of fear is its own kind of risk. The right seat isn’t a luxury. It’s a more sustainable answer than white-knuckling the wrong one. And when you bring that decision before God rather than carrying it alone, the path forward tends to get clearer than you expected.
The Right Seat Is Worth Looking For
We use GWC because we believe fit matters. Doing work you’re genuinely wired for is stewardship of the life and the gifts you’ve been given.
That’s what we’re trying to build at VAUSA. Not a roster of available VAs, but a community of people who are matched in the right seats, supported consistently, and known as whole people.
If you’ve worked through this post and the worksheet, you know something now that you didn’t know when you sat down. That knowledge belongs to you. The question is, what does God want you to do with it?
If you’re ready to find the seat that fits, we’d love to meet you.
