I was chatting to a friend of a friend the other night and was asked that all-important question: โWhat do you do?โ I went with my usual response of โIโm an Executive Assistantโ only to be probed slightly further with the follow-up query, โWhat do Executive Assistants do exactly?โ My off-the-cuff response was โI make my boss look good.โ
Thinking about it now, isnโt that exactly what we do, or at least should be striving for as assistants? Weโre employed to make our bossโs job easier, to take away unnecessary work, but how do we make them look great? Here are a few pointers that I think help us achieve that goal.
Understand the rhythm of your managerโs day. Itโs important to know at what point they are at their peak. Are they a morning or an afternoon person, do they take a while to get going or start to flag later on? A good way of finding this out is by monitoring when they need caffeine. Once you have this information you will know the best time to schedule meetings and when to leave time free for them to get stuck in to their emails or write reports.
Information is king. Ultimately, your manager needs to know what they are talking about, whether it is with the CEO, clients, the board or members of staff. To help them succeed, assistants should provide information in the right quantity and format that works best for the manager. Simple, right? Well no, not really โ how do we know what information they need, and surely we would be doing their job if we had that kind of knowledge?
In fact, we ought to have knowledge of their job and the business, so how can this best be achieved? Start by attending meetings with your manager, take notes and have them readily available if you need to refer back to what was discussed. Know what is going on elsewhere in the business and feed back this information. Get to grips with the office structure and how it relates to your boss โ whom does he need to see and who needs to see him?
Keep on top of tasks. Of course you have your own to-do list, but do you have one for your manager? Do you know what they need to achieve by the end of each day, week or month? It is a really good idea to have access to their task list (Microsoft Outlook is great for this) so that you can keep an accurate record of what they need to do.
A key characteristic of a successful person is that outward appearance of being on top of things. If you know they have an urgent deadline you can schedule time for them, rearrange meetings, or simply stop anyone interrupting them until that task has a tick next to it.
Get to grips with reputation management. From the moment you start working with your manager you should be figuring out what they are really bad at, so you know what to focus on being good at. Are they untidy, disorganised or constantly late for meetings? Whatever issue they have, work on the basis that you will excel at propping up their weaker side and this should make them so much better at their job.
Nicky Christmas is the founder of practicallyperfectpa.com, a website dedicated to the support and development of office assistants throughout the world. Nicky blogs about her experiences and knowledge, which has grown over the last decade as she worked her way up from Junior Administrator to Executive Assistant and Marketing Manager at a global events company. Now based in Barcelona, Nicky has experience working across a variety of industries, including accountancy, banking, insurance and the public sector
