How to Work Successfully with Your Administrative Assistant: What Every Executive Should Know

Working with an administrative assistant can be frustrating, successful, bewildering, and mutually beneficial for both the executive and the administrative assistant. Making that work more beneficial and mutually rewarding can be among the most challenging aspects of an executive’s life; especially a new executive. Your administrative assistant can be your greatest asset or biggest liability. “How to Work Successfully with Your Administrative Assistant” provides ‘how to’ information to work well with your administrative assistant and how to avoid some of the pitfalls that all too often occur.
Written from firsthand experience first as an executive in different industry sectors and then later, in semi-retirement, as an administrative assistant, the author discusses and describes how an executive’s actions may be interpreted by an admin assistant, others in the work place, and how those interpretations can affect work place productivity, environment, and relationships. Are you a neat freak or an organized slob? Change agent or maintainer of the status quo? Consistent or consistently inconsistent? All of these things matter greatly when dealing with an administrative assistant. Being able to assess these things in your admin and in others is one thing. Being able to assess them honestly in yourself and then being able to articulate those points is quite another thing, and major key to your success with your assistant.
Using a Who, What, When, Where perspective that looks at knowing one’s self, knowing one’s assistant, the environment you are working in, and when particular actions occur, this book examines how you can make or break the relationship with your administrative assistant. Knowing your own preferences; why your assistant is in the position he or she occupies; and the nuances of the specific environment you may be thrust into will enable you to deal with all of those factors to maximize the effectiveness of your admin while minimizing any potential frustration. Understanding these factors will also make you an executive for whom other administrative assistants will want to work.