Appointments on my Outlook Calendar that Tick Me Off

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Revolutionary Assistant

I am meeting with an account representative from a large travel provider next week, and, like every eager sales professional does, she took my email and promised to send along an invite for my Outlook calendar.  As soon as I hung up the phone and counted to ten, that invite was in my inbox, waiting for me to respond.

The meeting name?  It was the name of the company I work for.

I’m sure that when this sales exec looks on her calendar, she finds this information very helpful.  She views the upcoming day’s events and says, “Oh, I have a meeting at 11:00 AM with Acme, Incorporated!”

But me, I look at my calendar and think, “What is this?  Is this a meeting for me?”  Because the title of the meeting is my company name, and that doesn’t tell me a darned thing!  It says, “Acme, Incorporated” on my calendar.  Yup, that’s me!

The purpose of a Revolutionary Assistant is to make EVERYONE more productive, and when you send along a request that tells a busy executive what company she works for and nothing else, that’s not productive enough!  The subject of a meeting notice should contain helpful information to help attendees understand what’s going to be expected of them even before they open the invite.  They should know what’s coming just by glancing at it on their smartphones or tablets.  They shouldn’t have to dig.

Here are some rules that I use when sending along a meeting invite from my calendar:

Include all participants and their assistants on the send list – I like to send along a meeting notice to assistants as well as executives, so that if I’ve misspelled a name or missed an underscore in an email, the meeting will still get through and the assistant will know it’s arrived.  Also, many assistants like to have important calls on their calendars, so they receive reminders as well as their managers.

Put participants and subject in the subject line – If I send out a meeting invite on behalf of my manager, I’ll write on it: “Conf Call – Jack Jones, Worldwide Widgets/John Smith, Acme, Inc.”  If there are more than two people meeting, I’ll put in the company names and the highest ranking participant, or even just “Conf Call – Worldwide Widgets/Acme, Inc. – open for participants.”  And then I add participants into the body of the email.

A small confession: I do help make it easier for my manager when I send out these emails.  Whenever he has a call with Jack Jones, I always put Jack’s name first on the invite.  Why?  Because when my manager is looking at his smartphone, the calendar is small and shrinks down that invite so that only the first few words show.  I want him to see Jack Jones’ name first and not his own if there’s only three words to see.

Location and dial-in info should make sense for both – I can’t tell you how many times I’ve received a meeting invite for an offsite gathering that says, “West Conference Room.”  My manager has to leave the office, go to the other participant’s office, and meet with him in a conference room.  That’s all they’re giving us to go on?  “West Conference Room”???

If participants are coming to your office for this meeting, include all the information they’ll need to get to you.  Your company name, your address, a notation that there’s a link to Google Maps or Mapquest in the body of the invite.  And then, for the people participating in your own office, add that conference room name in, too.  This way, the invite is useful for everyone.

Don’t include info within the body of the invite unless you point it out – I can’t tell you how many times I’ve included important information within a meeting invite, only to have an assistant accept the invitation right from her inbox, without ever opening it, without the exec ever seeing it.  “Open invite for details” is one of the most valuable phrases you can use, to make sure that this critical information isn’t overlooked.

Be careful of time zones! – If you’re planning meetings on the west coast and you’re in New York, it’s sometimes helpful to indicate time zones and times in your meeting invite.  Not only does it reassure your manager that you’ve considered the time zones in your placement of the meeting (the12:00 noon meeting takes place at 9:00 AM in California!), it acts as a checks and balances to make sure you’ve done the math right.  If your manager’s in Asia and sees that you’ve written in that the call takes place at noon Shanghai time but accidentally added it for 11:00 AM Shanghai time, he’ll know something’s wrong and seek clarification.  (Hey, sometimes time zones get mathematically confusing!!)

The next time you send out an invite, stop and think, “Is this information I’ve included going to be useful to everyone?”  Does everyone know who they’re talking to and when?  What can I do to make sure everyone gets together at the same time?  If everyone can see the gist of the meeting at a glance, then you’ve done your job.  It helps all the participants be more productive and get to the right place at the right time with the right information!

Next post:  Wednesday, May 29

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Is That A Truthful Hotel Review?

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Revolutionary Assistant

We’ve all been there before – the boss comes back from a business trip and tells you, “That was the worst hotel I’ve ever stayed in.  Please make sure you check these places out first.”

With all the chatter about fake online hotel reviews nowadays (TripAdvisor has had their hand smacked for claiming their hotel reviews were truthful when clearly some are being posted by the hotels themselves), it’s hard to determine whether a hotel is really good or not.  Here are some hints that can help you make sure that your manager’s next trip is a happy one:

Check for the overly enthusiastic – Very often, a rookie self-reviewer will make rookie mistakes.  Check for things written in all caps or followed by a herd of exclamation marks.  It’s not very often a real reviewer will do that.

Is the review really about the hotel? – A slick self-reviewer will slip up when he talks too much about the surrounding areas of the hotel and not the hotel itself.  Usually, authentic reviewers will tell you, “The pool was open until midnight and my kids had a blast,” but a fake review might say, “The hotel was close to a lot of great shops and restaurants.”

Reviews that are too long or too short – Fake reviewers either don’t take any time at all, or go overboard and write a novel.  Be wary of the review that goes in either direction.

Consider reviews from a variety of sites – Trip Advisor isn’t the only site out there that reviews hotels.  Sites like hotels.com and Priceline also provide reviews, and your own travel booking tools may, as well.  You don’t have to look very far to find more than a couple of different sources.

Check the prices and reviews of the hotels in the surrounding area – A quick Google search will give you a variety of hotels in the area your manager is visiting.  A lot of times, those surrounding hotels can also give you an idea of what the area and the quality of the businesses are.  Look at prices – are there hotels nearby offering rooms for $39 a night?  If it’s not a hotel in the middle of nowhere, you may want to look elsewhere.

Ask other assistants for their opinion and feedback – If your manager is headed somewhere on business, it’s likely that other people from your company may have headed there, too.  Use the administrative network to see if anyone else has a hotel they can recommend – or warn you away from!

If your manager travels like mine does, the hotel you choose for him or her is an important part of the equation!  Use these tools to ensure that your manager will have a safe, happy and, most importantly, a productive trip!

Next post:  Wednesday, May 22

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Affecting the Administrative Hiring Process in Your Office

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Revolutionary Assistant

In this economic atmosphere, everyone is expected to do more with less, spinning corporate magic while understaffed. Administrative professionals are no exception.  So when it’s time to hire an administrative teammate to help lighten that load, why is it that most of us sit back and hope for the best?

Whether you work for a small company or a large one, your business is dependent on an administrative staff that can make things happen.  Does your company make sound hiring choices, bring in assistants who have the right skills, the right motivation, the right attitude?  Even if they’re close to hitting the nail on the head when it comes to making good hires, having an administrative professional on the interviewing team can make their wins even better.

It’s time to volunteer yourself for that tour of duty, and affect the hiring of administrative staff in your workplace.  And here’s why:

You know what an administrative professional does better than anyone.  This may seem obvious, but it’s not!  More often than you think, when an executive is asked what his assistant does, he’ll respond, “She manages everything for me” or “He’s magic.”  That level of specificity is not going to bring the correct talent on board!  A manager is reluctant to say, “I need someone who will kick me off my calendar and do it all for me.”  But you probably know that it’s exactly what the doctor ordered.  Help the executive get what he needs, and what he doesn’t know he needs, too.

Your new assistant is a teammate to the company’s administrative group as well as her manager.  If your company has an administrative staff of more than a person or two, it’s important that the group works well together, respects one another and helps each other make the day productive and satisfying.  After all, if you’re suddenly charged with getting four executives and five members of the board together in the same room, it’s reassuring to call an assistant who will work with you to accomplish the task.  You understand your administrative group’s dynamic and know the pain of working with an assistant who doesn’t want to play nice in the sandbox when important issues come up.  A spot on the interviewing team gives you an opportunity to make sure that the candidate’s work ethic and personality blends with the rest of the group.

Your company will attract a better quality administrative professional if an administrative professional is involved in the hiring process.  The best administrative assistant wants the chance to help her company improve everything, and seeing you, a fellow assistant, sitting across the table from her doing the interviewing speaks volumes for the kind of opportunities your company can provide her.  A quality candidate will have more respect for a company that puts an assistant on the interviewing committee because, to her, that company is saying, “We value the contributions our administrative professionals make here, and we value their input into important business decisions – like bringing on a new employee.”

Interviewing skills are a great addition to your portfolio.  Learning how to talk to people, how to ask the right questions and read behaviors will help you in many facets of your business.  Not only will you be able to help bring the right people on board for your company, but you’ll be able to apply these skills to interviewing vendors, assessing customer needs, etc.  It also looks great on a resume!

So, the next time an administrative position is posted, get involved!  It’s good for you and it’s good for the company!

Next post:  May 15, 2013

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Emoticons in Business :-) or >:-/ ?

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Revolutionary Assistant

When I began my two-year stint with Google, I was miserable.  Fifteen years older than the rest of the people I worked with, I was used to assisting serious Fortune 500 executives and was having a hard time adapting my style to assisting a lower level of management and a constituency of 200+ co-workers who’d been out of college less than three years.  Getting a message across to anyone in the style I was used to was nearly impossible.  In fact, during my first performance review, I was told by my manager that my email communications sounded harsh and that I should consider using smiley faces in my writing.

Smiley faces??

In my former position, I communicated regularly with c-level personnel.  When I was asking a question by email, I was short and to the point.  When I was responding to a question…ditto.  In no way did the leader of our company want or expect from me any sort of visual “sunshine.”  And what did I have here at Google?  Well, in my opinion they were a bunch of whiny kids whose feelings were hurt when I wrote an email that said, “Please do X.  Thank you.”

I wanted to tell my manager that he was out of his mind, and there was no place for a freakin’ smiley face in serious business correspondence.

But what I actually did was start using smiley faces.  And you won’t believe how ticked off I was when I saw that they actually worked, that people took a renewed liking to me and welcomed me more into their world.  I was deemed newly “Googley” and saw that I was able to get a lot more cooperation, a lot more accomplished.

Articles have been written and studies done on the use of emoticons in the professional world, and the results are heavily divided.  Some sources reluctantly acknowledge they exist and recommend using them almost never, others are beginning to endorse them as a means of communicating emotion that might not be conveyed in words alone.  I will take the stand that you need to consider your audience and your message . . . and if the moment calls for an emoticon, use it!

For instance, I prepare a lot of office-wide communications.  Some are in the vein of company strategy messages, or new instructions on how to use an expense reporting tool.  I’m not likely to say something like, “Hey, remember to split out the food and beverage from that hotel bill!  We don’t want the comptroller coming after us! :-) ”  Things like detailed instructions and messages about company direction are not flippant, whimsical communications, and you don’t want your audience taking them as such.

But if I’m telling them what we’re having for a company-wide lunch, or letting them know about the shoe shine service downstairs, an emoticon might creep into my writing.  If I’m asking the group to adopt a new behavior to avoid irritating consequences, I might throw in a smiley face to soften the blow: “We must remember to rinse our dishes and put them in the dishwasher.  Food left in the sink starts to smell bad, it looks bad and, well…you and I both know, it’s just gross!  :-)    Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.”

Emails lack personality and almost anything can sound harsh.  Emoticons smooth the rough edges and convey the emotion that’s behind the message.  When relationships matter so much in business, there can’t be anything too wrong with the judicious use of a smiley face here and there.

I’ve long since left those smart Google kids behind, but even in my new job, my fellow co-workers will come up to me and say, “I love your emails.  You’re so sweet.”  I like being thought of as sweet.  It helps me get the job done.

:-)

Next post:  Wednesday, May 8

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What I Want for Administrative Professionals Day

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Revolutionary Assistant

I feel very lucky to be in a profession that’s celebrated annually.  Today, the world is stopping to recognize people like you and me.  They don’t recognize welders or taxi drivers, but they recognize us.  That’s pretty special, don’t you think?

I get flowers and lunches on Administrative Professionals Day, and believe me, I appreciate the thoughts and sentiments that go into that.  It is, after all, just another Hallmark holiday, and I don’t expect a thing.  But if I were to have a “wish list” for this day, it would not be full of flowers and lunches.  I don’t need those.  What I’d love, are chances.

I would like the chance to do more in my position.  If my manager told me that I was getting the opportunity to work on a new project, something that challenges and stretches my abilities, the result would be a more useful me.  I’d get more out of my work, and be able to give more back.

I would like the chance to learn something new.  A small amount of money spent to bring in a speaker or a coach to talk to me and my fellow assistants would be very beneficial.  I could improve my work and bond with my most valuable teammates.

I would like the chance to broaden my impact.  A day spent in another department shadowing a coworker would allow me to spend a day in someone else’s shoes and give me a better understanding of how to work with others in my organization.  That would allow me to enhance my professional relationships and organizational knowledge.

I would like the chance to spend more professional time with my manager watching her do what she does best.  Accompanying her on a site visit and assisting “at the scene” would be a great learning experience, allowing me to learn how to better anticipate her needs when I’m not with her.

I would like the chance to share with others what I do.  There’s still folks in my office who think that I type memos and make flight reservations all day.  I’d love the opportunity to show them that being an assistant is so much more than that, that it’s a really rewarding position and more people should consider it.

Flowers are always nice, but nothing beats a vaseful of chances when it comes to the perfect Administrative Professionals Day gift.  Helping me develop into a leaner, wiser assistant is the best gift any manager can ever give me.

Happy Administrative Professionals Day from the Revolutionary Assistant!

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The Singularly Focused Assistant

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Revolutionary Assistant

We all work hard to be the best partners we can be to our managers.  We dote on their every need, fill every void . . . it’s the Revolutionary thing to do!  But every once in a while, we need to step back and remember that our managers are not the ultimate focus of our work.  There’s a bigger picture out there!

I have worked in the past with assistants who see nothing beyond their managers’ most recent requests.  These assistants see it as their mission in life to fulfill these requests at the expense of anything and everything else.  After all, the manager is the boss, right?  Whatever he says goes!

That assistant just ticks me off!  Here’s why!

Her “singular focus” doesn’t take into consideration what her manager doesn’t know – Perhaps her manager has asked her to police the collection of data for a call he wants to have with the entire department.  Like a good assistant, she approaches her manager’s direct reports and asks them to assemble the data her manager needs.  Immediately, there’s pushback.

“We’re having a distribution issue, and I can’t take my folks off that until our problems are solved,” one direct report tells her.  “I can’t get you this data until after that.”

The Singularly Focused Assistant says, “No, I need it for him today.  This is what he asked for and he’s the boss.”

One of two things will happen here as a result of that singular focus.  Either the distribution issue will be put aside and cost the business more money while the problem goes unsolved, or the direct report will go over her head, make a call to the manager and explain the situation, asking for a bye on the data until the problems at hand are under control.

The Revolutionary Assistant steps back for a moment and thinks about that distribution issue.  Perhaps her manager isn’t fully aware of the amount of work it’s taking to get the distribution center operational again.  “I will let him know that collecting this data will be difficult until this is under control,” she says.  “What’s the ETA on a solution?  Perhaps we’ll plan the all-department call for after that, so we have more to report.”

A manager’s needs aren’t entirely fulfilled unless the Revolutionary Assistant is supporting the entire team.  After all, a manager does not work alone.  Whether you’re actually supporting the team by assisting them or just making sure your manager is aligned with his direct report’s needs, the Revolutionary Assistant’s job is to help create this balance and keep lines of communication open.

Her singular focus takes away from the greater good – Her manager’s needs are not more important than the needs of the entire office.  For instance, say the company has just executed a large-scale, full-company move.  A team of employees are working non-stop over the weekend to ensure that the company doesn’t lose precious hours of 9-5 productivity as a result of the distraction.

She comes in, and her manager’s desk is not quite right.  The height of his chair needs to be adjusted, a panel screwed into the wall, a book case moved a little to the right.  So she grabs the two handy-men that are installing the dishwasher in the kitchen to help her with this.  After all, her manager needs to get right down to work on Monday morning.

They fix that panel, adjust that chair, help her move that book case.  She finds a couple more things wrong, and the fabulous handy-men help you with that, too.  Problem is, the dishwasher isn’t getting installed in the kitchen, the seven cubes that need to be wired with electricity have not been done, and a large chunk of her manager’s team is not going to be productive as a result.  Does this really help her manager?

The Revolutionary Assistant will come in Monday morning and say, “You know, boss, I know that things aren’t quite right in here, but your computer works and your files are where you want them.  We can work on the rest today.  I was here all weekend helping to make sure the other 85 people in our department could get down to work today.”

Her singular focus alienates her – The more a singularly focused assistant dotes on the needs of her boss at the expense of others, the more she will be hated. This makes it hard for her to get her manager’s mission accomplished.  If she really does need that data for a call, her manager’s direct reports will go the extra mile for her because they like her and know her to always do the right thing.  If she really needs that data and she has plowed over them many times before to get what her manager wants, they’re likely to retaliate.

What’s the worst case scenario here?  Managers sometimes don’t stick around for long.  If she’s singularly focused on a manager at the expense of his direct reports, and then that manager gets reassigned, quits, or gets fired…well, there she is, standing alone with her enemies.  I’ve seen more than one assistant be escorted out of the building the minute the manager’s car leaves the parking lot.

A Revolutionary Assistant serves the needs of her manager, but what her manager asks for or needs isn’t the best choice for the company every single time.  There’s nothing wrong with revisiting a request or making a choice that’s not to the best benefit of your manager if it means ensuring the productivity of the group or the growing bottom line of the company.  After all, your manager’s only human, and he counts on you to keep an eye out for his group as much as he does!

Next post: Wednesday, April 24

Posted in Collaboration, Partnership, Professional Image, Professional Relationships | Leave a comment

If You Want Them To Remember Your Content…Make It Hard To Read!

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Revolutionary Assistant

Huh?

No, really!  A recent study highlighted in the Harvard Business Review shows that people remember what they’ve read if they had to read it in a small, hard-to-read font.

Daniel Oppenheimer, associate professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University, worked with two other colleagues to determine if high school students would retain more if they had to read information in a small, hard-to-read font.  They tested this by asking the group to memorize the biological profiles of two fictitious species of animals.  The first pretend creature, the pangerish, was profiled on paper in a gray 12-point Comic Sans or Bodoni font, while the write-up on the second creature, the norgletti, was done in a black 16-point Arial.  After fifteen minutes of distraction, the students were able to recall 87% of the pangerish profile, but only 73% of the norgletti profile.

Furthermore, the students who were exposed to Powerpoint slides and handouts using less legible typefaces performed better on tests than the students who saw the same material in more legible type.  The theory behind these revelations is that the harder-to-read, harder-to-digest materials created a disfluency for the reader.  In other words, the student’s confidence in his ability to understand the material lowered, and so he slowed down and concentrated harder on remembering it.

As Revolutionary Assistants, we’ve been working very hard all these years to make sure that Powerpoint slides are clear and legible, but perhaps that’s the wrong route to take!  If we want folks to read and understand a memo, do we need to write it in purple Monotype Corsiva?

Studies show that the answer to this would be yes, but only if your memos aren’t what the reader considers “optional reading.”  As Dr. Oppenheimer noted, “…there’s a real danger that people will pick it [an optional piece of reading] up, say ‘This is too hard to read,’ and put it down.”  So while it’s likely that your memo would be highly retained by those who read it, there’s a chance that fewer people will actually stop to see what you said.

Granted, it may not be a good idea to do your manager’s next Powerpoint presentation in a hard-to-read font, there are definitely some business applications to this largely scholastic study that Oppenheimer and his associates conducted.  From past reading we know that

  • People cannot read and listen to a speaker at the same time

So if your manager is up in front of a group speaking, the last thing a Revolutionary Assistant would want to do is further distract from her spoken word by putting up several sentences in a hard-to-read font.  But now we know that

  • People retain more when they are presented something in a hard to read font

Does that mean that it would be worthwhile for your manager to highlight points on a whiteboard as she’s speaking?  That would be harder to read!  And perhaps those very important – but short – memos that your manager sends around could be written in a harder-to-read font or a harder-to-see color?

This information is probably not something that we want to abuse, but definitely something worth trying!  Please let us know if you experiment with this, and tell us how it went!

Next post:  Wednesday, April 17

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The Senior Citizen Discount and How to Get More by Being Pleasant

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Revolutionary Assistant

The other day I was the grocery store, and as I checked out, I was asked by the cashier, “Do you qualify for the senior discount?”

I am a 44-year-old woman, and I take care of myself.  There’s no gray hair on my head, I work out, I have good posture, no wrinkles, my teeth are original issue and…well, I just don’t think I look like a senior. So my response was, “You’ve got to be kidding me!  You think I’m a senior citizen?  What planet are you from??”  I paid for my things and stormed out, thinking I would never patronize that store again.

My anger over this continued on throughout the day.  I shared the story with my manager (he laughed), my friends (they were completely outraged on my behalf) and my family (they couldn’t believe a woman with such fabulous genes could be insulted in such a way).  Then, I shared my story with a wise co-worker, who said, “I would have just said yes and taken the discount.”

Hmm.

I’m a Revolutionary Assistant who’s been known to have a hot head from time to time.  Once in a while, my anger scores a victory and I’ll win the war, but other times I hurt no one but myself.  Usually a relationship is disrupted either way, and who knows how my anger will come back to bite me the next time I encounter that person?

The cashier may not have been the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but she meant me no harm when she asked the question, and my angry response didn’t teach her a lesson.  The same is true for 99% of the situations a Revolutionary Assistant finds herself in.  We set up a lot of process as assistants, but we don’t always have a lot of control over people and their actions.   Sometimes all we can do is get angry when our “rules” are broken.

For example, it’s difficult to smile when someone has jammed the copy feeder for the tenth time and needs your help to get the machine operational again.  Still, what happens when you fly off the handle?

  • The person jams the copy feeder for the eleventh time
  • He’s too scared to call you
  • He tries to fix it himself and breaks it more, or
  • He abandons it in its jammed state and when you need an emergency copy, you’re still left fixing it

Anger doesn’t solve anything.  You’re always a better business partner to your manager if you maintain good, solid relationships with your co-workers, and you look all the better when you rise above the conflict.  When that copy feeder jams for the eleventh time, your co-worker might be so grateful for your optimistic attitude that he takes you to lunch.  Or he remembers how you helped him when you make a request for information at 4:59 PM for a package your manager needs to get out tonight.  Being pleasant gives you a much better chance of getting what you want from the people you count on to help you get your job done.

Since that day at the grocery store, I’ve been trying to remind myself that Mom was right about honey catching more flies than vinegar does.  Now, I aim to be pleasant, let the bad stuff roll off my back, and win the game for myself and for my manager.  After all, what’s better than being a fit and nice-looking 44-year-old woman?  Being a fit and nice-looking 44-year old woman who just saved 10% on her groceries.

Next Post:  Wednesday, April 10

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Managing Your Manager’s Professional Image to Make Her More Effective

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Revolutionary Assistant

The other day, I played host to a vice president visiting our office from corporate.  To me, this is business as usual.  Like you, I’ve hosted many an “important person” and, while I’d not met this VP, I was confident that my manager and I would see to it that her agenda was a good use of her time.

But things started to get interesting when I started receiving emails from her assistant:

  • “Can you make sure that her lunches are set up with no more than seven people?  She doesn’t like to have lunch in large groups.”
  • “Can you make sure there’s someone to escort her from one meeting to the next? She doesn’t like to be late and might get lost.”
  • “Can you schedule one more one-on-one meeting with a non-direct report?  She specifically asked for three and you only put two on her agenda.”

And they kept coming.  You can imagine that, prior to the vice president actually arriving in the office, I had this idea in my head that she was a high-maintenance diva.  I started to get angry about her making so many demands on my office, making us unproductive and ineffective just for the purpose of her visit.

But such was not the case.  The vice president arrived, in casual clothing and chewing gum, and she said, “Don’t worry about me.  Show me where the coffee is and where the bathroom is, and I’ll take it from here.”

What a great example of the power you have as an assistant to establish and enhance your manager’s image!  This vice president’s assistant was creating some ideas in my head (and my team’s heads) that were very unrepresentative of her character.  She, of course, thought she was doing a good job of taking care of her manager’s needs, but instead she was creating an unwelcoming welcome committee for her boss.

A manager who is well-respected and has good rapport with her people is an effective one.  Here’s a couple of things that you can do to make sure your manager is well-received with her direct reports.

1.        Understand what your manager is trying to accomplish with her team

When she says, “I’d like to have three one-on-one meetings while I’m visiting their office” does your manager really think the earth is going to cave in if she only has two?  Probably not.  Understand the priority behind the request, don’t just take it as gospel.  When she says, “I want X, Y, and Z” it’s your duty to ask, “What’s the reasoning behind that? What if I can only swing two of them, which is least important in that group?”  If you fully comprehend the over-arching objective of what she’s trying to accomplish, you can fairly represent her objectives in conversations with others and make educated decisions about the components of her mission.

2.       Explain your manager’s specific requests by including the reasoning behind them

Explain the business purpose behind the request very conversationally.  Rather than saying your executive doesn’t like having lunch in large groups, say, “I saw the people slated for the lunch with Mary, and she’s excited to have some time with them.  I’m wondering, can we possibly keep it to seven or less?  Mary will want to give each of them some personal attention.”  That makes Mary sound like a fabulous manager who’s interested in collaborative discussions with her team members.

3.        Consider managing the details of your high-demand manager on your own

In the case study above, the vice president’s assistant had thrown the details of her manager’s visit to me, the host assistant.  If you have a manager that likes things just so – needing peanut M&Ms in her office, fifteen minute breaks every two hours – then perhaps a better course of action is to manage those details on your own.  If you handle the task, then you keep all those idiosyncrasies – some of which make her the fabulous manager she is and some of which might make her just darn irritating to others – to yourself.

4.        Understand your manager’s weaknesses when it comes to her team, and help her manage them

If your manager is a gifted numbers person but can’t always relate well to people, try being a bridge to her people for her.  Keep your ear to the ground and make sure she’s informed when things are going poorly in a certain area and require her words of encouragement.  Make sure she knows about someone who’s gone above and beyond the call of duty, and encourage her to write a quick note of thanks to him or her.  Employees’ personal events, like a birth or a death in the family, or even a milestone anniversary with the company, should not go without the proper acknowledgement.

5.        Keep the lines of communication open for your manager

Nothing says that a manager doesn’t care quite like being inaccessible.  Your job as the administrative assistant is to be the communication conduit.  Each person requesting time with your manager is doing so for a reason, and each request should be treated with respect and addressed quickly.

Your manager has built her professional image, but you sure do manage it.  Don’t give other people the wrong impression about your manager by pushing too hard for answers you want!

Next Post:  Wednesday, April 3

Posted in Partnership, Professional Image, Professional Relationships | Leave a comment

We’re baaaaaackk…

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Revolutionary Assistant

The Revolutionary Assistant is up and running again with a whole new approach!  No more the month-long “units” of information. That was a great way to talk about things that make us better business partners to our managers, but we’re pretty much done with those big subjects.  Now, we’re going to jump all over the place, covering subject matter and tidbits that are important to you!

Our past conversations are being converted into a reference library (still under construction!) for your use.  In the meantime, feel free to use the category and search functions along the right side to find valuable information about being a better partner to your manager.

Our new format debuts tomorrow!  We’ll see you then!

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment