What’s the chief characteristic of being a great Administrative or Executive Assistant? It’s knowing everything, or at least seeming like you do. The best assistants are those that can aptly handle managing the boss’s calendar, sorting his mail and screening her calls without having to always stop and ask for information or permissions. But how do you get to that miraculous place where you know all?
Daily meetings between the boss and the assistant are absolutely required. Well, maybe not every day. When the boss is home sick or on vacation, you can let him be if it isn’t an emergency. But most days vitally need at least five minutes of face to face time with the boss (phone time if she’s traveling).
You can’t be the person in the know, the person who saves your boss so much time and effort, if you don’t know what’s going on and what’s important. Without that vital information, your boss may as well have a robot sitting at the desk doing things by rote. The heart of an administrative assistant is her intelligence and discretion, and mostly of all, her knowledge.
At first, you may think there’s not enough to discuss for daily meetings. But once you get the hang of it, you’ll have trouble squeezing everything into those few minutes. Here’s a list of basics to discuss:
As you and your boss become more comfortable with the daily face-to-face meetings, you’ll both start thinking of more to be discussed. One boss I worked for was the Director of Human Resources for a university. Part of my duties for him was to review industry magazines and websites for pertinent information (especially legal decisions) he needed to know. That was part of our daily discussions. What you discuss every day will depend on your industry, your boss’s position, and your boss’s personality and work style.
Do you have daily meetings with your boss? If not, how often do you meet? What do you discuss in your meetings? Leave a comment and share with all of us, so we can all learn from each other.
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I am an assistant to a busy workman’s comp attorney. Instead of meetings, we communicate through email all day long even if he is just in the other office. I have easy access for questions and to update him on all new appointments or remind him of pending appointments. I update his paper calendar every morning when I arrive and I send him emails about phone calls or correspondence which i need approval on. Even when he is not in the office, thanks to a great cell phone, we keep in touch. I feel like the office runs very smooth this way and we are always on the same page(so to speak).
Thanks for the comment, Jeannine. It sounds like you and your boss have a solid communication plan in place. That’s the way to really keep things running smoothly. Congratulations!