When was the last time you sat with your administrative assistant and had a heart-to-heart talk about your perspectives and expectations of: 1) your assistant’s work performance and 2) your perspectives of the team relationship? If you are like most managers, it’s been awhile. And if you are like most managers, you hold in the things that bother you that your assistant isn’t doing to your liking. This negatively affects your productivity and your assistant’s ability to meet your expectations.
So, what do you do?
1. Take time to think about your work relationship with your administrative or executive assistant. What are the positive things about that relationship – what works well for you?
2. Make a list of the tasks your administrative assistant performs for you but are not being done exactly to your liking. All managers have one or several things in this category. They may be things like:
a. your phone calls aren’t handled as you would like
b. e-mail are managed as you would like
c. your assistant isn’t as reliable as you would like
d. things fall through the cracks
e. you don’t get status updates on projects without asking fro them
3. Set aside 30 - 45 minutes to meet with your assistant without interruption. The length of your meeting depends on how much you want to cover.
4. State to your assistant that this meeting is an opportunity to improve your relationship and to set goals so the two of you can work better together.
5. Point out your assistant’s strengths.
6. Clearly describe the behaviors you would like to see. Watch your wording to be most receptive. Say something like, “I need you to more accurately monitor our projects and give me updates on a daily (or weekly) basis. I would like this done verbally (or maybe in an e-mail).”
7. Ask your administrative assistant for her (or his) input to your comments. Does she have any ideas on how to handle things better? How she feels about your feedback?
8. You might like to tell your administrative assistant to think about your conversation and to get back with you in a day or two with her ideas.
9. Follow up within two to three months whether you’ve seen improvement or not.
These are strategies I use when providing executive coaching on how to improve relationships with their administrative assistant and increase personal productivity.
Joan