Julia Schmidt details her learning and creates an #AskForTraining manifesto for us all
My takeaways from the #AskForTraining campaign
During 10 days in September 2019, we followed the Executive Secretary Magazine’s campaign #AskForTraining. What a learning experience! What an opportunity to get inspired and motivated to keep on learning and trying new things! It can be inside or outside a classroom. It can be an online training session or a two-day conference.
As Melba Duncan says,
“today’s executive assistants are career professionals, whose purpose is of great significance and who are out to make history.”
During all these years as an executive assistant, I have learned that in different role positions, I need different arguments and strategies to #AskForTraining. Sometimes an agreement on having an annually determined amount for training has worked fine. Other times, other agreements were necessary to ensure that I could have training support. It will always depend on the employer, corporate policies, industry and budget. The #AskForTraining strategy must be a combination of many factors, including our willingness to negotiate.
Training is Essential
If you want to keep your skills sharp and stay at the top of your professional game, getting extra training is essential. Training is a great, direct way to up-skill, which will help you perform at a higher level at work. Achieving a new skill or piece of knowledge can also improve self-esteem and confidence.
How are we asking for training?
What do we know about our needs?
How often do we assess our training needs?
When did we succeed in asking for training?
What can we do better to have the training approval we need?
This campaign made the “I-questions” become “we-questions”. We are here to support each other by sharing tips, best practices, training opportunities, motivational tools, business case templates, and much more regarding this topic. This amazing campaign made us have a “one voice” approach to any #AskForTraining issue. We are here for each other. We are wishing each other success in becoming the best professionals we can be and supporting our investment in professional development.
Asking for course funding can be a tricky business, as organizations can be keen to talk the talk when it comes to staff development but slow to part with their cash. From now on, there is no need to panic. We are in this together!
Therefore, I am here taking this “we-voice” on behalf of all administrative professionals who took part in this campaign to offer us our #AskForTraining Manifesto, inspired by the videos and articles shared during the campaign.
The Commitment
We are committed to this manifesto because we know that training is essential to professional growth, high performance, job satisfaction, high career wellbeing, and building sustainable careers. It shall be part of our career strategy plan and embrace our high ambitions, values, leadership purpose, and career goals.
In my book The Executive Secretary Guide to Building a Successful Career Strategy you will find a chapter titled “Knowing the Why”, to help you understand your strengths, assess your need for new skills and create a plan to improve your skill set. The content will add relevant knowledge to you in the process of building your ultimate training and education strategy.
The time is now to plan a better future for our careers! Let’s #AskForTraining.
