Lucy Brazier OBE

An interview with Lucy Brazier OBE by Laura Schwartz, Professional Speaker, Television Commentator and author of Eat, Drink and Succeed.

Laura has been a frequent headliner for Executive Support Live worldwide and was thrilled to sit down with Lucy to discuss her incredible new book, The Modern-Day Assistant.

This personal interview is full of tips and tools for every assistant at every stage of their career you’ll want to watch over and over again.

Learning Outcomes

Watch as Laura discusses with Lucy the power of Lucy’s new book in the administrative professional community and beyond!

This session is also available on demand, in our Learning Library

The administrative profession is in an acute state of change. As organisations look at their needs post-Covid and how their administrative functions fit into that, there is a small window of opportunity to reinvent this role for the future of work.

But what does that look like? What are your organisations telling us that they need? And how do you ensure you are ready?

In this hard-hitting but inspirational session, Lucy Brazier explores the future of the profession and explains her vision for the future of the role.

Since the pandemic, the world of business has become almost obsessed with proving the return on investment of each employee. Every dollar counts, and so for the first time, Administrative Professionals are being measured too.

So where does a business start when they need to prove the value of an assistant?  What are the kind of questions are they asking? And how do you become one of their most valuable assets?

In this presentation, Lucy Brazier will explore why the multidimensional assistant is the future of the role, and how you can both measure and prove your value to your business.

Looking at three distinct areas of the multidimensional Assistant, she will explain

• Why you need to be multidimensional and what that looks like
• How to manage multidimensional people
• What the multidimensional role looks like in terms of work, and how to juggle the different strands.

This session is available on demand in our Learning Library

For administrative professionals all over the world, one of the most frequently asked questions right now is ‘What does my role look like post-Covid?’

Nobody likes change, and there is fear and trepidation around what it means for assistants as we try to work out what the new world of work looks like.

For many assistants, working in the office from Monday to Friday will be a thing of the past. As offices reopen, many are turning to a hybrid model that allows people to work in the office some days and at home for others. While being able to work remotely offers more flexibility, there’s going to be a learning curve, for both companies and their employees.

But there is another side to all these changes, and it is one which will create an enormous opportunity for assistants to finally step into the role that you have always wanted it to be.

In this interactive session, we will explore what that looks like in reality, and how you can take advantage of it to establish yourself as a valued member of the core team.

We’ll also discuss the unknowns that concern you, how to make the most of the changes to become a true strategic business partner, and why it’s so important to be proactive when communicating, collaborating, and leading up.

Learning Objectives

• Find out how to take advantage of the opportunities that the reinvented world of work has created for you
• Learn how to most effectively partner with your executive(s) in the new world of work
• Help your team feel supported and comfortable and form collaborative working practices

For many assistants, working in the office from Monday to Friday will be a thing of the past. As offices reopen, many are turning to a hybrid model that allows people to work in the office some days and at home for others. While being able to work remotely offers more flexibility, there’s going to be a learning curve, for both companies and their employees.

In this interactive session, we will look at new ways of working, both in terms of your partnership with your executive and making your team feel supported and comfortable. We’ll cover what a successful hybrid work reality looks like, collaborative working practices, how to align days with your manager’s schedule and other colleagues you work frequently with, what the potential unclear implications could be and how to make the most of your time both in the office and at home.

We’ll also discuss what the unknowns are that concern you, how to implement systems and workflows to maximise your time wherever you are working from, and why it’s so important to be proactive when it comes to communicating, collaborating and providing status updates.

Learning Objectives

• Find out what turning to a hybrid model means
• Learn how to partner with your executive(s) with the new ways of hybrid working
• Implement systems and workflows to maximize your time
• Help your team feel supported and comfortable and form collaborative working practices

With Chief of Staff becoming more prevalent as a role across the world and clearly emerging as a career path for the Senior EA, Lucy Brazier explores the differences between the EA and Chief of Staff roles.

• What are the differences between the roles?  Is there a difference in the education needed, the qualifications, the hours, the responsibilities, etc.
• What are some of the things you can do if you want to move from one position to the next?
• How do you need to shift your mindset?
• What can you expect in terms of salary difference?
• Are there some industries where this trend is more noticeable?
• How can you prepare and train for this role?

Duration: 60 minutes

Lucy Brazier has built a hugely successful business using social media as pretty much her only marketing platform.

In this session, Lucy will explore the key types of social media and how you can use them to enhance your effectiveness in your role and your personal brand. She will explain why social media is no longer a nice to have, as well as the benefits of each of the four main brands; Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. How do you build your profiles and cross-pollinate between platforms? How can you take advantage of the power of connection? What is the best way to minimise time spent but maximise solid results on social media? And with everything changing so fast, what are the latest trends and how can you best use them? Lucy will answer these questions and show you how to build both your business’s and your own presence online.

This is a must-attend session for anyone that doesn’t understand why social media is for assistants or how you can lead your team to victory once you have mastered it.

Within the administrative profession, Lucy Brazier OBE is one of the most recognisable public speakers in the world. She chalks up hundreds of engagements a year and has spoken in over 50 countries.

Lucy says, ‘For decades, assistants have been fighting for their seat at the table but with the latest changes in the role, it is now also about being part of the conversation and that means finding your voice and being comfortable with leading discussions, often by standing up and presenting ideas in a clear and concise way’.

In this session, Lucy will look at why you need to conquer your fear and how to do it, what will grab their attention, where to focus, tips and tricks to create magic and how to ‘speak business’ to stand out in all the right ways.

Learning Outcomes

• Become comfortable with leading discussions.
• Learn to have a voice at the table and be part of the business conversation.
• Conquer the fear of public speaking once and for all!

Duration: 45 minutes

1 hour / 2 hours/ 3 hours

This session will show how success as an assistant begins with an understanding of yourself. During the session, we will look at  the Belbin Psychometric testing exercise to explore strengths, weaknesses and where you fit into your team, Johari Window — opportunities from self-awareness, your beliefs, values and behaviours, your Inner Voice, how body language can make a difference and how important communication is.

2-day course / 1 hour / 1.5 hours

Since the recession began eight years ago, the role of the Assistant has changed beyond recognition. There has never been a more confusing time to be an Assistant because the responsibilities have developed so fast. In this session, Lucy Brazier looks at the role past, present and future to explain why it has developed how it has. She explores the opportunities that this creates for you to become a true Business Partner to your Executive including developing the partnership, setting the ground rules, communication, adapting to style & maintaining a great partnership. 

For full details on the one and two days courses visit https://moderndayassistant.com/

1 hour / 2 hours

Much has been made in recent times of the emergence of the Assistant as a Strategic Business Partner. The term is THE buzz word in the industry. But how do you become strategic? What does it mean? How to you change your day to day role to become the Assistant that your Executive needs in order to deliver at the highest levels. In this keynote session, Lucy Brazier will look at why businesses still need Assistants but why the landscape has changed, how to develop your business acumen to best support your executive and what skills are required to be a true Strategic Business Partner to your Executive.

• Why Businesses still need Assistants
• How to Develop your Business Acumen
• Business Ethics

1 hour / 2 hours / 3 hours

Communication is key and essential to any role, especially within the role of an assistant. It is crucial that you have strong communication with your manager, to help build a stronger and more reliable working relationship. With the skills from this session, you will be able to go back to your office and communicate more effectively not just with your manager, but other work colleagues as well. In time, you will see how it will help you to save time and build self-confidence within your role. 

• Body Language & Voice 
• VAKOG 
• Listening Skills 
• Assistants as Connectors 
• Productive Office Relationships 
• Problem Solving 
• Emotional Intelligence 
• Different work styles 
• Taking control without taking over 
• Tuckman’s theory 
• Ongoing communication with your Executive 

1 hour / 2 hours / 3 hours

Becoming a leader at work can be a challenge, especially for an Assistant, but with today’s CEOs increasingly listing leadership skills as one of the key qualities that they want from their Assistant, Lucy Brazier will examine how personal leadership is the key to establishing yourself as a leader in the workplace and which skill sets you will need to cultivate in order to position yourself as an influential leader within your business.

1 hour

With the average assistant now managing 4 executives and taking on middle management roles alongside their traditional administrative roles, the importance of putting systems in place to manage the workload and avoid burnout is a must.

In this interactive and motivational session, Lucy Brazier looks at the six areas that are particularly stressful for Assistants and how to manage them.

Workload, multiple managers, saying no, procrastination, delegation, difficult personalities and wellbeing are all covered.

The feedback on this uplifting session is most usually that it is refreshing to talk stress and the solutions entirely from the Assistant’s point of view.

1 hour / 2 hours

As the business world becomes increasingly global, the need for cultural awareness becomes more important. In the past year, Lucy has met and talked with thousands of administrative professionals in 26 countries, from South Africa to Australia, and Russia to Dubai, not to mention Europe and the U.S. The result is a great insight into administrative roles, business customs, and communications around the world. How do you find the right person to work with? What are common business blunders to avoid? How can you communicate clearly at a distance? Get a global perspective as well as practical tips to enhance your effectiveness.

1 hour / 2 hours / 3 hours

Most people find it challenging enough to work well with ONE Executive, but if you’re working for two – or MORE – the challenge is stressful at best. Are you dealing with two or more workloads, managing multiple communications and schedules, multiple projects and more? This session will explore practical tips for productivity and time management that will ensure that you can prioritise, juggle and support your numerous Executives effectively and without stress. 

1 hour / 2 hours

• Learn the differences between collaboration and teamwork
• Be aware of the challenges of collaboration 
• Create an in-house business community that can move mountains 

Executive and Administrative Assistants hold a unique position within their companies which allows them to participate in true cross-company collaboration in a way that almost no other job role does. So why do most administrative professionals continue to operate in silos when collaboration is so good for business? Could it be that this is because we are confused between collaboration and teamwork? The two are not only very different skill sets but are not in any way interchangeable. 

1 hour

Based on Edward De Bono’s six hats technique, this interactive session encourages attendees to open up to new ideas and problem-solving techniques. Together as a group, they find ways and suggestions to solve various problems.  

1 hour

An in-depth presentation exploring intergenerational teams, why Gen Y is such a buzzword for the world of work right now, and how to engage and retain the new ‘Gen Y’ workforce. 

1 hour / 1.5 hours

Social Media is no longer a ‘nice to have’. Using real examples, this session explains the power of Social Media for your company and how to combine it all in a time-efficient and intelligent way in order to use it as a structured marketing campaign rather than a sporadic activity. 

2 hours

Whether you are building a relationship by passing the time of day, setting expectations with your Executives, dealing with conflict, managing projects or setting performance goals, these are all conversations that take place with a wider outcome in mind; performance improvement. 

So, why should you be concerned with measuring the quality of your conversations? To improve the performance of your team and company… and of course, your own performance. 

Research shows that teams of people and companies of all sizes can improve their performance through conversations by making some simple changes. In this session, we will look at how you can 

• Get interested and ask questions 
• Proactively listen to people and hear what they are saying 
• Understand the power of autonomy 
• Agreeing what sort of support, you require and how often 
• Understand transactional outcomes – each conversation is a transaction. Identify what you would like to achieve with each transaction and tell the other parties before you get started 
• Feel the fear of conflict …and do it anyway! 
• Emotional intelligence – what is really being said and how to understand it 

1 hour / 2 hours / 3 hours

The relationship between an Assistant and their Executives is absolutely crucial to a company’s success but with the average age that most Managers get training sitting at 42, many Executives have never had training in how to manage their Assistants. 

It, therefore, falls to the Assistant to train their Executives how to use their skills to best advantage themselves and the company. 

In this session, we will explore: 

• Why influential leadership skills are crucial to the role of an Assistant 
• How the role has changed and the opportunities that this presents? 
• Strategically managing your Executive(s) and Key Stakeholders 
• Your map of influence 
• Flexible communication for different personality types 
• Developing the business partnership with your Executive 
• Proactive vs Reactive Support 
• Making the transition from support to strategic business partner. 

20 minutes

The story of our foundation. The dream is to give something back to the world by uplifting our local communities. Our goal is to tackle economic and educational problems by changing just one person’s life at a time. We aim to provide entry to the PA profession, to those in need of an opportunity. We have a dream….and now it is coming true! 

We strive to select, fund and prepare the best and brightest candidates and set them up for future success. Providing opportunities where none existed.

1 hour / 2 hours / 3 hours

Event management is a key and integral part of most assistants’ roles. Whether it is meetings, trade shows, the Christmas Party, team building, conferences or awards, Assistants are increasingly called upon to project manage events. 

As a Publisher, Lucy Brazier has managed thousands of events, from conferences to awards, from Christmas in her local village to The Great River Race which takes place across 12 London Boroughs, and from training to trade shows. 

During this session, you will learn the top pointers as to how to keep control of your events project. Content includes: 

• Importance of stakeholder engagement, management and communications 
• Scoping and defining the event 
• Managing and setting budgets 
• Finding a venue 
• Return on investment
• Negotiation 
• Planning 
• The importance of team 
• Progress reviews 
• Completing the event & follow up 

1 hour

So you’ve invested in your personal development and have spent either your businesses’ or your own budget on upskilling yourself. But what is the best way to ensure that you retain what you have learned and take home the maximum information. 

In this fascinating session, Lucy Brazier looks at learning styles and gives practical tips on how to gaining maximum return on investment from your training. 

1 hour

Whether you are a formal manager or want to increase your individual performance (or both), this program will teach you the foundational principles and brain science of Emotional Intelligence (EI). 

Focusing on managing your emotions under pressure, this program will enable you to increase your personal leadership by learning how to manage your emotional brain in your most difficult moments. This will allow you to influence and engage others, and connect with them in a more meaningful way. 

In this program, you will: 

• Learn the brain science of emotions that drives your behaviour under pressure 
• Increase your awareness of the situations that put you at risk of having your emotions lead to bad behaviour and poor decisions 
• Learn practical strategies to help you respond more effectively as pressure, tension and complexity increase 
• Identify patterns, triggers and emotional habits that either drive or derail your performance 

You have probably experienced some form of Office Politics. Working with different personalities, opinions, backgrounds, and values is a challenge in any environment. It is an inevitable fact that when people are working together, personalities can and will clash. No man is an island, so working together as a team is incredibly important to your organisation and every employee.  

The role of the Assistant has evolved. A good Assistant, used properly, can save their executive up to 50% of their time.  But so many executives don’t understand how best to utilise them. It’s a resource that is just not used properly.

Assistants are employed by businesses to ensure that its Executives are as efficient as they can possibly be. When businesses get it right, it can revolutionise the way an Executive works.

The most successful businesses understand how to use their Assistants as strategic business partners.  The days of Assistants typing, answering phones and doing gentle diary management are long gone. These days they are more likely to be found knee deep in project management, strategic research, reports & financial forecasts.

Increasingly, Executives are freeing up their time by utilising their Assistants to fill the gaps where their weaknesses lie – allowing them time and space to get on with the things they are best at. Just think of the implications this has for increasing bottom line performance.

In this session Lucy Brazier explains how best to work in partnership with your Assistant to ensure peak performance for both you and your team.

The future is here and assistants have risen to it; there is no turning back. Join Lucy Brazier OBE and Bonnie Low-Kramen as they bring LIVE up-to-the-minute information on the ways executive assistants are evolving their roles and influencing their leaders and workplaces.

There are new rules in a global landscape that has been shifting on a daily basis. In a welcomed movement towards true business partnership, assistants have flexed leadership muscles with hybrid structures, compensation, career progression, and professional development, as just a few examples. Assistants are racehorses and the gates have flown open. It is your time.

Join World Administrators Alliance Chair, Helen Monument and Lucy Brazier OBE for a discussion about the new Global Skills Matrix.

The World Administrators Alliance launched the Global Skills Matrix in September 2021 and has been talking, writing and presenting it to audiences around the world ever since.

You may be one of the 2500 or more people who have already downloaded the Global Skills Matrix report and supporting documents. Or you may have participated in one of the 40 webinars already given.

There has never been a more important time for organisations to utilise their Assistants to their full potential. Covid-19 has increased the need for management to be more agile and operating at maximum capacity. An organisation needs to ensure the ROI on their executives’ salaries is maximised. A career Assistant with clear goals and objectives, combined with opportunities for personal development and career progression is a key component for achieving this.

Take the next step and download the Global Skills Matrix Report here.

Lucy conducts 1-day and 2-day training programmes across the world – please enquire for more information

She is also happy to write new material if required for paid for engagements.

As one of the world’s leading authorities on the Administrative Profession, Lucy Brazier regularly consults with businesses all over the world on career progression, training needs analysis, skill sets and building the partnership between Executives and Assistants.

She also trains Assistants and Executives how best to work together to maximise performance from the partnership for the business.

It is always a privilege to be invited to offer a recommendation for someone you truly admire. That is my opening statement for Lucy Brazier, who is an outstanding global leader for the world of Executive Assisting. Lucy broadcasts reliable character and credibility, while she sustains applause throughout the Assisting community for her educational leadership, and worldwide network. Her unique contribution to the workplace exemplifies a passion for her work, which is universally recognized and increases workplace understanding. Continue the great work, Lucy!

I have known Lucy for several years, especially in her role as publisher of Executive Support Magazine. Lucy is passionate about the administrative profession and on a constant mission to elevate the profession. Lucy encourages professional development for admins around the world and tirelessly reaches out to assistants of all walks of life. Lucy is bright, fun, enthusiastic and publishes an informative magazine that inspires thousands of assistants around the globe.

It was one of the most productive and inspiring course I have been on! It has certainly given me food for thought on where my career is going as a Personal Assistant! Lucy is an incredible trainer and somehow managed to cover all of the topics within the two days and really listened to what we had to say; she made the course really fun and made us think outside of the box! If you want to take the next step in your career or in need of inspiration and motivation; this is the course for you! Looking forward to having the conversation with my manager to begin the next step of my career!  

It all started with a tweet. And within just a few tweets of our virtual introduction, Lucy Brazier and the Executive Support Magazine became one of my top recommendations for administrative professionals worldwide. Not only is Lucy a master networker and connector, she is a passionate supporter and promoter of those she partners with. When you combine that with a global publication that supports one of the largest sectors of the workforce today, you have a powerhouse of resources, training, and mentoring that few can rival.

Lucy Brazier is one of the strongest and influential leaders in the administrative professional business. She is endlessly curious, so smart, and is determined to bring quality and useful information to admins around the world. From her magazine to the LinkedIn discussion group, I find her work visionary and ground-breaking. I’m a big fan of Lucy. I look forward to writing more articles for the magazine and to working with Lucy whenever I can.