What will you do to maximise your impact and showcase your value as an Executive Assistant? asks Kathleen Drum
In England, where I live, there are 67 working days left in 2024, or 536 hours (based on an 8-hour working day). When you break it down like that, it doesn’t seem like a long time to impact your business, but it can be! Every interaction with colleagues and clients creates an opportunity to showcase the value Executive Assistants bring to the business, and to highlight the ROI (return on investment) provided to your immediate managers and the wider team.
Mackenzie Lee, the author of our cover story, How to Build a World-Class Office of the CEO, says: “When the CEO can more effectively run leadership meetings, close new clients, engage customers, inspire employees, manage the board, and partner with investors, everybody wins.” That statement can be applied to every level of the business, as it is in these interactions that Executive Assistants can truly show their worth.
We feature three articles on technology in this issue, all of which can make you more efficient and effective at work: Fiona Walsh talks us through How to Use PowerPoint’s AI Designer Tool, Traci Williams shows us how to use Excel as a stock management tool, and Julia Schmidt provides tips on prompt engineering. Alongside these articles, Cathy Harris discusses the benefits of becoming a Critical Thinking Assistant, whilst Jude Sclater shows us how to use the Coaching Two-Step to help your executives and colleagues clearly articulate what they want.
October is a busy month here at Executive Support Magazine; we have a new free eBook coming out on 01 October to celebrate Global Diversity Awareness Month – keep an eye out in our Take Five newsletter and on our socials for information on how to download that – and we are also celebrating the 50th anniversary of IMA (International Management Assistants) with another eBook later in the month. Maria Cirillo, the current Executive Chair of IMA, has written a great article for us on The Power of Taking On an Assignment, showing how joining a professional association can profoundly impact your career.
A reminder for those Assistants in the UK: the PA Show is taking place on 15 October at Old Billingsgate, London. Executive Support will be exhibiting at the event, and I will be conducting a session on “Having Difficult Conversations”. If you haven’t yet registered for the event, you can do so on this link: The PA Show.
Finally, we send our condolences to Rhonda Rountree, Eth Lloyd, and the members of AdmiNZ on the sudden passing of Friday Rountree, who was a member of AdmiNZ for 33 years. Eth, Rhonda, and the Honourable Justice Simon Moore have written a wonderful posthumous profile about Friday and the impact his life had on his family, colleagues, and the wider community.
Kathleen
