Sue France - The Definitive Executive Assistant and Managerial Handbook: A Professional Guide to Leadership for all PAs, Senior Secretaries, Office Managers and Executive Assistants

This ebook published in 2012 by

Kogan Page Limited

120 Pentonville Road

London N1 9JN

UK

www.koganpage.com

Sue France, 2012

E-ISBN 978 0 7494 6583 4

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my two daughters without whom my life would not be so fulfilled and joyous. My eldest daughter, Sara Reading (ne Hoodfar), and my youngest daughter, Samantha Higgins, who continue to love, support and encourage me in everything I do.

I also dedicate this book to Saras precious daughter my granddaughter, as its a wonderful and overwhelming feeling to have the opportunity to be a proud grandmother to Bella, who always makes me smile. She melts my heart and brings joy and laughter to us all. I simply feel blessed to have such a wonderful family.

I also dedicate this book to each and every proactive assistant around the world for all the hard work you do with such passion and enthusiasm. Thank you for buying this book, which I hope gives you wisdom and knowledge and helps motivate and encourage you to keep on learning and aiming high.

Contents

Lucy Brazier, CEO, Marcham Publishing, Publishers of Executive Secretary and The VA Magazine

A fifth of the worlds working population works in administrative roles. Often undervalued and usually misunderstood, administrative professionals play key roles in their companies, supporting their executives to allow them to be the best that they can be.

Whether you are an Office Junior at entry level or an Administrative Director looking after huge teams of administrative professionals with the onslaught of the recession four years ago, the role has never been so important to a companys growth.

With the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the subsequent recession has forced the biggest shift in the role of the administrative professional since the invention of the internet and the biggest opportunity.

Its an exciting time for the market.

Assistants are being asked to take on roles that middle management traditionally used to do, because so many of them have been made redundant. The role is evolving at lightning speed. Those not willing to embrace the changes and hoping to keep their heads below the parapet will quickly become expendable.

If you dont like change, you are going to like irrelevance even less.

(General Eric Shinseki)

The post-recession business environment for administrative professionals requires a whole new way of thinking and a new level of understanding about the challenges of leadership and management in the corporate world.

No longer the stereotypical typist, message taker, gatekeeper and diary manager, the role has become so diverse and creative that the challenge has become how to define and regulate it across the marketplace to provide structure, career progression and training because suddenly assistants at all levels are managing not only their executives but also projects and often people too. A strategic partner rather than just a support mechanism, the modern Assistant is a crucial part of any business.

Just as in her first book, The Definitive Personal Assistant and Secretarial Handbook , Sue France wholly understands the need for an in-depth practical and inspirational guide to the skill sets needed by an Administrative Assistant. This new companion, The Definitive Executive Assistant and Managerial Handbook takes this one step further, looking at the leadership and management skills that are now a necessity. The advice in this book is key to empowering the Assistant allowing them to assert their leadership qualities within this constantly changing new role in order to progress in their careers.

Sue France is uniquely positioned to write this book. With over 30 years of experience as a top level assistant, she is in now in such demand as a trainer that she is rarely out of the classroom. I would suspect that in the last two years, Sue has probably met more Assistants in more countries than any other trainer in the world. She has listened to their stories and discovered at first-hand how the role is developing and what their issues and needs are.

Sue encompasses all that she writes about in this new book. A true leader innovative and inspirational, you couldnt ask for a better role model to offer advice on these qualities and skills and what they will mean to you and your career.

The new-world Assistant understands the need to be constantly evolving, stretching their abilities, facing challenges and leading the way. Suddenly, Assistants are the glue that holds a business together. As an Assistant is often the only one to have the full picture as a connector between people or departments, they are in a unique position to use their knowledge and skills to help the business and its employees to make informed decisions to lead from the front.

When this recession shakes down and we finally come out at the other end, the role of the Assistant will have been redefined beyond recognition to encompass more responsibility and with it the respect that the profession deserves and has needed for so long. The wheat is rapidly being separated from the chaff. Its up to you which category you end up in.

Sue France, FCIPD, INLPTA

A fter working in the secretarial field for over 30 years, Sue France set up her own training business for assistants in November 2009, which has taken her all over the world. Whilst working for a training and development company, Persuasion, in 2006, she won the prestigious title of The Times Crme/DHL PA of the Year. Sue was also a finalist in the Smart European PA of the Year 2007 and since then she has been the judge of several PA of the Year awards, including the UK Times Crme/Hays PA of the year 2007.

Sue is an internationally renowned professional motivational speaker, coach and trainer and the author of the worldwide best-selling book The Definitive Personal Assistant & Secretarial Handbook 2nd edition.

Sue is a certified Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) practitioner and a qualified learning and development practitioner, as well as a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and an associate trainer for Reed Learning UK. In 2012 she was certified as a TetraMap behavioural profiling facilitator. Sue is on the editorial board of the global magazine for secretaries, Executive Secretary , and regularly writes articles for this magazine and other publications.

Her career began as a shorthand typist/word-processing operator, becoming a senior secretary, team supervisor, events manager and personal assistant to the head of a global leading accounting firm. Whilst working full time, Sue attended university as a mature student two nights a week for three years and gained a postgraduate diploma in human resource management. She then became the UK training manager responsible for 600 secretaries in the UK.

From 2002 to 2009 Sue worked for Bill Docherty of Persuasion, an international motivational speaker, as his PA, global marketing, training and events manager, trainer/coach for assistants as well as being Bills co-presenter at PA conferences worldwide. She is now the UK National Chairman for European Management Assistants (EUMA), a voluntary secretarial networking organization in 26 countries that promotes learning and self-development as well as global networking with like-minded assistants.