Skills of An Effective Executive Assitant

Skills of an Effective Executive Assistant

Introduction

Executive assistants are considered as one of the key players and staff of an organization. They plan an important role by being the right hand man of the manager and mostly report to positions such as CEO or any other type of senior manager leading the organization. Their role is very important for successful running and coordination between different departments and work processes. They have knowledge and information about all the important changes, plans and decisions taking place at the higher management level and they support and assist manager at all important stages. They must have all the important information regarding the manager and department's strategic objectives and goals so that they can support them in every function. They are involved in every important task of their managers and participate in every activity from planning of appointment, manager schedule, meetings, documentation, filing, coordination between operations and departments, making important announcement, maintaining records and the list is unlimited.

Discussion

Administrative skills are important for successful implementation and support of work processes and systems in any organization and are a basic requirement from a good executive assistant. Administrative skills can be divided in communication, planning, scheduling, computing, organizing and sometimes staffing as well. He must be able to mentor the other administrative staff or take care of planning and scheduling of different projects on his own. Additionally, he should be well aware of different computer programs like word, excel and powerpoint which will be helpful in making of different reports and presentations for the manager and for the department. He must guide the staff and employee of a department by taking care of the things when the manager is away. Providing with important data and reports in a timely manner is one of the most important task of an executive assistant and needs good computer skills. Good communication skills also play an important role transfer of information and adequate knowledge of different medium of communication can make the work processes and systems more effective and efficient. He must be able to use fax machines, emails, scanner, computer and photocopier. Interspersonal skills contain more comprehensive set of personality attributes that make communication with other employees more effective. Multitasking skills also add to the performance and work processes of the department. Every day executive assistants are presented with variety and number of tasks but prioritizing them according the need and requirement of manager is very important. He must be able to make decisions in the absence of manager and make sound judgements without any guidance and supervision. He must possess broad knowledge of all the business concepts and operations and processes of department so that if any issue arises, he can direct the problem to the concerned person. Problem solving skills also play an important part and he must be able to deal with the issues without any help from the manager since he is busy in other high priority ...