Building Relationships one Assistant at a Time

Assistants are in contact with other assistants on a daily basis.  It is important to build relationships with those we work with, but what about assistants we don't work with?

I breathe a sigh of relief when I get someone's assistant on the phone or receive an email from them.  If I hear from the assistant I know I am going to get answers and the process of setting up a meeting will go smoothly, but should I try to develop a working relationship with them?  Our bosses know the value of building work relationships and I think it is valuable for us as well.

My former boss was a lawyer, so building client relations was very important to him.  As his assistant I kept that in mind when dealing with his clients and their assistants. I had always made a point of getting to know the various assistants I worked with as I found it to be useful for both of us.  I could help them and they could help me, but I also found it to be good networking.  I heard about my current job from an assistant I dealt with regularly.  She received a job posting that she thought I would be interested in so passed it along to me and I have done the same for others.

I also get good tips from other assistants.  If I deal with someone and can see that they have organized something well, I will make sure to ask them about it. Or if I know they have a particular expertise, I will ask them their secret to success.  I have learnt some great tips that way.

Knowing assistants and having a working relationship with them is very important and can make the difference when you need to set up a meeting or if your boss needs to have a quick phone call with their boss. 

I never underestimate the value of my interactions with other assistants both on and off site. They are a valuable resource and I appreciate them.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

When you need it later: The Bring-Forward System

My boss likes me to keep him organized and the way I do that is to have a system to bring forward items, which I then bring to his attention when he needs to see it. The system I use is quite simple and has been around for a long time. They taught this system when I was in highschool and it is still being taught and used by many assistants today because it works! Tried and True Method: I set up 12 hanging file folders labelled January through to December. If my boss is going on a business trip in April for instance, I put his ticket, passport (if necessary) and any material he will need for his trip in the April folder, with a bf date on it i.e. April 6. If there are forms that need to filled in and it has a due date in June, I put those forms in the June folder with a bf date on it for a week before it is due. Each day before I leave for the day, I go through the appropriate hanging folder and look through it for any items my boss will need the next day. I then put the items in a two-
Read more

Injuries at the desk

As many of you know, I have been in administrative work for over thirty years.  As much as I've enjoyed it, a lot of injuries come with our line of work.  Recently, I was being assessed by a personal trainer at my gym and was complaining about my weak arms and she immediately asked what profession I was in.  As soon as I told her what I did for a living she gave a knowing nod.  She then listed a number of things that office workers suffered from because of our long hours sitting at the computer.  I had experienced most of them.  I am hoping she will be able to help me get some strength back, but in the meantime someone sent me this article that I thought was important to share to avoid some of these problems. 18 Important Ergonomics Tips for Online Students &Workers. http://www.onlinecollegecourses.com/2012/01/18/18-important-ergonomics-tips-for-online-students-workers/ If you are a younger worker, please take note of the tips as it will certainly help you further down the roa
Read more

Shiny and New: Emacs 22

I finally upgraded to Emacs 22 a few weeks ago, and now I'm wishing I'd braved it sooner. Technically it's not released yet; I'm working from a build of a cvs snapshot from a month or so ago. But the Emacs dev team works pretty hard to make sure it has problem-free builds on a whole slew of platforms, so just following their instructions has a pretty good chance of working for you. It's worth the effort. Truly. Reading through its NEWS file, there's just tons and tons of new functionality. It's going to take me some time, maybe a few weekends, just to absorb it all. Personally, though, I think there are two features that by themselves justify the entire effort of upgrading: the Unicode and UTF-8 support, and the enhanced replace-regexp command. International At Last It's been a very long wait for Unicode and UTF-8 support, and now that I have it, I could never go back. There isn't much to say about it, except that it works. Seamlessly. It
Read more