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bonnie-lowkramen · 3 years

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PERSONAL ASSISTANT TRAINING

It’s about love.

The truly great Personal Assistants all love what they do. They unabashedly and unapologetically love their work in support of others. They blow off comments like, “You’re just an assistant,” because they know better.

Personal assistants are some of the brightest, most organized and resourceful people on the planet. That is why not everyone is cut out for this demanding work. They are very far from being “just” anything. The smartest people in the business world know to invest in the true power of the assistant. They also know to never, never, never underestimate or demean these influential gatekeepers.

I know because I was one.

For 25 years, I worked as the Personal Assistant to Oscar winner Olympia Dukakis, and I loved it. Yes, I said it. Friends would say that I was one of the only people they knew who genuinely loved their job. That always struck me as important feedback as I observed how often the world treats assistants with disrespect. That happened to me too. Working with a movie star did not make me totally immune from dealing with people who just didn’t get it.

Personal Assistants are an elite subset of the larger “Executive Assistant” group. Personal Assistants are the women and men who do whatever it takes to get the job done and usually this means everything barring the illegal. Their responsibilities have a remarkably wide range from scheduling the private plane to flying ahead to a vacation location several days ahead of the principal’s arrival in order to prep the house to picking up the dry cleaning and prescriptions. Whatever it takes. And they love it. I did.

Now I teach Be the Ultimate Assistant training workshops for Personal Assistants all around the world. In the training, I teach the skills that are absolutely necessary to succeed. The topics in this intense and highly interactive workshop include:

Leadership

Mentoring & Networking

Communication – In-Person and Virtually

Business Partnerships with Executives

Organization

Event Planning

Travel Planning

Disaster Planning

Handling Workplace Bullying

Career Management

MS Office Computer Technology

Social Media

Cybersecurity

At BTUA, I share the universal truths about this career we love. These apply whether it is a Personal Assistant in Maryland or Malaysia or any point in between.

Here are the top 10 things that assistants do better than anyone else:

They are relentlessly adaptable. They love the variety the job offers and that no two days are ever the same which makes it easy for them to shift gears at a moment’s notice. Their brains are trained to run the what-ifs and prepare for Plans A, B, C, and sometimes D.

They love a challenge. “No” is not an option. True confession: I used to play a game at work called “How few emails or phone calls in the shortest time will it take to get this answer?” I won if it took five minutes or less.

They underplay their power. Looks can be deceiving. The Personal Assistant has the ear of her/his principal and wields tremendous influence and power. Do not underestimate this. Seriously. If you want to get things done, don’t.

Making people happy is their goal. Going above and beyond is SOP. Personal Assistants have an innate desire to please and to figure out the myriad of ways to do that. Assistants are born with a “service heart” and receive great pleasure and satisfaction from being supreme implementers.

They read minds. To be fair, they usually need a clue or two, such as a look on their principal’s face or the way a fellow staffer responded at the staff meeting. Great assistants are clairvoyant and truly know when “it is a good time” to approach the executive, and more importantly, when it is not. Anticipating what needs to be done is their gift and no AI device will ever be able to do what these humans do.

They love to put out fires and bring order to chaos. The assistant is the go-to person in any crisis whether it is dealing with a pandemic or untangling a Zoom meeting gone haywire.

They are master jugglers. The best assistants enjoy managing 12 invisible balls in the air and are able to handle #13 and #14 too. Just give them a fresh cup of coffee.

They are hungry to learn. Assistants know that they need to commit to life-long learning in order to stay at the top of their game. Smart CEOs and business leaders recognize this need and invest in their assistant’s professional development.

They are connected. Resources are an assistant’s best friends. The best assistants have the widest and deepest networks. They know the magic power of relationships to get it done…now.

They yearn to make a difference. Assistants are the ultimate enablers for their managers and companies. It gives them great pleasure to see the results of their plotting and planning. They don’t need a lot of feedback. A little goes a long way.

If fully utilized and are well managed with respect and appreciation, Personal Assistants will function as the eyes and ears of their principals who will prove their value and over-deliver – not just on some days but every day.

BLK named Educator of the Year 2015 from DEMA Domestic Estate Managers Association

Bonnie & her employer of 25 years Academy Award winning actress Olympia Dukakis

Speaking at the Club 42 meeting in London

With Reggie Love, Pres Barack Obama’s Body Man

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#executive assistant training #personal assistant training #executive administrative assistant training

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bonnie-lowkramen · 3 years

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EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TRAINING

Executive Assistants are one of a company’s biggest and potentially most powerful natural resource. EAs are the backbones of their companies, the right arms to their managers, and the face of the company culture – even in the virtual world. But, here’s the bad news: Historically, they are also the most underutilized, underleveraged, and undertrained members of the team.

The fact is, most of the nation’s 10 million Executive Assistants are still self-taught regarding everything about their jobs. They have succeeded in their roles in spite of the lack of support and training. Traditionally, they have not been included in Continued Professional Development (CPD) budgets.

As the Harvard Business Review has pointed out: “Everyone says that learning is essential for companies’ success — and for your own. And yet, on a daily basis, who cares for your learning? No one. People care about what you have learned. They care about your results. Learning is great as long as you do it quietly, in your own time.”

And on your own dime, I might add. This old model is not working anymore, especially in a workplace rocked by the pandemic. The old rules don’t apply. The workplace needs to respond to the urgent needs of the administrative staff.

Even though training for Executive Assistants has the potential to boost company profits, improve employee productivity and build more powerful relationships between managers and assistants, it is still a fairly new idea in the 2021 workplace. Most often, the reasoning is that EAs don’t have a direct impact on income generation, and therefore the ROI cannot be quantified.

That is faulty reasoning. After all, if an EA’s work is able to save her/his executive one hour of time per week, that saved time has a dollar value. A high one.

The first time I knew that training was an issue among admins was during the Q&A after a presentation in 2006 at a big pharma company. A woman stood up in front of 200 fellow admins and said, “First, I want to thank you for coming because it was really great. Second, I have been at this company for 30 years and this is the first time there has ever been any program for the administrative staff.” The look on her face and the silence in the room that followed has never left me.

Has the situation improved since 2006? Yes. But, not enough. Far too many assistants are still fighting for training dollars.

Why train EAs now?

In the aftermath of 9/11/01 and the financial crisis of 2008, the workplace was thrown into turmoil in both situations and caused the role of EAs to change dramatically. As a result, many found themselves filling the gaps and functioning in part as project managers, and holding significantly more responsibility. An important note is that this happened without changes in EA titles, job descriptions, or compensation.

The WFH movement (work from home) caused by the pandemic crisis of 2020 resulted in an increase of responsibilities for assistants. This has accelerated the need for training. What’s more, support for training is a major factor in job satisfaction and employee retention among administrative staff (and all staff for that matter). It is even more important than a salary increase. This is why professional development is not an option anymore for companies that need their backbone to be strong, skilled, and resilient in a volatile and competitive global and virtual marketplace.

Be the Ultimate Assistant Fills the Learning Gaps

“I created Be the Ultimate Assistant workshops out of frustration. I looked around and saw a severe lack of high-level education for the Executive Assistants, namely me. As I worked with my executive, Oscar winning actress Olympia Dukakis, as her Personal & Executive Assistant. I would ask myself this question. How can I be as great an assistant as Olympia is an actress? When I searched and could not find the answers, I decided to write the book and design the workshop myself.” Bonnie Low-Kramen

Since 2011, hundreds of students have attended the Be the Ultimate Assistant workshop and 10% have attended two or more times. The workshop has been named in the Top Conferences for Executive Assistants to Attend every year since 2018.

Be the Ultimate Assistant training features the topics that matter most to Executive Assistants and the leaders they support. In an intense and highly interactive 2-day and 3-day programs, students dive deeply into the following.

Leadership

Mentoring & Networking

Advanced Communication in a Virtual World

Business Partnerships with Executives

Organization

Event Planning

Travel Planning

Disaster Planning

Handling Workplace Bullying

Career Management

MS Office Computer Technology with Vickie Sokol Evans, MCT, the trainer to Bill Gates’ team

Social Media

Cybersecurity

While compensation has always been an excellent incentive for employee retention, the number one motivator for admins costs nothing. It is respect. If you doubt this, just ask them and give them license to be candid without repercussion. Training is one of the strongest demonstrations of respect.

The most profoundly meaningful and long-lasting investment you can make in your staff is to believe in them enough, trust them enough and support them to learn. Knowledge is power, and it is also a bottomless source of loyalty, commitment, and profits. Isn’t the backbone of your company worth that?

BLK & Olympia Dukakis who wrote the Foreword to Be the Ultimate Assistant

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Executive Assistant Training - Online & In Person Workshops

#executive assistant training #administrative assistant training #workplace training and development program #virtual workplace training programs

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