Day 1 - Introduction
2015-10-05I am delighted to be the guest blogger this week and share my working week with you. This is an exciting week as I’ll be spending much of it preparing for the Office*Show, the UK’s largest event for PAs, EAs, VAs & Office Managers, and the Executive PA Magazine PA Awards.
EUMA UK will be exhibiting at the Office*Show and, as National Chairman, I’ll be managing the exhibition stand and co-ordinating volunteers. I’m also presenting a seminar on ‘Managing Up’ (more about that tomorrow!) and I’m a panellist on Executive PA’s keynote session on how to bean award-winner.
All this alongside my day job as a lecturer in Business Administration and Principal Tutor at Beckenham College! It’s a tough call, so how do I do it? The answer’s simple – my years as a Personal Assistant were invaluable in developing the exceptional skills necessary to juggle multiple projects and stay organised.
As every PA knows, to be effective at your job you must be efficient at multi-tasking and time management and have keen intuition, strong interpersonal, listening and relationship management skills, a well-developed sense of humour and the ability to manage up.
And the PA of the future – the new ‘Administrative Professional’ – will require ever more sophisticated skill sets and experience in other areas of business, as the role becomes more complex and organisations demand more. We’ll need to be highly analytical, technology-savvy, creative and adaptable with global-know-how and great communication skills if your role is to remain credible.
I’m eternally grateful for the skills I learned as a PA. They’ve enabled me to move from Junior Secretary to Executive Assistant, IT Trainer, Lecture in Business Administration and now to Chairman of EUMA UK. I continue to maintain and develop these skills, just in case a fantastic PA opportunity comes my way!
Throughout my blogging week I’ll explore some of the hot topics from the Office* Show, starting with ‘Managing Up’ tomorrow. Now, off to prepare the exhibition stand!