You hold everything together

Where would organisations be without their PAs?

PAs hold the lives of businesses, teams and the lives of high-flyers together. They act as a lynchpin, ensuring that things run smoothly. Bosses dread their PAs being away it then becomes supremely obvious to everybody who really runs the business and keeps it going. The boss, traditionally short on common sense and too embarrassed to ask, starts heading to Starbucks instead of admitting he's no idea how to work the coffee machine; clients are ringing in and disappointed that the PA isn't there to help them - they don't really want to talk to the boss anymore, because the PA knows far more about what's going on. People miss being able to ring the lynchpin of the team to find out who they can talk to about a problem they've got. The PA always knows the answer, or, if she doesn't, she'll know someone who does in the company.

And PAs pull support staff together. Organisations can't function without their support people. The bosses may go out and get the business, and plot strategies to implement their mission and vision; but without the back-up support, all that work would fall flat on its face. Indeed, much of it may never happen. An organisation needs supporting in aspects such as finance (to pay the wages, send out invoices and balance the books); IT (to help with communicating and marketing, research and development); human resources (recruitment, development, personnel issues); and legal (to make sure it all stays on the right side of the law). In a large organisation, there may be huge departments covering each of these. In a small company, many of them may fall to the PA/Office Manager who keeps the organisation running. It's certainly up to many PAs to see that things get done, and ensure that all the cogs in the wheel of their organisation work together to make things happen.

Part of a PAs's role is to act as the eyes and ears of the organisation for the boss, or his section. The PA is in a key position to alert him to any problems such as low morale. The PA can listen to their boss let off steam in the privacy of his office, but keep quiet about it afterwards. They can act as a sounding board for bosses about to present new ideas to the staff, and give feedback on prospective changes and presenting technique and style.

PAs liaise with a lot of people by phone, face to face, meetings, fax and email. Consequently, the ability to build a strong rapport quickly with people you don't know is crucial. Even secretaries who sits and types all day still form a key part of a team. They fulfil a role and a responsibility. You're the one people rely on to make things happen, and you need to work closely with everybody, so your social skills will need to be hot, hot, hot! By social skills, I'm talking about the way you handle people, not so much your ability to organise the weekly Friday night happy hour. As things change during the course of the day, the PA needs to be able to cajole and influence people into helping them do particular tasks to get things done, frequently at great speed.

This diagram from Getting a Top Job as an Assistant shows how much assistants work with people to get things done: