(This piece is reproduced from my LinkedIn posting today at
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/thank-us-mean-lose-angela-garry?trk=pulse-det-nav_art)
You know how sometimes an article can jog your memory of something?
Today, I was pointed in the direction of Mark Goulston's rather
excellent article on the importance of thanks and praise for assistants
(see "
How to give a meaningful Thank You", from February 2013 - available on the Harvard Business Review website
https://hbr.org/2013/02/how-to-give-a-meaningful-thank).
Reading the article, I was reminded of a Personal Assistant who spoke
with me a couple of years ago about one of her former bosses.
Since
2010 I have been delivering training, mentoring and coaching sessions
worldwide for PAs, Executive Assistants, Secretaries and administrators.
Kelly* attended one of my training sessions in 2013, around the time
Mark was writing his article. She was at that point about three years
into her job at a leading finance organisation. Within my training
session I had mentioned the importance of thanks - and she came to chat
with me afterwards on how much this had resonated with her.
This was what Kelly told me of her story:
"I'm really happy in my current job and I get on very well with
my Chief Executive and my colleagues. Maybe it's rare in the finance
industry but it's actually quite a caring culture at the company, and we
are actively encouraged to notice and appreciate each others' efforts.
One of my previous jobs was totally different though...
"I was the Chief Financial Officer's personal assistant at a
bank. He was quite 'old school' and a couple of times while I was there
he referred to PAs as 'secretaries with an attitude', which I very much
disliked but he thought was a bit funny and clever. He'd say it to
visitors to his office - in front of me. They'd smile, I'd wince
politely, they'd go into their meeting, and I'd sit at my desk thinking
of ways to get him back...
"I never did though, I was far too professional in my work and I
became more determined, I suppose, to prove him wrong and to make him
appreciate what I did, by going that extra mile on things, putting in
additional effort.
"Looking back now, I can quite easily see that his doing down of
my skills, his lack of thanks and praise - and his lack of
acknowledgement of any sort about my efforts - was actually making me
want and need them all the more, and I became a workaholic, yearning for
some sort of acknowledgement of my hard work. Of course, I didn't see
this at the time. Nobody does in that situation, I suppose...
"The more I worked, the harder I worked, the more effort I put
in, the earlier I came into the office and the later I stayed to get
things done, the less he seemed to notice. The pressure grew all the
time, and I became more and more unhappy, more and more tired, more and
more determined to get things right enough that my boss would have to
see how good I was, surely he would see it one day? But he never did.
"A
colleague from another branch of the bank came into my office around
9am one day for an all-day meeting with ten or twelve others, plus my
boss, who hadn't arrived yet. He and my boss were due to meet for an
hour first before the others arrived for the major pitch on a project.
He commented on the two empty coffee cups on the shelf behind my desk -
hadn't the room been cleaned last night, he asked? I explained that they
were my 'first thing in the morning' and 'one hour after arrival'
drinks from this morning. "You mean you've been here over an hour
already?" he asked. "About two hours, actually, to get the final things
ready for this meeting", I said.
"He sat at a spare table in my office and got on with some
paperwork whilst waiting for my boss to arrive. When my boss finally
came in half an hour later, the colleague said jokingly to him "You work
Kelly much too hard, you know. Do you know she's always in the office
so early each day?" My boss smiled and replied "She thrives on the
pressure, she wouldn't have it any other way."
"They
went into their meeting. I was in split in two trains of thought. Part
of me thought, yes, I did seem to thrive on pressure, I worked hard and
got into routines to get me through a lot of work swiftly. The other
part of me thought, no, I wasn't thriving at all, I was miserable,
over-worked, over-wrought and exhausted, and why couldn't my boss see
that? Probably because *I* hadn't seen that until then.
"The all-day meeting was about a really major project, which
could have a big impact for the organisation. I'd spent an enormous
amount of time in the weeks leading up to this meeting, putting together
the documentation, the presentation slides, the handouts, etc. The
other attendees arrived and joined the meeting. I flitted about,
organising teas and coffees, making sure the lunch order was finalised,
making yet more copies of papers after someone spilled coffee on theirs,
and mopping up the spilt drink. As I was doing this, I heard my boss
say something about how they ought to halt the confidential discussions
whilst "the little woman was cleaning the table". No mention of the fact
that I had typed all of the confidential documents that they were
looking at, or of the other hard work that I had put in to ensure that
everything was ready for this major meeting. Just a sly comment that
implied that I couldn't be trusted to hear something confidential.
"I went back to my desk and got on with my work. But I also spent
the day thinking (and fuming!) about what had been said. At the end of
the all-day meeting, the visitors left, and the colleague left. My boss
came out of his office, beaming from ear to ear. "We've got the project
'go ahead'", he said. "This is going to be major. Of course, you're
going to need to put in some harder work from now on, but at the end of
this project it's going to mean a lot. I'm even going to get a nice big
bonus out of it." He was so proud. Something on my face must have
registered for a second... "I'll see you right, don't you worry. In
fact, I'll go and sort that out now" he said, and he left for the day.
"A small part of me thought "Wow, has he gone to speak with
someone about a bonus for me?" I went home, exhausted. When I got into
work the following morning, everything was the same as usual. I did an
hour and a half's work before my boss swanned in with an unfeasibly
large bouquet of white lilies, wrapped in paper, which he plonked on my
desk. "This is for your hard work on the project" he said, and went into
his office. Not even a "Thank you"' and certainly no hint of a bonus
for me.
"White lilies have been traditionally used as a highly scented
flower to mask the smell of death. We've had white lilies at family
funerals. I don't like their smell, and because of the funerals, I
associate them with death. To be brutally honest, I hate white lilies.
They're not a cheerful flower. And they're certainly not a 'thank you
for all your support' flower. What were these flowers were to me? They were the death of my role.
"I sat at my desk and typed a resignation letter, resigning with
IMMEDIATE EFFECT and stating that I would take my remaining holiday
entitlement - all 16 days of it - during my notice period. It was close
to Easter. This meant that I gave a month's full notice, but didn't owe
the organisation another day or my time. I didn't even owe them that day
- my annual leave entitlement was enough for me to walk out, there and
then. So I did.
"I printed two copies, signed them both, and put one into my
boss's in tray and the other into the internal mail tray in the
corridor, in an envelope marked to the Director of HR. I emptied my few
personal things from my desk. And I put the lilies in my office bin
which I stood on my desk - next to a handwritten note saying "Thank
you."
"My 'thank you' note wasn't to say 'thank you for being a great
boss' - oh, no no! It was to say 'thank you for showing me that I needed
to do this for myself, and that I needed to make the decision to
leave'.
"Then I walked out, crossed the road and signed on with a
temping agency, who found me a full-time role to start just a couple of
days later. I never went back.
"After a few months of temping in several offices, a week here, a
couple of weeks there, I found my current role and I love it. I'm not
looking for a boss who tries to thank me for every single little thing I
do day in day out, but being genuinely thanked every once in a while
when I've been working hard is SO joyful and means SO much."* Note: Kelly has given me her permission to repeat her story here, on condition that I change her name for anonymity purposes.
To bosses worldwide, the bottom line is this:
Take on board the amount of work that your assistant does for you.
Notice the number of hours they put in on your behalf.
Look at the amount of success you achieve as a result of their efforts.
And then THANK THEM. Genuinely. Mean it.
Not just a quick "thanks a million" as you walk out of the door, or a "Tks" at the end of an email.
Let your assistant know that their work is appreciated, that their efforts are appreciated, that what they do
MAKES A DIFFERENCE.
Then I want you to do something more.
PAY THEM ACCORDINGLY.Administrative
Assistants, Personal Assistants, Executive Assistants, Secretaries,
whatever you choose to call us in our roles, are paid VERY little for
the level of expertise and professionalism which we demonstrate on a
daily basis. And yet, more and more, you expect more from your
assistant.
In the Hays / Executive Secretary survey (results published in July
2015), 63% of managers / executives credited their assistant with
working at MANAGERIAL or DIRECTOR level. There is no excuse for paying
such a worthy worker a pittance for their efforts in ensuring that you
do well in your role of running the organisation.
Without the support of your Assistant, where would you be?PAs
and EAs the world over are supporting the leadership of businesses,
working in partnership with their bosses, to run organisations.
We
are not the stereotypical "take a letter, Miss Jones" secretary or
no-brained receptionist from the cartoons of the 1950s. We never were.
We are working in partnership with you, we have well developed skills
and expertise, we soak up your knowledge in order to keep the
organisation running all day while you are out at meetings. We deal with
your visitors, your phone calls, your correspondence, with the
knowledge and learning that we have developed in our roles.
We help you to lead your business to success.All of that deserves thanks, praise and appropriate remuneration.
As I've said before, it's all L'Oreal, you know.
We're worth it.
Angela Garry
angelagarry@picaaurum.comWorlds most connected PA and PA Trainer on LinkedIn
Global PA & EA Trainer at Pica Aurum
www.picaaurum.comAuthor "Brave PAs"
www.bravepas.com and "The PA & EA Circus"
www.thepaeacircus.com Editor of "National Association of Headteachers' PAs" magazine
www.nahpa.org.uk
