The essential training resource for senior and aspiring administrative professionals

I Am So Organised Because Of A Bump In The Road

One Assistant wonders why all has gone quiet on the office front

Well, that’s another job done’, I think to myself with some satisfaction. It has been ages since I had time to sort out the hard files and archive older files. Electronically, my files are all organised so I can always find documents.

Anything significant that comes in by post or fax is scanned in straight away and filed electronically. But my hard copy files are another matter! Its something that I tend to put on the end of the long finger. It is my one organisational weakness. My PA kryptonite! I just never seem to have the time to file away documents. Anyway, I can find anything in minutes electronically; therefore, the hard files are not a priority. But lately, I have managed to get most of my ‘long finger’ jobs done.

‘What’s your new found organizational method?’ I can hear you all shout! This took me a little while to figure out myself. At first I didn’t think about it, I was just working though my task list. I was delighted that I was getting through my urgent and important tasks and then finally getting the lower priority work done too. There is something so satisfying about placing those completed ticks after each task!

But, after about a week or so of ticking off tasks and reducing my task list, I started to think that something unusual was happening. My task list was reducing, and meanwhile, very few new tasks were being added. What on earth is going on? How come my phone and email have gone very quiet lately? Where are all the colleagues asking for ‘favours’ and help with various projects? One of the reasons I like being an Executive Assistant to the Chair is because I am not attached to any one unit so I get to help out and learn about the entire organisation. The downside to this, is that I get called on for help by many managers. This can make my role very fast paced and varied. I could be helping finance one day and HR the next, then organising an event or meeting the following week.

But lately, things have become terribly quite.

Is the economy downturn starting to seriously affect us in the public sector too? I had thought that the service we provide to the public would need to be done, whatever the economic climate. Certainly, up until a few weeks ago it was business as usual. I wonder if everyone in the organisation is also in a work lull. Perhaps it’s just a week of calm before the next storm?

Well, I would have had the management meeting this week, but they have moved it from Thursday to Friday, and I am off on Friday. Therefore, I am free from minuting this three hour meeting this week. As the agenda and supporting documents are normally only finalised in the hour before the meeting I can’t really help with the meeting preparation either. Come to think of it, I also missed the last management meeting as I was out of the office then too.

I have already offered my services to the managers, but they have no work for me at the moment. The quiet is unnerving now. So, I decide to subtly ask colleagues about their workload.

The PR Officer is my first stop and she says that she is ‘up the walls busy’. In addition to her usual role in communicating with various trade and national press, she and a technical officer have even been asked to organise the logistics and facilities for a big event. Of course, she will also have to market the event and contain the usual media hype associated with such an occasion. This is strange – I am normally asked to do event logistics. Until casually speaking with the PR Officer over coffee, I wasn’t even aware of the event. Why on earth were the PR Officer and a technical officer involved with organising registration packs and catering?

The next colleague I spoke with was in a more similar role and grade to me, as an Administrative Team Support. She said that she was also very busy. So busy, in fact, that she had an application for 3 weeks leave turned down. In addition, she said that she has been asked by ‘The Executive’ (my boss) to minute the next management meeting. This was in spite of the fact that she tried to get out of facilitating the management meeting as she has a number of pressing tasks to complete for her own manager.

Once again, this meeting is something that I would normally do, but it was changed at short notice from Thursday to Friday – the day I have off on annual leave. I wonder why they didn’t bring the meeting forward to Wednesday, when I would have been available. A quick check of the manager’s diaries shows a diary gap and that the meeting could have been held on the Wednesday.

Okay, this is starting to look personal now. For the last three weeks or so, I have been avoided, cut out of email correspondences, my work handed to other people and meetings changed at short notice to dates that I am unable to attend. In addition, various queries from me to my boss have gone unanswered. The type of queries that would usually result in a reply something along the lines of: ‘Thanks for the reminder, can you arrange X or Y.’

WHAT IS GOING ON?

Have I annoyed my boss in some way? Did I do something that has displeased him so much that he feels like he is unable trust me to continue doing my job, or even talk to me about it? Perhaps he was searching for an original hard copy file? I look guiltily at the newly diminished pile in the corner. But no, he would have asked me to fetch whatever it was if he was unable to find it.

I think back to around three weeks ago to when all the strange behaviour began, and I wrack my brains for some incident that might have started all this off. I have that awful stomach churning feeling you get when you think you have lost something important, like your wallet. I am really worried about this. I resolve that whatever it is I have done, I have to fix it.

I will apologise and learn from the experience and never do it again. Surely The boss will be okay with whatever it is I have done or not done? I have been working with him for five years! But I am unable to think of any incidents that may cast aspersions on my professionalism.

I haven’t had any heated discussions with him or colleagues. I delve into my reading pile searching for the March 2012 Executive Secretary article about saying sorry, although, I am not aware of forgetting anything critical or menial.

Wasn’t there an article in that issue about getting an appraisal too?

The only thing that has changed is…but no… surely it cannot be THAT.

Not is this day and age? Isn’t that illegal? But ‘it’ is the only thing I can think of. About three weeks ago I told my boss that I was four months pregnant.

Is this the bump in my professional road?

www.excecutivesecretary.com

The Manager/Assistant Stockholm Syndrome

The essential training resource for senior and aspiring administrative professionals

The Manager/Assistant Stockholm Syndrome

Have you ever felt trapped in an abusive workplace relationship? So have others, and it may now become a recognised problem.

For six months I worked for a luxury fashion brand and I lived a terrible experience. I felt like I was trapped in a circle of negative thoughts because the people around me, and the company culture itself, were permeated with such a negative and constraining atmosphere I could barely breathe.
After at least six interviews and spending six months under a magnifying lens, having met the entire important ‘Gotha’ related to my future possible role, and after deciding to leave my previous job for a new venture, I discovered with horror, that my new boss took great satisfaction in insulting the assistants, including myself. His second hobby was to play off one against the other to keep supreme control over everybody in his area, dispensing privileges and favorable treatment like a medieval king.

I began to feel very bad, both mentally and physically, and as a result of this treatment I was admitted to hospital because I was suffering an acute case of gastritis. My mind was continuously swirling like a spinning top around the idea that I was not able to do my job anymore.
If this can be considered a psychological disease, and I think it is, I would call it the ‘Manager/Assistant Stockholm Syndrome’*, and it happens when the assistant is the prisoner and victim, without any possibility to defend themselves, and the boss exercises any kind of power on them.

This was the situation in the company I worked for, not only for myself, but for many of the employees, most of whom were assistants. We spent more than eight hours working every day, elbow to elbow, with managers who were not able to manage their stress properly, and allowed their frustrations to cascade in the direction of their subordinates. The result was that in this situation, we were like prisoners in many ways: we couldn’t leave our job as we needed the money, but we did not believe in our possibilities; we lacked self-confidence and we’re not strong or courageous enough to say no and leave the company; or we thought that we were inadequate to work for such an important person that we believed our boss to be. Even the strongest among us, and I think I was, being continuously contradicted and criticised, transformed us into some sort of punching-bag.
After some months of this brain-washing, we began to falter and to make more mistakes, confirming to ourselves that we were not as good as we thought.

So, at the end of these excruciating six months, I gave up and I left the company.

Examining the situation from outside, trying to look at it from a different point of view, I understood that the problem was not about my abilities, skills or my professional experience – when we discussed my performance my boss said I did a great job organizing the General Secretary – but it was instead a problem of values. We didn’t share any of the same values and the conflict between us had reached a point of no return because the fight was about our different way of being and our behavior. My boss perfectly understood that I wasn’t be an ally but a fierce enemy.
When a Personal Assistant reaches a certain level in their career, skills and abilities are not enough anymore, and during interviews the evaluation is based on their behaviors, attitudes and the way they communicate a precise style of management, in and outside the company.
This style must be shared with the company and with the boss.
If we don’t share any values with the company we are interviewing with, and we are not interested in what they do or produce, we are going to have big problems. If we do not share the company’s style of management and completely embrace their vision, but your boss does, this particular relationship cannot work.
Whatever you try to do will always be wrong both in terms of how you perform your tasks and how you communicate. Without their support we are in the middle of the arena stark naked.

In the book The Devil Wears Prada, this situation is well demonstrated through the negative attitude the main character has towards the fashion business at the beginning of the book, and further highlighted at the end when she throws the phone in the fountain, leaves her boss in Paris and applies for a job in what she considers a ‘real’ newspaper, where the focus is on the economy and what is happening in the world, and not about the color of a skirt or the height of the heels in the next season.
I’m not sure how many people considered the end of the story from this angle, as I’m sure most people stopped at the happy ending, thinking that after the hell she went through she deserved to find the job she wanted. My interpretation is that while she despised the experience when she was living through it, it demonstrated that she could survive anything.
She too was trapped, but only for a while, in the ‘Manager/Assistant Stockholm Syndrome’.
The real issue is that usually we don’t clearly understand the situation, and we cannot discuss this matter with our boss or anybody else in the company.
We would like to offer a different approach to follow for managing situations, information or even people, but can’t because we would touch a nerve at the core of the company, and this cannot be accepted. It is impossible for them to change simply because an assistant is suggesting there could be a different way to think and to do things.

My previous work experiences have resulted in me being more prepared and educated in these fields than even my bosses. I’m sure I would have been able to provide suggestions and options to help them overcome problems, but I was never given the opportunity to speak to them at the same level and offer them all of the available possibilities and paths.
This was my third role in fashion or related fields such as shopping outlets and fashion magazines, and now it is very clear to me that I do not share the same values as the typical managers and employees who work in this industry. I really don’t get as excited about the nuances of two different colors as they do!

Similarly, someone may have the same problem if they were working in the petrol industry if they had very strong ‘green’ values, or held values about world peace and were required to work in the weapons industry. My suggestion is to evaluate this information before accepting a new job.
The theory behind this is very simple: working in such a situation is almost impossible because we are denying our values and our highest principles on which our life is built, meaning that the result of our actions is always wrong because we don’t feel confident, we lack of selfawareness and we lose control of our lives.

Some examples of this are: when we write an e-mail our boss may judge that the tone of the communication is incorrect, either too friendly or too formal; when we decide to take an action we don’t feel confident with, the impression we give to colleagues is of lack of professionalism; or if we are asked to do something that we don’t approve of, our internal ‘red warning light’ begins to flash.
So we feel completely out of control, like a moth being drawn to a flame. We don’t know how to solve the problem, we try to be assertive and cooperative, but all the while there are some details that keep slipping through our fingers and the result is a disaster, a catastrophe.

As I wrote in the beginning of this article, this is the ‘Manager/Assistant Stockholm Syndrome’ and I have met many colleagues trapped in this situation, and have seen them to come back to life when they changed boss or left the company. I am sure nobody has identified this as a disease yet, but it can be seen clearly in so many workplaces.

To further credit my thesis, the day I left the company I was at home, a little bit shocked, watching television and thinking about my future, when I came across a program where a man was asking for financial compensation for being hired only due to his appearance and being mistreated by his female boss. Although he had been hired as a Marketing Consultant, in the seven months that he worked for the company he didn’t do any of the work he had been hired to and was barely allowed to speak as his job was to accompany the female boss to dinners and weekends at famous and fashionable tourist resorts.
Only once he tried to say something during a meeting and his boss stopped him, saying, ‘With that pretty little mouth you can say whatever you want’.

There was a psychologist on the show, and after a debate, his conclusion was the following: ‘The man has the right to compensation, because during that seven months he was considered not a person but an object without any consideration for his dignity and emotions.
If he was a woman, everybody would have shouted that it was an obvious case of sexual harassment, so he deserves a reward to repay his offended dignity.’

In Italy, sexual discrimination and violence towards women is a hot topic. In this case, due to the fact he was a man, everybody on the show was amazed and puzzled because they couldn’t understand why he accepted the situation for such a long time and didn’t leave the company, saving his face and dignity as soon as he understood the situation.
I know the reason why, he was trapped and affected by the ‘Manager/Assistant Stockholm Syndrome’.

From www.executivesecretary.com

*In psychology, Stockholm Syndrome is an apparently paradoxical psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness.
Stockholm Syndrome can be seen as a form of traumatic bonding, which does not necessarily require a hostage scenario, but which describes strong emotional ties that develop between two persons where one person intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other.
Source: www.wikipedia.com

III Congresso Nazionale di MACSE Italia - Quote rosa? Ci siamo anche noi!

III Congresso Nazionale di MACSE Italia

29 Settembre 2012

Quote rosa? Ci siamo anche noi!

MACSE Italia è l'unica associazione di categoria italiana attiva sul territorio nazionale, dedicata alla figura dell'Assistente di Direzione. Siamo nate nel 2010 e ogni anno organizziamo il nostro Congresso. Il tema di discussione che abbiamo scelto per il Congresso 2012 è: "Quote rosa? ci siamo anche noi!" La scelta è stata dettata dal fatto che, da qualche anno, si discute della necessità di garantire una maggior presenza di donne in ruoli di rilievo, ma mai è stato evidenziato che la maggioranza delle donne che lavorano, non ricopre ruoli dirigenziali. Le Manager Assistant sono moltissime in Italia e raramente sono dirigenti. Noi siamo convinte che se non si crea una vera cultura al femminile nelle aziende italiane, che sono ancora territorio governato da regole maschili, le donne manager faranno di sicuro molta più fatica a raggiungere e poi mantenere certe posizioni, senza perdere la loro identità femminile. Questa cultura siamo noi stesse che dobbiamo diffonderla e dato che lo possiamo e lo dobbiamo fare tutte, auspichiamo che questi progetti coinvolgano anche le figure professionali al di sotto della dirigenza. I relatori che abbiamo invitato parleranno di questi temi portando le loro personali e professionali esperienze di vita vissuta.

Iscriviti entro il 3 Settembre - info e iscrizioni: congresso2012@macseitalia.it

Hotel Milano Scala - Via dell'Orso 7, Milano

Sabato 29 Settembre - 14.30-17.00

Panel Relatori:

Maurizio Bottari - Amministratore Delegato di Ambire

Lucia Fracassi - Membro della Fondazione Bellisario

Gianna Detoni - Amministratore Delegato di Panta Ray

Calendario corsi Autunno 2012

15-Set-2012 I incontro del programma di Knowledge Sharing anno 2012 Riservato alle Associate MACSE Italia Presso SpaziPer dalle 10.00 alle 17.00 Per iscrizione: info@macseitalia.it 22-Set-2012 II seminario di approfondimento sulla Contrattualistica Presso SpaziPer dalle 9.30 alle 13.30 Docente: Egon Caputo Per informazioni: formazione@macse.it 26-Set-2012 ApeMACSE – Assistant on stage: L'enneagramma (link) Presso Wood Bar in Via Tiziano 19, Milano, dalle 19.00 alle 22.00 Costo: 10 euro per iscritte MACSE Italia, 15 euro per ospiti Docente: Mariachiara Novati Per informazioni: iscrizione.aperitivo@macseitalia.it 29-Set-2012 III Congresso Nazionale di MACSE Italia Quote Rosa? Ci siamo anche noi! 06-Ott-2012 Budget e consuntivo di un progetto (link) Presso SpaziPer dalle 10.00 alle 17.00 Docente: Gianluigi Noris Chiorda Per informazioni: formazione@macse.it 10-Ott-2012 ApeMACSE – Assistant on stage: Yoga della risata (link) Presso Wood Bar - Via Tiziano 19, Milano, dalle 19.00 alle 22.00 Costo: 10 euro per iscritte MACSE Italia, 15 euro per ospiti Docente: Anita Ferraro Per iscrizione: iscrizione.aperitivo@macseitalia.it 20-Ott-2012 Prevenzione e Crisis Management (link) Presso SpaziPer dalle 9.00 alle 13.30 Docente: Gianna Detoni Per informazioni: formazione@macse.it 24-Ott-2012 ApeMACSE: La sicurezza pratica in Internet (link) Presso Wood Bar in Via Tiziano 19, Milano, dalle 19.00 alle 22.00 Costo: 15 euro per iscritte MACSE Italia, 25 euro per ospiti Docente: Luciano Brenna Per informazioni: iscrizione.aperitivo@macseitalia.it 10-Nov-2012 La gestione del tempo e la capacità di organizzarsi Presso SpaziPer dalle 9.30 alle 18.00 Docente: Marco Odescalchi Per informazioni: formazione@macse.it 14-Nov-2012 ApeMACSE: Il travel management Presso Wood Bar in Via Tiziano 19, Milano, dalle 19.00 alle 22.00 Costo: 10 euro per iscritte MACSE Italia, 15 euro per ospiti Per informazioni: iscrizione.aperitivo@macseitalia.it 17-Nov-2012 La scrittura efficace in azienda (link) Presso SpaziPer dalle 9.30 alle 18.00 Docente: Davide Giansoldati Per iscrizione: formazione@macse.it 24-Nov-2012 Manager Assistant: la leadership nel ruolo (link) Presso SpaziPer dalle 9.30 alle 13.00 Docenti: Cristina Deaniella e Mariachiara Novati Per informazioni: formazione@macse.it 12-Dic-2012 ApeMACSE – Assistant on stage: Affrontare il ruolo con ironia Presso Wood Bar in Via Tiziano 19, Milano, dalle 19.00 alle 22.00 Docente: Cristina Deaniella Per informazioni:iscrizione.aperitivo@macseitalia.it Per informazioni sui costi: formazione@macse.it

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