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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

Abusi: quanto sono frequenti nella nostra professione

Circa un mese fa ho lanciato una poll sul nostro gruppo di LinkedIn in cui chiedevo di rispondere a una semplice domanda:

Hai mai subito abusi durante la tua vita professionale?

Le categorie di abuso che ho individuato sono:

• Abusi verbali, come urli, risposte maleducate, l’uso di appellatavi sgradevoli, le richieste rivolte come fossero ordini
• Abusi psicologici, quando il capo in modo sistematico critica tutto quello che facciamo e come lo facciamo, scatenando quello che io chiamo il senso di inadeguatezza
• Abusi fisici e qui non ho bisogno di spiegarli a nessuno

Il gruppo è costituito da 722 colleghe e queste sono le risposte ottenute:

• Hai mai subito un abuso verbale, es urli
  10 (27%)
• Psicologico, ti fanno sentire inadeguata
  18 (50%)
• Uno fisico
  2 (5%)
• Non ha mai subito nessun abuso
  6 (16%)

Significa che su 36 persone che hanno risposto l’82% ha subito abusi, il 16% non ha mai subito abusi di nessun genere e il 2% non si è espresso.

Significa che su 722 persone circa il 4% ha subito un qualsivoglia tipo di abuso dal proprio capo.

Sono cifre importanti, un vero e proprio campanello di allarme.

In realtà, come si può leggere dai commenti delle colleghe, che sono e restano riservati, gli abusi fisici sarebbero di più, ma si fa molta fatica ad ammettere di aver vissuto situazioni simili, perché per qualche strana ragione, la vittima si sente in colpa.

Anche per quanto riguarda il tema degli abusi psicologici e verbali, il senso di inadeguatezza, più che di colpa, gioca un ruolo importante.

Senza voler fare la psicologa, che non sono, mi sembra evidente che noi subiamo queste situazioni per svariati motivi personali, che possiamo ricondurre a tre macro categorie:

1. non possiamo rischiare di perdere il lavoro ribellandoci
2. non siamo psicologicamente forti per affrontare un contradditorio con il nostro capo
3. accettiamo il maltrattamento perché in un certo senso lo riteniamo giusto, il capo è un uomo – nella maggior parte dei casi, un nostro superiore – in tutti i sensi, quindi ha ragione

Il primo punto lo si può risolvere solo nel momento in cui decidiamo di averne avuto abbastanza, troviamo il coraggio di guardarci intorno e cominciamo a cercare un nuovo lavoro.

Attualmente la situazione economica non gioca a nostro favore, ma nulla e nessuno ci vieta di provarci, non si sa mai che capiti una buona occasione.

Gli altri due punti sono un po’ più complessi perché riguardano il nostro modo di essere, l’educazione che abbiamo ricevuto fin da bambine, i forti condizionamenti culturali di una società che è centrata sul maschio e che vede la donna come un appendice, sicuramente necessaria, ma sempre un appendice.

Come possiamo trovare la soluzione? vi posso dire che c’è, non è impossibile arrivarci, ma di sicuro è un percorso lungo, faticoso e a volte anche doloroso.

Alcune di noi hanno già raggiunto alcuni traguardi, hanno almeno preso coscienza della situazione e capiscono che è sbagliata e vogliono cambiarla, ma spesso non sanno come fare.

Altre neanche hanno capito che sono trattate ingiustamente, perché è da sempre che la situazione va avanti in quel modo, sin da quando, bambine, venivano messe in secondo piano rispetto al fratello.

Purtroppo comincia tutto da lì, dalla famiglia, dalle nostre madri che ci hanno educato ad essere passive, umili, disponibili e disposte ad accettare tutto, il bene, ma anche il male e che non ci hanno detto che possiamo e dobbiamo decidere per noi stesse.

Così arriviamo nel modo del lavoro con questo bel bagaglio di consigli, che a me sembra più che altro un lavaggio del cervello, pronte a dire sempre si, a stringere i denti e a non protestare mai, incapaci di negoziare per noi stesse, incapaci di chiedere per noi stesse, incapaci di dire basta.

Chi ha dei figli si faccia una domanda: cosa sarei disposta a fare per il benessere dei miei figli? certe madri arrivano ad uccidere per l’incolumità dei propri figli.

Perché allora non riusciamo ad applicare, anche solo in minima parte, questa attitudine anche nei riguardi del nostro benessere?

Perché non chiediamo mai per noi?