Establishing the Working Relationship

What the role is

An executive assistant multiplies the effectiveness of one or more senior people. The tasks — diary, correspondence, travel, papers — are the visible part. The substance is judgement: deciding what reaches them and what does not, what they need to know before a conversation, what can be handled without them, and when to tell them something they do not want to hear.

The best working arrangements are partnerships. The assistant understands the objectives well enough to make decisions in service of them, and the executive trusts those decisions sufficiently to stop reviewing each one. That takes deliberate construction; it does not develop by itself.

The conversation to have at the start

Agree explicitly, and revisit periodically:

• Priorities — what they are trying to achieve this year and this quarter, so you can judge what serves it.
• Decision rights — what you decide alone, what you decide and tell them, and what you must ask about.
• Access — who reaches them directly, who goes through you, and who is declined.
• Information — what they want to see, in what form, and what they would prefer summarised or handled.
• Communication — how and when to reach them, what warrants interrupting, and what waits for the next check-in.
• Working patterns — protected time, travel preferences, when they will not take meetings, and how they like to be prepared.
• Boundaries — hours, out-of-hours contact, and whether personal arrangements are in scope.

Write this down. It is the reference when something unusual arises and it is the handover document if either of you changes role.

Building trust

• Be reliable first. Judgement is only delegated to someone whose basic execution is faultless. Nothing is forgotten, nothing is late, nothing needs chasing.
• Show your reasoning when you make a decision on their behalf, briefly. It calibrates their confidence and teaches you where the boundary really is.
• Raise mistakes immediately. Concealment is what ends these relationships; an error reported early is almost always fixable.
• Anticipate. Producing the document before it is requested, or flagging the conflict before it happens, is what converts an assistant into a partner.
• Be consistent. Senior people manage a great deal of uncertainty and value a person who is entirely predictable in their reliability.

A regular check-in

Hold a short scheduled meeting — daily or several times a week — covering: what is coming up, decisions needed from them, items you have handled that they should know about, and anything you are uncertain about. Fifteen minutes at a fixed time prevents dozens of interruptions and is the single most useful habit in the role.