How the Role Fits Together

One role, four areas

An executive assistant supports a senior person so that their time and attention go to the work only they can do. The daily tasks look varied: a diary change, a travel booking, a board paper, a difficult telephone call. But almost every task belongs to one of four areas.

• Time — the diary, travel, and the protection of focused work.
• Information — the inbox, briefings, papers, and the tracking of commitments.
• Relationships — the people who want access, the network of other assistants, and the stakeholders the executive must keep informed.
• Governance and operations — boards, committees, budgets, projects and events.

This course covers all four at an intermediate level. That means you are expected to do more than follow a procedure. You choose between options, explain the trade-off, and fix things when they go wrong.

Two worked examples

Example 1. A regional director asks for one hour with the chief executive this week. A beginner books the first free hour. An intermediate assistant first asks what the meeting is for. It is about a budget overrun that the finance committee will discuss on Thursday. So the assistant books thirty minutes on Wednesday, asks for a one-page summary in advance, and adds the item to the executive's briefing pack for Thursday. One request touched all four areas.

Example 2. The executive forwards an email with the note “deal with this”. It is a complaint from a key customer. The assistant routes it to the account manager, asks for a reply within two days, records it on the follow-up list, and tells the executive in the next check-in what was done. The executive's attention was used for ten seconds, not thirty minutes.