Partnering with Your Boss: Strategic Skills for Administrative Professionals

Master the essential techniques for building a strategic partnership with your manager. This seminar equips senior administrative support staff, executive secretaries, administrative assistants, staff assistants, and executive assistants with practical skills for effective goal setting, prioritization, planning, decision making, and relationship building. Develop the confidence to communicate assertively, establish trust and credibility, and harness your professional authority to drive organizational success.

What You Will Cover:

Defining the Strategic Partnership

• Identify characteristics of effective partnering with your manager and apply these features to create a positive working relationship

Developing a Trusting Relationship with Your Manager

• Complete a self-evaluation exercise to understand your communication preferences, then create a personalized blueprint for adapting your approach to complement your manager's preferences

Planning Skills to Anticipate and Proactively Support Your Manager

• Master active listening skills through a communication assessment and role play exercises that enable you to anticipate your manager's needs before they are voiced

Extending the Partnership

• Define and integrate your personal power bases by revisiting the foundations of trust and completing a practical power base planning tool

Aligning and Expanding Partnering Relationships

• Apply influencing and persuasive communication skills by planning and delivering a business case presentation to stakeholders

How You Will Benefit

• Consistently anticipate your manager's needs and priorities before they are formally expressed
• Gain the respect and confidence of your manager and be recognized as a serious professional
• Acquire what you need from colleagues and other stakeholders to accomplish your objectives and support your manager's goals
• Develop the authority to make important decisions and take action on them with confidence
• Represent your manager effectively and professionally in all interactions
• Be viewed by your manager and colleagues as an invaluable professional resource and trusted advisor
• Build a genuine relationship of trust with your manager based on mutual respect
• Successfully coordinate with multiple managers and other office professionals in complex environments
• Manage your time more effectively and accomplish significantly more throughout your workday