Meet Karen; typical of many of the people I’ ve helped‘ manage up’. She’ s been expecting her boss to look after her, to resolve issues and disagreements on her behalf and to be better than all of the bosses Karen’ s had in her long and distinguished working life. Above all( and it’ s taken her a while to see and admit this), she’ s been expecting her boss to be even closer to perfect than Karen expects herself to be. And, Karen’ s a card-carrying perfectionist.
But Karen’ s not an EA – she’ s a senior manager in a well-known multinational organisation. In my experience, a lot of PAs look at their bosses differently to Karen. While most people effectively act as though their bosses are some kind of surrogate parent, this role is reversed for the majority of EAs. The PA becomes the parent, taking care of their executive’ s daily needs and keeping them on the straight and narrow.
Whether you’ re operating as the parent or the child with your boss, though, it can be easy to overlook the need to ensure that you yourself, are truly thriving. If you’ re like Karen, you might be caught on the hamster wheel of meeting shortterm targets or pleasing others and, if you’ re like the classic parental EA, you might be so focused on looking after the boss that you’ ve lost sight of what you want from your own career and how best to get it.
“ When looking to get the best from a relationship it’ s helpful to think in terms of the habits, needs and mindsets of the people on both sides of that relationship”
Image © iStock / akindo
The healthiest way to approach these relationships is as two adults, partnering with the intention of thriving together. That doesn’ t mean making a pact with your boss to manipulate those around you; the two of you trampling over others to get to the top or inflating each other’ s egos by ignoring each other’ s faults and always agreeing. Instead, it’ s about working as a team of equals, understanding each other’ s needs, aspirations and blind spots, and finding ways to ensure both of you thrive in a way that’ s healthy for your colleagues and the rest of the organisation.
If you’ re looking to thrive at a new level in 2018, I’ d suggest the following:
Work out what it is that you really,
1 really want Thriving means different things to different people – earning more money, progressing faster up the career ladder, breaking through a plateau or out of a rut, having a great deal more fun or a fantastic work-life balance. It might mean something else entirely.
Whatever you’ re seeking, the following three techniques are very helpful when working out what you want, and they’ re best done in the following order: w Grab a sheet of paper and draw a graph of your life-to-date. The horizontal axis is time. Some people prefer to start with their childhood, others prefer to start at 16, 18, 21 or when they got their first job. Meanwhile, the vertical axis shows the extent to which you were thriving versus simply surviving. Once you’ ve plotted the various times and periods in your life on the graph, showing for each the extent to which you believe you were truly thriving, look for the common themes. What was it about the things you were doing, the environment you were in or the people you were with that really helped you thrive? w Take a really big sheet of paper next; preferably a flipchart. Draw three overlapping circles. Label the first‘ what I really enjoy / have a passion for,’ the second‘ what I’ m really good at’ and the third‘ what will bring me the success I’ m looking for’( whether you define that success as career progression, income or something else). Then, drawing on the previous exercise, fill in the circles and the spaces between them – if you have a passion for something and you’ re also really good at it, it goes in the overlapping space between those two circles. If you’ re using a flipchart, post-it notes really help here as you can move them around if necessary. You’ ll realise that the place where the three circles overlap is your sweet spot – that’ s where you’ re truly thriving. w The third step is to look at your current job and work out which parts of it are contributing to you j
April / May 2018 | Chief of Staff 55