Christina Maslova - Coffee Break Confidential. Real-Life Tales from Assistants

• Look. Definitely. You will never afford jeans or extra make up. The understanding of how you should look like on this position, one of the key success to get the job. And Fridays are not an exception.

• Smile. It’s easy to bring coffee. But, is it easy to be happy to see everybody from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.? If you have never tried – do this. Just try. I would say, that sometimes this job would be more complicated than to be a PA.

• Willing to help everyone. Absolutely everyone. And, how about this? To find the proper solution even if you do not know where to run.

• Answering the phone calls. 10th, 50th, 100th… With smile in voice and absolute desire to convince the caller that we are happy to hear him\her.

• Punctuality. And better to come in advance for 10—15 minutes to be able have a look if everything is fine in conference rooms and etc. The reception person just cannot be late. Cannot. That’s it.

• Stress resistance. When two or three people stand near you and all need urgent help already yesterday. To make sure that you pay attention to everyone, keep the deadlines. It’s not an easy task.

This is at least what I have thought about when was searching for “ideal” candidate. And the list is not full. However, we used to think that every person could be easily replaced, well, yes, it’s true. But, to find the right one it could become your real headache. I convinced that reception secretary is a very complicated job, and true professionals can grow from this profession.

First of all, let me clarify – we talk about a bad company or a bad boss according to how we define “bad”, and whether or not we belong in a particular organization.

If you don’t belong or fit well in a particular organization, there is no reason why you should stay there. Even if you’re paid a lot of money. The only possible and acceptable exception – which I hope none of us has faced or would ever face in our lives – is when we have to stay because there is truly no choice. No choice because you absolutely need the job. Without it you cannot pay bills, buy food, support your family and your life. This should be the only reason why you would ever consider working in a bad place. By “bad” place I mean, of course, a job you don’t like, a company you don’t like, a boss you don’t like, colleagues you don’t like, etc. But even in these circumstances working at such a job should just be a temporary measure while you look for the job you would love to have.

Some assistants who have just started their career try to work in a prestigious company with a well-known person, and sometimes they don’t understand the price they pay. But the same goes for small companies and unknown executives – the issue will be the same. A good situation is if you really love your boss and the company. Even if there are some complicated situations, you simply don’t care about all these problems. Because you love your boss and your company, these situations don’t matter to you. You wake up in the morning and you’re totally happy because you want to go to work.

But, and there is a big but, if you are not comfortable because of the boss, or because of the company, and you don’t look for something else – it will become you biggest problem. When you work at a job where you truly don’t belong, where the atmosphere is uncomfortable, the challenge is you can start thinking that this situation is normal. This is something you must guard against because it is not normal and you should not consider it normal. If you accept the circumstances, which should not be accepted by default – the result could be that you get sick often, get stressed, or worse, you could fall into depression.

Many of us have forgotten that we should be happy at work. You should be happy in what you do, where you do it, and whom you work for. But, very often we’re afraid to take that step and check the market and try to find a better job. We try to convince ourselves that things are fine, we can handle it, we are strong, we can put up with the situation for another year.

Mentally, we accept the bad terms and are afraid to change something. A simple example: I would never work with someone who smokes. Good salary, good location? No, no, no! I cannot handle the smell of cigarettes. If I breathe it – I feel unhealthy.

Working in a place where you don’t feel good about the job or the environment is bad for your mental health. Speak to psychologists. They will tell you that there is nothing worse than being in a place where you feel nervous all the time, it’s even worse than breathing cigarette smoke.

So other than the necessity I mentioned earlier, there is no reason to accept working somewhere where you are not happy. I have a lot of examples in my career when I meet assistants and they look very, very tired. They don’t look happy. They look as though they are barely surviving.

Work should be a very nice and attractive journey. Yes, we should learn how to work in different companies and with different people. And you should try. But, if you are sure it is not a good match – look for another job. Otherwise your work life will be one of trying to survive.

As Jan Jones, author of “The CEO’s Secret Weapon”told me, “You cannot do your best, most productive work if you are in an environment that doesn’t promote or support your mental and physical well-being. If there are tweaks or changes that can be made to your workplace by discussing the situation with your boss, you should do so. You may be surprised to learn that they value you and would like to make the changes in order to keep you and improve the overall workplace morale. But if your efforts fall on deaf ears, you should consider making a move. Otherwise, your creativity and motivation will suffer and you may develop negative work habits. Low morale workplaces are simply not conducive to high performance”.

This is a differentiation for me here when I try to understand what kind of boss I talk to. We all make mistakes. I’ve never ever seen an assistant who doesn’t do mistakes. Actually haven’t seen any other my colleague who does not. There are no ideal people, there are ideal intentions – somebody said.

Long ago, one of the company’s owners whom I talked to said, that it’s much more efficient to learn people, then to criticize them. He said, “I do never tell people, that they have done a mistake. We try to discuss the situation and understand why it happened as it is and look for a proper solution to learn how not to doin future. Maybe this is the reason why I have many employees working with me for 8—10 years and more. I do really appreciate their adherence to my company. This is the trust which cannot be replaced by anything”.

Obviously, for many of us critics it’s a kind of a signal that we need to review our approaches, but on the other hand, many of us are very upset to find out that something wrong was done. When we see the understanding that nobody is ideal and to be mistaken – it is ok, and the approach is to learn together and talk – this is absolutely another story. For company it means much more loyal employees, because nobody likes to be criticized. Of course, depends on situation, but in most cases – to be learnt is more efficient.

Is it worth to say that when we are afraid to be mistaken – our chances to mess up grow rapidly?

So, if you’re the boss, what kind of boss you are – mistaken or learning?

Sometimes, I’ve being asked – you have a lot of everything, how do you find time, any secrets from time management point of view? Well, probably yes, but on the other side, it’s only 24 hours in a day and nobody can do everything. And I’m the human being like others, and it’s sometimes difficult to be everywhere. But…