Essential skills for personal assistants
Workshop Facilitator:
Natalie Soinè
CEO, Facilitator and Qualified Assessor
Papillon Training
Why you cannot miss this event
Senior Executives are looking for assistants who are active participants and have a good understanding of the direction their company is going as well as what their executives want and need in the short, medium and long-term. They are looking for strategic thinking and strategic acting Executive Assistants with whom they can forge meaningful partnerships that will enable them to lead and manage more effectively within their businesses, be more productive and therefore achieve greater success for themselves and their organisations.
This Workshop On Essential Skills For Executive Assistants And Office Professionals 2012 is THE premier event that will highlight effective strategies for achieving greater personal and professional growth whilst improving your ability to add more strategic value to your Executive's productivity and that of your organisation
The role of the office administrator, personal assistant, and executive secretaries has assumed a greater dimension as many managers increase their dependence on the capabilities of their assistants. This increased expectations and responsibilities require that anyone in any of these roles must have the skills to optimally perform in all critical areas of the business.
Much more than that is the fact that today, the Personal Assistant and Executive Secretary is more of a partner with the manager through unrivalled competency across a range of disciplines. Hence, to remain relevant in a profession where incremental knowledge is a given, the attainment of critical skills is categorically imperative.
This workshop has been designed to equip present day professionals with techniques that would enhance 'thinking outside the box', effective partnership with managers, management thinking skills, project management competencies, self-management abilities, business writing skills, effective communication skills and many more.
You cannot afford to miss this workshop!
Who should attend:
This workshop is targeted at
• Personal Assistants
• Executive Assistants
• Secretaries
• Senior Secretaries
• Administrators
• Management Assistants
• Office Managers
Benefits of Attending:
• Become an indispensable and integral part of your business
• Enhance your professionalism and strategic awareness
• Align your job with the business's direction and aspirations of your company
• Become a strategic influencer and agent of change
• Rationalise your activities and demonstrate your personal value
• Add strategic value to your company beyond day-to-day activities
• Manage your stress triggers while juggling different assignments and deadline
This will help you in;
• 'Management skills' - Improving your overall ability in managing resources
• 'Effective partnership' - Improving your partnership with your manager
• 'Business writing' - Mastering skills for effective business and report writing
• 'Time management' - Managing key success factors in the role timeously
• 'Problem-solver' - Managing workplace conflicts more effectively
• 'Project management skills' - Understanding, developing and working with realistic project plans
• 'Office best practices and skills' - Improving your Microsoft Office skills
• 'Taking good minutes' - Refining your minute taking skills
• 'Assertive and decisive' - Developing essential assertive and decision-making skills
Extra Benefit:
• An experienced facilitator
• Improve your skills, competence, personal image, self-confidence and productivity at work
• Network with other Office Professionals
Day One
Session One
'Management skills' - Improving your overall ability in managing resources
• Identifying where and when to apply management skills in your role
• Defining the critical skills for effective management
• Optimising the effectiveness of the role with advanced management skills
• Allocating resources to tasks and projects appropriately
Session Two
'Effective partnership' - Improving your partnership with your manager
• Determining your personal and your manager's behavioural style
• Understanding the definitive features of effective partnering
• Defining where you and your manager complement each other
• Enhancing your role and your partnership with your manager
• Avoiding common pitfalls by understanding hierarchy and protocol
• Improving difficult partnerships with proven techniques
Practical Exercise: Delegates together with the facilitator will go through relevant exercises
Session Three
'Business writing' - Mastering skills for effective business and report writing
• Understanding the whole writing process
• Learning basic formats and when to use them
• Getting to grips with the principles of grammar and punctuation
• Understanding your readers so as to make your writing appealing to them
• Sustaining organisational image through your writing
• Writing with unrivalled confidence for your manager
• Determining the approapriate style and tone
• Applying the principles of effective writing to
- Memos and e-mails
- Policies and procedures
- Presentations, business cases and media releases
- Job descriptions and performance appraisals
- Minutes
- Reports
Session Four
'Time management' - Managing key success factors in the role timeously
• Managing time more effectively
• Detecting pressure points and dealing with them
• Ensuring a greater organisation in the role
• Utilising delegation to greater effectiveness
• Identifying and overcoming the challenges of people management
• Dealing with difficult people more effectively
Session Five
'Problem-solver' - Managing workplace conflicts more effectively
• Identifying the early signs of conlicts and confronting them
• Determining and handling the actual issues in every conflict situation
• Confronting conflict situations headlong without bias
• Developing a win/win framework for dealing with difficult people and sitautions
• Overcoming your fear of confrontations and fear
Question and Answer session:
In this session delegates will benefit from a question and answer exercise on all the topics discussed for the day. It will be interactive, allowing for analysis of questions and answers.
Day Two
Session One
'Project management skills' - Understanding, developing and working with realistic project plans
• Understanding what project management is
• Developing a work structure breakdown
• Drawing an implementation roadmap
• Utilising risk management tools and techniques to avoid surprises
• Working out deadlines and timelines relevant for the project
• Understanding the importance of having a robust project plan
• Learning the basic planning tools and techniques
• Preparing realistic budget plans for the project
Session Two
'Office best practices and skills' - Improving your Microsoft Office skills
• Gaining insight into how the entire MS Office suite works together
• Improving your word processing abilities with advanced tools and techniques in MS Word
• Enhancing your presentation skills through MS PowerPoint
• Improving your knowledge of the features and functions of Excel
• Increasing your ability in the use of MS Outlook
Case Study: Relevant case studies will be explored
Session Three
'Taking good minutes' - Refining your minute taking skills
• Understanding what is required of you as a minute taker
• Determining what is relevant and important for the record
• Deciding what format of minute is fitting for what purpose
• Learning the key success factors for effective minute taking
- listening attentively at meetings
- making note of relevant points
- presenting them in an orderly, brief and beneficial format.
• Applying relevant writing techniques to differentiate your work from others
Session Four
'Assertive and decisive' - Developing essential assertiveand decision-making skills
• Understanding what assertiveness is and its importance for the role
• Applying relevant assertiveness techniques to meet objectives
• Linking assertivesness and confidence for increased development
• Learning how to be assertive in communication without being aggressive
• Detecting and overcoming barriers to decision making
• Gaining your manager's trust in decision making
• Laying down the ground rules and clarifying with your manager what, when and where to apply your decision making skills
Question and Answer Session:
Delegates will put their questions through to the facilitator, after which answers will be sought from both the delegates and the facilitator. This conclusive exercise will enhance your professional skills for collecting money telephonically.
The above topics are further enhanced through all-inclusive examples, real-life experiences and relevant case studies.
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Programme schedule:
08:00 Registration and coffee
08:30 Morning session begins
10:30 - 10:50 Morning refreshments and networking break
12:30 Networking luncheon
13:30 Afternoon session begins
15:00 - 15:20 Afternoon refreshments and networking break
16:30 Course concludes
All timings are approximate due to the interactive nature of the course.
Date: 28 November 2012 to 29 November 2012
Time: 08:00 - 16:30
Venue: Holliday Inn Sandton, Johannesburg