“A trainer who has worked in the role and really understands the issues makes such a difference.”
Hub Events course delegate
Heather Baker has been working with us for the last ten years, delivering our specialist range of PA and admin courses helping assistants at all levels and across all sectors develop their skills and realise the potential of their role. As a result, this helps to progress the profession as a whole, including perceptions of the EA, PA and assistant role within businesses and the career path it can open up.
Heather has decades of experience working as an assistant in national and international businesses across a wide range of sectors. Our delegates have shared with us how valuable they find it to learn from someone with real-life examples and hands-on knowledge of the role. We recently caught up with Heather to find out a bit more about her earlier career and how that influences and empowers the training she delivers.
How did the courses for Personal and Executive Assistants come about?
Well, I worked as a secretary and then a PA for over 20 years. At one point in my career, my managing director offered me training as I was taking on more responsibility as an assistant. This was in the mid to late 1990s, and there wasn’t much available in the way of training for assistants at the time. I went on this course called ‘The Executive Assistant’. It was a guy from HR, who'd never done my job, telling me how to do my filing. I just thought ‘You have no idea what this role entails.’ At the time I did think, ‘I could do better than that!’
Many people thought that if you are a PA, it's just like being a high-level secretary, but it's a totally different role. You're working much more strategically, it's about building relationships, superb communication and business acumen. In the end, it was my MD who trained me to be the assistant that he needed.
Somebody who's actually been an assistant should be out there training assistants because from my experience, there wasn’t anybody doing that. I made a lot of contacts across businesses through my managing director, I started delivering training and gradually built up my business. I then started working with The Hub Events a few years later and I’ve been happily working with Hub for the last ten years – they’re a lovely bunch of people - fabulous to work with!
Do you think the course content is born out of a misunderstanding of the role? Do assistants see that misunderstanding as a barrier to their success?
There are two problems. Firstly, a lot of managers don't understand how useful an assistant can be. They don't understand how assistants are there to work with them for the success of the organisation. They don't understand how an assistant can save them time, can make them more profitable, more successful and more effective.
Secondly, if they've been in an environment where they're considered to be ‘just’ assistants, they often don't have the confidence. We're not ‘just’ assistants, we're not doing smaller stuff or less important stuff. We're simply doing different stuff. It’s important that we understand the importance of the assistant’s role. Many of my course delegates can tell me what they do, but not necessarily why it’s important. When we understand the fact that assistants are working with their managers for the success of the organisation, the penny drops, and they realise how important they really are.
How has your own experience helped to shape the courses you create and how you deliver them?
In my 20 years’ experience I worked for ICI pharmaceuticals, which is now AstraZeneca, I then worked in France for five years as assistant to the commercial director of a Cognac company, I then worked for Hewlett Packard, and lastly worked for Granada Television.
Over the years, I’ve experienced the huge variety the roles cover and, unfortunately, the old-fashioned attitudes, like colleagues saying, ‘You’re just an assistant’, I’ve experienced the bullying. Generally, most of the challenges that assistants have had, I've experienced it or been close to somebody else who has experienced it.
I couldn't train assistants if I hadn't been one. It's such a unique job there's no other career like it.
Are you finding that delegates on your courses are experiencing the same challenges you used to face in the role, or are the challenges completely new?
Well, both. There are still a lot of the same old things that happen. But also, there was never a lockdown when I was an assistant. There were also few online meetings when I was an assistant, so naturally, the role and its opportunities and challenges change over time. I speak to assistants all the time to keep up with their challenges. It's terribly important that I do that, because the role is different in many ways, there’s always something new.
In my day, there was more sexism, and people did speak down to you more, whereas now this thankfully happens less and less in the workplace. So there are the same challenges, but there are also new ones as well.
Has the role become more diverse in terms of gender?
Yes! There are a lot more men coming through into these roles now. It is still the case that assistant roles are about 97% women around the world - the profession is the largest employer of females in the world. But there are more men coming into it now and we’re seeing more gender diversity across the profession. Thank goodness!
How do you make the courses fun for people as well as informative?
One of the things I'll always say at the beginning of the course is that every assistant is different. And every one of their managers is different, some will have more than one manager, so you can't prescriptively say, ‘This is what you should be doing’.
I can't stand up in front of a group of assistants and tell them how to do their job. What I can do is tell them things that work for me and get them talking to share ideas to find what works for them. I love it when people are sharing and bouncing off each other with stories, laughing and having fun with each other. It's extremely interactive.
We’ll play some games and do some fun activities together, but they've always got a focus. Hopefully, that helps the learning to stick because everyone’s had a bit of fun with it. I remember in one of my courses we got told off because there was too much laughter coming from our room! It was a nice problem to have.
I never do roleplay, but what I will do, is preparation. For example, if you always get nervous when you go into a meeting room, we’ll think about how you'll do it next time and prepare you for it. We'll talk about the body language and what you might say. Delegates will have time to prepare and plan a strategy, thinking about not just words, but tone of voice and body language. Communication combined with confidence and assertiveness is the basis for everything, without those, we can't do anything else.
One of the things that a lot of our trainers say, is that the great thing about a course is getting like-minded people in the same space. Do you think that is even more important in your courses, given the sometimes misunderstood nature of the assistant role?
Yes, it is. If we can't talk openly, then we can't help each other. It's lovely having all those assistants there, they're so much fun. I love it. At the end of the course, you often get people who connect on LinkedIn and build a community together that stretches outside the training room.
I'm on the editorial board of Executive Support Magazine, that's a huge community and I speak at their live events around the world. I join all the PA network groups on social media. So, I really keep in touch with what's going on. I'm also a business partner of the World Administrators Alliance, which is a worldwide alliance all about progressing the profession and getting it recognised for the importance it has.
I have been invited to join their task force all about executive and assistant partnerships. At the moment we’re setting up online resources to help people with tips, hints and useful information about the role. They have also created a global skills matrix, which is creating a structure for the profession and the career progression of assistants.
I keep very much on top of the profession, what's going on and what’s in store for the future. AI, for example, is a really big one. There’s a great quote I heard at the World Administrators Alliance summit in Wellington, New Zealand about the impact of AI on our profession:
“AI is not going to replace assistants, but assistants who understand AI will replace those who don’t”
I meet so many assistants that I can really contribute positively towards the work that the Alliance is doing. But equally because of being with the Alliance, it gets me much more knowledgeable and aware of the real issues being faced by assistants around the world which helps me develop my courses, so one will always complement the other.
Today I wouldn't recognise my courses from when I started. They are completely different because the role is so different now. Assistants have become much more involved in things like HR, project management and more. Today the role is about working strategically with the managers. It's certainly not ‘tea and typing’ anymore!
How do you prepare yourself and your environment for the courses that you deliver?
I always make sure that I'm there in plenty of time. I can't bear rushing; It’s so much more professional to be ready when people arrive. It's like theatre, you're ready when the curtain goes up. I like to have plenty of time and stay calm. If I know the venue, then that's lovely. If I don't, I just get a feel for where everything is and so on. The Hub Events find fabulous venues. They're always beautiful spaces in very handy locations with great food and great service.
What would you say are the three most important characteristics a trainer needs to have?
Experience. You've got to have done it. If you've not done it, nobody will take you seriously.
Be flexible with your approach to each course, because you can't say: ‘This is how you do it’. It's going to be different for everybody in different situations.
It's also about having flexibility from one moment to the next on the course. You never know what's going to come up, you’ve got to be able to read a room and change your delivery as appropriate.
What are your top three tips for somebody who's thinking about attending one of your courses?
Make sure you’re not disturbed. Managers will still contact you, even if they’ve paid for you to come on the course – try to make sure they can leave you alone!
For online training: cameras on, please! It’s important to make the training experience as close to being in the room as possible, if we can’t see each other, we can’t see reactions and we miss out on some crucial learning experiences, it can be quite disheartening! Also, as I said, the assistant role is now about building relationships and that can’t be done with “black squares”.
Come to the course with an idea of what you want to get out of it, although it's not essential. Sometimes this can change over the course of the day. You might come to the course thinking ‘I need to write better emails’ or ‘I need to not be nervous when I go in a meeting room’. My courses help delegates to realise the bigger picture, that it’s not just about the emails or meeting rooms. It’s about developing the assistant profession as a whole and becoming a fully professional person.
We always end the courses with an opportunity for you to create an action plan. I expect delegates to come up with some specific concrete actions so that they go away with things they’re going to do differently. Things have to change if you want to improve them!
Heather runs a series of dedicated courses for us here at The Hub Events, including- The Proactive Assistant: 2 Day Development Programme, The Exceptional Assistant, Business Writing Excellence for PAs and EAs, and Meetings and Minute Taking.
If you want to know more about how The Hub Events can help you and your organisation learn, inspire and thrive, get in touch today! And you can find out more about Heather and our other amazing trainers here.