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Why the PA Show Is a Must-Attend Event for UK Assistants and How to Prepare for It

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The PA Show has become an essential fixture in the UK calendar for assistants, PAs, EAs, and office managers. Each year, it brings together thousands of professionals who support leaders, manage complexity, and keep organisations running behind the scenes.

It is not just another event. It is one of the few spaces designed specifically for the administrative profession, with learning, development, and connection at its core.

But as anyone who has attended before will tell you, the real value of the PA Show is not automatic. How you approach it matters.

During our recent PA Show Sneak Peek panel, speakers and attendees shared practical, honest advice on how to get the most from the experience. What follows are just a few of the insights that stood out.

Understanding What the PA Show Is Really For

One of the first things discussed was the importance of understanding what the PA Show actually is.

As Max Agostini, Chief Communications Office at Mash Media hosts of The PA Show, explained, “The PA Show is designed as a space where assistants can learn from global trainers, discover tools that genuinely support their roles, and connect with others who understand the work without explanation.”

Seeing The PA Show as a professional development opportunity, rather than just a busy conference, changes how you plan your time and what you prioritise once you are there.

Plan Early So You Can Be Intentional

Planning came up repeatedly during the conversation, particularly around registering early and reviewing the programme in advance.

Claudine Martin, Senior Executive Assistant and PA Show speaker, shared a simple but important reminder, “Register as soon as you can and book onto the sessions you really want, because they go very quickly. Once they’re gone, that’s it.”

Planning early allows you to be intentional. Instead of rushing between sessions on the day, you can choose learning that aligns with your role, your goals, and where you want to grow. Planning is not about filling every gap in your schedule. It is about making the day work for you.

Rethink Networking as Connection, Not Performance

Networking is often the part of The PA Show that makes people most nervous, especially when attending alone.

Winnie King, Senior EA and PA Show speaker, offered a helpful reframe, explaining that networking does not need to feel forced or transactional. “It’s not about working the room,” Winnie said. “It’s about having real conversations and connecting with people who understand what you do.”

You do not need to meet everyone. One or two genuine conversations can be enough. For many assistants, simply being in a space where people share similar challenges and experiences is powerful in itself.

Think Beyond Your Current Role

Some of the most valuable sessions at the PA Show may not feel immediately relevant, and that is often where the real value lies.

Phyllida Casey, Senior EA and PA Show attendee, reflected on this, sharing, “Some of the sessions that helped me most were ones I didn’t think applied to my role at the time. Later on, they became incredibly relevant.”

The assistant role continues to evolve. Attending sessions that stretch your thinking or expose you to new perspectives can quietly shape the next stage of your career.

Look After Your Energy on the Day

Practical advice also featured heavily in the discussion.

Susana Montiero, Executive Assistant and PA Show attendee, spoke about the importance of pacing yourself. “It’s a long day,” Susana said. “Comfortable shoes, using the cloakroom, and not trying to do back-to-back sessions in different areas makes a huge difference.”

Simple choices like planning breaks, allowing time to eat, and building in breathing space help you stay present and engaged throughout the day. Looking after your energy is not indulgent. It is strategic.

Bringing It All Together

Lauren Bradley, Founder of The Officials and PA Show speaker, closed the discussion by bringing everything back to intention. “The PA Show isn’t about doing everything,” Lauren said. “It’s about making intentional choices that support your role, your confidence, and your growth.”

The advice shared during the panel covered far more than can be included here. These are just a few highlights.

That is why we have brought everything together into a single Planning Pack to help you prepare properly.

Inside the PA Show Planning Pack, you will find:

  • a practical survival guide
  • a ready-to-use justification letter
  • access to the full Sneak Peek replay

Everything is designed to help you approach the PA Show with clarity and confidence.

The PA Show is an essential event. With the right preparation, it can also be one of the most valuable professional experiences you invest in.

Get the PA Show Planning Pack

To make preparing easier, we have created a PA Show Planning Pack that brings everything together in one place.

When you sign up, you will receive the PA Show Survival Guide, a ready-to-use justification letter to support approval conversations, and access to the PA Show Sneak Peek replay where this advice was shared.

Everything in the Planning Pack is practical, assistant-led, and designed to help you feel prepared and confident as you plan your PA Show experience.

👉 Get the PA Show Planning Pack

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How to Use AI as a Thought Partner: A Practical Guide for Assistants

A simple framework to interrupt self-doubt and act with clarity

Picture this. You open your inbox and there it is. A message from your exec with five words that can change your entire week, “Can you take this on?” It’s a chunky piece of work, the ask is vague, the timeline is tight and it’s outside your scope. You know what you need to do next. Ask the right questions, set boundaries on what’s possible, and propose a clear path forward. Or decline.

But your brain does that thing it does. A rush of pressure, a spike of self-doubt, the urge to either over-explain, people-please, or go quiet so you don’t get it wrong. Suddenly, making a simple decision feels weirdly hard.

When emotional noise and protective instincts get loud, our capacity to choose and act, our sense of agency, gets smaller. And it has been happening for so long that we have created very stubborn patterns over the years. As adults, we’ve learned default responses that once kept us safe or successful like avoiding conflict, over-delivering, saying yes too quickly, second-guessing ourselves or waiting for certainty. The problem is those patterns do not always match who we’re trying to become, or the level we are actually capable of playing at.

What if, instead of letting old patterns choose for you, you had a practical way to step into a more deliberate version of yourself when it counts?

In one of The Officials recent Mentorship Session, one of our incredible Officials, Mihaela Boitan (a MacGyver level assistant who is always quietly engineering a smarter way through the mess), shared a solution she’s been quietly building using AI. Something that’s helped her make clearer decisions and show up more deliberately when pressure hits. She calls her Maya Bloom, Mihaela’s AI Alter Ego. Perfection is not the goal, neither is using her like a therapist.

It has given her a repeatable way to interrupt the fear and self-doubt loop, step back into agency, and take the next right step without needing to feel confident first. We asked her to break it down for us, what made it work in real life, and what to avoid, and we knew we had to share it.

Creating Maya Bloom, Mihaela’s story

Here is Mihaela explaining her journey
What do Sasha Fierce, Tatiana, the Black Mamba, and Ziggy Stardust have in common? They’re all alter egos.

Beyoncé created Sasha Fierce to access confidence on stage. Tate McRae talks about Tatiana as a way to step into boldness when she performs. Kobe Bryant adopted the Black Mamba to stay focused and emotionally contained under pressure.

They don’t escape who they are, but they act more deliberately when it matters. Each alter ego enables distance from fear, hesitation, self-consciousness, or the weight of the world’s expectations and creates room for courage, choice, agency and action.

I wanted something like this in my own life, so I sat down in front of my computer, opened ChatGPT and started building her. I didn’t want to create Maya because I needed help doing my job. I was creating her because I wanted to relate to myself differently.

I spent weeks defining who she actually was, not only in an aspirational or “best self” sense, but in more practical, behavioral terms.

How does she move through the world when she isn’t weighed down by fear? How does she respond when something is uncomfortable but true? What does she do when she needs to act although the doubts are still overwhelming?

Maya Bloom is not fearless or perfect. Although initially I thought of her like that, that persona felt too foreign and unreachable. So I’ve reshaped her as someone who is grounded, self-aware, and honest. She acknowledges her flaws without punishing herself for them. She’s willing to try, to be seen, to be wrong, and to learn, she’s brave when she needs to be.

Most importantly, she doesn’t perform or seek approval. She acts from a place of values and integrity. That’s who I wanted access to. The version of me that doesn’t shrink.

The moment it clicked
Mihaela has a perfect anecdote of the moment it stopped being an interesting concept and became something real. Here’s what happened when it clicked:

I knew it was working when, after circling back and forth about a decision I needed to make, I asked Maya to just tell me what to do. And Maya’s answer was:

‘I’m not going to tell you what to do and you know why. Instead, I will ask you one question: What would you do if you trusted yourself?’

That’s when I knew I had what I needed: a thought partner that would not let me off the hook too easily or let me lie to myself. And once I had that, things started to shift. Nothing earth-shattering, but a number of small, steady changes in the places that actually count.

Over the past year, I’ve had some of the most valuable conversations with my husband about our finances and future, the kind of talks I’d avoided for years because they felt too hard.

Meet Your Inner COO: A Practical Neuroscience Case for Alter Egos

Neuroscience, though fascinating, can get complex quickly. To keep it short and sweet, what is happening in your brain at any given moment is that dozens of networks and circuits are interacting in the background, shaping what you notice, how you interpret it, and what you do next.

When you have read that email from your exec with the big ask, your brain, a prediction-and-prioritization machine, is doing two jobs at once. First, it predicts what’s about to happen based on past experience and what’s happening now. Then it allocates your resources, attention, energy, and action, toward whatever it decides matters most in that moment.

In simple terms, your brain is constantly toggling between three ‘’modes’’ which drive your choices in the moment: survival mode, emotional mode and executive mode.

Illustration of three brain modes: executive, emotional, and survival

When the pressure spikes, your brain can get less strategic and more protective. Planning wobbles, certainty gets louder, and your sense of agency, your capacity to choose and act, gets smaller. That’s why a simple email can trigger over-explaining, people-pleasing, or going quiet. It’s not incompetence. It’s biology meeting old patterns.

Todd Herman, a performance coach and author best known for the book The Alter Ego Effect, describes an alter ego as something you step into intentionally. Not a permanent persona, more like a switch you use when pressure rises or old habits try to take over. In academic language, the closest match is self-distancing, creating a little space so you can think like an advisor, not a threatened participant.

Ethan Kross, an award-winning neuroscientist and psychologist at the University of Michigan, has spent the last 20 years studying the conversations we have with ourselves and what helps (or hurts) when we’re under pressure. In his self-distancing work, he describes it as taking a few steps back mentally, like watching the scene from the “fly on the wall” view, which tends to reduce reliving and increase a more constructive kind of sense-making.

So the goal of an AI alter ego isn’t to delete emotion, or to become some robotic productivity machine. It doesn’t exist to soothe you or validate you on repeat either (that’s where AI can become an echo chamber). It’s to help you step back, re-enter strategy mode, and make decisions that match the person you’re building, especially when your default patterns would normally take the wheel.

How to build your AI Alter Ego 

Please, use AI responsibly
What this is:
A decision and clarity partner. It helps you think in frameworks, weigh trade-offs, spot blind spots, and act in line with your values.
What this isn’t:
A mental health service. It’s not there to process trauma, validate feelings endlessly, diagnose, or replace real support.

Before we start, a very important expectation-setter. Step 1 will not nail it. Step 2 will not nail it. Step 3 will not nail it either. This is not a “set it once and it’s perfect” tool. You are building a voice, a process, and a relationship with a thinking partner. The only way it becomes genuinely useful is through testing, noticing what feels off, tightening the rules, and testing again.

With that said, here are three steps to get a first working version.

Step 1: Define the alter ego you actually need

Your alter ego is not a fantasy character. It’s a usable version of you that shows up when you usually shrink. Start by naming the energy you struggle to access on your own. Steady? Blunt? Calm under pressure? Boundaried? Decisive?

Mihaela said this: ‘’For a while, Maya only existed in my head. That helped, but it had limits. I couldn’t access her exactly when I needed her most: mid-spiral or mid-overthining. 

So I started experimenting with building Maya as a Custom GPT and later as a Project in Claude AI, to make her available when I’m not at my best. In all honesty, my process was chaotic; I had a sense of what I wanted but no clear plan for how to get there.

Mine is mostly like a grounded mentor, wise, steady, but with a bias to action and an edge that calls out my patterns plainly. Yours might be completely different. Fiercer. Sassier. Blunter. The question to ask is: what energy do I need access to that I struggle to embody on my own?

I had spent months thinking about this, but if I wanted to speed up that process, I’d set aside a few hours and use AI to figure this part out.’’

Step 2: Surface your patterns (the defaults that hijack you)

By “patterns,” we mean the automatic defaults with which you respond when you’re under pressure, uncertain, or afraid. Repetitive thoughts, feelings, and behaviours that show up in specific situations. This part can be challenging, but it is the difference between a nice chatbot and a tool that actually changes behaviour.

Mihaela’s Advice
This part can be uncomfortable. It’s one thing to vaguely know your patterns, another to describe them clearly, knowing they’ll be used to challenge you. But honesty is essential here. Admit where you say yes when you mean no, where you shrink, over-explain, or delay. I would use AI to draw these out through conversation, because I’ve found that it’s harder to hide when something’s asking follow-up questions.’’

Step 3: Write the first version of your rules of engagement

This is where you turn the idea into something you can actually use in ChatGPT (Custom GPT/Projects) or Claude. You’re giving AI a clear identity, tone, and process. The goal is not cheerleading. It’s clarity, agency, and action.

Mihaela’s Advice
You have to tell AI who your alter ego is, how she speaks, how she challenges you, and what rules to follow. The instructions cover identity, voice, process, and constraints. There’s a structure that works, but getting the voice right matters more than getting the format perfect.

The biggest shift was moving from advice to dialogue. Early Maya was too eager to fix things before understanding what was happening. She was trying to be useful instead of truthful and seemed to want to make me feel better rather than help me see clearly. I had to be explicit: don’t fix immediately, don’t give options unless I ask, wait for me to respond.’’

Step 4: Test, tweak, test again

This is where the real value is built. Your first version will almost certainly be too generic, too polite, or too quick to “fix” you. That’s normal. Use real situations as your test cases, like an email you are hesitating to send, a boundary you need to set, or a decision you keep circling. Notice what lands and what doesn’t. Then run it again. This is not a one-off setup, it’s an iteration loop, and each round makes your alter ego sound more like the version of you you are trying to access.

Mihaela’s Advice
Getting something technically functional was quick. Getting something that actually felt and sounded like Maya took weeks.

I paid attention to my reactions and used them as data. Where I felt relieved instead of challenged, where I felt irritated, where I felt seen. It didn’t really matter whether the response was ‘correct,’ but whether it landed the way Maya would respond.

Want the copy and paste version of the prompts Mihaela used to build her AI Alter Ego? Download the AI Thought Partner Starter Kit here. It includes the three core prompts to help you define your alter ego.

From Concept to Real Results

If there’s one thing we hope you take from this, it’s that you do not need to wait until you feel confident to start acting like the person you want to be. Most of the time, the patterns we default to are so well-rehearsed, they can start to feel like “just who I am,” when really they are just the most repeated route through pressure.

That’s why this whole idea matters. Not as a tech trick, but as a genuinely useful way to use AI in service of humans. To build tools that support clearer thinking, better decisions, and more agency in the moments we usually hand the wheel to fear.

Mihaela’s Final Thoughts
My assertiveness at work increased dramatically. I joined a live panel, said yes to recording a podcast, and got asked to become a committee member for one of the most respected EA communities in the UK. I posted on LinkedIn over a hundred times, something I’d never have done before. Overall, I interrupted my go to default mode and stopped shrinking.

None of this happened because I became more confident overnight. It happened because I stopped letting fear make the decision, even though the fear never went away.

Maya represents who I already am when I’m not weighed down by old patterns. She’s not a fantasy. She’s what I’d be without the doubt, the noise, the weight of people’s expectations. Building her as an AI meant I could access that version of myself more consistently, even in small, everyday decisions where it’s easiest to shrink.

Maya didn’t change who I am. She made it harder to ignore who I already was. She gives me back my sense of agency.

Admin professional on camera with minimal post engagement, highlighting visibility challenges on social media.

How LinkedIn’s Algorithm Fuels a Gender Visibility Gap

The “bro-boost” story (and why it feels so familiar)

You’ve probably been seeing the posts, women switching their LinkedIn gender to male, tweaking photos and headlines, even “bro-coding” their content, only to watch their views and profile visits suddenly spike. 

Others have created a post with a male colleague, each posting to their profiles only to witness the post on the male colleague’s feed travel further and faster, even though they were identical posts.

One Official, Hillary Robertson recently share in the HQ community, “I deleted my demographics rather than switch to male, and my reach skyrocketed within 2 days.” Experiences like Hillary’s highlight a truly disturbing issue, that LinkedIn and other online platforms have algorithms that disproportionately amplify the boost of male users over female users.

Intersectionality and the Internet: Not all digital bias is equal

And we have to say this clearly, this doesn’t land the same way for all women. Women of color, women with disabilities, and anyone living at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities often experience even harsher penalties in visibility, credibility and how their content is policed.

If that feels depressingly familiar, it’s because it is. Sexism at work is older than every platform we’re using. In the 1960s, Dame Vera Stephanie Shirley was a brilliant mathematician who wanted to keep working after having a child. So she did something radical, she banded together other highly qualified mothers who were stuck at home, and built a remote tech company doing serious work (flight software for Concorde, stock control systems, train timetables) long before flexible working was a buzzword. To get taken seriously in business, she signed her letters and would turn up to meetings as Steve Shirley, confronting sexism face-to-face. 

It shouldn’t be lost on us that in 2025, women are still having to play similar games with their names, photos and profiles just to get their ideas seen but now it’s a digital game as well. 

So… is LinkedIn sexist? As always, the reality is more complicated than a simple yes or no.

What algorithms and LLMs actually do with that history

Most modern platforms, including LinkedIn, use AI systems to decide what you see, and these systems learn from massive pools of historical data and user behavior.

That matters, because:

  • LinkedIn’s job-matching algorithm has already been found to disadvantage women. MIT Technology Review reported that even when gender was removed from the data, LinkedIn’s system learned to favor male candidates because men tend to apply for jobs they’re less qualified for, while women typically wait until they meet almost all the criteria. The algorithm learned that behavior and amplified it, recommending more men for senior roles.
  • Other companies have had to scrap biased AI entirely. Amazon abandoned an internal recruiting tool after discovering it was automatically downgrading resumes that contained the word “women’s” (as in “women’s chess champion”) because it had been trained on mostly male resumes.

The pattern is clear, AI systems don’t wake up one morning and decide to dislike women. They learn from a world that already undervalues women, and then they industrialize that bias at scale.

That’s exactly what Emma Wilson argues in her Is LinkedIn sexist? piece, what we’re seeing is less a single evil algorithm and more a messy interaction between data, design and human behavior, where platforms amplify the patterns they’re fed.

Behavior vs Code: The Visibility Paradox

One of Emma Wilson’s most useful distinctions is this, an algorithm can look sexist even if the rule itself isn’t to “prefer men.” You have to separate what the algorithm is trained to reward and how people behave towards different posters, who they click, trust, reply to, or quietly scroll past.

Research shows that men and women, on average, are showing up with different behaviors around confidence and risk. A gender-equality study found something important, on average, women score higher on verbal ability and altruism, while men score higher on risk-taking and self-esteem.

If you layer that over LinkedIn, a pattern starts to emerge:

  • On the human side, women are more than equipped to write sharp, compelling content.
  • On the platform side, LinkedIn quietly rewards behavior that looks like confident, frequent, self-promotional posting, the same kind of risk-taking and self-belief men are still more socially encouraged and forgiven for.

So we end up with this visibility paradox:

The issue isn’t that women don’t have the words. It’s that the system is tuned to boost the people most willing to push themselves forward, most often, in the boldest terms, behaviors men are still more likely, and more free, to lean into.

So when women see their posts underperform, it’s a sign that the platform is optimized for a style of visibility many women have been taught to dial down, and punished for when they don’t.

So… is LinkedIn sexist?

Here’s the framing I find most useful (borrowing from Emma):

The better question isn’t “Is LinkedIn sexist?”

The better question is: “Does LinkedIn amplify existing human biases, spam patterns and communication norms in ways that often disadvantage women, especially women at the intersections of race, disability, class and caregiving?”

Looking at the job-matching bias, the bro-boost experiments, and the under-representation of minority groups in ranking systems, it’s hard not to conclude that the answer is yes, that’s exactly what’s happening.

This is less a story about one evil platform and more a story about biased training data, biased platform incentives, biased social responses (who we choose to amplify, trust, hire, promote and quote).

When biased history trains modern systems, it’s no surprise the results keep landing harder on women.

What can you do about it? Especially if you’re an EA or admin. 

We know that AI can and does pick up the worst of our offline habits and magnify them. We know women are not lacking in ability, ideas or words. We know that EAs and admin professionals are often the ones quietly holding organizations together, and that your voice is badly needed in public, not just behind the scenes.

We can’t fix this on our own, but we’re not powerless either. Here are concrete moves you can make, starting today.

At the bare minimum, we need to back ourselves more loudly and more often.

That looks like:

  • Using more assertive, specific language about what you deliver (“I designed and led…” vs “I helped with…”).
  • Positioning your role around strategic outcomes, not just tasks (“I own the exec’s schedule” vs “I manage his calendar”).
  • Taking more calculated risks such as posting the opinion piece, sharing the story of a boundary you set, talking about measurable impact, asking for the raise or title change instead of waiting to be noticed.

From our conversations with assistants, this is the core mindset shift, moving from “support person keeping things afloat” to strategic operator whose judgment moves the business.

2. Plug into communities that treat your ambition as normal

In a room full of ambitious admins and assistants, things that might feel “too much” elsewhere, like talking about money, impact, boundaries, thought leadership, are baseline, not bragging.

That’s why, at The Officials, we encourage our members to treat their career like a business and the employer as their client. We teach them to better understand the service they provide and know the business case for each one of those services. It doesn’t cut it to say, “I check their inbox and reply to emails.” Administrative professionals need to use elevated language that properly articulates the business case for their role by instead saying something like, “I build and implement an inbox triage system that speeds up processing, prioritizes business-critical matters, reduces oversight risk, and delegates at every appropriate opportunity so the executive stays responsive and free to focus on high-value work.” 

We want our community to know that they don’t have to rewire their relationship with visibility alone. In our weekly mentorship sessions, open to any administrative professional, Officials practice using agentic language, with support, so that it is easier to deliver it when to their “clients”, aka executives.

3. Use your voice and your vote

There’s also a policy and product side to this:

  • In the UK, you can add your name to a petition calling for fair visibility for all on LinkedIn, pushing the platform to audit and address gendered outcomes in its algorithm.
  • Tech companies, like LinkedIn, repeatedly say they care about their users and are committed to building the best platforms for them, meaning those users can hold them accountable by asking:
    • How are you auditing your systems for gender and race disparities?
    • How are you cleaning and rebalancing training data?
    • How can creators challenge unfair moderation or reach drops and have that feedback fed back into the model?

Platforms are responsible for building systems that don’t silently punish women for existing, leading or talking about their careers and lives. We’re responsible for insisting on that, and for refusing to disappear quietly when the numbers don’t add up.

4. Be intentional about how you train the system

Finally, remember, your own clicks and comments are training data.

  • Comment generously and substantively on women’s posts, especially those of women of color, disabled women and other marginalized voices.
  • Share and save content that centers assistants’ expertise, not just their helpfulness. 
  • Challenge posts that recycle tired stereotypes (“just an EA,” “my girl who sorts out my chaos”) and instead amplify language that names the strategic nature of the work.

Small choices compound. If enough of us change what we reward, the signals going back into the system change, too

We discuss topics like this and how to show up as a leader in your workplace in our Weekly Mentorship Sessions. These sessions are free for all administrative professionals to attend and allow you to crowdsource advice and support from other hardworking peers. 

We need your voice and would love to see you at our next session. 

Why Assistants Need a Safe Space

As an assistant, you aren’t just the organizer or the fixer, you’re the vault. You hold confidential information, manage executive emotions, keep an eye on team dynamics, and absorb stress from all directions.

The catch? You often can’t talk freely “down” to the team or “up” with your exec, and many times you’re the only person in the organization doing what you do. The pressure builds up and the walls get higher. As Brené Brown’s work on vulnerability reminds us, we’re not meant to armor up and carry that load alone; being able to be honest in front of people who can hold it with us is how we start to release it.

Inside The Officials, our Weekly Mentorship sessions (our “Assistants Anonymous”) are built as a release valve for exactly that. They’re where you can bring the hard stuff you can’t say at work and all the “you will not believe what just happened” stories: like being put on the spot in a company town hall to launch a Christmas event you’ve never actually aligned on with your boss, or seeing an executive swoop in to “fix” an agenda you already have under control while you’re out sick with a migraine. And you’re met with nodding heads, zero judgment, practical ideas, and a feeling that you can finally put the armor down because you’re not the only one in it.

Support isn’t indulgence. It’s infrastructure.

That feeling isn’t just nice-to-have. There’s a growing body of research showing that being part of a supportive community is one of the most powerful ways to protect your mental health, reduce burnout, and actually perform better at work.

Let’s dig into what the data says, and how our weekly sessions are designed around it.

What the research and big thinkers say about not doing this alone

For years now, researchers across disciplines such as neuroscience, psychology, social science, and public health have been saying the same thing in different ways: we are not built to do life or work alone. Major reviews show that strong social connection is linked to better mental health, lower levels of anxiety and depression, higher self-esteem, and even longer life expectancy.

1. Social support literally changes your brain’s stress response.

Our members say that the mentorship sessions are a safe, no-judgment space where they can vent, process real situations in real time, and walk away feeling lighter, validated, and more confident about what to do next. Whether it’s untangling why a boss cancelling 1:1s makes you feel powerless, or reframing an overstepping exec’s email so it doesn’t hijack your whole week, the pattern is the same: they arrive tense and leave clearer and calmer.

They reflect what the science has been telling us for a long time: being in community literally changes how your brain and body process stress. In other words: when you feel supported, your nervous system gets to stand down. You’re not constantly in fight-or-flight.

Thought leaders in the leadership and work space have been echoing this too. Simon Sinek has built an entire body of work around the idea that together is better — it’s literally the title of one of his books, an illustrated fable about how we thrive when we move with others instead of white-knuckling it alone. In Leaders Eat Last, he talks about humans as deeply social creatures who need a “Circle of Safety” around them: teams where people trust one another, feel protected, and can focus their energy on the work instead of on self-protection.

2. Peer support is a burnout buffer.

A paper on workplace support found that better collegial/peer support is significantly associated with less depression, anxiety, insomnia, and burnout, and more overall well-being. Peer support programs provide real mental health relief for people by giving them spaces to debrief, process, and feel understood.

Sound familiar?

3. Psychological safety isn’t a buzzword. It predicts how well you work.

Feeling safe to speak up, ask questions, and admit mistakes without fear of humiliation (a.k.a. psychological safety) is strongly linked to lower burnout and better work outcomes.

A 2022 study found that when people feel psychologically safe, they report less overall burnout and are more resilient during times of crisis. It has even been linked to higher task performance and more “above and beyond” behaviors at work. It’s also been shown to weaken the link between tough work environments and burnout, like a shock absorber for your emotional well-being.

So when you’re in a space where you can say “here’s what I’m struggling with” without bracing for impact, it’s not just therapeutic, it’s a performance strategy.

4. Community is a mental health intervention.

The UK’s Mental Health Foundation points out that being part of a community helps us feel safer, more connected, and more hopeful, and improves mental health overall.

When our members leave one of our sessions thinking, “Okay, I’m not crazy and I’m not alone,” that lightness they feel is the intervention.

How our weekly group mentorship sessions are designed (on purpose)

When we say our weekly sessions are about psychological safety, it isn’t just vibes, it’s structure.

We intentionally designed them to hit the things research says matter most:

  • Peer support, not performance. You’re not there to impress anyone, you’re there to be honest. And you’re surrounded by people who understand.
  • Shared language for hard things. When someone says, “My boss cancels our 1:1s and then announces in front of the whole company that I’m leading an event we’ve never actually discussed,” or “An executive keeps jumping in to ‘fix’ work I’ve already done and it makes me feel incompetent,” everyone else can suddenly name that in their own roles too. Labeling experiences reduces shame and opens the door to change.
  • Gaining “Hive Mind” wisdom. The collective experience of the group will always beat individual knowledge. When one person brings a problem, ten people bring solutions, scripts, and reframes you can borrow.
  • Building emotional resilience. As the data shows, having a supportive network is a buffer against burnout. You return to your desk lighter because you put the load down for an hour.

You’re not being dramatic. You’re building capacity.

Brené Brown on vulnerability and why it matters in our realm

Brené Brown’s work gives us a language for what’s happening in these sessions.

She defines vulnerability as uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. That’s exactly what you’re practicing when you say to a group of peers, “My workload is unsustainable and I don’t know how to have the conversation,” or “I feel underpaid and I’m scared to name it,” or “I’m worried this exec’s behavior is making me look incompetent even though I know I’m doing the work.”

In her recent appearance on The Diary of a CEO, Brené spoke about the misconception that vulnerability is weakness. She argued the exact opposite: vulnerability is the most accurate measure of courage. When you’re willing to be seen in the moments you don’t have everything figured out, you open the door to the things most of us say we want more of: clarity, connection, learning, and real change. That’s why you often leave these calls not just feeling lighter, but clearer on your next move. Naming the hard thing out loud is usually the moment momentum starts.

Vulnerability is also what interrupts shame. Brown’s work on shame and “wholeheartedness” shows that when we keep our struggles hidden, the story in our head is, “It’s just me. I’m the problem.” When we bring those same struggles into a supportive space and are met with empathy, the story shifts to, “Oh, this is a pattern. Other people navigate this too. There are tools for this.”

And then there’s creativity and growth. Brown often describes vulnerability as the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change: you can’t try a new boundary script, redesign a broken process, or reposition your role without some level of emotional exposure. Our sessions become a testing lab where you can say, “I’m thinking about emailing my boss with two options and a presumptive close — does this wording land?” or “Here’s how I’m planning to reply-all to an overstepping exec so I stay classy, not combative — what would you tweak?” before you take it into the room. The vulnerability is real, but you’re not doing it in a vacuum. You’re doing it with people who are also, in the words of Brené Brown, daring greatly in their own roles.

What this means for your career (and why we built this for you)

Here’s the bigger picture:

  • Your work is emotionally and cognitively demanding. Research keeps showing high levels of burnout and stress in administrative and support roles, and that organizational fixes alone aren’t enough without real peer support.
  • You can’t sustainably lead from the shadows. You’re already doing leadership work — coordinating, translating, prioritizing, anticipating risk. Community is where you remember that, and where you’re reminded to fight for the conditions you need to keep doing it well.
  • Support isn’t indulgent. It’s infrastructure. The data is clear: social support, psychological safety, and peer programs are now recognized as core components of a healthy workplace, not perks.

So when you carve out time to join our weekly group mentorship sessions, you’re not taking a break from “real work” — you’re doing the strategy work that keeps you effective, sane, and still in love with your career.

Your invitation

If you’re already inside our community but haven’t joined a Weekly Mentorship Session yet, consider this your nudge:

Bring one real situation you’re wrestling with.

We’ll bring the questions, the frameworks, the “OMG same!”, and the brave, evidence-backed belief that you deserve to be well and well-paid for the value you create.

You don’t have to do this role alone. And honestly? You were never meant to.

Your Most Important Client: Your Own VA Business

As a Virtual Assistant, you’re a master of systems. You’ve probably learned half a dozen project management tools, navigated countless CRMs, and become fluent in your clients’ unique workflows.

But here’s the truth that most VAs don’t want to admit: you’re neglecting your most important client—yourself.

While you’re busy optimizing everyone else’s business, your own VA practice is held together with mental notes, scattered spreadsheets, and a prayer that you’ll remember to follow up with that lead from three weeks ago.

The irony is painful. You’re the systems expert, the operations wizard, the person clients hire to bring order to chaos. Yet your own business? That’s running on autopilot (and not the good, automated kind).

Why VAs Struggle to Build Their Own Systems

The challenge is unique to the VA industry. Unlike other service providers who typically work with one or two clients at a time, VAs juggle multiple clients, each with their own goals, tools, communication styles, and expectations.

You spend your days context-switching between:

  • Client A’s Microsoft Planner board
  • Client B’s Monday.com workspace
  • Client C’s custom Notion setup
  • Client D’s email-based chaos that you’re trying to organize

By the time you close your laptop, the last thing you want to do is build another system. Your brain is full. Your energy is depleted. And building systems for your own business? That gets pushed to “someday.”

But here’s what happens when “someday” never comes: that first client you landed (you know, the one who practically fell into your lap) eventually moves on. And suddenly, you realize you have no pipeline, no repeatable sales process, and no idea how to find your next client.

If you’re thinking about becoming a VA, or you’re already working as one but feel like you’re flying by the seat of your pants, it’s time to treat your VA business like the valuable client it is.

The Three Pillars Every VA Business Needs

Building systems for your own business doesn’t have to be overwhelming. In fact, if you focus on three core areas—Sales, Socials, and Systems—you’ll create a foundation that actually supports your growth instead of holding you back.

1. Socials: Marketing Can’t Be an Afterthought

I know too many talented VAs who are one client departure away from panic. They’re fully booked right now, so marketing feels unnecessary. They tell themselves they’ll focus on it “when things slow down.” But when that anchor client finishes their project, suddenly there’s nothing in the pipeline but that doesn’t stop your bills from being due.

Your social media and content marketing shouldn’t be something you do when you’re desperate for work. It should be a consistent engine that keeps opportunities flowing even when you’re busy.

But here’s the problem: When you’re deep in client work, switching between systems all day, the last thing you have energy for is writing LinkedIn posts or planning content.

This is exactly where tech becomes your best friend.

It’s important to find tools that help you:

  • Batch-write content and capture ideas
  • Schedule posts weeks in advance
  • Repurpose one piece of content across multiple platforms
  • Keep your presence active even during your busiest weeks

Questions to ask yourself:

  • If your biggest client left tomorrow, how long would it take to replace that income?
  • When was the last time you posted about your services?
  • Do you have a content calendar, or do you post when you remember?
  • Are you actively building relationships with potential clients, or waiting for them to find you?

2. Sales: Your Client Pipeline Shouldn’t Be a Mystery

Let’s talk about what happens when a potential client reaches out. If you’re like most VAs, the process looks something like this:

  • Scramble to write a custom proposal in Google Docs
  • Copy-paste an old contract and hope you updated all the names
  • Send separate emails for pricing, services, and next steps
  • Cross your fingers and wait

Then, once they say yes, the real fun begins: the onboarding marathon. It can take weeks to get access to all their systems, understand their workflows, learn their tools, and actually start delivering value. During this time, you’re earning nothing (or very little) while investing significant energy.

What if you had a system instead?

Imagine a sales process where:

  • Inquiry forms automatically capture all the information you need
  • Proposal templates auto-fill with client details and your service packages
  • Service agreements are generated with pre-approved terms
  • Onboarding sequences trigger automatically upon signing
  • Payment links are included in every proposal

This isn’t fantasy, this is what happens when you build a proper sales system. You stop recreating the wheel for every new client and start closing deals faster with less effort.

Questions to ask yourself:

  • Do you have templated proposals and service agreements?
  • Can you generate these documents quickly, or does each one take hours?
  • Do you have a clear pricing structure for your services?
  • What does your client onboarding process look like? Is it documented?
  • How long does it typically take from “yes” to starting billable work?

3. Systems: Your Backend Operations Need Love Too

You’re a systems person. You know how important it is to track time, invoice promptly, manage tasks, and stay organized. Yet somehow, your own backend is a disaster.

Maybe you’re:

  • Using three different tools that don’t talk to each other
  • Manually logging time across multiple clients
  • Forgetting to invoice because you’re too busy doing the work
  • Losing track of your own tasks in the shuffle of client priorities

Your backend systems are what keep your business running. Without them, you’re leaving money on the table, burning out faster, and creating unnecessary stress.

Consider tools that actually work for you:

For time tracking, systems like Kirmada can automatically track your time even when you’re switching between multiple clients. So helpful when you are too busy to remember to start and stop a timer every time you context-switch. (And if you do, you’re probably under-logging your actual hours.)

You need a command center for:

  • Sales follow-ups
  • Content creation
  • Administrative tasks
  • Client goals and milestones
  • Professional development
  • Financial management

For invoicing and payments, building systems is non-negotiable. Your invoices can generate automatically based on your time logs or project milestones. Payment reminders can send themselves.

Questions to ask yourself:

  • How accurately are you tracking your time across all clients?
  • Are you invoicing for all the hours you actually work?
  • Do you have a system for managing your own to-do list?
  • How long does it take you to prepare and send invoices each month?
  • Are you using tools that integrate with each other, or constantly duplicating data?

Making It Happen: You Need a Plan

Here’s what I know about VAs: you’re smart, capable, and absolutely able to build these systems. The problem isn’t ability it’s time, energy, and knowing where to start.

You need a plan. Not a “someday I’ll figure this out” plan, but a real, actionable roadmap that helps you build these systems without burning out or abandoning your current clients.

When you start treating your own business like your best client, everything changes: your confidence, your consistency, and your capacity to grow.

The systems you build for yourself will free up time, energy, and headspace to serve clients better and scale sustainably. This isn’t busywork, it’s business maturity.

So take your own advice: get organized, automate what you can, and make your VA business the well-oiled machine it deserves to be.

Ready to Build Systems for Your Most Important Client?

If you’re thinking about becoming a VA or you’re already working as one but struggling with the tech side of running your business, our 6-week live cohort gives you everything you need:

✅ The exact tech stack to run your VA business (with room to customize)
✅ Templates and workflows for sales, onboarding, and client management
✅ Live implementation sessions where you build these systems in real-time
✅ Community support from other VAs who get it
✅ Ongoing accountability to actually finish what you start

Stop treating your own business like your least important client. You deserve systems that work as hard as you do.

Join the VA Business Systems Cohort →

The cohort starts November 10th, 2025, and we meet Mondays at 6 PM UK / 1 PM ET for six weeks. You’ll walk away with a better understand of the tech that work for you and your business and the confidence to run your VA business like a true leader.

The Low-Hanging Fruit of Automation

When I look at how administrative professionals are using AI, it’s only scratching the surface of what it can do. They are mostly using it for augmentation, to make things better, faster, prettier, cleaner. They’re asking AI tools like ChatGPT to write emails, polish copy, or brainstorm ideas. That’s great. But the next step, and the one that will truly move the needle for your workload and your career, is automation.
Automation isn’t the future. It’s the now. And the best part? The low-hanging fruit is everywhere. 🍓

From Augmentation to Automation

AI for augmentation is about assistance. AI for automation is about liberation.
Augmentation helps you do the task better. Automation helps you not do it at all — or at least not manually.

Think of it this way:
When you use AI to draft an email, that’s augmentation.
When you set up a flow that drafts, sends, and files that email automatically when a meeting is booked, that’s automation.
Both are powerful, but one scales the quality of your output. The other scales you.

Why Automation Matters So Much for Administrative Professionals

Let’s talk reality. EAs, office managers, and admin professionals are under more pressure than ever with more stakeholders, more tools, more responsibilities, and fewer boundaries. Every quarter, the expectation bar gets raised.
But here’s the truth: you can’t “work harder” your way out of this anymore. You need to work smarter and smarter means automating.

By automating elements of your day-to-day processes, you:
Free up brain space for the strategic work your execs actually need from you.
Create measurable impact by saving time and money and you can prove it.
Scale your role to handle increasing demands without burning out.
This isn’t just about efficiency, it’s about future-proofing your career. Automation is what separates an overloaded assistant from a strategic operations partner.

AI + Automation: A Powerful Duo

AI isn’t just the tool that helps you build automation, it’s the tool that can live inside it.

Imagine:
An AI that categorizes your incoming emails, labels newsletters “To Read,” and summarizes key updates automatically.
A workflow that generates meeting notes, identifies action items, and updates your tracker in seconds.
A system that notices when a deadline is missed and pings you before it becomes a problem.
That’s not science fiction. It’s Tuesday afternoon when you’ve learned the basics of automation platforms like Power Automate, Zapier, or Google Apps Script.

And with the rise of tools like Microsoft Copilot and Gemini, automation isn’t just mechanical — it’s becoming intelligent. AI can now make decisions within your automations: “If this email is urgent, forward it; if not, archive it.” That’s not replacing you. That’s supporting you.

The Low-Hanging Fruit: Start Small, Scale Fast

You don’t need to be a developer. You just need to start.

Here are three examples of where most assistants can win today:
Inbox triage – Automatically label newsletters, file receipts, or forward specific emails.
Meeting prep – Generate agendas and pull key documents when a meeting is added to the calendar.
Task tracking – Auto-update a dashboard or Notion board when a project milestone is hit.
Each of these takes minutes to set up but saves hours every week.

Ready to Go from “AI Curious” to “AI Confident”?

If this resonates, you’re not alone. Thousands of assistants are realizing that automation is their next power move — and they’re learning how to make it work now.
That’s exactly what we’re diving into at the AI for EAs: Virtual Summit on October 29. I’ll be leading a live session — “How To Get Started With Automation” — where I’ll show you three practical examples of automations every EA can use, plus how AI fits into the mix.

👉 Reserve your spot for the AI for EAs Virtual Summit (You’ll leave with real-world tactics you can use the next day.)

Want to Take It Further?

If you’re ready to build your own system — a personal dashboard that keeps you one step ahead of your exec — come join one of our HQ Live: Build Your Admin Dashboard sessions.

We’ll help you design a personalized workspace in Google, Microsoft, or Notion, so you can track, automate, and visualize your workload like a pro.

👉 Join our next dashboard workshop (Premium HQ members only — free trial available.)

Final Word

Automation isn’t about replacing what you do. It’s about elevating how you do it.
Start with the low-hanging fruit. Then, keep climbing. Because the assistants who automate now? They’re the ones leading tomorrow.

Missing the Mark: Why Your Admin Hire Failed and What to Do Instead

Recently, I came across an article on Inc. that described a scenario I’ve seen far too often in my work training and mentoring administrative professionals. In it, we meet an employer who hired an admin, hoping this person would take work off their plate but somewhere along the line, things went sideways.

They finally brought on administrative support to lighten the workload, but somehow, everything feels heavier. Tasks are slipping through the cracks, they’re answering more questions than ever, and instead of gaining back their time, they’re now managing someone else’s.

If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. I’ve seen this dynamic play out again and again. What starts as a hopeful hire quickly becomes a source of stress for both the employer and the employee.

But this kind of mismatch between expectations and outcomes is rarely about one “bad hire.” More often, it points to deeper issues including a lack of clarity and understanding around administrative roles and a hiring process that overlooks key capabilities.

Let’s unpack what’s really happening and explore how to fix it.

1. Lack of Clarity Around the Role

Many employers believe hiring an admin means offloading “the small stuff” greeting guests, calendar invites, emails, meeting prep, and more. While those are important functions, the role is far more nuanced.

Administrative roles vary widely from entry-level front-of-house positions to highly strategic executive assistant roles. But regardless of the level, all admin professionals must manage a high volume of varied requests, respond to a diverse range of personalities, and maintain psychological safety for those they support whether that’s executives, clients, or guests.

They often build mental (and sometimes digital) profiles of those they work with, adapting to communication preferences, anticipating needs, and acting as the first line of brand representation. They must balance warmth and professionalism with efficiency and problem-solving. This work requires high levels of emotional intelligence, cognitive flexibility, critical thinking, and a strong internal drive to be of service.

Without clarity about the expectations and scope of the role, employers often create vague or shallow job descriptions. They end up hiring someone to “help out” without defining how that help should show up nor understanding the true value that role brings to the business.

This is the most important part of the hiring process and the part most employers get wrong. They don’t fully understand the real business case for these roles, often underestimating both the impact admins can make and the soft skill set required to make it look effortless.

At the same time, the employee may also underestimate the role. Some candidates step into these positions thinking it will be straightforward without realizing the complexity involved in managing relationships, protecting time, and anticipating needs across an organization. When the reality of the role sets in, they can feel overwhelmed and underprepared.

This is why developing a clear understanding of the role and writing a job listing that reflects the actual value it brings to the business is the first critical step in hiring well. Both the employer and the candidate need to be aligned on what the role entails and why it matters. A well-written job description that highlights the true scope, expectations, and impact of the role can help filter out underqualified candidates and attract those who are genuinely equipped to succeed.

I often tell clients to think of job listings as supplier briefs and imagine they are looking to work with a supplier or contractor. That means clearly articulating the services you need providing and how those services positively impact the business, and ultimately the bottomline.

Employers miss this crucial step because they don’t just underestimate the role, they underestimate the entire business case for it. They aren’t just there to help and be nice. Admins operate to improve productivity, enhance efficiency, provide exception customer service, and ultimately make the company more profitable. Their impact is powerful, and their skill set (especially the soft skills that make it all look easy) is both unique and essential.

When expectations aren’t aligned from the start, disappointment is inevitable.

2. Hiring Without the Right Lens

Too often, admin hiring is based on personality fit or perceived likability rather than competencies. Employers may prioritize friendliness or previous job titles over more critical qualities like initiative, prioritization skills, and cognitive agility.

What gets overlooked?

Cognitive flexibility: Let’s be clear, multitasking is a myth. No one can switch between tasks without a cognitive cost. What you’re really looking for is someone who can maintain clarity of thought while juggling multiple streams of information. Cognitive flexibility isn’t about thriving in ambiguity it’s about seeking clarity amid complexity. It means being able to pause, reprioritize, and problem-solve effectively using strategic reasoning, deduction, and lateral thinking. (Yes, even for reception whose skills are sorely underestimated.)

Critical thinking: Can they sort through competing priorities, recognize what’s urgent versus what’s simply loud, and take the right next step without needing to be told? This requires discernment, clarity under pressure, and the ability to question assumptions.

Can they sort through competing priorities, recognize what’s urgent versus what’s simply loud, and take the right next step without needing to be told? This requires discernment, clarity under pressure, and the ability to question assumptions. It also means being able to justify their decisions to management while they build trust. Ultimately, if you’re hiring an admin, you’re hiring someone you want to trust with autonomy. What’s the point in bringing someone on if you still need to tell them what to do, in what order, and by when? Yet far too many line managers still fall into this trap.

Emotional intelligence: What many employers call “ability to anticipate needs” is actually high emotional intelligence. It’s not about guesswork or instinct, it’s about analyzing “people data.” Successful administrative professionals observe and record information about habits, preferences, behaviors, communication styles, and decision-making patterns in others. Over time, they use that data to draw conclusions, predict needs, and make informed decisions. Their ability to collect, analyze, and apply this information accurately is what allows them to proactively support those around them.

What happens when these skills are overlooked? A hire who can follow instructions but can’t lead a workflow.

When these qualities are missing, the result is predictable. You end up with a hire who might be able to follow instructions but struggles to take initiative or apply nuance. They become dependent on constant direction, unable to prioritize or act independently which ends up adding more work to your plate instead of taking it off.

Bottom line:

  • Hire for capabilities, not just personality or past titles.
  • Look for evidence of cognitive flexibility, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence during the interview process.

Tip: In the interview, use performance-based tasks with no single right answer. Focus on how the candidate processed the task and arrived at their answer.

3. The Employee Response: Deflecting or People-Pleasing

Those who are drawn to roles of service often bring a strong desire to be helpful, but with that can come unhelpful patterns, such as people-pleasing. These behaviors, while well-intentioned, can backfire quickly in fast-paced, high-demand environments.

In the Inc. article, the admin begins to overcompensate. This isn’t unusual but in my experience. I suspect it’s a survival instinct, a reflex to deflect scrutiny and project calm and control, even when internally they’re struggling to keep up.

Instead of asking for support or clarifying expectations, they double down on saying “everything’s great.” I suspect they are struggling with the notion that they are a potential problem, especially when they are drawn to a service role that is meant to help others. But the more they project false confidence, the more trust erodes.

At this stage, the employer isn’t just questioning the admin’s ability to perform the role but they may also be questioning their motivation, emotional stability, and professional judgment. It becomes harder to see a way forward.

This dynamic can create a feedback loop where stress, confusion, and miscommunication build until the working relationship becomes unsalvageable.

It’s also worth considering that this kind of people-pleasing behavior can mask deeper challenges. The admin may be:

Overwhelmed by workload: If the role hasn’t been properly scoped, tasks that seem simple may actually be time-consuming, requiring more steps or accuracy than expected. Without the tools or confidence to push back, they may rush and make mistakes.

Navigating neurodiversity: Conditions like ADHD or dyslexia can affect focus, time management, and detail orientation. These challenges often go unspoken, but with understanding and the right supports, admins with neurodiverse traits can thrive especially if they excel in interpersonal aspects like customer service.

Unclear on the consequences of inaccuracy: They may not yet connect the importance of precision to the success of the business. No one is perfect, and early mistakes are natural. But growth depends on developing awareness and linking actions to outcomes. When an employer has clearly illustrated that connection, and how inaccuracy undermines the value of even their best work, and the employee still cannot process or accept that impact, then offboarding may be the only humane and logical next step.

Bottom line:

  • Anticipate people-pleasing tendencies in service-driven candidates and assess whether structure and support can help them overcome those patterns, or if these characteristics are etched too deep and will likely cause issues down the line.
  • Don’t assume poor performance equals poor character consider what support or clarity might be missing.

Tip: Early on, normalize feedback and open discussion around workload, expectations, and how the admin prefers to process and organize work.

So what’s the path forward when support and expectations fall out of sync?

The Role of Training and Mentorship

In the Inc. article, the employer shared that they had invested time trying to train the admin. They also noted that while the admin demonstrated excellent customer service skills, they struggled with detail and deadlines.

Sometimes, even with time invested, internal training isn’t enough because the problem isn’t always effort, it’s expertise. This is where outsourcing training can make a measurable difference.

Working with an experienced administrative training company, like The Officials, can help employers navigate every phase of the admin talent lifecycle. Working with an experienced administrative trainer and consultant can:

  • Audit and advise on the current situation to understand the root causes of performance issues and determine appropriate next steps
  • Support humane offboarding, ensuring you’re a “good unemployer” and preserving dignity and professionalism
  • Craft job listings and descriptions that reflect the real value of the role and attract the right candidates
  • Support hiring decisions, including interviewing and evaluating candidates through an admin-specific lens
  • Mentor and train new hires to increase their chances of success and long-term retention

Rather than assuming the admin will figure it out or relying on ad hoc internal training, this kind of structured support sets both the employee and the employer up for meaningful, sustainable success. It ensures that the return on investment (ROI) of the new hire is realized more quickly, not only because the admin receives targeted, expert training, but because the line manager no longer needs to dedicate extensive time and energy to onboarding or course-correcting.

Final Thoughts

Hiring an administrative professional should make your life easier, not harder. But that only happens when the role is treated with the strategic importance it deserves.

Admins are not just helpers. When hired and supported correctly, they are operators, culture carriers, and time multipliers.

If things aren’t working right now, don’t write it off as a hiring mistake. Look deeper or risk repeating the same mistake again. Rethink how you define the role, how you hire for it, and how you support the people who step into it.

An executive support professional in a pink suit working at her desk and managing several AI agents

AI Experts Agree with Us: That Executive Support Professionals Should Think Like Founders

AI Experts Agree: Treat Your Role Like a Startup

Today, I had the opportunity to watch an interesting Google event titled TechByte: A Conversation with Anthropic on How AI is Shaping the Future of Startups. The event featured insights from Francis deSouza, the COO of Google, and Matt Bell, the VP of Product Research at Anthropic, the creators of Claude. I can’t wait to share the fascinating predictions they gave on the future of AI. But what really stood out to me was how their insights perfectly aligned with what I’ve been teaching administrative professionals for years: you need to treat your role like a startup.

Why Treating Your Role Like a Startup Matters

I’ve spent years honing my framework for administrative professionals to build confidence, take ownership of their careers, develop their leadership skills, establish boundaries, and find fulfilling roles. My Treat Your Role as a Startup framework positively impacts every part of your career.

So, imagine my surprise when I heard Bell from Anthropic say, “Human employees become much more in a CEO role, where each individual employee has a whole team of specialized AI agents working for them. We’ll see organizations be set up fundamentally differently,” when asked about where he thinks we’ll be in 3 to 5 years with AI.

It seems he was offering an optimistic view of how human employees will gain more autonomy in their roles by managing AI agents, aka AI employees. He also pointed out that there are three areas where humans are still better than AI: long-term planning, strategy, and common sense.

What I loved about his statement was how it reinforced the importance of this framework and introduced a new layer to how it can positively affect your career.

Treating your role as a startup is a crucial shift in mindset. It’s about adopting a leadership mentality, prioritizing strategy, and taking full ownership of your career. I’ve long encouraged the administrative assistants and executive assistants I train to approach their work with an entrepreneurial mindset, as if they were the founders of their own business. It’s about thinking proactively, prioritizing what truly matters, understanding your “customer” (aka your employer), and owning your success.

Surprisingly, some of the brightest minds in AI are echoing this very sentiment, and it’s exciting to see them catching up!

In addition to the insightful predictions about the future of AI in the workplace, there were several other useful takeaways from the event. These themes will undoubtedly shape the way we work in the coming years, and it’s important to dive into some of the key points that were discussed. Let’s explore these major themes now, starting with the first: The Necessity of Data Anonymization.

What Administrative Professionals Can Learn About the Future of AI

There were many insightful predictions and trends discussed during the event that are worth paying attention to, especially for administrative professionals. These major themes will have a significant impact on how we work in the future, and understanding them will help you stay ahead of the curve. Let’s dive into some of the key takeaways.

The Necessity of Data Anonymization

One of the standout points from Bell’s discussion was the emphasis on the importance of data anonymization. As AI becomes more integrated into business processes, it’s critical that you take steps to ensure the privacy of sensitive data—not just with AI tools, but across any app in your tech stack that requires access to your data.

This is something we have been preaching for years now. You can strip the identifying points in any prompt or uploaded resource and talk in general terms to prevent a proprietary data breach, flashback to Samsung’s AI blunder back in 2023.

The Future of AI: Agentic Orchestration and Faster Business Growth

Another compelling concept Bell introduced was agentic orchestration, which he believes will reshape how businesses operate. Agentic orchestration refers to the coordinated use of multiple AI agents (or AI “employees”) to work together on a shared task whether it’s email management, customer service, or data analysis which will allow businesses to scale faster than ever.

As a result, businesses can function much more efficiently, and their employees can focus on more strategic, creative, or leadership-focused tasks.

AI Will Transform Organizational Structures

One of Bell’s predictions was that AI will fundamentally change how organizations are structured. Specifically, he believes that AI will help reduce Dunbar’s Number, a concept that refers to the idea that humans can only maintain stable social relationships with around 150 people at once. The way this translates to organizations, is when they recruit past 150 staff communication begins to breaks down, trust fades, and silos form within the company.

Bell believes that AI could alleviate these challenges. The idea is that AI can help maintain cohesion and improve collaboration, even within large teams, by automating much of the work that causes fragmentation and inefficiency in larger organizations.

Using AI to Create Expert Databases: An Underhyped Trend

An underhyped trend that was discussed during the event is the use of AI to create expert databases to democratize access to expertise and empower professionals to work smarter, not harder. . This is something I’ve seen firsthand with Officials and Courtney Johnson, who has been way ahead of the curve on this. Courtney’s project, EAwiz, is a great example of how AI can be used to create a robust database of knowledge and expertise that empowers executive assistants to become more efficient in their roles.

Courtney and Molly Medvecky (another Official!) co-host the Weekly EAwiz call, AI for Admins: Empowering Executive Assistants with AI, where they meet to demo the latest AI tools, share insights, brainstorm solutions, and celebrate wins with the administrative community.

Fostering a Culture of Experimentation: A Key to Success

Google then hosted a post-event Q&A where I was able to ask Catayoun Azarm, a Customer Engineer at Google, about how AI giants like Google and Deepmind are empowering their employees to utilize AI in their everyday workflows.

Sadly, the answer I received was not as specific as I was hoping for but was very typical from what I am hearing from mentees and trainees at the moment. It doesn’t matter if you are an AI giant or university, despite advanced technology, organizations are still figuring out how to fully integrate AI into daily operations and are relying on employees to explore and relay.

Azarm said, “[At Google] employees use Gemini and Docs for drafting in Gmail, for summarizing in sSheets, for data analysis. We offer a wide range of internal and external courses on AI fundamentals. We have Cloud Skills Boost, and this program aims to build AI literacy across all roles, not just the technical roles. Encouraging employees to explore how AI can amplify their individual productivity. In the end, it’s all about fostering a culture of experimentation. Employees are encouraged to experiment with AI tools, find use cases within their own roles and share best practices along the way.”

AI literacy is still in its early stages for many companies, and there’s often a gap between understanding the basics and effectively using AI to optimize workflows. That’s why I strongly recommend attending Tech Hacks and any other AI discussions for administrative professionals. It’s crucial that we don’t just look upwards towards leadership for help with AI; we need to create solutions within our own roles, just as we’ve done with other technological advancements. It’s time to experiment, explore, and embrace the AI tools at our disposal to evolve our roles and careers.

Next Steps to Take Control of Your Career

As we move forward in this exciting era of AI, there are plenty of opportunities for administrative professionals to embrace these changes and take control of their careers. Here’s how you can stay ahead:

  • Attend our Tech Hacks to dive deeper into AI tools and learn how to leverage them for your role.
  • Subscribe to the Dossier to stay updated on upcoming tech and industry news and events tailored to administrative professionals.
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Simple Gamification to Beat Task Paralysis and Tackle Overwhelm

Staring at an overwhelming to-do list or a packed inbox, feeling completely stuck has happened to all of us. The task feels too big, too endless, and too impossible to start. That frozen, paralyzed state is what’s often called task paralysis, and it’s a common struggle for busy professionals.

The good news? You don’t need a complex system or a fancy productivity app to break through it. Sometimes the simplest tricks can be the most effective, especially when they use gamification to spark action.

Why Gamification Helps Break Task Paralysis

Gamification is simply the act of adding game-like elements to non-game tasks including:
✔️ clear rules,
✔️ progress markers,
✔️ rewards.

When a task feels overwhelming, your brain often can’t see the path forward. Gamification creates structure and momentum by giving your brain something it craves: small wins.

The beauty of this approach is that it doesn’t have to be elaborate. In fact, simple gamification works best because it removes overthinking and gets you moving quickly.

A Real-World Example: The “Sets of Five” Email Hack

One small but powerful gamification trick I use is when I’m faced with an overflowing inbox. Rather than trying to tackle everything at once, I break the job down and only work on 5 emails at a time.

I grab my notebook and I write the number of emails I have down in batchese of five. If I have 54 emails then I would write the 54, 50, 45, 40, 35, 30, 25, 20, 15, 10, 5, 0 in a grid (see image).

Once I clear five, I cross off the number and move on to the next set. This simple action transforms an overwhelming, open-ended task into a clear, achievable challenge. This helps me visually see my progress and then I want to solve the simple game and get to zero.

Why Simple Gamification Works

It Reduces Overwhelm
Breaking a large task into smaller steps makes it easier to start and less intimidating.

It Delivers Quick Wins
Every crossed-off number or completed step releases dopamine, giving your brain a sense of achievement that motivates you to keep going.

It Turns Tasks Into Games
The repetitive structure (clear five, cross off, repeat) helps your brain focus on “what’s next” rather than “how much is left.”

It Builds Momentum
Once you’ve crossed off the first few milestones, it’s much easier to keep moving. That forward motion is often all you need to break free from paralysis.

You Don’t Have to Overthink It

The best part? Gamification doesn’t need to be complicated. You don’t need apps, charts, or reward systems. Simple, visual, and tangible tricks like writing numbers on paper or setting mini-targets can be enough to shake you out of feeling stuck.

Try It for Yourself

Next time you’re staring down an overwhelming task whether it’s a packed inbox, a cluttered project, or a long list of admin jobs you can experiment with a small dose of gamification:

  • Break the task into bite-sized, countable chunks.
  • Track your progress visually.
  • Celebrate each small win.

You might be surprised how quickly the momentum builds, and how something so simple can clear the mental fog and help you move forward.

Interested in more tips to make you job easier? Why not sign up for The Officials Dossier newsletter?