Partnering with Your Boss: Strategic Skills for Administrative Professionals
This seminar will help you master the techniques behind effective goal setting, prioritization, planning, decision-making, relationship building, and active listening. You will also learn how to communicate with confidence and assertiveness, and how to develop and exercise authority in your role.
You will leave better equipped to support your organization's and your manager's goals, adapt your communication style to work more effectively with a range of personalities, establish trust and credibility, and deepen the strategic partnership you have with your boss.
What You Will Cover
Defining Your Strategic Partnership
- Identify the characteristics of effective boss-partner relationships and apply them to build a positive, productive partnership
Developing a Trusting Relationship
- Adapt your approach to complement your boss's working preferences through self-evaluation and a personalized blueprint for change
Planning Skills to Proactively Support Your Boss
- Choose and apply active listening skills that help you anticipate your boss's needs, using a communication assessment and listening skills role play
Extending the Partnership
- Define and build on your personal power bases by completing a power-base planner
Aligning and Expanding Your Partnering Relationships
- Use influencing and persuasive communication skills in planning and delivering a business case presentation
How You Will Benefit
- Consistently anticipate your boss's needs and stay one step ahead
- Earn your boss's genuine respect and be taken seriously as a professional partner
- Get what you need from others to complete your work and achieve shared goals
- Have the authority to make decisions and act on them with confidence
- Represent your boss effectively and with credibility
- Be recognized by your boss and your peers as a valuable professional resource
- Build a genuinely trusting relationship with your manager
- Navigate working for multiple bosses and alongside other administrative professionals
- Use your time more strategically and accomplish more in each working day
Who Should Attend
Senior administrative support staff, executive secretaries, administrative assistants, staff assistants, and executive assistants.
Course Outline
Learning Objectives
- Build and Preserve Productive and Trusting Workplace Partnerships with Your Boss and Others
- Apply Planning Skills to Anticipate Needs, Manage Time and Projects, and Gain Recognition, Personal Power, and Authority
- Identify and Practice Personal Behaviors and Modes of Interaction That Form the Basis for Strategic Collaborations with Your Boss and Others
- Apply Decision-Making Skills in Order to Become Proactive in Anticipating the Needs of Your Boss and in Acting for the Benefit of the Organization
Defining Your Strategic Partnership
- Identify the Characteristics of Effective Partnering and Use These Features to Create a Profile for Your Partnering Relationship with Your Boss
- Define Your Role as a Partner By Completing a Partnering Worksheet/Planner
- Understanding Your Boss (and Yourself): A Study in Behavioral Styles
Identify Your Own Behavioral Style Preferences
- Identify Your Boss’s Behavioral Style and Build a Better Working Relationship
- Identify How to Build Trust with Each Type of Behavioral Style and Make a Trust-Building Plan to Incorporate with Your Boss
- Demonstrate the Best Way to Communicate with Bosses, Peers, or Employees Whose Style Preferences Differ from Yours
- Describe the Concept of Different Work Styles and Determine How You and Your Boss Complement One Another
Anticipating Your Boss’ Needs with Good Communication Skills
- Choose and Apply the Active Listening Skills That Will Allow You to Anticipate Your Boss’ Needs By Completing a Communication Assessment and Enacting a Listening Skills Experiment
- Create a List of Best Practices for Active Listening, Feedback, and Questioning Skills
- Begin Gathering Information to Help You Start Anticipating Your Boss’ Needs More Accurately
Becoming an Effective Gatekeeper By Managing Information Flow
- “Manage Up” By Being Conscious of Information Flow
- Clarify What Gatekeeping Means in Terms of Controlling and Supporting Information Flow
- Negotiate to Use Your Skills as a Gatekeeper More Effectively By Getting Either More Information to Manage or More Authority to Handle the Information You Are Already Working With
- Solve Information Flow Problems at Work
Decision Making with and for the Boss
- List the Barriers to Decision Making
- Use Four New Decision-Making Tools
- Establish Decision-Making Ground Rules to Apply When Either You or Your Boss Is the “Partner-in-Absentia”
- Organize Your Office and Communicate with Your Boss So S/He Can Find What S/He Needs When You Are Out of the Office
A Trusted Partner: Establishing Your Ethical Boundaries
- Recognize and Respond to Unethical Behavior
- Define and Prioritize Your Ethical Obligations
- Establish Your Own Ethical Boundaries
- Use Questions to Help Resolve Ethical Dilemmas
- Access Written Documents Outlining Legal and Ethical Behaviors and Use That Information to Determine Your Course of Action When Responding to Unethical Behavior in Others
Aligning and Expanding Your Partnering Relationship
- Synergize and Practice New Feedback-Seeking and Informative Speaking Skills By Planning a Work Review or Project Update Presentation
- Apply Influencing and Persuasive Communication Skills in Planning and Delivering a Business Case Presentation
