What Makes a Good Personal Assistant Invaluable?

LOST or Logical Organization Skills and Techniques – The perfect personal assistant will organize their client’s home and office, and will accompany their employer on trips. They will manage any and all road show production meetings and arrange for stationary and office supplies, catering, transportation and security, while at the same time being responsible for finding a house sitter, groundskeepers and someone to look after his or her employer’s pets.

Be Good with Pets – This is one of the easiest and best wisdoms to forget. The client’s house pets are very important. Earn the animal’s trust and become part of the family. Be aware of walk schedules, grooming and veterinary appointments and the exact location of the closest animal hospital. Pets, children and expensive toys are emergencies waiting to happen.

Commitment – The best PA is the first to volunteer to rake the lawn before the tournament, and or the guy who comes in on Saturday to apply smelly driveway sealer to the asphalt parking lot. Use tough assignments to measure your staff, and generously reward all accomplishments.

More Advanced

Personal assistants earn their employer’s trust and respect. The best and brightest PAs on the way to becoming invaluable, manage household affairs, balance checkbook and track spending; my best PA prepares all checks for my signature (and scrutiny) and mails payments to subordinate personnel.

Event Planning: More advanced PAs are trusted to manage familial birthday parties and wedding anniversary vacations, and even elaborate business events and office parties. This is in addition to their regular duties, which they have now streamlined into daily, weekly and monthly routines.

Travel Arrangements: Another key to becoming invaluable is an assistant’s ability to make domestic or international travel arrangements, to everyone’s satisfaction. The best professionals make timetables that include handy phone numbers and addresses including hotel and car rental information plotted on printed paper maps. Once again Poynt is the secret to success here – all such information can be plotted on Microsoft Virtual Earth which can then be copied by using the print screen function on every computer keyboard and pasted into a Word document beside additional contact information. This is how my best assistant prepares my itinerary. Every destination is plotted and printed on paper sheets that I keep in my pocket. And she picks me up and drops me off the airport too!

Over the years I’ve seen good people start as personal assistants because they are bilingual. They speak both English and French here in Canada, or English and Spanish in the United States. This is certainly another secret to success in this business category.

But What Makes them Invaluable?

The rare and precious personal assistants have a head full of proprietary secrets and at least two years experience managing their client’s most complex personal business. They have established a network of useful contacts and are familiar with legal procedures like court filings, patent and design documents etc. When the very idea of training another candidate becomes unthinkable, then the present employee becomes invaluable. The perfect personal assistant is a symbiotic extension of the host.