The hub of the wheel around which the manager and team revolve, you as administrators are often the last to be considered for development opportunities. Yet, training administrators can maximize the effectiveness of all personnel development efforts.

A team of senior AAs in a large Silicon Valley company created a plan to increase the efficiency of company administrators world-wide. The plan included formally sharing information and instituting administrator training. After the AAs made their proposal to a committee of senior executives (many of whom were their managers), one executive remarked: "I didn't know they could pull something like this together!"

As his surprise illustrates, management may be overlooking the hidden power of highly trained professional assistants. According to a study by Georgia Tech, managers spend 59% of their time doing work below their own work level. Trained AAs can step in to allow managers to tackle more strategic tasks. Also, organizations typically spend large sums to train managers to retain critical technical talent, but managers often fail to use these new techniques because implementation takes time. Trained AAs can again step in to relieve management pressures and allow managers to concentrate on developing and implementing new behaviors to help retain valuable talent.

Nancy Miller of Norell Corporation said that administrators in the 21st century are doing financial reporting, project management, staffing and networking, and tracking quality and productivity, as well as managing Internet communications. With these increased responsibilities, you as administrators will need:

Managerial Skills -- Eliciting collaboration from other workers and interviewing, hiring, and training new employees are some of the functions the increasingly stretched manager may hand over to you. You’ll have additional authority to make business and financial decisions.

Advanced Communication Skills -- As more workers become telecommuters or virtual employees and more managers travel globally, you increasingly become "Communication Central." In long distance communication about 50 percent of the impact can be lost. You must become an expert in abstracting correct meaning from quick or electronic communication.

Conflict Resolution Skills -- A report in The Secretary, a publication of International Association of Administrative Professionals (then PSI) states that "more than nine work weeks per year are spent resolving employee personality clashes." Administrators often tell us that they either know about conflicts or are involved in them. By expanding your conflict management skills and your ability to interact with different kinds of people, organizations can save management some of those nine weeks each year.

Self-Management and Assertiveness Skills -- AAs willing and able to handle some of the more routine managerial reports, budgets, and interfaces may not feel confident enough to step forward and suggest taking them over. Assertive communication skills and self-responsibility techniques make it easier for administrators to become partners with your managers.

Despite the obvious benefits of investing in AA training, most companies still don't offer it. One reason is that, because their AAs are so valuable on a day-to-day basis, managers can be reluctant to let them go to long classes. That’s why it takes ingenuity to come up with opportunities for development. In later issues, Betty will offer some tips that will help you create a plan to get what you want.