by Beneth Perry

How difficult it can be to determine what project is priority. Sometimes the boss walks up to her desk and tells her he has a job that needs to be done immediately. What he has forgotten is that he told her the same thing yesterday, and that’s what she was working on when he gave her another “priority.”

That depending on her job description, she may have more than one boss. She needs a way to determine whose A priority gets done first.

That it’s her job to make the boss look good. Therefore, she and her boss need to work out a plan whereby she can respectfully “bug” him about getting a job completed without her being made to feel like a nag.

How important “round-trip tickets” are. In order for both the boss and his secretary to be most efficient, they need to communicate clearly on what job or part of a job either of them has completed. For instance, when a boss sends an email to his secretary with a job for her to do, she needs to reply with a “Got it,” “Okay,” or even something like “Okay. I’ll start on that after I finish . . .”— something that lets him know she got the email. She then needs to communicate with him again when the project is completed. In the same way, the boss needs to have the courtesy to respond to her emails, letting her know she can rest assured that the job she completed for him was done right and that he will take it from there.

How frustrating it is to discover the boss doing her job. It seems oftentimes that because the boss either doesn’t know what to do next or just doesn’t want to take the time to explain a job to his secretary, he ends up doing small tasks himself, instead of passing them off to his secretary, allowing her to successfully fulfill her job description of helping the boss be able to complete his administrative duties.

That while she is to make her boss look good, she is not to be his scapegoat. If he misses a deadline, messes up a job, or fumbles a ball that was most clearly in his court, he needs to be the one to make that right with the offended party, not get the secretary to do it for him.

That everyone expects the secretary to know where her boss is and when he will be available. Therefore, it’s helpful for the boss to communicate often with his secretary on where he is; what time he’ll be back; if while he’s gone, he’s able to be reached on his cell phone; and if while he’s in his office, he’s able to be interrupted.

That she and her boss need to determine what he best way is for the two of them to communicate and then stick with that plan. For several months, I worked in a church office where the senior pastor’s secretary would keep a folder on the windowsill between his office and hers. Every time the senior pastor walked into the office, which oftentimes was when she was not there, he would open the folder and find letters he needed to sign, paperwork he had requested, and other bits of information. He would do whatever was necessary with that information, sometimes put new items in the folder, and return it to the windowsill for the secretary to retrieve the next day. Even though he was rarely in the office, they were able to get much accomplished as a team with this great system of communication.

That they both need a regularly scheduled catch-up meeting, at least weekly. If the boss is rarely in the office, these meetings are vital for the secretary so that she knows there’s a meeting coming where she can tell him, without feeling hurried, what her work load looks like for the coming week. At that time, she can also tell him what she has perceived to be top priority, giving the boss the opportunity to change her priorities if he needs to.

That she can handle some time alone to work on the long lists he gives her. After a weekly meeting, the boss may have given the secretary at least a week’s worth of work—work that she will need some blocks of uninterrupted time to complete. The boss should give her that space and not feel like he constantly needs to be coming to her every day with big projects. Perhaps he could keep a list and just give her these new items at their weekly meeting.