You and Your Mindset
PPPA Guide to Building influence in the Assistant role
This guide is designed to help Assistants progress in the career, build influence and manage the relationship with their colleagues.
Wherever you are in your Assistant career, influencing skills are vital to be successful in the role. Moving people forward, getting colleagues to listen to your thoughts and ideas, being taken seriously and seen – influence is needed in all of these scenarios.
What is influence, and why is it a must-have for Assistants? In the workplace, Assistants have to be persuasive. Assistants don’t necessarily have the authority or job title to tell people what to do. But, they do often have to get people to do the things they ask. So, that requires the ability to be persuasive and hold a level of influence. Many Assistants struggle with this concept. They often have to work hard to be heard in meetings, to have their opinions and thoughts actioned.
I don’t know how many times in my career I have suggested something in a meeting without any action taken, for it to be recommended by someone else a short while later and the idea acted upon.
It is frustrating, but you can change that behaviour if you have the drive to do so. In this guide, we are going to cover a lot of ground. This guide – Building Influence in the Assistant role, is segmented into five chapters that cover different areas of influence and how Assistants can develop their persuasion skills so that they are seen and heard in all aspects of their role.
Here are the topics we are going to cover.
Building influence comes when you learn how to work with people, get the most out of their character and understand their behaviours. In chapter one, we will cover the steps Assistants need to take to build their influence.
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