Top 5 Skills of an Executive Assistant

Top 5 Skills of an Executive Assistant

Pretty sure that the list can go on and on but here are the top 5 to consider if you are a business owner looking for additional hands for your overflowing workload. And aspiring executive assistants can also look at this as a quick checklist on what skills to enhance to be able to provide top-notch service to your clients.

1. Organizational Skills - With a very large amount of information and multiple tasks to juggle, an executive assistant must have an organized and smooth flow of operations. Must know where to pull up files, must not miss any deadlines and not lose track of important details.

2. Communication Skills - Effective communication is the first key to a great relationship between a business owner and his executive assistant. To be able to understand instructions properly and to ask important questions when needed are things that are very crucial in working with your client. Communication skills in dealing with different people is also a must for executive assistants considering the tasks that we do everyday on behalf of them.

3. Attention to Details - Hiring an executive assistant is like adding an additional error proof gear in your business. Details in emails, files, presentations, reports and the like are highly important and we, as executive assistants, are expected to double check everything that our client might have missed.

4. People Skills - The impact of good communication skills can work hand and hand with having people skills. Executive assistants deal with different people on different levels at any given time of the day. We need to know how to approach people and even build rapport with them regardless of their position or mood.

5. Adaptability - As we deal with the different tasks delegated to us by our client, we need to adapt to different settings, the changes and the varied thoughts, strategies and input that we encounter everyday. When the client or the business encounters setbacks, triumphs or delays, we need to know how to adjust our gears and offer some workarounds.