Don’t pull the plug CAREER Administration professionals play
a vital role in company life by acting as connectors, writes Shirley Taylor.
MALCOLM GLADWELL, author of The Tipping Point, notes there are three types of people involved in the phenomenon of word of mouth, one being Connectors. While he is looking at character traits to clarify personality
types, I believe the same can be said for different jobs. Certain careers seem bring out the connector in their practitioners, such as administrative support. And while the various roles in this sector change and evolve, one thing seems to be constant: being a connector. We are always learning about building relationships and making
connections with people – co-workers, clients, managers – but one aspect of admin positions we rarely think about is that we actually are the connectors in our companies.
WHO DO YOU CONNECT WITH? FOR a start, look at the different departments or people with whom you deal on a daily basis in yourt work. They may be clients, other administrative support personnel, management, your boss, travel agents, IT staff, accountants or human resource people. |The list goes on and on. Think about these different people: what do they have in
common? Easy – they all connect to one another through you. You might take information from human resources and summarise it for your boss so he/she can hire a new employee. You’ve just connected your boss to human resources as well as some external hopefuls. Maybe you need the input of a travel agent to provide the
finance department with dollar figures so they can arrange the expense account for payroll to cut a cheque for your boss’s trip to a convention. Here you have connected four people or groups: the travel agent, your boss, the finance accountant and the payroll people.
WHY DO YOU CONNECT? YOU might say that you connect with all these different people and departments because it is almost like a side effect of your daily duties. After all, how can you arrange that trip without talking to the finance department and the travel agent? But the reason you are a connector lies much deeper in the
modern business model. The business model of corporations, which has filtered down and pervades many medium to small businesses, is that of separation of duties. People tend to work in groups, or pods, based on function: finance, payroll, design, engineering, quality, technical writing, information technology, benefits and so on. These pods are useful for many reasons. They make
We create the hubs around which all the other staff members
can work with each another
distribution of information easier, they provide support from co- workers who are familiar with the field, and they even create a sense of teamwork based on that familiarity. Our current business model requires that all these pods have a connector. That’s where administrative support comes into the
picture. Admins are the connectors that tie all these pods together. We create the hubs around which all the other staff members can work with each other. We unite the disparate groups and, as a result, create a company-wide team spirit.
HOW DO YOU CONNECT? HOW you connect with groups and individuals can probably be as varied as the number of groups with which you deal. You probably have a lot of face-to-face time with your own boss, while other department heads might be reached mostly by phone. Contact with individuals in other departments probably includes a lot of emails or even texts, while folks outside the company are likely accessed via a blend of phone and email. This is why it is so important for admin workers to be great
communicators. To make the company work like a well-oiled machine, admin staff must be able to communicate well, which in turn will build and maintain relationships.
DON’T GET UNPLUGGED KEEP in mind the need to stay connected when dealing with others, both within your organisation and outside it. If something causes all the admins in your company to be unplugged at the same time, the pods might still work but the company as a whole would definitely not be so effective. You are the connectors that create the hubs around which the modern business model revolves.
Shirley Taylor is a speaker, trainer and author of 12 books on communication skills. A secretary for nine years in Sheffield, UK, she now lives in Singapore and runs an annual secretaries’ conference there and in Malaysia (
www.sttstraining.com/ASSAP).
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