We’ve all heard the expression “work spouse.” Typically, it’s said in a joking manner. But in fairness, there is something to be said for the concept.
Are you married at work?
[ctt template=”3″ link=”974b3″ via=”yes” ]Are you married at work? Here’s why every EA needs to be in sync with his/her executive.[/ctt]
Warren and I have been legally married for 11 years. We are also work spouses. We not only chose to spend the rest of our lives together, we decided to work together when he agreed to become my office coordinator four years ago.
To me, that meant that not only did we need to be in sync emotionally for our marriage, but we also needed to be in sync professionally as well.
I’m not suggesting that you create wedded bliss with your executive. Instead, try to find that elusive “in sync” combination that top-performing duos have. You know the kind, where one person can finish the other’s sentence. When you pick up the phone and don’t hear the dial-tone you were expecting but the voice of the person you were just about to call. Or when one person has the information the other was just about to ask for.
Some people think that if you work together long enough that will naturally happen, but that’s not true. There are some things you need to do to ensure it happens.
- Start watching their patterns. The same way you notice the patterns of your significant other to see if they like to chat in the morning, have sugar in their coffee, or like action movies, you need to do the same things with your executive.
You’ve learned they want an aisle seat on United and to stay at Marriott on a lower floor away from the elevator. Now, start paying closer attention to their other preferences as well. At meetings, do they ask you at the last minute for back-up information? If so, start gathering it before they even ask for it. Do they prefer strategy meetings scheduled in the morning or the afternoon, or always leave their employee performance reviews to the last minute? Do they avoid taking a vacation because their schedule is too full, and only take days off here and there?
Once you start noticing these kinds of patterns, you can work more synchronistically with your exec. For instance, you can protect one week of her calendar in the summer and then let her know, as that week approaches, that instead of her taking off a Friday or a Monday here and there, you have kept the week of August 6 empty so she can spend a whole week with her family. If you notice that your executive isn’t very tech-friendly, start giving him printouts of his travel information instead of populating his online calendar and making him use the company app. Try keeping one or two hours each day free of meetings so your executive can use it to catch up on the day.
- Have a strategy meeting to establish what synchronicity means to your executive.
When Warren and I first started living together, I put “rules” on our relationship. For instance, I told him that I was a positive person who didn’t want to be surrounded by negativity. At the time, he had a corporate job that he didn’t like. His tendency might have been to come home grumpy about it every night and complain. I asked him to try to be more positive. He said that sounded like it would be too difficult, so we discussed it and negotiated what would work for us both, and we created a strategy around our lives.
We have the same strategy at work. He knows what is important to me (the things that I want to hear about the business), and the things that I consider his part of the business, which I don’t need to hear about if he is handling them. We agreed on what our top business priorities are for each coming week, each month, and each year. We are strategically aligned.
Are you strategically aligned with your executive? Do you know what her top priorities are, not only daily, but weekly, monthly, and yearly? I don’t mean just the company’s strategic direction, but her personal ones as well. It might be that she is determined to make partner in the firm in the next five years, or she is thinking about retiring in the next two. You know that she will always volunteer to take a high-profile client, or that she dislikes when the Board of Directors have meetings without inviting her.
[ctt template=”3″ link=”K7AdR” via=”yes” ]What does synchronicity mean to your executive?[/ctt]
- To be truly in sync with your executive at all times, you have to like them as a person.
You don’t always have to like your executive to work well with him (although you do always need to respect him). However, if you want that rare partnership that looks like a marriage, you do have to genuinely like the person you are supporting.
I was watching an admin/executive panel at an event recently, where three sets of work duos were talking about what worked and what didn’t work with their professional relationships. Of the three, it was obvious that one team had the final magic ingredient: they genuinely liked each other. The male executive was telling a story about traveling in the car with his young children, and they asked him a question. When he didn’t know the answer, they said, “Call Jennifer—she has all your answers.” Everyone laughed. Jennifer and Mark made eye-contact, laughed, and she joked that his family referred to her as his work-wife.
Before you think that perhaps there was more going on in the relationship, rest assured that was not the case. Jennifer was probably the same age as Mark’s mother. They showed each other genuine affection and nothing more. She respected and liked Mark, and Mark respected and liked Jennifer.
Back when I worked for Mr. Donnelly as his EA, I respected him as a manager. I just didn’t really like him, since we had nothing in common at the time. It wasn’t that he was bad, and we worked well together, but something was missing. I remember when he would take me out for lunch for Administrative Professional’s Day, I would cringe and almost dread it. Other than work, we had very little to talk about. I looked forward to the times when he brought his wife because I knew she and I could chat. He was a nice man, and he was good to work with, but we never had that married type of relationship at work; the final ingredient was missing for us.
A successful marriage at home is just as difficult to achieve as a successful marriage at work. Just because you work together doesn’t mean that you’re in sync with one another. And like a true marriage, it takes a lot of work, a lot of patience, and a little bit of luck.
