If you’ve not worked with an Assistant before you might be a little unsure how exactly they can help you – whether Virtual or in your Office your PA will be a pivotal member of your team.  Here are five ways an assistant can help you that you might not be aware of:

• PROTECTOR – they will know your priorities and understand what’s important in your working day. As a result, they will defend your time when others want to fill it with meetings. If you tell them you want protected working time, they will make sure it happens.
• PREDICTOR – your Assistant will get to know your business inside out and they will look ahead and pick up things that might have fallen under your radar. They’ll think about the time you need to plan for a presentation or when the deadline is for an important project and will make sure you have time to achieve what you need to.
• GATEKEEPER – fielding your emails and calls, your Assistant will make sure you only deal with the relevant ones. They will delegate to your team or deal with the others themselves.  Or they might send a holding reply if they know you’re just not going to have time to deal with it straight away.
• NEGOTIATOR – just as your Assistant is your protector, other Assistants will protect their bosses’ time. So, when you need to get that key meeting in the diary, they will negotiate hard with other Assistants and attendees to try to make it happen.
• DIPLOMAT – when your priorities shift and that meeting that was urgent last week is no longer a priority, or the one you changed three times already has to be changed again, they’ll take the heat and deftly manage the other person’s response.

These are just a few of the ways an Assistant can help you out. Let us know what others you can think of.