Shopping cart
Your cart is empty
£0.00
Although it’s over a week since the Today’s PA Conference, we haven’t been resting on our laurels – quite the opposite. In fact, if you’ve looked at our website, you’ll have seen we now have a date and agenda for next year’s event!
The Today’s PA Educational Conference has come a long way in a short time. At our first conference, five years ago, we were joined by 80 PAs and EAs. Fast forward to this year, and over the two days, we had a total of 160 delegates. For Day 1 (our training day) over 40 PAs came along to enjoy one of our most popular courses, Outlook Masterclass. As with all of Paul’s courses, the vibe in the training room was relaxed, informal, and fun. By the end of the day, everyone was feeling motivated, bursting with ideas, and ready to tackle anything – including Day Two!
As always, our second day got off to a flying start with delegates arriving early, all looking forward to hearing from our speakers and expert panellists.
After a few words from Paul, we got underway with Yvonne Dowie from the Ministry of Justice. Her talk, ‘It’s Everybody’s Business’, introduced us to the subject of Employee Engagement. Whatever organisation we work for, we’re all invested in its success, and whatever our passion in life, we owe it to ourselves to channel some of that enthusiasm and energy back into our work. We need make our voice heard and ensure we have the opportunity to grow, thrive, and reach our full potential. But never forget that we can work hard and play hard. Yvonne, a qualified Zumba instructor, showed us that, yes, we can do both.
But good employee engagement needs champions, and PAs can play a huge part in this. As assistants to senior executives, we can act as the gateways, encouraging engagement and involvement throughout the organisation.
Our second speaker, Darren Clark, is a Director and co-founder of the Spotless Group. In ‘A Story of Triumph Adversity’ he showed us that, whatever we face in life, we have it in us to overcome any obstacle in our way.
Darren – serial entrepreneur and Ambassador for the British Dyslexia Association – left school with no qualifications to work as a trolley collector at Sainsbury’s. But his is no “with-one-giant-leap-I-was-MD-of-a-successful-company” kind of story. He spent most of his life struggling with severe dyslexia, only being diagnosed at the age of 36. In order to be successful, he had to find a way of working around it, developing his own coping strategies to be the best he could be in his career. He demonstrated how, by thinking outside the box, by focussing on what we can do – instead of what we can’t – and, most importantly, by not giving in, we can get to where we want to be in life.
At the end of this session, Darren and Paul took questions together, as there were many parallels between their two stories. Paul, who started his career as a cashier at Sainsbury’s, is mildly dyslexic and has also found that by thinking and working in a much more creative way, he has been able to achieve and exceed his goals.
The theme of never giving up was echoed by our next speaker, Sara Harris MBE. After 12 years in the military, Sara made the difficult adjustment to civilian life. Going from the security of a large support network straight into the corporate world was not an easy transition. She shared her experiences of struggling to find her niche, and of being made redundant, before a series of mergers and take-overs led to her being promoted into a high-powered role within the telecoms sector. After more than 10 years as a PA/EA, working long hours and dealing with a demanding boss, she took a leap into the unknown to work for herself. At every stage, she took all she could from each role and learned not to fear change. Her motto is, ‘in life, you never stop learning’. Whether that’s from your boss, your colleagues and your peers, from your friends and family, or from your clients, you need to embrace the fact that we all learn from everyone every day. It’s only by taking our previous experiences and building upon these that we can move forward.
Sara’s experience losing a vital support network was highlighted by our final speaker of the morning. Caroline Wylie, founder of Virtually Sorted, is an expert in virtual working. As PAs, we’ve all worked with remote bosses, whether because our managers work abroad, work from home, or from clients’ offices. But increasingly these days, it can be the PAs who work from home several days each week. Whatever the situation, working remotely with your manager and/or colleagues creates a very different dynamic. As someone who works virtually with all her clients and her own PA, Caroline’s advice is to equip ourselves – technically, physically, and mentally – to minimise any negative impact and to help us work effectively when away from the office. By making sure our first interaction of the day (with our boss or colleagues) is a social one – not work-related – we can create those ‘watercooler moments’ that happen spontaneously when we’re in the office. This may require a little more effort – but it’s worth it!
The last session of the morning was our PA Panel discussing what leaders look for in their PAs. For this, our speakers were joined by special guest Kim Glover, an experienced EA and Business Manager, founder of the Exeter PA Network and recently named as one of Exeter’s Top 100 Most Influential Women.
Paul got the ball rolling, asking why, in 2019, PAs were still seen as such an important part of an organisation? The panel recognised the contribution PAs made and the value they added, enabling them to be much more effective than would otherwise be the case. When asked for the number one characteristic of a great working relationship, the panel overwhelmingly said, “trust”. The delegates agreed that trust – working both ways – was the vital ingredient in the PA/boss partnership.
After lunch, the room split into two breakout sessions. Paul led his ‘Magic Moments with Microsoft’ session, sharing a few of the hundreds of tips and shortcuts that can save us both time and effort, and help us look like Microsoft geniuses in front of our bosses!
The second breakout session was led by Andy Workman, mindset specialist and clinical hypnotherapist. In ‘Playing the Cards Life Deals You”, Andy revealed – through a 20-minute card game – how the rules of the game equally applied to many of the situations we find ourselves in at work each day. But more than that, he demonstrated how the way we played the game – whether winning or losing – could show us how we might deal with a similar situation in a business environment, by standing back and re-framing our thinking. This simple technique certainly made an impression and gave us an insight into our own thought-processes and reasoning.
As discussed in our PA Panel earlier in the day, trust was seen by everyone as the main element in the PA/Manager relationship. Paul’s main afternoon session, ‘Developing Greater Trust with your Manager’, looked at this in greater detail, discussing strategies we can adopt to help foster that trust, to demonstrate that we can be relied upon to carry out the task, to respect confidentiality, distance ourselves from office gossip, and show ourselves as loyal to our boss, team, and organisation.
In our last session of the day, ‘How PAs and Managers Work Together’, our guests were Nigel Hare (Director of Operations at Devon Air Ambulance) and his PA of four years, Catherine Moss-Crump. They shared their experiences of how they started working together, what Nigel looked for when he was first recruiting a PA, and how their working relationship has developed over the years. There were lots of questions from the room regarding working collaboratively, and how they worked to establish the level of trust demanded by their respective roles. Both emphasised why developing that all-important rapport should start from the first meeting at the interview – but why learning how your boss thinks is an ever-evolving process!
This session brought Day Two to a close – and marked the end of another successful Today’s PA Conference. To our delegates and our speakers, and to everyone who made the conference a fantastic success – a huge thank you! You’ve helped us to establish the Today’s PA Educational Conference as a permanent fixture in the calendar. Each year we love seeing old friends and new faces, and we look forward to welcoming you next August for another amazing two days.
The Today’s PA Conference 2019 was held on 15th -16th August. The Today’s PA Conference 2020 will be held on 20th-21st August 2020, agenda is already announced and Early Bird tickets available at www.todaysPAconference.co.uk.
Launched in 2015, the Today’s PA Conference is an annual two-day event held at a prestigious Central London venue. It gathers together the PA community, and offers high quality educational content as well as outstanding networking opportunities. The Conference attracts over a hundred delegates each year.
Tel.: +44 (0)20 7622 2400
Email: info@todayspa.co.uk
Today's PA
52 The Warwick Building
Chelsea Bridge Wharf
366 Queenstown Road
London
SW11 8NJ
Copyright © 2024 Today's PA. All rights Reserved.
We use cookies, just to track visits to our website, we store no personal details.
ACCEPT COOKIES What are cookies?