She comes out on a large stage to an enthusiastically cheering audience of 800. She’s been flown to London, Dubai, New York, and all over the country delivering a unique message to a unique audience.
Today is Administrative Professionals Day when we celebrate the unsung heroes of the corporate world. I’ve been working with them for decades and my admiration for them is boundless.
This article is about an extraordinary one, Debbie Gross, the author of The Office Rockstar Playbook: How I Leveled Up as an Executive Assistant and Helped My CEO Build a Multibillion-Dollar Company.
Note: I recently interviewed Debbie. If you’d like to see the interview, the link is here: https://vimeo.com/1076946771
Administrative Professionals are the ones you first see when you show up for your meeting, they let the executive know you have arrived. For years they were the ones who served the coffee and disappeared. You never saw the talent behind the smile.
Juggling an executive schedule requires the skill and coordination of an air traffic controller. Ensuring all the complex details of an offsite meeting are perfect, especially when people are coming in from overseas, demands the expertise of the best wedding planner. Arranging the agenda the executive has charged them to make happen with strong-willed heads of government with their own agendas can’t be done without the skill of a top negotiator.
Debbie goes beyond all this. Her message to worldwide Administrative Professionals is that Administrative Professionals and Executive Assistants can move beyond the role that business culture prescribed for them, to being strategic business partners for the executive they support.
And, even more importantly, that they can move beyond even that to becoming true Rock Stars. Debbie is one who is willing to share her journey from Administrative Professional to Rock Star so others who aspire can be on stage with their own audiences.
It’s a journey I had the privilege to see close up.
About 20 years ago I was invited to do a workshop for a small elite group of Executive Assistants to the top CEOs in Silicon Valley. Debbie was in the group and came up to me afterward. Debbie was a highly successful Executive Assistant for John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, but she had never done public speaking or teaching. She said to me, “I would like you to mentor me. I would like to be as good as you are.” What she was asking for was beyond what my usual highly motivated clients request. She wanted to get so good as a causative communicator, she could make a career of it and get paid for it.
I said, “You might want to think twice about that. Having me mentor and coach you for that is going to be tough, more of a Boot Camp than a walk in the park. It takes real work to develop these skills.”
Debbie didn’t hesitate and said, “I’m up for it.” And so we began an intensive coaching program.
As we worked together, Cisco revenue grew from approximately $120 million to $48 billion. The number of employees grew from 561 to over 70,000. Debbie went from being the CEO’s Executive Assistant to becoming the Chief Executive Assistant working with a team of Executive Assistants to handle an incredible volume of media appointments, critical meetings and presentations for a dynamic CEO. It was a rocket ride to success that lasted for decades.
In addition to her daily job of “doing the impossible to make it happen,” Debbie embraced her passion for sharing what she knows with others and started delivering highly successful workshops within Cisco. Her reputation for outstanding training and unique message spread to other corporations and she was invited to talk to their Administrative Professionals too.
Debbie never missed a coaching session with me. Year after year, she got better and better and better. When she left Cisco several years ago, she stepped into her highly successful business providing training and coaching for Administrative Professionals and Executive Assistants.
Debbie became a truly causative communicator. The skills she learned helped her become, not only a Rock Star as a Chief Executive Assistant, but a Rock Star “Edutainer”, a perfect blend of education and entertainment that keeps her audiences on the edge of their seats. Debbie has helped many grateful Administrative Professionals become Rock Stars in their own right. I can’t count the number of them who have been in my workshops and have told me, “Debbie really helped me.”
I asked Debbie what she learned from our coaching sessions that particularly helped her. This is what she said:
“You taught me a number of wonderful things. The first thing is presence. To be fully present with anyone who is communicating with you. You taught me how to look you in the eye and be very intensely there. I realized I have to fully stop what I'm doing and be present. That was a magic thing in terms of building relationships.
You get information when you are present. You are able to read things, what they're trying to tell you that they're not telling you. I found there are so many good things about being present. Which is very rare in our profession. Very, very, very rare. We're too busy now on our smartphones.
The other thing which I really love and I still do today is the power of intention, when you set your mind on something. I decided to set my mind every day on what my day was going to be like and what I was going to be like. There's a lot of power in terms of your mindset.
I learned affinity and that if I didn’t like someone then I wasn't going to communicate effectively with them. Affinity is amazing. When you have affinity for someone you really learn to communicate far more effectively with them.
The other principle that is really cool and I teach this a lot, is acknowledgement, how to acknowledge them, letting them know I'm listening to you. Now it doesn't mean that I'm agreeing or that they're going to get what they want, but acknowledging is something people don’t do.
Acknowledgement has helped me immensely both in my personal life and in my professional life. It doesn't come naturally you have to learn how to do it. You really do have to learn how to do it.
We can end world war if we just acknowledge each other first.
These skills are the cornerstone of success. I think they are the foundation of success.
Conflict would be eliminated if we could basically use these skills. I believe they’re the basic foundation of success for anyone. I'm glad that I was able to get them from you because it certainly has changed my life a lot.
I think what I'm trying to teach and share with Administrative Professionals is: Know your value. Know how valuable you are. This has to come from the place of your heart. Know that you are capable of doing so much more than what you say or think you're capable of doing. Continue to develop. Continue to learn. Become the best of the best of the best. Never ever stop learning. Never ever stop learning.”
You can find Debbie’s book The Office Rockstar Playbook: How I Leveled Up as an Executive Assistant and Helped My CEO Build a Multibillion-Dollar Company here:
https://www.amazon.com/Office-Rockstar-Playbook-Executive-Multibillion-Dollar/dp/1733384707
Debbie can be reached through her website: www.DebbieGross.com
It’s a big jump from Administrative Assistant to Executive Assistant, and then to strategic business partner. It’s an even bigger jump to Rock Star. But Debbie’s message is clear: If you’re willing to do the work, you can be one. That’s a message that is embraced by many successful Administrative Professionals all over the world.
It’s certainly the right message for everyone I can think of. Debbie was willing to do the work and the payoff is huge, it always is.
A causative communicator is a Rock Star in their own field. And you most certainly can be one.
Be the cause!