# Workplace Surgery: The overwhelmed EA - **Episode:** [150](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/150.md) (2024-12-03) - **Type:** workplace-surgery - **Tags:** executive-assistant, overwhelm, workplace-advice - **Time:** 35:28–40:47 (start 2128s) - **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/150?t=2128](https://truthliesandwork.com/150?t=2128) --- [35:28] Leanne Elliott: Well, a few different things going on here, isn't there? First of all, congratulations for showing how valuable you are and, and how Yeah, how much value you add to the organisation to be given these extra tasks. Scope creep, role creep, fairly common, particularly if you were the first executive assistant. Maybe that role wasn't very well fleshed out. Few roles are, because no one really bothers to take the time to go through something called job analysis, which actually looks at what you want the job to do and how you want to contribute to the organisation. Without that, you get role creep, and that's where people start saying yes to everything and end up burning out [35:59] Al Elliott: Yeah [35:59] Leanne Elliott: Fun fact, well-being probably actually starts with recruitment. Anyway, I digress, sorry. Um, what I would say is, um, there's a few things here that I'm not gonna address the kind of the people-pleasing aspect of this because I think you probably know you should be saying no a little bit more. Um, if you wanna, if you wanna kind of look at that, send another question and we'll, we'll talk about that a bit more because I actually think there's some really practical things that you can do here that are going to help. Um, first of all, I think just start to make a little note of all the tasks that you're doing on a daily basis, or look back over the last couple of weeks, all the tasks you've done, write them down, type them up, start to group them into themes. So, whether it be travel, administration, proposals, sales meeting, creative, and just make a list of all the different things you're doing. And if you can, over kind of 2, 3 weeks, the percentage of your time you're spending on them. What you're really doing there is essentially your own job analysis. You're looking at the tasks that you're doing frequently and how long it's taking you. What you should be able to do then is look at that list and go, what do I actually want to be doing? [37:05] Al Elliott: Mm-hmm [37:05] Leanne Elliott: And what do I not wanna be doing? Or what could we maybe get in some other help that is maybe, doesn't need your experience at this point to come in and the tasks that they can do. So you're almost crafting your perfect job. job that you want to do moving forward, you can get rid of the stuff that you don't wanna do. This is an ideal starting place. Get rid of the stuff that you don't wanna do. Keep the stuff that you do and potentially identify areas where additional resource might be needed. Bearing in mind, you're the executive assistant to the MD. The MD wants business proposals. They don't— they wanna be able to make a decision based on information that you've given them. They don't wanna have to ask maybe loads and loads of questions. So, use the experience you've gained in terms of these sales meetings, these proposals, proposals to basically put together a proposal for your MD saying, look, when I joined 2 years ago, this job was very different. It's evolved. I'm very grateful for this opportunity. I've taken the time to look at what I've been doing over X number of months. This is what I'm doing my time. This is the percentage it's taking. This is the value I believe is adding to the business in terms of saving you time or making you money. Because that's all any MD wants, isn't it? Oh, you want to save time and make money [38:19] Al Elliott: Yeah, yeah [38:20] Leanne Elliott: So you're basically going with a pitch of, this is what I want my role to be. I've also done some research around what the market— typical market salary is for this type of role, um, which is this. So I want to be— my proposal is I formally move to this role as my official job description. This is the asserted salary and benefits package that is market fair to be delivered with that. And FYI, we also need a part-time admin assistant to take on these tasks in my job that now doesn't make sense for me to do. It's gonna cost X amount, and I've already crafted the job description. This is it. I can get it advertised and get somebody in post in the next month. What do you think? [38:59] Al Elliott: That is beautiful [39:01] Leanne Elliott: And then I think with that as well, on your list are gonna be some things that, you know, James down in accounts has asked you to do that he probably shouldn't have, that, you know, you might include in your job if you wanna keep doing those things. You might not if you don't. It might be your MD goes, I didn't know that they were asking you asking you to do that? That's outrageous. Um, but I think the fact is, any MD that's gonna get— any manager who's gonna get a really great solution to a problem they probably don't even know about, um, and just get an easy way to say yes, happy days. And if they say no, well, I think that really questions whether it's the right place for you. Now, given this role has evolved and your organization isn't willing to to reflect that. That doesn't take away from the experience that you've got. That doesn't take away from the fact that you've got and now collated that experience to update your resume, to apply for those roles that you've already researched, to get your market, um, typical salary. Um, so it's— none of this effort would be wasted even if it doesn't go the way you want it, because you've actually done 90% of the preparation you need to do to start looking for that role in the open market [40:05] Al Elliott: That is one of your best answers. I absolutely love it. I love it. And I also love the idea that, um, when, when this person goes to the MD, they'll go, this is the problem, here's one potential solution. The MD, if they don't want to go down that road and don't want to spend more money, they'll go, well, don't worry about it, I'll stop Jeff from accounts from giving you all this other stuff because I want you to be— I want you for myself. So you're gonna win no matter what. It's such a brilliant, brilliant solution. Well done, Lee. Uh, we got question number 2 here. I got— so it's an email from a manager, and this is, this is quite cool. It's not cool at all, but it's quite funny. Makes me laugh. Last week, our finance director accidentally shared a spreadsheet with me that contained everyone's salaries, including leadership team pay