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Home / All Training Courses & Events / Modern Day Assistant / The Modern-Day Assistant São Paulo

Join us in

São Paulo

30th September - 1st October 2024

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Hours
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MODERN-DAY ASSISTANT | LUCY BRAZIER'S LIFE-CHANGING SIGNATURE TRAINING COURSE | BECOME A STRONGER, MORE EFFECTIVE & INFLUENTIAL ASSISTANT

The Modern-Day Assistant São Paulo

THE MODERN-DAY ASSISTANT AS A STRATEGIC BUSINESS PARTNER with LUCY BRAZIER

Join Lucy Brazier, OBE as she takes you on a fantastic journey exploring the role of the Modern Day Assistant.

Are you ready to embrace change and fulfil your potential?

Understand how to use the changes to the role and to the world of work to catapult you to success. Explore the opportunities for you to become a true strategic business partner to your executive. Learn tools to reset the ground rules. Achieve the structured communication that you need to drive success for both of you. And adapt your ways of working to your executive’s style to build a proactive partnership.

This 2 day course is designed to inspire, motivate, challenge, excite about the opportunities that exist in the role of the Executive Assistant.  It also provides very practical training, tools and tips – real business solutions that you will take back to the office and implement immediately to improve your systems and productivity.

Lucy Brazier OBE is one of the world’s leading authorities on the administrative profession.

As CEO of Marcham Publishing, specialist publishers of Executive Support Magazine, a global training magazine dedicated to the professional development needs of senior and aspiring administrative professionals, Lucy works with the best trainers of Executive Assistants from around the world to deliver the most up to date and current training in the market.

Her passion is for the Assistant role to be truly recognised as a career and not just a job. Her formidable training expertise and speaking style have given her opportunities to train, present and emcee events in over 50 countries at over 450 events including Chairing the 2015 World Administrator Summit in Papua New Guinea and co-facilitating the same event in Frankfurt in 2018.

Lucy was awarded an OBE for services to Office Professionals on the Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2021.

Lucy's book, The Modern-Day Assistant: Build Your Influence and Boost Your Potential, based on the course, was awarded the 2024 International Book Award Career Book of the Year.

Suitability - Who should attend?

This course is designed for those in the following roles:

  • Executive Assistant
  • Management Assistant
  • Administrative Business Partner
  • Strategic Business Partner
  • Office Manager
  • Senior Assistant
  • Executive Personal Assistant
  • Executive Secretary
  • Personal Assistant
  • Personal Secretary
  • Administration Manager
  • Management Secretary
  • Executive Personal Secretary

PLUS anyone else responsible for the support of the senior management and executives

This course will train you in the new skill sets necessary to ensure businesses are getting the best from their support.

Benefits of Attending:

  • Understand the role and how you can add value to your Executive and your business
  • Enhance your communication skills, understand body language & explore emotional intelligence
  • Learn how to build a powerful business partnership
  • Increase your productivity
  • Master the art of managing more than one Executive
  • How do you become strategic?
  • Explore processes for problem-solving, decision-making & project management
  • Learn to deal with multitasking, stress and overwhelm

Training Course Content

Day One

Introduction & course objectives

Let us give you the inside track – the most successful businesses understand how to use their Assistants as strategic business partners. The days of Assistants typing, answering phones and doing gentle diary management are long gone. These days they are more likely to be found knee deep in project management, strategic research, reports & financial forecasts.

Increasingly, Executives are freeing up their time by utilising their Assistants to fill the gaps where their weaknesses lie – allowing them time and space to get on with the things they are best at. Just think of the implications this has for increasing bottom line performance.

The Modern Day Assistant as a strategic Business Partner:

This session is about positioning.  Why has the Assistant role changed and how?  It looks at the role past, present and future to explain why it has developed how it has.  It explores the opportunities that this creates for you to become a true Business Partner to your Executive including developing the partnership, setting the ground rules, communication, adapting to style & maintaining a great partnership.

Strategically managing relationships & the expectations of your stakeholders:

Executive and Administrative Assistants hold a unique position within their companies which allows them to participate in true cross-company collaboration in a way that almost no other job role does. So why do most administrative professionals continue to operate in silos when collaboration is so good for business? Could it be that this is because we are confused between collaboration and teamwork? The two are not only very different skill sets but are not in any way interchangeable.

Managing more than one Executive:

In the new role, most Assistants are managing at least two people. It challenging enough to work well with ONE Executive, but if you’re working for two – or MORE – the challenge is stressful at best. Are you dealing with two or more workloads, managing multiple communications and schedules, multiple projects and more?

This session will explore practical tips for productivity and time management that will ensure that you can prioritise, juggle and support your numerous Executives effectively and without stress.

Communication - the Assistant's key to advancement:

Communication is key and essential to any role, especially within the role of an assistant. It is crucial that you have strong communication with your manager, to help build a stronger and more reliable working relationship.

With the skills from this session, you will be able to go back to your office and communicate more effectively not just with your manager, but other work colleagues as well. In time, you will see how it will help you to save time and build self-confidence within your role.

We will explore how success as an assistant begins with an understanding of yourself. During the session, we will look at, the Belbin Psychometric testing exercise to explore strengths, weaknesses and where you fit into your team, Johari Window — opportunities from self-awareness, your beliefs, values and behaviours, your Inner Voice, how body language can make a difference and how important communication is.

What we will cover:

  • Body Language & Voice
  • Listening Skills
  • Assistants as Connectors
  • Productive Office Relationships
  • Problem Solving
  • Emotional Intelligence
  • Different workstyles – flexible communication for different personality types
  • Taking control without taking over
  • Ongoing communication with your Executive

Building a Powerful Business Partnership with your Executive:

The relationship between an Assistant and their Executives is absolutely crucial to a company’s success but with the average age that most Managers get training sitting at 42, many Executives have never had training in how to manage their Assistants. It therefore falls to the Assistant to train their Executives how to use their skills to best advantage themselves and the company.

In this session we will explore:

  • Why influential leadership skills are crucial to the role of an Assistant
  • Strategically managing your Executive(s) and Key Stakeholders
  • Developing the business partnership with your Executive
  • Proactive vs Reactive Support
  • Making the transition from support to strategic business partner.

Day Two

Day two is the practical day of the course. Having spent day one looking at a change in mindset and positioning the Assistant as a strategic business partner, day two looks at the practical productivity, decision making and project management skills you will need to do this.

So you think you’re strategic - what does that mean?

Much has been made in recent times of the emergence of the Assistant as a Strategic Business Partner. The term is THE buzz word in the industry. But how do you become strategic? What does it mean? How to you change your day to day role to become the Assistant that your Executive needs in order to deliver at the highest levels.

In this this session we will look at why Businesses still need Assistants but why the landscape has changed, how to develop your business acumen to best support your executive and what skills are required to be a true Strategic Business Partner to your Executive.

  • Why Businesses still need Assistants
  • How to Develop your Business Acumen
  • Business Ethics

Productivity

The Assistant’s role is to ensure that their Executive(s) are as effective as they can possibly be. In order to do this, their own productivity and systems must be operating at the highest levels of efficiently.

In this session we will look at systems and procedures including:

  • setting boundaries
  • email
  • diary management
  • the myth of multitasking
  • managing more than one executive
  • procrastination
  • time management.

Decision Making & Problem solving

With the changes to the role, many assistants are taking on more supervisory roles: Executives can help empower their assistants by making it clear that the assistant has real authority. The message the executive should convey is, “I trust this person to represent me and make decisions.”

This session will visit some classic decision making and problem solving processes to ensure the Assistant has confidence to look at all the options and weigh up the alternatives.

Introduction to Project Management

Project Management seems to be overtaking the Executive Assistant’s world these day. Whether or not your company calls it “Project Management” and deliberately applies its terminology and principles doesn’t matter; the reality is that Project Management is now part of every Assistant’s working life.

We’ll look at:

  • The difference between routine work and a project
  • Managing stakeholders and their expectations
  • Understanding how to prepare for and plan a project
  • Understanding how to monitor a project
  • Understanding the purpose and ways of evaluating a project

We will then organise an event from start to finish using the techniques we have used to determine ROI and manage the project from a budget.

Stress - Getting Out of Overwhelm

And finally, we will talk about how you achieve all of this without blowing a fuse.

  • Why is managing your stress important?
  • What are the signs?
  • Work/Life Balance
  • How to avoid burnout

Pricing

MDA São Paulo

$1 169

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  • 2-day Modern-Day Assistant course with Lucy Brazier OBE
  • Includes 1x ticket to FISEC Brazil (Saturday 28 September & Sunday 29 September)
  • Food & beverages during the course
  • Certificate of Attendance, for recertification points
BUY NOW!

Looking to bring a group?

We offer group discounts, and we can offer custom solutions! Talk through your training requirements with one of our friendly team and let us work with you to design a programme to suit your needs. Contact us here >

Not sure how to ask?

We make it really easy by sending you a business case letter that has helped thousands of Assistants to ask for funding to attend our events and training.

Request a business case letter

About The Course

Empowering Support Leaders: ES Tech Conference

Benefits of attending

  • Become a stronger, more effective and influential Assistant 
  • Understand the role and how you can add value to your Executive and your business 
  • Enhance your communication skills, understand body language & explore emotional intelligence 
  • Learn how to build a powerful business partnership 
  • Increase your productivity 
  • Master the art of managing more than one Executive 
  • How do you become strategic? 
  • Explore processes for problem-solving, decision-making & project management 
  • Learn to deal with multitasking, stress and overwhelm 

About Lucy Brazier OBE

CEO, Marcham Publishing | International Speaker | Author of ‘The Modern-Day Assistant: Build Your Influence and Boost Your Potential’ | Expert on the Administrative Sector    

The visionary Lucy Brazier is one of the world’s leading authorities on the administrative profession.

She is the CEO of Marcham Publishing, a global force synonymous with world-class conferences and training, including Executive Support LIVE and Modern-Day Assistant, and home of Executive Support Magazine, the gold standard of training in print for administrative professionals.  

Author of ‘The Modern-Day Assistant: Build Your Influence and Boost Your Potential’, Lucy is passionate about ensuring the Assistant role is truly recognised as a career and not just a job and is dedicated to supporting the development of both senior and aspiring administrative professionals. 

Her formidable training expertise and speaking style have given her opportunities to train, present and emcee events in over 50 countries at over 650 events, including chairing the 2015 World Administrators Summit in Papua New Guinea and co-facilitating every World Administrators Summit since. Lucy has keynoted at almost every major conference for Assistants in the world.  

She has a unique overview of the role and where it is heading. With access to the most forward-thinking, passionate and knowledgeable trainers and administrative business leaders in the world, as well as personally meeting and speaking to thousands of Assistants for more than a decade, her knowledge of the market and what Assistants all over the world are facing on a day-to-day basis is second to none.  

Lucy’s work in the field has led to thousands of Assistants and executives working more effectively together. Her training and ongoing conversations have resulted in promotions, internal networks and career frameworks being created in some of the biggest companies in the world; college students seeing the Assistant role as a proper profession with a career path; and businesses, HR and executives finally understanding how to measure performance to best utilise their Assistants. The work being conducted worldwide with the publication of the Global Skills Matrix is one of Lucy’s key drivers, and she is working with some of the most recognisable companies on the planet to consult on restructuring and training their Business Support functions. 

In 2021, Lucy was awarded an OBE (Officer of the British Empire) from the Queen for services to office professionals. She has also received an Honorary Fellowship to the Institute of Administrative Management – one of the oldest management institutes in the world, having inspired professional business managers and administrators since 1915 – in recognition of her work to drive the profession forward. 

Who is this course recommended for?

All aspiring & senior Administrative Professionals, looking to enhance their skills from a level 3 to 4 based upon the Global Skills Matrix.

What our attendees say:

“An extremely informative 2 days spent investing and uplifting my skills to benefit my executive and the company. By understanding what it means to partner with my executive, learning and implementing time-saving tactics and processes, will ultimately save us all time and money and by making me more efficient, ensures my executive is more effective. Highly recommend this exceptional course.”
Catherine Dernulc, EA to CPO, Lego
“This is a great course if you feel you are getting nowhere with a hard to manage executive, it helps understand the different personalities and how we can all help our executives perform better and therefore become invaluable to them.”
Bev Austin, Executive Assistant, CIFAS
“Every PA/EA should go on this course! So many insightful hints, tips and ideas as well as some great stories and first-hand experience shared by Lucy. It’s also a great opportunity to network and share best practice with others in the profession. Not to be missed!”
Joanne Conroy, EA to Head of First Direct, HSBC
An inspiring training for assistants at any level, insightful and thought-provoking with lots of tips and tricks and real-life stories shared throughout the course.
Viktoria Gal
I can't think of anyone better than Lucy to give this sort of training. I feel I have received the best the world can offer and will benefit for years to come!
Yvonne Bell
Lucy has a real talent for storytelling and bringing content across in a way that you can actualize it in your normal day-to-day as opposed to a lot of theoretical concepts. Came away feeling very inspired and ready to action what I had learnt.
Rebecca Pipe
Lucy Brazier is one of the most exciting and engaging speakers I have seen in a while. The course was brilliant, the layout and the trainer were great. As it was provided in a small group, the outcomes were brilliant - as we were not only learning from Lucy but also from each other.
Lucia Mayo
Lucy Brazier OBE is a fantastic speaker, coach, mentor. I thoroughly enjoyed the Modern Day Assistant course but it has left me wanting to learn more! It has inspired me to be the best version of myself and to find that job that makes my heart sing!
Lori Harding
Lucy was absolutely fantastic. I was so glad to take the course as it benefited me so much. It's really inspired me to approach my role now in a different light and utilise my skills further. I would highly recommend this course to all Executive Assistants and PA's!
Tegan Rimmer

The Schedule

Introduction & course objectives

Let us give you the inside track – the most successful businesses understand how to use their Assistants as strategic business partners.  The days of Assistants typing, answering phones and doing gentle diary management are long gone. These days they are more likely to be found knee deep in project management, strategic research, reports & financial forecasts.

Increasingly, Executives are freeing up their time by utilizing their Assistants to fill the gaps where their weaknesses lie – allowing them time and space to get on with the things they are best at. Just think of the implications this has for increasing bottom line performance.

The Assistant as a Strategic Business Partner

The first session is all about positioning. Lucy Brazier looks at the role past, present and future to explain why it has developed how it has. She explores the opportunities that this creates for you to become a true Business Partner to your Executive including developing the partnership, establishing the ground rules, communication, adapting to style & maintaining a great partnership.

This course is designed to inspire, motivate, challenge, excite about the opportunities that exist in this role. It also provides very practical training, tools and tips – real business solutions that you will take back to the office and implement immediately to improve your systems and productivity.

Skills to Position Yourself as an Influential Assistant

Becoming a leader at work can be a challenge, especially for an Assistant, but with today’s CEOs increasingly listing leadership skills as one of the key qualities that they want from their Assistant, Lucy will examine how personal leadership is the key to establishing yourself as a leader in the workplace and which skill sets you will need to cultivate to lead up and position yourself as the influential leader that your executive needs.

The Assistant’s Guide to Self-Awareness & Communication

Communication is key and essential to any role, especially within the role of an assistant. It is crucial that you have strong communication with your manager, to help build a stronger and more reliable working relationship.

With the skills from this session, you will be able to go back to your office and communicate more effectively not just with your manager, but other work colleagues as well. In time, you will see how it will help you to save time and build self-confidence within your role.

We will explore how success as an assistant begins with an understanding of yourself. During the session, we will look at, the Belbin Psychometric testing exercise to explore strengths, weaknesses and where you fit into your team, Johari Window — opportunities from self-awareness, your beliefs, values and behaviours, your Inner Voice, how body language can make a difference and how important communication is.

Quality Conversations, Office Politics and Emotional Intelligence

A key skill for every assistant is how to listen to understand rather than listen to answer. In this session, we will look at how misunderstandings occur, why failure to communicate properly can lead to toxic environments filled with politics and competing egos, and how failing to use emotional intelligence properly results in living at a low level of effectiveness, which ensures we will never achieve our greatest aspirations.

Building a Powerful Business Partnership

The relationship between an Assistant and their Executives is crucial to a company’s success but with the average age that most Managers get training sitting at 42, many Executives have never had training in how to manage their Assistants. It therefore falls to the Assistant to train their Executives how to use their skills to best advantage themselves and the company.

In this session we will explore:

  • Why influential leadership skills are crucial to the role of an Assistant
  • Strategically managing your Executive(s) and Key Stakeholders
  • Developing the business partnership with your Executive
  • Proactive vs Reactive Support
  • Making the transition from support to strategic business partner.

But what if you have more than one manager? In the new role, most Assistants are managing at least two people. It is challenging enough to work well with ONE Executive, but if you are working for two – or MORE – the challenge is stressful at best. Are you dealing with two or more workloads, managing multiple communications and schedules, multiple projects and more?

We will also look at practical tips for productivity and time management that will ensure that you can prioritize, juggle and support your numerous Executives effectively and without stress.

Review of Day One

Day two is the practical day of the course. Having spent day one looking at a change in mindset and positioning the Assistant as a strategic business partner, day two looks at the practical productivity, decision making and project management skills you will need to do this.

Appy Talk

A lively and interactive session, sharing which apps the group are finding most useful currently in their role.

So, you think you're a strategic business partner? What does that mean?

Much has been made in recent times of the emergence of the Assistant as a Strategic Business Partner. The term is THE buzz word in the industry. But how do you become strategic? What does it mean? How do you change your day-to-day role to become the Assistant that your Executive needs in order to deliver at the highest levels? In this keynote session, Lucy Brazier will look at how to develop your business acumen to best support your executive and what skills are required to futureproof your career in a post-COVID / AI world.

Learning objectives:

  • Knowing is not the same as understanding! Learn how to understand your business.
  • Explore what you need to know in order to support your Executive at the highest level.
  • Understand your executive’s personality and learning styles to ensure maximum return of investment from your partnership.

Productivity

The Assistant’s role is to ensure that their Executive(s) are as effective as they can possibly be. In order to do this, their own productivity and systems must be operating at the highest levels of efficiently.

In this session we will look at systems and procedures including:

  • setting boundaries
  • email
  • diary management
  • the myth of multitasking
  • procrastination
  • time management

Project Management (Practical Session)

Project Management seems to be overtaking the Executive Assistant’s world these days. Whether or not your company calls it “Project Management” and deliberately applies its terminology and principles doesn’t matter; the reality is that Project Management is now part of every Assistant’s working life.

We will look at:

  • The difference between routine work and a project
  • Managing stakeholders and their expectations
  • Understanding how to prepare for and plan a project
  • Understanding how to monitor a project
  • Understanding the purpose and ways of evaluating a project

We will then organize an event from start to finish using the techniques we have used to determine ROI and manage the project from a budget.

Problem Solving and Decision Making (Practical Session)

With the changes to the role, many assistants are taking on more supervisory roles: Executives can help empower their assistants by making it clear that the assistant has real authority. The message the executive should convey is, “I trust this person to represent me and make decisions.”

This session will visit some classic and brand-new decision making and problem-solving processes to ensure the Assistant has confidence to look at all the options and weigh up the alternatives.

Stress – Getting Out of Overwhelm

And finally, we will talk about how you achieve all of this without blowing a fuse.

  • Why is managing your stress important?
  • What are the signs?
  • Work: Life Balance
  • How to avoid burnout – especially when working from home.

Looking to bring a group?

We offer group discounts, and we can offer custom solutions! Talk through your training requirements with one of our friendly team and let us work with you to design a programme to suit your needs. Contact us here >

Accommodation

World Trade Centre São Paulo

A multi-purpose complex that is ahead of its time and in a privileged location. With this proposal, the World Trade Center of São Paulo was built and, since 1995, has become an icon of the city’s development and a reference for the business universe in Brazil and in the world.

The synergy obtained by the combination of a 5-star hotel (Sheraton São Paulo WTC Hotel), the largest events center in Latin America (WTC Events Center), the largest design and decoration mall in Brazil (D&D Shopping), a modern office tower (WTC Business Tower), and a corporate business club (WTC Business Club), broke the boundaries of the development, transforming the entire neighborhood into one of the main CBDs (Central Building District) of São Paulo.

Book Your Room Now

Would you like to talk through your training options?

Would you like to chat about your training options for the rest of 2024 or for 2025?

Or would you like to talk to someone about training options for your team?

David Willing and Sinead Tyrell have recently joined our team as Training Advisors, bringing fresh perspectives and a strong commitment to supporting assistants in their career journeys and helping them find training programs that best suit their needs.

Contact us for a free half-hour chat

David Willing

David Willing

Training Advisor

Sinead Tyrell

Sinead Tyrell

Training Advisor

Recertification & Endorsements

Recertification & Endorsements

The Modern-Day Assistant course is an IAAP and an ASAP approved programme and you can earn both IAAP and PACE recertification points by attending. Please contact us for details.

The course is also endorsed by the Institute of Administrative Management, one of the oldest management institutes in the world, having inspired professional business managers and administrators since 1915 and by International Management Assistants, a global association founded in 1974, currently represented in more than 30 countries.