The Definitive Personal Assistant & Secretarial Handbook: A Best Practice Guide for All Secretaries, PAs, Office Managers and Executive Assistants Paperback – August 25, 2015

Whether or not you are looking to be a personal assistant, this book id great for organizing and controlling your own life!

It's good

I found it very interesting that I opened this book expecting to start with phone etiquette or the like, but was surprised to begin with Neuroscience and applying that to oneself . I had never heard of this but found it very interesting. Neuroscience was explained by the author as a way to understand our own abilities and to maximize them and to apply the science to others, such as co-workers and employers, to better understand them.The author does spend some time on our personal appearance to others and how we project ourselves. In a professional setting you want to be professional you do not want to appear as a timid mouse ready to run at a moment’s notice. There are wonderful tricks and techniques the author includes to help a person to communicate as a professional individual in the work environment.Personal development, goals, conflict resolution are all wonderful skills to establish and to improve upon and are not just for the Personal Assistant but for every person around. That is why I truly believe this book offers so much for others beyond what the title suggests. The Neuroscience and self-analysis is a great tool for a high school entering the work force to someone who has a need to switch careers because the one they have just isn’t working. This book may help to uncover why that is.The Definitive Personal Assistant does provide the information the title suggests. Skills of the trade and tips of improvement are inside the pages once the assistant as a person has been covered. Techniques on how to handle objectives or situations are discussed with examples or instruction to help a personal assistant become the best they can.I liked the focus on the Personal Assistant and was fascinated by the approach from the Neuroscience aspect.I have provided this review in exchange for receiving the ebook copy.

Simply perfect

Some difference from other versions. This may limit the younger generation.

Unfortunately this book’s title suggests that it may be overlooked by many, assuming instead that it is just a guide to word processing, answering the telephone and putting up with a challenging boss. Ignore it at your own risk - it is a lot more than that! It can be truly a definitive guide for a personal assistant or secretary and many others!When you glance at the chapter headings, you straight away get an idea about its potential and depth: using neuroscience to maximise your brain for excellence, relationship management, compassionate communication, confidence, self-belief and goal setting, ergonomics, perfect presentations and the list goes on. Oh, and a “chapter to share with your boss” for good measure too.As you read it, you soon discover that it is an excellent introduction to many fascinating subjects that many secretaries and personal assistants should know about. It is quite possible that they already know a fair bit of this stuff too, partially through trial and error, experience and perhaps latter-day education and continuing professional development programmes. Yet it is a credible, powerful compendium.There is a lot more to being a secretary than collecting dry cleaning and fetching coffee; in this reviewer’s experience the position is one of the key roles in an organisation, knowing everything that is going on. It is not unknown for the same person to be better informed than the executive they serve! As well as top-rate office and administrative skills being necessary, knowing how to be a diplomat, nursemaid, peacekeeper and detective can help.This is by no means a dumbed-down book. Clearly it is abridged. You can only get a taster to many subjects, such as neuroscience (that can easily fill an entire bookshelf and our understanding of this subject is ever changing). The information served up is tailor-made towards the 160-or-so different job titles the author has estimated could benefit from this book (and that probably is an understatement, as the skilled, alert executive might be advised to sneak into their assistant’s office and borrow the book if they can’t bring themselves to order it for themselves.It could equally be described as a definitive guide for everybody in business as it does have a wide-reaching appeal. It is what you let it be. It can either deliver just the facts or serve as a springboard to deeper, more involved research and study. It is not a question and answer-style book so you have do a bit of work yourself, yet the chapters are relatively short, focussed and direct so you could even take a chapter a day during a break (or use it as your commute companion) as it is worth putting in the time to know the book backwards. Some stuff you will possibly skip through, others may engage your focus a little longer, yet overall this is a keeper. In the right hands this will become a dog-eared book in due course, a ready reference source close at hand.The intelligent boss would, of course, be ordering copies in bulk for all of their executive staff and passing a few copies around for any generally interested parties too.

I am so happy that I bought this book! This is a true gem, and has become my "bible" at work. I keep reading and re-reading it almost every day. The book provides so many useful tips for all of us working within the administration sector. I am sure there is something for everyone in it, both for experienced secretaries/ assistants, and for those who are just entering the business. I highly recommend it!!

I bought the book for my training and did not find it useful. There is nothing new here, really. The contents are not necessarily or exclusively for secretaries....Some of the contents are rather general. The U-SOFAR technique was just fair, nothing exclusive for secretaries. It is rather general. All in all, i regret a lot for purchasing this book because ended up, i could not use much of it for my training. The questionnaire was rather basic. I wanted to request for a refund but i was just busy with work, and missed it out I just...don't recommend it..No.