Season 2 - Ep 3 The Debate of the Title “Assistant” with Jeremy Burrows

The Future Focused Admin

In today’s episode, we’re having a healthy debate with Jeremy Burrows Author of The Leader Assistant: Four Pillars of a Confident, Game-Changing Assistant, and founder and host of The Leader Assistant Podcast which Jessica and Candice have both been guests on.

We start with the debate of the Title “Assistant” referring back to Candice’s viral LinkedIn post that sparked this debate (link below). Jeremy has a different opinion to Candice and also brings feedback from some of the admins in his community about how they feel on this topic. Jessica gives feedback from her admin community and shares her experience with titles and gives an example of how a title change caused a huge financial impact in her family.

We discuss how all 3 of us have held the same title of “Executive Assistant”, but had VERY different careers, opportunities and salaries. We discuss the privilledges that some of us have had, and acknowledge that others in our communities don’t have these privileges, including the gender pay-gap.

We discuss the varying costs of training, development and events in admin from different sides of the globe. What some see as expensive and what some see as investments and get their companies to pay for the investment. We discuss pay disparity and talking about your salary with other admins.

We touch on the ugly side of some of the thought leaders in the admin space. We discuss the lack of diversity in this space and the need for more younger people to start showing up in this space, without the fear of being torn-down for their efforts.

(This was recorded just after episode 2 with Dominique Givens. We interviewed Dominique about her experience as a younger african-american female who was on the receiving end of a known bully in the admin community for giving her opinion and making her way as a thought leader on LinkedIn in the admin space).