Leah Warwick: Hi everyone. I’m Leah Warwick, and you’re listening to The Admin Edge. At the American Society of Administrative Professionals, we’ve developed a career stages framework to help you map your career progression and identify skills gaps and opportunities along the way.

Now, our framework is not title fixed because job titles are evolving quickly, along with the profession itself.

To finish season 10 strong, we invited Lynn Walder back to the podcast to talk about how community catalyzes change, and we’re just getting started.

Hi, I’m Leah Warwick, senior content manager for the American Society of Administrative Professionals, and my guest today is Lynn Walder, founder and owner at Executive Management Partners and a speaker at this event, EA Ignite.

Welcome to the podcast, Lynn.

Lynn Walder: Thanks so much for having me, Leah. You know I love it here. This is gonna be so fun. We’re doing this officially together.

Leah Warwick: We talk all the time, but hey, now it’s on the podcast for everyone to hear.

So, let’s get into it. Let’s talk about job titles and administrative professionals reporting a lack of career progression opportunities. We hear this a lot. Is the current title structure holding the administrative profession back, and what else is factoring in?

Lynn Walder: You know, this is my happy place, and I’ve been talking about this for eight or nine years now.

Yes, I am a big proponent that says the administrative titles as they have been traditionally utilized – especially for administrative assistant, executive assistant, and now you’ve added in, chief of staff – it is not serving the evolution of where we are right now, as administrators and for the future of work. And part of that is because we are still holding onto baggage and stereotypes and a lot of outdated mindsets around our profession.

And so instead of us trying to flail and rally against that, I think that it’s more important that we start moving into a place that is working with systems as they already have been for other parts of the organization.

What I mean by that is, I would like to see the titles, in their own right, be shifted over to traditional titling, for more defined career ladders, starting at coordinator up to associate, up to manager, senior manager, associate director, director, VP, and then even beyond that into the C-suite.

That being said, titles are only one part of this process, right? You can’t just get a title and say, “Oh, I’m a director now,” and people don’t just start looking at you differently. Now, it will shift the energy around it, because people have different stereotypes and/or phenotypes or context around that title, but you need the competencies in order to shore that up and get the same level of respect and integration into the business if you are going to start chasing after that title.

And so, I would say it’s a little bit of “Yes, and…”

Yes, we need to move towards different kinds of titles. We have to upskill to different competencies, which shout out to ASAP, launching this summer: the Strategic Executive Administrator Certification, right? Yes.

This is where all the upleveling of that competency comes that will then shore up those changes.

Third variable: We can only go as fast with this change and shift as the infrastructure of the organizations and the mindsets of the leaders are catching up to do that. They are very behind right now. We’re working on that part, too. Hopefully we’ll talk a little bit more about that next year, when we have a bit more detail and data behind that.

Leah Warwick: Yes. It’s very clear to us from the  wonderful people who come to our events and learn online with us, that they are outpacing what their organizations even expect of them in a lot of ways.

There are also a lot of outdated assumptions about what they do, and some of that is tied to the title. Some of that is also tied to role design at organizations.

Because when you talk about having titles that map more to other functions in the business—like coordinator, manager, director—often, at organizations, an EA reports to an executive, and there is no career path. And so, how could you even start out at coordinator level, then get to manager, then get to director?

It’s way bigger than title happening as well. Why do you think that companies resist formalizing admin career paths, even when they clearly benefit from the talent?

Lynn Walder: Yeah. I think there’s so many variables that are feeding into this, and I always look at things from a macro, meso, and micro perspective.

I would say that we are in very volatile times in paradigms breaking down from a macro perspective, from work identity, ways of work. COVID started that. It was happening before COVID, but COVID sped that up.

And then, I would say AI coming on the scene has amplified that, like, a hundredfold. And so what you’re seeing is, every aspect of companies are now almost in a fight or flight mode.

I would say G&A portions of the business, human resources and people strategy in particular, are also fighting for their value proposition narrative. And they’re already a business function in the business, and that’s not what our value proposition has been built on. Our value proposition has mostly been built on one-to-one executive support.

And that’s another kind of philosophy that I champion and try to advocate and train and talk and really build frameworks and models around for this movement towards business administration morphing into what I would call executive operations—not just executive assisting or executive administration—to become a standalone function so that it, it is integrated as a business ROI, not just an executive ROI.

That’s not gonna happen when you are dealing with other functions of the business that are there to support that integration or that migration of change management. For the titles, the career ladder, the competency upskilling, the reimagining and reintegration into an organization, this is multi-year change management roadmap. And when you are in a fight or flight mode, that seems like it’s an elephant to eat.

So I want to be careful and empathetic to our fellow human resources and other G&A personnel. They’re fighting a good fight as well, and sometimes it’s just too much to be layered on.

I think we have to stay positive and optimistic, but we’re gonna have to come with a lot of more of the cognitive load and solutions than maybe other functions of an organization would have to in order to reimagine themselves.

But if we can start partnering with them and showcasing we’re actually in the same boat together, and there is so much left on the table, so much latent talent, so much business ROI—until we can start actually reimagining and reintegrating this as a function, and working together on that—wow. There’s so much potential here, especially for the future of work with the dynamic and increased risk and speed and doing more with less. We’re perfectly posited to fill that gap.

Leah Warwick: Yes, absolutely. We are in this place where not only are administrative professionals underrecognized, underappreciated, misunderstood, they’re under-leveraged. This is a huge operational asset.

Lynn Walder: Yes, snaps to that! Shout it out to those in the back.

Leah Warwick: The operational intelligence that these individuals hold that isn’t being fully utilized by organizations. It’s a waste of talent, it’s a waste of the company’s time in a lot of ways, and that’s not the fault of the administrative professional.

But again, like you’re saying, I have a nuanced view because our friends in HR are very overloaded as well. And We’re all trying to figure this out. But I think we’re starting, and we see it here at ASAP, we see it in SEAC, our new certification, where executive operations is the first module. We have a responsibility, as an association, to make change happen.

And it’s a lot of repeating the same stuff over and over, so more people can hear it, banging the drum. But it’s also codifying some of this new language, and you have been on the forefront of that, because stories get people to see things differently and make change happen.

Lynn Walder: I would say also there’s a couple of things here that you just brought up and I’m going to pull some threads. First of all, love the term of operational intelligence versus task efficiency.

Another shout-out to ASAP, we did the State of the Profession panel, it was recorded, so you can go and see it on the website. That was one of the top takeaways for me: We have to start using that kind of language and showcasing and making invisible work visible.

The upleveled work we’re delivering on is in the operational intelligence, versus the task efficiency realm, and this is where development has to start aligning as well.

Language around titles: People have assumptions, and people migrate to what they’re comfortable towards. And how do you level things? It’s a lot easier when you already see those titles across other parts of the business and you understand, “Oh, this is what I know a manager does. This is what I know a director owns.”

When you look at, say, the titles of EA or, chief of staff, they’re all over the place. It depends on the industry and the size. And while that somewhat holds true to some of the more traditional titles, there is still a tighter codification and formalizing, especially when it’s associated with compensation.

And that’s where our HR colleagues, many times their hands are tied keeping it close to the benchmarking that’s associated with, say, Aon Radford or Pave Compensation and these other kinds of benchmarking.

I do think that language matters. I think that having tenacity and commitment and just continual passion, and lowering the cognitive load of those people who are moving in that direction on our behalf, we need to start bringing those not only words and potential solutions, but we have to actually proactively get out of our comfort zone and start showing and making people feel what that benefit, what that ROI, what that in the moment release of pain is when we get into those operational up-leveled positions.

And nobody’s gonna come and ask us to do it. They don’t even know what we do!

Leah Warwick: Exactly. And Why don’t they know what we do? That’s a very complicated question, and part of the answer is our profession has not always been very loud about the actual impact that we’re having and what we enable versus what we do task-wise. So, the ROI for the business.

Lynn Walder: I think the term enablement is a really important. I would also say that we need to find some more confidence in really owning what I call our domain of expertise. And most people in, I would say, outdated mindsets, they think anybody can do this job. Anybody can come off the street, press a couple of buttons, manage somebody’s calendar, make some meetings, put some travel out. I mean, these are the traditional, I would say, core elements and fundamentals of what this role has traditionally owned. That has ballooned and expanded out, and it will continue to do so.

It has been u-leveled, and so we have to start owning that and being like, “Oh, no, no, you think you can do that. This is a true domain of expertise that I have honed, I develop, and I am delivering on.”

We need more confidence in what we’re owning as an expertise, and how do we make that invisible expertise more visible?

Leah Warwick: Yes. The confidence gap is real, and I was talking to Angela Cheng-Cimini, who is a wonderful CHRO, our friend in HR. And another way that HR and admins face similar challenges: these are majority female workforces. There are some societally ingrained ways of behaving that are sometimes unconscious until we really start to investigate why we say less in meetings, why we feel like we can’t talk about ourselves because it feels like bragging.

Like, where do these things come from? And there is a little more of a hurdle there just to overcome before we can even get to certain places. But what’s inspiring about being at EA Ignite is seeing the support that’s here

Lynn Walder: Woo. Yes. I love it so much. It’s my people. It’s community. It’s change. This is what it’s all about.

Leah Warwick: If you feel alone and like, “Well, I’m the only one having these problems, and I’m the only one that is struggling here,” it can be really hard to see the actual sea change that we want to happen in the profession come to fruition, but there’s strength in numbers.

Lynn Walder: I would say the collective grouping of advocacy and raising of all voices together, we know that this makes a difference. Community catalyzes change, and first you need to convene those people into community, and that’s what this EA Ignite, APC, ASAP, and all the work that you and the team do so beautifully here, it’s really, really important.

And it’s getting bigger, better and bigger every year, right? That’s optimism in in my own heart and seeing the forest through the trees. This is a long marathon. This isn’t a short sprint. And there is a moment right here where a lot of different things are converging.

From a macro perspective, there’s global change going on. AI is coming on the scene, and businesses are demanding a different level of integration of competency, commitment, and speed of development that has never been asked of the workforce before. Paradigms are breaking down, and so we have always been versatile and flexible.

Ever since—I was talking about this on the panel—from the 1900s, we have been the innovation ushers of new technology almost every step of the way. But we haven’t truly been acknowledged for it, right? We used to be clerks. We became typists. We [adopted] dictation tools. We went into word processing. We went into cloud and internet, and now we’re turning into AI workflow specialists.

We haven’t owned that yet, and people haven’t caught up in businesses. But it’s going to be there, and it’s coming out to find your community here [at EA Ignite] and learning about those things that is gonna bring us up to that next level, and man, it’s gonna be so amazing when we finally  level up to that and people start recognizing it.

Leah Warwick: Oh, yes. The orchestrators of so many things, including AI systems, is going to be a very powerful shift. I can already see it happening here.

I want to ask you, what would a truly professionalized admin career ladder look like if companies actually got serious about this?

Lynn Walder: Is this a plug for my framework? Because I love it so much.

Leah Warwick: Let’s go!

Lynn Walder: I’m going to totally plug my own framework. Now, that being said, I also want to plug some other frameworks because I work mainly in the US-centric system because I came up through HR, so I understand a lot of the background of how HR benchmarks back to Aon Radford, and that drives a lot of decision-making from compensation to leveling to scope of domain of what your, your role actually encompasses.

But there are other things. So I have two frameworks in particular. The first one is the Admin Title Recalibration Initiative, which I had put out in 2017, almost 18, and I refreshed it in 2023. It ushers us into the more traditional titles of moving up through the development chain with, again, coordinator to associate to manager, director, that kind of thing.

All my systems that I have put out there are downloadable and free through my LinkedIn account. I make everything open source. There’s editable job descriptions, all the stuff.

Then there’s another one called the Executive Operations Cohort, which is the systems change management, and it’s a change management roadmap from literally a three to seven year, depending on what size the company is.

How do you get from stage one to two to three instead of jumping from one to three? Because there was a huge gap in between there. That’s a very detailed guideline document that you can download.

Now that being said: ASAP has come out with this framework that showcases that there’s a four-step stage, which a lot of the development here has been built around. You have Assisting, you have Supporting, you have Partnering, and then you have leadership. And what’s beautiful about this is it’s backed up by data.

And then on top of it, we have Lucy Brazier, who has been working with the World Administrators Alliance on the global scale, which has nicely dovetailed on all of these things.This is the beauty of all of the voices at all the different levels coming together and converging at this moment in time. They have the global skills matrix, and it’s very similar to what you’ve been seeing through the data. It’s very similar to what I had started putting out, but taking it one step further, in more the broader, more traditional formatting of US development leveling tied back to AM Radford.

It’s amazing, we are living in an amazing time for our profession. And there’s opportunities to access already made frameworks and solutions out there that are specific to the pain points that we’ve been seeing for so many years. So, it’s time to take the step. You’ve gotta go out and you’ve gotta do the work on your own.

Educate yourself. Start having the conversations, build that confidence, get your development here at a place like EA Ignite or APC or through ASAP. And if you are willing to take that leap and get a little uncomfortable and start pushing that and not asking for permission at first, it’s amazing what’s gonna happen for this profession.

Leah Warwick: I agree, and like Melissa Peoples was talking about on our panel yesterday, it’s time to move to implementation. It’s time to start putting some of this into practice. Yes. Start piloting some of this.

Lynn Walder: Pilot, my favorite word. I love it.

It is so validating and so exciting to see the change that I have been talking about, and I knew it was gonna be a long time. Like, I’m in it for the long haul. Change management at these system scales takes 10 to 20 years. That is the reality of it. But guess what? We’re in the 10-year mark right now, so we are halfway there. And seeing this unfold before your eyes in real time, there is nothing like it. It is so exciting and so, like I said, so positive and optimistic.

And for all the stuff that you read out there, “The admin profession is dying” that is not true at all. That is a narrative that is built around what we already know is no longer, and so we just have to now move and step into that new way and get everybody else to catch up with us.

It is exciting times out there, and it is happening. It’s happening.

Leah Warwick: I would say the old way is dying. The old way is going away, and the new way is here, and it is energizing. It is really exciting. And I’m so glad that you’re a part of it with us.

Speaking of, I do have a question related to the admin function. It’s from one of our community members. They wrote in to us: “At what point do you stop trying to grow within the admin function and just make a move into something else?”

Lynn Walder: Oh, this hurts my heart. There’s an emotional context to this, and then there’s a reality context to this for me.

Most people come to this place of asking a question like this because they have been entrenched in the outdated structures that we have been held back in. And I don’t believe anybody should have to leave this profession. I think that there’s been a title cliff and a competency level cliff that has been systemically built in through these outdated and old mindsets and structures that haven’t caught up to what we have.

And that’s where the models that I’ve been putting out, that you’ve been putting out, that Lucy’s been putting out, we’re trying to showcase that there’s a different way to build within the infrastructure in its own right in an organization.

I would say before you say you’re ready to jump off the administrative track, because we need really passionate and really skilled admins to stay in the pipeline, I would say maybe start exploring how could you extend your own runway, which is, I think, what Melissa was talking about [on the State of the Profession] panel, right? How do you extend the runway by reimagining the types of structures that are currently being utilized on behalf of the administrative profession within your organization?

And you show the way. Nobody’s gonna show the way for us. You have to come with that, and you say, “Look, I am currently functioning at, within the levels, a manager level that is currently titled as senior executive assistant.” When you gather all of this information together and you start really getting into the data of what you’re doing, of where you’ve expanded, of how you can bring value to the business, you can start structuring what it looks like to go beyond instead of having to go parallel.

And I want more of that to start happening. Don’t jump off the track just yet. See that there’s other ways. We can get creative.

That being said, look, sometimes people feel they’ve evolved out of their role, and I don’t want to shame or demonize anybody for that either.

There are so many transferable skills in this. And so you absolutely can explore. But I will say, if you do go into any other realm, especially if you go into HR, I want you to reach back. I want you to be an advocate on behalf of our function. I need you to help bring us up. That’s what I’ll say.

Leah Warwick: I love that answer because, hey, if, if there’s something else that appeals to you, go for it.

But I do think it’s not just in the admin function, it’s in other functions as well, that you can do things differently than they’ve been done before and still remain in your function. You could be in a marketing team and you’re a marketing manager, and think, “Well, we’ve always done our campaigns this way.” If you can tie it back to the value of the business and you can say, “What if we try doing things in a different way?” using skills that will fill your cup, in ways that you feel better about, but also create value for the organization that you work for, then that’s a win-win.

We’re in this time of great change. Your role today could be different than the role that you rewrite for yourself tomorrow.

Thanks again for joining us on The Admin Edge, Lynn. Where can our listeners find you online?

Lynn Walder: Thank you so much for having me! I get so excited being among my people, it really fills my cup, and I love being on the podcast too and talking all these topics.

If you’d like to access a lot of the things that I spoke to today, you can go and find all of those as open-source downloadable items directly on my LinkedIn account under Lynn Walder. And I have a website for my consulting agency, which is executivemanagementpartners.com. But you can get there by typing in execmpc.com. So I hope to see you there.

Leah Warwick: Thank you for listening to The Admin Edge, produced by the American Society of Administrative Professionals. Original music and audio editing by Warwick Productions, with audio and video production by 5Tool Productions. If you like this podcast, please leave us a nice review, five stars, and subscribe.

If you’d like to submit a listener question, you may do so on our website at asaporg.com/podcast.