đ„Ș Lunch Is A Pain
Your weekly round up of what's going on in the Admin world
Hello and happy Friday!
Weâre nearly in June! How has that happened?? One month to go in the first half of the year. Yikes! Perhaps a good time to revisit those new yearâs resolutions to see how you are getting on. Give yourself another little push before mid-year.
đą Have you taken the EA Salary Survey yet? We are still working to get as many responses as possible - the more we get, the better quality the report. We are close to getting as many as we did last year, but we are really keen to surpass - and we need your help! Please pass it on to anyone and everyone you know in the administrative industry - every voice really does count.
This week gave us a surprising comment from our friend (not friend) Bill Winters from Standard Chartered. Last week I told you about his nasty and ill-placed comments about administrative professionals. Turns out heâs âapologisedâ - read on for that one!
Thank you for being here - I appreciate you all!
Yvette đž
NewsWrap
I canât quite work out if this article is satire. Someone telling me that they think lunch is a waste of time, and that we arenât actually programmed to eat in the middle of the day. Well, someone really ought to tell that to my stomach, which generally gets irritated if it doesnât get two breakfasts, a lunch, âthreesiesâ (my 3pm snack), dinner, and then another snack. Describing it as âmandated leisure timeâ I think takes the biscuit. Personally, I enjoy closing my laptop and walking away from my desk (home or office) to get a bit of sunshine/tv/exercise. What do you think?
Laura Johnston's latest over at The Assistant's Handbook is a good one - all about the relationship architecture underneath the EA role. Her take: lateral leadership isn't soft power, it's the slow, deliberate accumulation of trust. And what happens when you move countries? She goes there too, from London to Dubai to New Zealand. The foundations transfer. The blueprint doesn't. Definitely worth a read.
How was your office air con holding up this past week, Europeans? If it was anything like mine, I took a jumper into work and then popped outside to sit on the wall in the sunshine to warm up. The hot weather has prompted unions in the UK to nudge the government to impose maximum temperature rules for workplaces - which I would support, although I donât think they would apply to my home office which felt like it was in the centre of a volcano this week.
Which leads me to this question: in this year 2026, has anywhere on earth managed to get their office heating and cooling consistently comfortable??
Gallup dropped their State of the Global Workplace report a few weeks ago. Buried in all the doom about engagement being at a five-year low is a stat I found hilarious: 95% of companies have seen zero measurable results from their AI adoption, and only 12% of employees say it's actually changed how they work. So while we've all been in back-to-back meetings about AI transformation strategy, most people are just... doing their jobs the same way they always did. The report puts the blame partly on managers - whose own engagement has dropped nine points since 2022 - which, if you've ever tried to get your exec to adopt a new tool, will come as absolutely no surprise. We're asking about AI adoption in this year's EA Salary Survey too, so we'll be able to see exactly how EAs stack up against the global picture - watch this space. In the meantime: are you genuinely using AI differently at work, or is it just living in a tab you opened three months ago?
Well, well, well. Bill Winters came back. After the backlash over his "lower-value human capital" comments last week, he posted on LinkedIn on Friday to say his choice of words had "caused upset to some colleagues" and that he was sorry. Notably, he then posted a third time, attaching a carefully punctuated transcript to clarify exactly what he said at the Tuesday conference. So not a clean apology, rather a "sorry you were upset, here's some context." Classic. He maintains the discussion about AI-driven job losses deserves "mature discussion" - which, to be fair, it does. Just perhaps not led by the man with a $377 million net worth who kicked it off by calling people lower-value. Read his full âapologyâ coverage here.
By referring your friends and colleagues to The Admin Wrap, you can earn yourself free access to The Extra Wrap - our in depth thought leadership pieces which are sent out every Monday. Can you make it to the top of the leader board?
đ RealityWrap: Itâs OK To Stay An EA
Somewhere along the way, the EA profession decided that standing still was the same as falling behind.
LinkedIn will tell you that you should be a Strategic Business Partner. A Chief of Staff in waiting. An Operational Leader with a seat at the table. The conference circuit will sell you frameworks for executive influence. The webinars will promise to elevate your profile, expand your remit, and transform the way leadership sees you.
And if thatâs what you want - genuinely - then go after it. Throw yourself into the trainings and the promotions and the levelling up, and donât let anyone (including me) tell you that you shouldnât.
But nobody is saying the other thing out loud, so here it is: you are allowed to be an exceptional EA and have that be enough.
It doesnât always have to be a stepping stone or a launchpad. Not all EA roles are being outgrown. An EA can be your career, a craft - something youâre brilliant at and proud of and intend to keep doing.
The noise around advancement isnât neutral. It carries an implication that excellence in your current role is somehow insufficient - that ambition only counts if it points upward. Thatâs not a career philosophy. Nine times out of ten, thatâs a product being sold to you.
The EA profession is genuinely hard. It requires intelligence, emotional range, political awareness, operational precision, and the ability to make complex things look effortless. That is not a consolation prize for people who didnât want more. It is the job.
You are allowed to own it without apology.
If the noise is getting to you:
The next time someone asks about your career goals and you feel the urge to perform ambition you donât actually feel, try answering honestly. âI love what I do and Iâm focused on being exceptional at itâ is a complete sentence. It doesnât need a follow-up plan or a five-year trajectory bolted on.
You donât owe anyone an upward arrow.
EventWrap
The Business Travel Show America is confirmed for October 14-15th in New York. There is complimentary registration for all attendees, plus there are hosted options if you have budget responsibility for your organisation (youâll need to be approved by the organisers and meet certain criteria). Check out all the details here.
ES Global is happening in a couple of weeks - thereâs a fantastic line up as always, and the sessions are recorded. Itâs happening on 11-12th June and thereâs a whole 24 hours of awesome stuff (so youâll need that recording!!). Get all the details here
EA How To is hosting another session on LinkedIn - alongside Nathanial Bibby who is one of Australiaâs leading LinkedIn educators. A free session on 4th June at 12noon Australian Eastern time (so late evening on 3rd June for those in US) . Sign up here
For a list of Conferences, head over to the Conferences section in our Ultimate Assistantâs Toolbox.
If you are running an event aimed at administrative professionals, please send me an email and let me know all about it - hello@theadminwrap.com
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