5 crucial traits every personal assistant should exhibit

A good personal assistant will exhibit these five key traits in order to help their boss become more organized and productive while reducing their stress levels.

Personal assistants handle a wide range of job duties for their boss, from the mundane to the highly specialized. A good personal assistant will exhibit five key traits in order to help their boss become more organized and productive while reducing their stress levels. Here's what a personal assistant needs know in order to succeed.

You have to get along with people to perform your duties, as many tasks will involve engaging with a variety of individuals. Personal assistants interact with restaurant waiters, commercial vendors and direct clients on a day-to-day basis. If you can't communicate articulately with the people you come in contact with, you're going to have problems doing your job properly.

Another major part of succeeding as a personal assistant is picking up on your boss' preferences without him or her saying it. If you get everything nice, neat and organized straight off the bat, you relieve a great deal of stress and position yourself as a highly competent professional in the office. This is a great way to impress your boss and work your way up the corporate ladder.

If you don't have organizational skills as a personal assistant, it's easy to become overwhelmed. You need to organize your daily tasks, paperwork, memos, emails, phone calls, food orders, and hundreds of other detail-oriented tasks. You don't want to mess them up, as that takes your boss' attention away from his or her required work. Learn software systems and time management skills to stay as organized as possible.

You don't have much of a routine as your boss' duties and tasks change on a day-to-day basis. Adaptability is required more often in high-paced and stressful work environments and industries, but it applies to any personal assistant position. Flexibility and the ability to deal with constant change are assets in this job position.

You're around your boss on a regular basis, whether you're carrying work files or entering a lot of data into a CRM database. You deal with a significant amount of sensitive data, so your boss needs to trust your ability to remain confidential as an employee. Trade secret leaks can cost a business millions of dollars, so this is one of the most essential skills you can have.