Conflict Management for Executive Secretaries: A Case Study

This report analyzes a case study involving an executive secretary who hired a temporary employee exceeding the budget, leading to a conflict with their boss. The report explores various strategies for the secretary to improve their position and handle the conflict effectively. These strategies include applying assertive behavior techniques (Project, Analysis, Look, Speak Up), enhancing verbal interactive communication through planning and clear language, utilizing progressive relaxation to manage stress, improving nonverbal communication to align with verbal messages, and developing strong listening skills to avoid misunderstandings. The report emphasizes the importance of effective communication, emotional intelligence, and proactive problem-solving in navigating workplace challenges and maintaining a positive professional image. The secretary can improve his position in the organization by addressing the boss's concerns by using the above-mentioned strategies.

The Professional Executive Secretary
Course
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................3
TASK....................................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION....................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES.....................................................................................................................................8
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INTRODUCTION
Professional executive secretaries use different technology methods so it becomes easy to
add significant value to the company for making effective personnel interaction. They directly work
for the organizations to provide close administrative support to the top management and other
executive members (What Does an Executive Secretary Do?, 2016). A professional executive
secretary is required to follow different kinds of duties and responsibilities. The present study is
based on case where a secretary appoints a full time temporary person on the demand of marketing
VP by exceeding the budget. Now, his boss asked him that who gave him authority to go over
budget. In this context, secretary requires to improve position to deal with this conflict and
minimize the probability of occurrence of following situation again in the near future.
TASK
As per the given case study, it has been found that secretary to the vice president in charge
of personnel. It is his responsibility to arrange for part time and temporary help and he has to
strictly follow the budget at the time of appointing a person (Chughtai and Buckley, 2010). Boss
gives authority to his secretary to make all arrangements which involves the expenditure of extra
funds. One day, marketing VP tells to hire a full time temporary person for helping his secretary to
handle extra paperwork. On this demand, secretary determines the problems of marketing VPs
secretary and hires a temporary person for a thirty five hour week. It was over the budget and for
this situation, his boss ask him to why he did not consult with him before hiring a new person by
going beyond the budget. In this situation, secretary is required to improve his position and for this,
he has to take some actions (Eysenck, 2013).
As professional secretary, it is important for him to show a good learning assertive
behaviour at the time of dealing with this boss. In this technique, there are four phases project,
analysis, look and speak up (McInnes, Howard, Crowley and Miles, 2013). In first stage project, as
per the given case study, secretary remembers his past experience in which he felt the same or the
similar situation.. For the same, some question about such events that took place with whom, when
and why etc is asked. After answering all questions, it becomes easy for secretary to determine
overall own strengths and weaknesses. By doing this, he can get the knowledge about self image in
the organization about different people. Along with this, the issues and subjects that bother secretary
at the time of hiring permanent or temporary person etc are also determined in an appropriate
manner (Buchborn, Schröder, Höllt and Grecksch, 2014).
In phase 2 analysis, secretary evaluates the degree of threat On the basis of this; he can
select a particular option that leads to self improvement planning (Arnold, 2011). For this, he has to
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describe the situation by analysing it and concentrating on who said, what did, when and where
questions in the conversation. Along with this, he has to specify his problem behaviour and
determine alternative options to deal with it. In phase 3 look, secretary is required to pay closer
attention to own emotional reactions. For this, he has to look at his feelings so he can think
realistically about the consequences of actions and decide what to do next to deal with the situation.
Last phase is speak up in which secretary plan a negotiating message to remedy of conflicts and
learn to express itself in an affirmative manner (Rindel, 2010).
As per the case study, secretary first tries to remember past experience in phase 1 project.
Here, he can relive his feelings and actions to complete the work. By doing this, he can identify his
own strengths and weaknesses to evaluate his self image after completing the work of hiring of full
time temporary person on the request of marketing VP (Wigham and Chanier, 2013). In the
evaluating phase, secretary analyzes the degree of threat and upset so that a self improvement
planning can be prepared. Along with this, he can assess his behaviour of appointing a person by
exceeding the budget. By doing this, he can identify whether he can take right action or not by
meeting the requirement of marketing VP. In phase 3 look, secretary can give close attention on his
emotional reaction so that his next step becomes more realistic. In the last phase speak up; secretary
can prepare some arguments to give clarification of his boss questions. For the same, he can also
answer why he hired a person by exceeding the (Kemper and Shaltout, 2011). So, with the help of
the four phases in leaning assertive behaviour, secretary can improve his position and is accountable
to use his power and liable to answer questions of his boss.
Another approach that a secretary can use to improve his position within the organization is
improving verbal interactive communication. It is very well known that written communication is
most important at the workplace (Silverman and Kinnersley, 2010). As per the situation, a secretary
may ask to type, write or compose a letter. Effectiveness of writing skill helps the reader to
understand the meaning of message. Along with this, face to face conversation also allows secretary
to convey his ideas and thoughts to his boss and other employees. Apart from this, written
communication effectively delivers ideas and opinions regarding any kind of work or decisions. In
the context of the given case study, where a secretary has appointed a temporary person on the
request of marketing VP by going more than decided budget (Jackob, Roessing and Petersen, 2016).
Now, his boss asked to him that why he did not consult with him before hiring a person. In this
situation, secretary is responsible for answering the questions and for this; he can take help of
verbal interactive communication.
With the application of interactive verbal communication, secretary first of all makes an
effective plan (Girdano, Dusek and Everly Jr, 2012). Under this, he defines his purpose and
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objectives before writing a document. After this, he takes decisions what key points are required to
be included. Further, next stage is writing in plain English, so that it becomes easy to give
information and reasons of hiring a person over the budget to the top management. During this, he
has to ensure that the language used to write information should be simple, clear and
understandable. Words used to frame sentences should be effective so that reader can clearly
understand in taking decisions (Steptoe and Kivimäki, 2012). So, by doing this, secretary answer
every question of his boss by verbal communication methods and explain the reasons of appointing
the person over the budget.
Rather than the above methods, progressive relaxation is one of the methods to improve the
position within the organization. It is a way to keep control over emotions and relieving from
tensions from a stressful lifestyle (Konturek, Brzozowski and Konturek, 2011). For the given
situation, secretary can use the following method in which he can practice for getting relaxed in
complex and other conditions. For this, he can relax by using different relaxation techniques. It will
help him in taking right decisions. It has seen that many of the people are scared at the time of
facing their boss and other executive members. That time, they become blank and forgot what to
say in front of the boss. During this, they experience different states such as shaking of body, dry
mouth, butterflies in stomach etc. These all are the reasons of nervousness and stress at the time of
talking with boss on a particular topic. To deal with all such kind of experience, secretary has to
adopt various stress relieving techniques and face the questions of boss. It also helps him to create a
new and good position within the workplace (Chughtai and Buckley, 2010).
This method is based on the fear reduction principle. Under this method, firstly secretary is
required to relax and determine the issues of threats of stress (Eysenck, 2013). By doing this,
various reasons can be easily determined. Same practice again and again helps him to eliminate
anxiety and make him more relaxed. In the given case study, secretary can use desensitization to
control his anxiety few hours before meeting with the boss regarding appointing the secretary by
going over budget. For instance, he has to just think about the man who makes him angry and
extremely stressed from thoughts and orders (McInnes, Howard, Crowley and Miles, 2013). After
development of hierarchy and other things, next step is checking out vividness of the imagination.
By doing this, it becomes easy to maximize the anxiety and stress situations in the more effective
manner. Hence, it will help secretary to improve position within the workspace and deal with the
conflicts and miscommunication which arise between his boss.
Beside this, with the application of nonverbal communication, message can be delivered to
other people. In few situations, only words are not enough to explain everything. For better
explanation, sometimes, it is essential to take help of non-verbal aspects of communication
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(Buchborn, Schröder, Höllt and Grecksch, 2014). In reality, non-verbal communication is associated
with verbal communication only that is hard to separate with each other. Most of the time, it has
been seen that many people combine non-verbal and verbal communication to interact and interpret
the messages. Accuracy of message depends on the understanding of communicator or receiver and
their coding and decoding process. In the situation, when words do not match with non-verbal
behaviour, it is hard to understand the information. Under this, it is important to understand the non-
verbal communication of sender rather than making any kind of assumption (Arnold, 2011). For
instance, if superior checks the employee’s work and says in a loud voice as he really liked his
work. This shows that there is a difference between verbal and non verbal message. At this stage,
this reaction may create confusion. To check this, employee might have confusion in his mind that
whether the superior actually liked his work or if it is not as accurate as it has to be. Thus, non-
verbal communication many a times leads to create doubts in the minds of other party (reciever).
Here, both non-verbal and verbal communication took place (Rindel, 2010). For the given case
study, it has found that secretary has hired one person on temporary basis on the request of Vice
President by going over the given budget. After his action, boss asked to him about the person who
has given him the authority to take this type of decision. To explain this thing, secretary was
required to improve non-verbal communication aspect as well. By doing this, he could easily and
effectively explain the reasons of hiring a person over the limited budget. With the help of this, he
could show same expressions and attitude on face and behaviour which he used in verbal
communication (Wigham and Chanier, 2013). It integrates both verbal and non-verbal
communication with each other and thus, made the argument effective. It improves the position of
secretary in organization and he could use his power effectually.
Apart from this, by brining improvement in listening skills, secretary can improve his
position in front of others. It is well known that communicating effectively helps in bringing
improvement in the job (Kemper and Shaltout, 2011). But to make the job more effective, secretary
needs to develop listening skills because many a times, improper listening creates confusion for
both the parties, that is, the speaker and listener. When two people communicate, they speak and
listen to each other. For effective face to face communication, it requires that both of them should
be good listeners. At the time of working in an organization, employees and other top management
people get involved involve in one to one interaction to perform the work. But, in the meetings or
decision making, listening task is more essential. From the research, it has found that people spend
on an average 45% of their time to listening related to work and managers spend 60 to 80% on
listening others with respect to work. As per the given case scenario, it has been determined that
Vice President has demanded to hire a worker who can work for full time in order to do paper work
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along with other activities (Silverman and Kinnersley, 2010). On this request, secretary appoints a
person as per the requirement and according to the budget. His boss orders him to only handle the
task but not hire a person by going beyond the decided budget limit. It shows that there is a
miscommunication problem between secretary and his boss because of poor listening skills. To
overcome this situation in the near future, he has to improve his listening skills. For this, he can use
different methods such as attending seminars, to improve these skills (Jackob, Roessing and
Petersen, 2016). By using this, it becomes easy for secretary to create awareness to listen other
people and make them understand in an appropriate manner. With the help of this, he becomes a
better listener within organization. Along with this, it will help in improving the position of
secretary and making him more responsible.
CONCLUSION
From the above report, it can be concluded that secretary has an important part of an
organization. He has accountable for various things in which one of them are managing personnel
within firm. In day to day life, he has faced various issues, conflicts and other problems to take
decisions. For some of the actions, secretary has been responsible and while giving answers, he
might have faced some difficulties. In this context, to overcome all kinds of issues, he had to
improve his listening skills by several activities. Along with this, different phases of learning
assertive behaviour have helped him to deal with the conflict situations. Apart from that, with the
help of progressive relaxation, secretary has minimized his stress level and took appropriate
decisions in the favour of organization. For the same, secretary was able to solve the conflicts with
the employees and management. Verbal and non verbal communication method assisted him to
communicate information in an effective and appropriate manner. All these actions and activities
have improved position of secretary at the workplace.
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REFERENCES
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in an animal model of depression: normalisation of learning behaviour and hippocampal
serotonin 5-HT2 signalling. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 28(6), pp.545-552.
Chughtai, A.A. and Buckley, F., 2010. Assessing the effects of organizational identification on in-
role job performance and learning behaviour: The mediating role of learning goal
orientation. Personnel Review, 39(2), pp.242-258.
Eysenck, H.J., 2013. Learning Theory and Behaviour Therapyf. Readings in Clinical Psychology,
p.349.
Girdano, D., Dusek, D.E. and Everly Jr, G.S., 2012. Controlling stress and tension. Pearson Higher
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Jackob, N., Roessing, T. and Petersen, T., 2016. 3 Effects of verbal and non-verbal elements in
communication. Verbal Communication, 3, p.39.
Kemper, K.J. and Shaltout, H.A., 2011. Non-verbal communication of compassion: measuring
psychophysiologic effects. BMC complementary and alternative medicine, 11(1), p.132.`
Konturek, P.C., Brzozowski, T. and Konturek, S.J., 2011. Stress and the gut: pathophysiology,
clinical consequences, diagnostic approach and treatment options. J Physiol
Pharmacol, 62(6), pp.591-599.
McInnes, K., Howard, J., Crowley, K. and Miles, G., 2013. The nature of adult–child interaction in
the early years classroom: Implications for children's perceptions of play and subsequent
learning behaviour. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 21(2), pp.268-
282.
Rindel, J.H., 2010. Verbal communication and noise in eating establishments. Applied
Acoustics, 71(12), pp.1156-1161.
Silverman, J. and Kinnersley, P., 2010. Doctors' non-verbal behaviour in consultations: look at the
patient before you look at the computer. Br J Gen Pract, 60(571), pp.76-78.
Steptoe, A. and Kivimäki, M., 2012. Stress and cardiovascular disease.Nature Reviews
Cardiology, 9(6), pp.360-370.
Wigham, C.R. and Chanier, T., 2013. A study of verbal and nonverbal communication in Second
Life–the ARCHI21 experience. ReCALL, 25(01), pp.63-84.
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Online
What Does an Executive Secretary Do?. 2016. [Online]. Available through: <
http://learn.org/articles/What_Does_an_Executive_Secretary_Do.html>. [Accessed on 16th
July 2016].
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