Those who know the dgs team well, know that we go by our initials most of the time. LG is Leslie Galbreath, Chief Executive Officer. I’m RB, Rebecca Boyle, Executive Assistant to the CEO. Initials make for fast communication, especially when you’re referring to the same people’s names about a million times a day. And it soon becomes habit. You even begin to think in terms of and call people by their initials instead of their names.
Recently, LG was on vacation and I’ve spent some time reflecting on what goes into a week without her here at dgs from my point of view. As you’d guess based on our job titles, LG and I have a very close working relationship. As LG’s assistant, my job calls for a variety of different types of work each day–work that supports LG, work that supports our clients and work that supports our agency as a whole. When LG is out of the office, I step in to handle a number of things that she’d usually handle if she were here. Some are expected, some are things that you just can’t plan for.
I may review work on behalf of LG and send it to a client without her seeing it, I may create a solution to a client’s challenge without her feedback or I may even manage an urgent project from start to finish. Sometimes I know I’ve got it, sometimes something takes me a bit out of my comfort zone. That’s where a combination of past experience, judgement, advice from my coworkers, that gut feeling of “am I comfortable with this?” and self-confidence comes in.
While there are sometimes moments of feeling a little in over my head, I start with the most important thing, then move to the next most important thing and work my way down the line. There are always a bunch of things that I’d love to do that temporarily get put aside.
At the end of the week, there’s exhaustion (especially if it’s been a crazy week at home too) but there’s also a sense of accomplishment knowing that I’ve done my best and that I’ve helped the dgs team do their best. I love being able to check all of the important things off the to-do list. It makes me feel good knowing that I can hold down the fort for a little while so that LG can get some well-deserved rest. I definitely couldn’t do it on my own, but I have a strong team of dgs friends around me. There are times when all of us step up to do things that we wouldn’t normally do. That’s what makes us a team and that’s what makes us successful. But, I always look forward to when LG comes back. I miss her when she’s gone.