Debbie Pringle on Launching a Learning Group for Assistants

Debbie · 0:00

Hi, I'm Debbie Pringle, and today's leadership quote is, If it's not your job to do it, perhaps it's your opportunity. I'm Napoleon Hill.

Speaker 3 · 0:14

The Leader Assistant Podcast exists to encourage and challenge assistants to become confident, game-changing leader assistants.

Jeremy · 0:31

Everyone is talking about Nova Chief of Staff, and it's no surprise when graduates walk away with huge benefits, like greater confidence and the validation that they can do the role. There are over 300 students in the Nova Chief of Staff Certification course, many of which are growth-minded executive assistants like you. Many of the Leader Assistants taking the course aren't necessarily looking for a promotion, they simply want to become more effective, strategic, and game-changing assistants. Over 18 countries around the globe are represented by students in Nova's course, so I highly recommend you join the club. Visit leaderassistant.com/nova to learn more about this amazing professional development resource. Hey friends, welcome to The Leader Assistant Podcast. It's your host, Jeremy Burrows, and welcome to episode 270. Today, I'm speaking with my friend Debbie Pringle. Debbie is Executive Assistant at Coral Springs-Parkland Fire Department, and Debbie has more than 22 years of experience as an assistant, and we're excited to be speaking with her today. So, Debbie, welcome to the show. What part of the world are you in? Coral Springs, is that, where is that?

Debbie · 1:50

South Florida, Southeast Florida, specifically.

Jeremy · 1:53

And are you from that area?

Debbie · 1:55

Originally, I'm from New York, but I've been down here more than 30 years. I grew up on Long Island.

Jeremy · 2:01

Awesome. And what's maybe your favorite thing to do when you're not working?

Debbie · 2:09

I would have to say traveling. Not traveling, then reading, relaxing, cooking.

Jeremy · 2:20

Where do you like to travel or where have you traveled recently?

Debbie · 2:24

Recently, I just came back from Georgia. I was visiting my son there and before that, Tallahassee. When we travel for fun, we kind of go everywhere. We do something different every time we go on a trip. I know some families like to go back to their same favorite location year after year. We've never done that. We go somewhere new all the time. It's fun. My kids have been to 49 of the 50 states and we've had a lot of fun doing it over the years.

Jeremy · 2:59

Do you usually drive, fly, go on cruises? What's your favorite type of travel?

Debbie · 3:06

I love cruises, but we have usually driven when we've done our family trips. We've done a few cruises, but we do road trips. If it's close enough on the East Coast, we'll drive from Florida. If in earlier years when we didn't have as much vacation time, we would fly to say Denver or Las Vegas and we'd rent a car and then do our road trip from there.

Jeremy · 3:34

And tell us about the Executive Assistant role. How did you end up becoming an assistant?

Debbie · 3:43

So I've had kind of a varied career doing a lot of different things when I was younger. A lot of it was customer service. And then I worked for a financial firm for about 17 years. And I worked for them in New York, moved down to Florida with them. And when my daughter was five years old and ready to start kindergarten, I wanted to be home in the afternoons when she got home. I wasn't able to be home earlier, but it was important to me. We were able to do it then. And I couldn't make a part-time job work at the company I was at at the time. So I left there and started looking for part-time opportunities. And I actually went to a job fair at my local mall. And the city of Coral Springs had a table. They had all their pronounce of current openings. And there was one for the fire department, for an office assistant. It had the right hours. It sounded like something I could do. It sounded kind of interesting. So I applied and I've been here ever since. And I was part-time actually for 13 years. And then when I became full-time was when I took the executive assistant position. And that was 10 years ago.

Jeremy · 4:59

That's amazing. So I have you supported. I mean, how many executives have you gone through? I guess is my question over the years.

Debbie · 5:10

Well, when I first started, it was as a part-timer to support three assistant fire chiefs. And they each had different responsibilities, administrative responsibilities, in addition to running a shift. And I would help them with a number of things. But throughout the years, my role kind of expanded and grew, even before I became an executive assistant. And I would assist any of the chiefs that needed help with whatever they needed help with. So it's changed over the years. As the executive assistant to the fire chief, he is the primary person that I support. But I do probably support three or four others with certain things when they need it.

Jeremy · 5:58

And what's maybe what's some of the interesting things working in in for a fire department?

Debbie · 6:09

I would say that the most interesting thing is that every day is something different. You can plan your days, you can plan meetings and schedule things, but you never know when something's going to happen. You never know when there's going to be an emergency that involves everybody. So you always have to be ready to turn on a dime and go into something else, into a different mood and attack that. But it's fun. I've gotten to do a lot of different things. When I first started, I was helping with uniforms, ordering uniforms and getting everybody's, what they need and the different types, from t-shirts, uniform shirts, pants, boots, bunker gear, everything. Then one of our assistant chiefs was in charge of facility, so I was helping him with administrative tasks related to that. Another one was in charge of EMS, so I started helping with our licensing and everything related to what we needed to run rescues and transport people, including purchasing controlled substances, and everything, not the actual purchase, but taking care of the orders and making sure everything was in order for that. That's been interesting. As an executive assistant, it's been everything. I do the usual things that everyone does, schedule meetings, correspondence, but I've also gotten involved in the purchase of fire apparatus, fire trucks, which has been fun.

Jeremy · 7:48

Oh, you get to buy a fire truck?

Debbie · 7:51

Sort of. It's funny because one time the bill actually was sent to me, and I thought that was kind of nice.

Jeremy · 7:57

You're like, I'm not going to pay for this.

Debbie · 8:01

But I would say that the most interesting thing is that some of the chiefs in our department are really, really brilliant and have involved themselves because they care so much about the fire service in things that go beyond our department. So on a regional level, on a state level, even national, we have some folks that have won national awards for what they've done in the areas of safety and health for firefighters. We help our state Fire Chiefs Association run a conference every year, so I'm involved in that pretty heavily. Back in my own department, I'm responsible for our annual report. I've been doing that since 2015. Our award ceremony, which that's actually the next thing that's coming up in April, so I'm pretty heavy working on that right now. And anything else that comes up, which can be anything good or bad.

Speaker 3 · 9:05

Wow.

Jeremy · 9:05

So how large is the department? Or maybe another way to put it is how many assistants do you work with? Do you work with assistants in your own building, or is it more in the connecting districts or cities?

Debbie · 9:22

So primarily, it's just within our city and within our own building. We actually moved into a new building last year so that each division of the Fire Department is now under one roof. We have about four or five full timers and another four or five part timers. So we are all in one building on two floors right now, and each of us does different things. Some of it overlaps, but a lot of it is kind of segregated. We have one person that does payroll, one person that does financial, credit card purchasing, and everybody kind of has their own thing, but there is some overlap as well.

Jeremy · 10:03

Awesome. And then you started a learning group. Was this specifically for... Tell us a little bit about this. You started an administrative professionals learning group within your organization so that you could do training and resource sharing and just have that camaraderie with everyone. How did that come to be? And, you know, why did you start it? What's it all about? How does it work? And yeah, tell us a little bit about that.

Debbie · 10:33

Yeah, sure. So a little over a year ago, I had started thinking that there are times when I know I have learned something, a new procedure within the city, not just within the department, but within the whole city and their assistance in every department. And typically we don't cross paths. I might never have anything to do with Parks and Rec or the building department. But there are things that we all have to do that may be the same. And there are times when I would find that I found out something and I would share it with someone else and I'd find out, oh yeah, I heard that a week ago. And I thought, there's got to be a better way. We need to have some sort of unity that when one finds out something, we all find out and we all share it and we all help each other. And it got me to thinking that it could be so much more than that. So I put together a presentation, kind of put all my thoughts down on paper and created a presentation. And I went first to my chief with it, told him about it. He was very supportive. He thought it was a great idea and suggested that I take it to the next level, which would be to mention it to HR. They handle employee engagement and groups such as this. We have a leadership development group within the city, and they're in charge of that. So they would be the ones to speak to next. So I presented it to them. They also liked the idea. They gave me someone to work with on the HR side, and we kind of put together a little steering committee, a little group of our more seasoned assistants, folks that have been here a really long time, and created like a little board of directors, so to speak. And we talked about what my ideas were and what else we could add to it if we wanted to and how we thought it would go. The next step after that was to present it to our city manager who actually used to be the fire chief. He's one of the assistant chiefs that I first started working for 22 years ago. So I have worked for him this entire time. But yeah, he was fire chief for seven years, and he got promoted to city manager. So I presented it to him. He also agreed and liked the idea, wanted me to present it to senior staff. So all of this took place over several months. And what I did each time was kind of tweak the presentation so that I would be giving the information about the group to each person or group that I was presenting it to and focus on what was going to be most important for them. What are they going to get out of it? So after that, the senior staff loved the idea. They encouraged me to go ahead with it. They promised to be supportive of their assistance, being able to attend a monthly group like this. And the next step was to present it to all the assistants within the city. So we have over 100, and I would say about 60 of them were able to come to the meeting, the launch, which was last August, and we've met every month since then. So it's worked out really well. We've done some cool things that I'm really happy about.

Jeremy · 14:05

So it's basically open to the assistants in the city of Coral Springs or particularly government assistants?

Debbie · 14:16

It's strictly city employees. So it's our organization. And what we've done, one of the first things that I did when I got interest from the assistants and other folks in support roles was to send out a little questionnaire to find out what do they think a group like this would be good for? What would they see as a benefit so that I can make sure I was going in the right direction? And some of the questions that I asked were what are things that you're good at? Are you somebody that's good at Word? Are you better with PowerPoint? Are you an Excel expert? And I put together a list of who was better at some things and who could use help with other things so that we could lean on each other when we needed to and say, hey, you know, I'm trying to do a pivot table on Excel and I don't know how to do it, who can I call? So I created a resource guide and based on the answers to all these questions, it has everybody that's in the group We have a list of people who are good at all these things, and their phone number. So you can go down the list and say, okay, she's really good with word. I'm going to call her because I have a question about mail merge, whatever. And then we just added to it, we included some things that are used across the board in the city, such as your standard voicemail greeting, how to use different cities' security rules and processes, how to answer public records requests, things that anybody in any department might come across. But it also has things like how to set up the voicemail on your phone, how to actually, you know, what buttons to push on the phone to get there, who in the city is a notary if someone comes in and needs that, who can you call for this, who can you call for that? So it's a resource list within the city, but it also has all the most common things that we all come across. So some of it, if you're a city employee for many years, you might already know. If you're new, you might not. If you forget, if you don't come across this very often, you might not. So it's a resource guide that would contain all of that as well. It's got an org chart for every department in the city, which had never been shared before with everybody, along with contact phone numbers. So anybody that needs to reach anyone in any other department can now do so. It has links to all the different city services that we have, both for the public and for city employees. It's got information about even things like restaurants around town. If you're setting up a meeting, if you've got people coming in from somewhere else, and you need to coordinate a lunch, where can you go? If you live in the city, you may know a lot of them. If not, this would be helpful as well. It includes tips, different shortcuts for different software programs, Word, Outlook, how to book a meeting room, how to use some of our internal services. We don't use Dropbox. We actually have our IT department created an internal Dropbox for sharing large files. How to use that? Let's see. Common misdirected inquiries and who to call instead. That was a fun one to do because there are always people that said, everybody calls me about this and it's never us, it's always somebody else. We have that in the book. Tips for taking minutes, customer service tips, how to talk to people on the phone. We have assistance and support staff of all ages, all levels, entry level, people who've been here for years. You might look at the book and say, I don't need this, but wow, that's really useful. There's something for everybody and one of the most important things is we keep it updated regularly, so it remains accurate, relevant, and useful to everybody.

Jeremy · 18:41

So how long has this been going on? When did you create this resource?

Debbie · 18:50

We launched it August 29th and our first meeting was in September. The first meeting was an intro, everybody just going around talking, I'm so-and-so, I support this person, I work in this department, and I've been trying to get everybody to be more vocal and to get to know each other. Sometimes that's worked, sometimes folks are shy or they don't want to talk a lot. So sometimes we've just gone right into a training for the day. We've had folks that work within the city that are really good at something to present. Sometimes when we haven't had that, we've gone online, we've done YouTube videos together, we've had teams meetings where we would share some of the free resources that are out there. One of the things that I included when I presented it to senior staff, because by then it was almost summertime and our fiscal year starts October 1st. So, the budget for that year, the coming year was done. So, I told them that for the first year anyway, I could do this for relatively no money at all, no cost. And I've been sticking to that. The only thing I asked for was in December to have a little holiday luncheon. But now we're coming up on budget time. So, one of the things I'm hoping for next year is to actually get funds allocated to the group so that we could expand our training opportunities. We can offer certifications, you know, have people if they want to get certified, either with IWAP or PACE or one of the other certifications out there, Microsoft, that they'll be able to perhaps attend a conference so that the folks that really do want to learn more and invest in themselves will be able to and have it be covered.

Speaker 4 · 20:53

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Jeremy · 21:29

Okay, nice. That's great. That's super exciting. So tell us a little bit about, I'm going to ask you to brag on yourself a little bit. Tell us a little bit about the award that you were, let's see, you're nominated for a couple of awards, but then you won an award. Tell us a little bit about that.

Debbie · 21:49

Okay, so we have throughout the city every year a chili cook-off day, and they announce at that event the City's Employee Excellence Awards, and they give out awards in categories that match some of the core values of the city. So it will be teamwork, accountability, and the one that I got was for leadership, and it was specifically for creating this group. And one of the things that really made a difference that I was really, really happy about was a few people came up to me and told me that they nominated me. So my own chief nominated me. One of the other people and senior staff nominated me. Some of the people within the group sent in a nomination. So I felt really good about that because it wasn't just, you know, my boss said it's really nice, but it's nice to know that people within the group were getting benefit out of it, too. And so I had been nominated once before, and this was the first year that I won it, though, and it was specifically for this.

Jeremy · 23:03

Well, congratulations. Sounds like you put a lot of a lot of work into this and a lot of energy and time and then a lot of really advocating for assistance in your community. And so much, much deserved. And congrats.

Debbie · 23:19

Thank you.

Jeremy · 23:21

Awesome. Well, this is all super awesome how you've put this together. And, you know, very interesting, you know, talking with someone at a fire department, definitely similar. One thing I like about being an EA is you can transfer to any industry, any organization, any building. And it's in your skills are transferable and it's it's similar type of work. But at the same time, I can talk to someone at a global tech company, like I talked to someone earlier at a large 6000 person tech company in California, and then talk to someone at a small family office in Iowa, and then talk to someone at a fire department in Florida. And, you know, we all have that same speaking of camaraderie, we have that we know what it's like to be on our toes all the time, adapting all the time and being flexible and trying to make it make it happen no matter what. And but it is unique to hear all the different worlds, if you will, that that assistants live in. And so you have a you're in a totally different world than my software company in the Midwest. And it's it's fun to it's been fun to talk to you. So if you know, you've done all this work, you've won this award or in the leadership category, what would you if you could if you could spend, you know, five million dollars on a Super Bowl ad or a billboard on the highway? And it was specifically the ad or the billboard was specifically for executive assistants. What would you want to say on the billboard or what would you want the ad to communicate to assistants of the world?

Debbie · 25:19

Oh, wow. I would say probably two things. Never doubt that you can do something if it means enough to you and you really want to and you think it's going to benefit people, then you can. You can find a way. And I think we come across a lot of people that think they're, you know, quote, just an assistant. And I think that's changing, but there's still a long way to go. And when you work for an organization that is supportive of their assistance, and I'm fortunate enough that I do work for that kind of an organization, you realize that you do have a lot more of a voice and a lot more. I don't want to use the word power, but you've got you can do things. You can make things happen. You can, if you do it the right way and understand who to talk to and what to say and how to present it, you can get your ideas across to anybody. And if you have good ideas that are going to help the organization or help others, there's nothing you can't do.

Jeremy · 26:36

Love it. That is a great billboard slash Super Bowl ad. Thank you. Thank you, Debbie. So what's the best place if people want to reach out and say hi, they want to connect?

Debbie · 26:51

So I would say if they want to connect with me on LinkedIn, that would be great. I check it daily. So I'm not always active in terms of posting things, but I do check it daily and if they want to reach out, I'm more than happy to share the presentation if anyone is interested in starting such a group within their own organization. I'd be more than happy to share the presentations that I've created and more than happy to talk to anyone about it as well.

Jeremy · 27:21

That'd be great. I will put your LinkedIn URL in the show notes at leaderassistant.com/270. Again, that's leaderassistant.com/270. I'll put your bio in there and your LinkedIn links so that people can reach out and say hi. I'm sure there will be plenty of assistants out there interested in hearing more about this learning group that you put together and the presentations and all that fun stuff. Thank you so much again. Actually, I'm trying to remember, Debbie, was it LinkedIn that you reached out and you saw something and you said, hey, I want to be on the show? How did we end up here today?

Debbie · 28:08

Yeah, so I saw something. I don't think someone shared your post about being on the show. And I thought, well, I was kind of really going strong with this group. And I thought I would love to be able to share that because if it got started in other organizations, I think it would be really helpful for everyone. So I reached out and just asked if that's something you'd be interested in hearing about. Perfect.

Jeremy · 28:37

Awesome. Well, that's one of the things I love about the podcast is it just brings all these people together, all these assistants. And I've met so many assistants like yourself that I never would have met if it wasn't for the podcast and the good old Internet. So great to meet you. Great to chat with you. Hopefully I can bring my boys for a firetruck ride someday in Florida.

Debbie · 29:02

Absolutely. That is one thing I can promise you. You come to South Florida, I can get you on a firetruck. Or at least to sit on one.

Jeremy · 29:12

Yeah, we live next to a firefighter at one of our homes. And back when we lived in St. Louis, my kids were younger then. And there were several times where the firetruck would stop by and he'd come by for lunch or whatever. And the boys would be like, firetruck, firetruck. So that was really exciting living next to a fireman.

Debbie · 29:32

It is. It's always fun when kids come into the stations and they love it.

Jeremy · 29:39

Awesome.

Debbie · 29:40

And we do too.

Jeremy · 29:42

Of course. Yeah. Great, Debbie. Well, thanks again for being on the show. Best of luck to you in your career and we'll talk soon.

Debbie · 29:49

Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Please review on Apple Podcasts.