Your Role as Communications Hub

1)	People in your office give your name and number as an emergency contact in their outgoing voicemail messages. But you aren't always available either, and callers get very frustrated.

	Ask your office mates to include someone else's name instead of yours.
	When such callers leave you messages, return them immediately.
	Arrange a system where all outgoing messages leave an emergency phone number that is always covered.

2)	You screen calls for your boss, who lets the phone messages pile up. After people have called several times, they sometimes get angry -- and you get really tired of placating them.

	Ask your boss if you can do some of the callbacks, after the two of you work out what you should say.
	Inform the callers of a good time to reach your boss directly.
	Grin and bear it. It's part of your job.

3)	Your boss expects you to keep tabs on everyone in the department. But people seldom tell you where they are going when they step out or how long they will be gone.

	Arrange to have access to everyone's computerized calendars.
	Brainstorm solutions at a staff meeting.
	Just do your best. This is really a problem between your boss and the others.

4)	You set up a weekly conference call among telecommuting members of your department. On the regular conference call day, you wake up with a fever, runny nose, and practically no voice. But no one else in the department knows how to set up the call.

	Come in, set up the call, and then go home.
	Call the operator and set it up from home.
	Call in sick. It's time someone else learned how to do this.

A member of your department calls you frantically from home. Now she's got the fever and runny nose. She's staying home, but has to finish the report she's working on. She wants you to turn on her computer and e-mail it to her, but she's forgotten what she named the document or what folder (if any) it's in.

	Use her computer's find function to search by words in the text.
	Suggest she take two aspirin, go back to bed, and come in and finish the report tomorrow.
	Suggest she call tech support.

6)	She also asks you to forward her new e-mail. In the process of doing that you inadvertently read correspondence indicating she's planning to quit her job. You know some of your boss's critical plans depend upon her being around.

	Forget you saw it.
	Tell her what you saw and suggest she tell your boss right away.
	Tell your boss. E-mail is company property anyway.

7)	Your boss takes pride in typing all his own correspondence. But at least once a day he calls you desperately into his office to help him find a lost file. His computer filing system is a disaster but he constantly brushes aside your offers to show him how to organize it.

	Offer to do his correspondence for him.
	Fail to find his lost file. After he retypes a couple of letters he'll be more amenable to better organization.
	Point out to him that this is costing you both a lot of time, and find him a good tutor or training course.

8)	On your boss's behalf you send out regular e-mail messages to staff members announcing meetings and appointments. "I didn't get the message" seems to be a favorite excuse among people for missing these events.

	Cc your boss on all messages so your boss knows you sent them to everyone.
	Make phone calls to remind people a day in advance.
	Instruct your e-mail software to confirm that messages were received.

9)	You've done such a good job fielding calls for people in this office that many of their callers now consider you their friend and keep you on the phone chatting, often telling you more about themselves and your officemates than you really want to know.

	After no more than three minutes of chatter, say politely but firmly that you have a mountain of work and have to hang up.
	Change your style to be more formal and less friendly.
	Explain to them that their conversation makes you uncomfortable.

10)

Your boss now asks you to make calls for her, not just to place them but to talk to company executives, seeking or passing on information. Sometimes you are not sure they want to talk to you.

	Talk to the executives' assistants instead.
	Make sure you are fully prepared and practice before each call.
	Tell your boss which executives you are uncomfortable with.

Some people call your job a communications hub. It's like being in the middle of a wheel all right, but sometimes it feels more like a roulette wheel than a wheel that's moving forward. You are part traffic director, part confidant, part techno wizard, and sometimes part scapegoat. And there is no end to the problems you encounter. Here are 10 typical ones, each followed by three possible solutions. Can you pick the best one?

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