Executive assistants: correspondence in fragments

Last updated 11 October 2026

Why the fragments matter

An EA's work is not one long task interrupted occasionally. It is forty small tasks in a day, each needing a written output, each interrupted by the next. A four-minute email that gets interrupted twice takes twelve minutes and comes out worse.

Speaking a reply takes thirty seconds, which is short enough to finish between interruptions. That is a different property from being fast — it is being completable, and it is what makes the difference across a day.

Where it fits

Writing in someone else's voice

The particular skill of the role, and dictation interacts with it in a way worth understanding.

Speaking naturally produces your register, not the executive's. If you are drafting something that goes out under their name, that matters. Two approaches work:

• Dictate the content, edit the register. Get what needs saying down at speaking speed, then adjust the tone by keyboard. Faster than composing in their voice from scratch.
• Build snippets in their register. Their standard decline, their thanks, their sign-off, their way of asking for something. Worded once, correctly, and reused. This is the higher-value option and most EAs already have these as text files.

The confidentiality point

An EA's written output is an unusually dense concentration of sensitive material: board scheduling, personnel matters, travel patterns of named executives, commercial conversations, health absences, things that have not been announced.

A cloud dictation service receives all of it. Nobody decides that — it happens because a useful app got installed. On-device recognition means the audio does not leave the machine, which for this role is the difference between a tool and a disclosure.

Setting it up

1. Teach it the names first The board, the executive team, the regular external contacts, the venues. An EA writes more proper nouns per hour than almost anyone, and they are the words a general model spells worst.
2. Build the snippet set The decline, the reschedule, the introduction, the thanks, the chase, the sign-off. This is an afternoon and it pays back within a fortnight.
3. Make a briefing-note template Who, history, what they want, what to avoid, the ask. Dictate into each heading in ninety seconds.
4. Set a shortcut you can reach one-handed You will be on the phone.
5. Keep the no-numbers rule Times, dates, flights, room numbers, phone numbers. Typed, always.
6. Mind the room If your desk is outside someone's office, what you dictate is audible to whoever is waiting. This is a real constraint in this role.