Reverse Empowerment:
Successful Leadership through Assistance

How can a manag­er be success­ful today? Expec­ta­tions in terms of required skills are high. In a 2022 survey conduct­ed by Boston Consult­ing, resilience was ranked third. Added to this are profes­sion­al chal­lenges such as main­tain­ing an overview during digi­tal change. In this Valdivia News­room arti­cle, we want to focus on a topic rarely mentioned in lead­er­ship guides: the impor­tance of compe­tent support for managers, or ‘reverse empow­er­ment’.

Lead­er­ship also needs empowerment 

In the HR context, empow­er­ment stands for the empow­er­ment and strength­en­ing of employ­ees by the compa­ny manage­ment. Managers are thus relieved of detailed ques­tions. Howev­er, they still bear over­all respon­si­bil­i­ty for goals and results. Further­more, they must remain up-to-date and navi­gate the compa­ny in the market. This complex­i­ty of tasks, includ­ing poly­math­ic lead­er­ship, was also a topic in our news­room feature in February.

In order to meet all these chal­lenges, “empow­er­ment and strength­en­ing” also seems desir­able for managers — a reverse empow­er­ment through qual­i­fied assis­tance. They can provide managers with compre­hen­sive support, manage infor­ma­tion flows and accom­pa­ny the imple­men­ta­tion of deci­sions with­in the company.

The modern image of assistance

For a long time, the role of assis­tant was not consid­ered attrac­tive and was seen as a subor­di­nate posi­tion with­in hier­ar­chi­cal compa­ny struc­tures. Today, howev­er, modern compa­nies often offer chal­leng­ing assis­tant posi­tions and can do a lot to improve the tradi­tion­al percep­tion of the role through visi­bil­i­ty, recog­ni­tion and active rethinking.

Numer­ous assis­tants are already lead­ing the way, show­ing a pres­ence in social networks and making it clear that their role is wide-rang­ing and indis­pens­able for modern work­ing envi­ron­ments. They act strate­gi­cal­ly, commu­nica­tive­ly and with a high level of profes­sion­al exper­tise. Their work often involves demand­ing tasks such as data analy­sis, budget nego­ti­a­tions, project coor­di­na­tion, social media manage­ment and person­al brand­ing for managers.

Strength­en­ing for the digi­tal transformation

The profes­sion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions of assis­tants, which are often in sever­al special­ist areas, are becom­ing increas­ing­ly impor­tant. In medi­um-sized to small compa­nies, partic­u­lar­ly in the real estate sector, they can play a key role in coor­di­nat­ing and support­ing project teams. This is partic­u­lar­ly true when it comes to provid­ing prac­ti­cal support for digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion, e.g.

• Find new appli­ca­tions for the compa­ny as trend scouts,
• Organ­ise and host train­ing cours­es for such applications,
• Coor­di­nate hybrid teams via plat­forms such as Trel­lo, Slack, miro etc,
• Contribute commu­ni­ty manage­ment and blog posts for the intranet,
• Organ­ise and support meet­ings, appoint­ments, webi­na­rs etc. online.

Above all, through their posi­tion as medi­a­tors between manage­ment and teams, they can contribute a great deal to the accep­tance of new tools and work­ing meth­ods and gener­al­ly support managers in change projects.

Salaries show grow­ing importance

Salaries have long since reflect­ed the grow­ing impor­tance of strate­gic and organ­i­sa­tion­al tasks that are now part of the job descrip­tion. For exam­ple, start­ing salaries for manage­ment assis­tants in 2013 were still between 31,000 and 43,000 euros per year, with the aver­age annu­al salary bare­ly high­er at 43,000 euros². Today, on the other hand, start­ing salaries often range from 45,000 to 55,000 euros per year, with an aver­age of around 65,000 euros³. Compar­a­tive figures from the USA are also simi­lar­ly high at 35,000 to 71,000 dollars (approx. 31,500 to 64,000 euros) per year⁴.

Of course, assis­tant salaries depend on many factors in indi­vid­ual cases, such as the size of the compa­ny, the indus­try and indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ence. Never­the­less, the increase across the board shows how impor­tant the tasks and how strong the bene­fits of qual­i­fied assis­tance and thus reverse empow­er­ment for managers have become today.

Sources

1. “What employ­ees expect from their managers” — Boston Consult­ing, quot­ed in “Der Bank-Blog”, Novem­ber 2023; other top char­ac­ter­is­tics: Recog­ni­tion, knowl­edge of human nature, coach­ing, empa­thy, self-reflection
2. PMSG Personal­Markt Services GmbH 2013
3. “The manage­ment assis­tant: tasks, train­ing and salary” — Hays 2025
4. “Exec­u­tive Assis­tant Career Updates: 2025 Salaries, Stats & Indus­try Changes” — Bold­ly, an exec­u­tive assis­tant recruit­ment specialist

(Image source:istockphotos)