I saw a recruiter’s post on LinkedIn this week asking how far AI will go with the management support role. It prompted the usual responses: some executive assistants (EAs – which I use as a generic title that covers most of the 160 job titles currently for management support roles, according to the great Lucy Brazier OBE) proudly listing their AI tools, others expressing scepticism and many hedging their bets somewhere in the middle.

We’ve had the same conversation for months; it misses the fundamental EA role transformation already underway.

The question isn’t whether AI will impact the EA role; it already has. The question is why many accomplished professionals respond to this inevitable transformation with either blind enthusiasm or thinly veiled panic.

After four decades of supporting executives across multiple industries, I’ve witnessed numerous technological revolutions driving EA role transformation. I’ve learned that beneath the surface concerns about specific tools lies something much deeper: a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes a management support professional valuable.

The truth nobody’s telling you about EA role transformation

The uncomfortable reality is this: If your primary value comes from executing predictable, repeatable tasks (scheduling meetings, taking notes, formatting documents, booking travel) parts of your role will be automated. This isn’t speculation; it’s already happening.

I witnessed this first-hand at a recent management support conference. During a panel discussion, several EAs dismissed AI tools as “just another fad.” Meanwhile, in the exhibition hall, vendors demonstrated transcription software that captured every word of the same panel with 98% accuracy, complete with speaker attribution and sentiment analysis.

The gap between this dismissal and the rapidly advancing technology was striking.

But here’s what too many in our profession are missing: the opportunity isn’t in resisting these changes; it’s in recognising that these tasks were never the source of our actual value.

What executives need (but rarely articulate)

When I worked with the CEO of a global professional services firm, he could have hired anyone with technical skills to manage his calendar. What he needed – and what made our partnership successful – was someone who could:

1. Recognise patterns across seemingly unrelated events. I noticed connections between separate client issues that eventually led us to restructure an entire service line.
2. Navigate complex human dynamics. I understood the informal power networks that determined which initiatives succeeded, regardless of the organisational chart.
3. Create context and perspective. I helped separate genuine priorities from the constant stream of “urgent” matters by understanding the broader business landscape.

AI won’t replace any of these capabilities. They’ll become more valuable as routine tasks are automated and executives face even greater information overload.

The essence of the EA role transformation is a shift from task execution to strategic problem-solving and sense-making.

The dangerous comfort of the tool conversation

Why do we keep having the same surface-level conversations about specific AI tools? Because it’s comfortable.

Discussing whether Microsoft Copilot is better than Notion AI feels productive while allowing us to avoid the harder questions about our professional identity.

I’ve witnessed this trap ensnare countless talented professionals throughout my career. An EA colleague I coached spent six months mastering a proprietary document management system, becoming the office expert who could retrieve any file in seconds.

The company migrated to a new platform with automated search capabilities three months later. It made her hard-won expertise obsolete overnight.

The tragedy wasn’t just the wasted time; she had been developing this narrow technical skill at the expense of the strategic thinking her executive valued most. While she perfected file retrieval, she was missing opportunities to contribute to decision-making processes where her institutional knowledge would have been invaluable.

The fear beneath the resistance

Many EAs aren’t afraid of AI; they’re afraid to redefine their professional identity. They’ve built careers on being the reliable person who executes tasks flawlessly. The thought of surrendering those familiar responsibilities can feel like losing their professional purpose.

I understand this fear intimately. I felt that same resistance when our company first introduced automated scheduling tools. I had prided myself on managing the perfect calendar, anticipating conflicts and protecting my executive’s time.

Only when I forced myself to let go of that task-oriented identity did I find a more valuable role: becoming the architect of my executive’s attention rather than just the manager of their time.

The path forward isn’t about tools; it’s about positioning

The EAs who will thrive in this new landscape aren’t those who master the most AI tools or resist them the longest. They’re the ones who fundamentally reposition themselves from task executors to integration specialists.

When I managed operations for a professional services firm, I wasn’t the person who knew most about our new document management system. But I understood how it needed to integrate with our existing ways of working, where the potential privacy pitfalls lay, and how to modify our processes to maximise the system’s benefits.

That’s the territory we need to claim: not as technology users, but as the architects of how technology integrates with human systems.

Three uncomfortable questions every EA needs to answer

If you want to complete this EA role transformation successfully, stop obsessing over which AI tools to learn and start asking yourself these more fundamental questions:

1. What unique patterns do you recognise that others miss? These might be connections between seemingly unrelated projects, early warning signs of organisational issues or insights about how decisions get made in your company.
2. What complex human dynamics do you navigate that no algorithm could map? Consider the relationships you maintain, the conflicts you defuse, and the cultural nuances you interpret.
3. What contexts and perspectives do you create that transform information into wisdom? Think about how you help your executive separate signal from noise and connect immediate decisions to longer-term goals.

Your answers to these questions – not your proficiency with the latest AI tool – will determine your value in the coming years.

A new definition of the indispensable assistant

The truly indispensable assistants of the future won’t be defined by the tasks they perform but by the problems they solve. They’ll be:

• The person who identifies patterns across disparate information streams
• The architect who designs how AI tools integrate with human workflows
• The sense-maker who provides context and perspective in an increasingly complex environment
• The network navigator who understands how to get things done when formal systems fail

I recently worked with an EA who transformed this role transformation after her company implemented AI-based scheduling and email management. Instead of fighting the change, she became the person who designed the criteria for which meetings warranted human attention versus automation. She created decision frameworks for email prioritisation that the AI couldn’t understand without human aid.

Her role didn’t diminish, it elevated. She’s now involved in process design decisions that never would have crossed her desk in her previous, task-focused role. This is what a successful EA role transformation looks like in practice.

The question that matters

So when someone asks “How far will AI go with the executive support role?” I suggest a different question: “How will you navigate your EA role transformation to evolve your understanding of your value beyond the tasks that AI can automate?”

The future doesn’t belong to those who can execute tasks perfectly. It belongs to those who can make sense of chaos, see patterns others don’t notice and design solutions that address root causes rather than symptoms.

This isn’t a comfortable transformation for many who built their careers on being the reliable, efficient engine behind the scenes. But this EA role transformation is necessary to remain relevant in a workplace where routine tasks are increasingly automated.

The good news? This evolution offers the opportunity to finally shed the limiting perceptions of our role and demonstrate the strategic value we’ve always provided but rarely received credit for. The key is to stop defining yourself by what you do and start articulating the complex problems you solve.