Assistant Director Vs. Assistant to the Director

My professional title is Assistant Director. I work very closely with my Director, on work projects and in proximity to each other. Our office is very small and we have developed an intricate series of coordinated movements that keep us our chairs from banging into each other all day long. We have worked together for four years now. It is a great working relationship and we have even become friends outside of the workplace.

She is my boss though, which makes me think of our roles as leader and follower. When I first applied for the job of Assistant Director, I interpreted the role as Assitant to the Director, which would have been role-based (Northouse, 2019) working relationship. As the years have passed and we have settled in to our seperate strong suits I have realized that I am actually the Assitant Director of the preschool, not her assistant. Our leader-follower relationship has evolved from role-based to relational-based as we grew to trust each other and we learned each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Our relationship has redefined our roles. It works very well for us. I don’t ask her to take on tasks that require any advanced tech knowledge and she knows not to ask me any math problems that I can’t complete on a calculator.

Recently, the director had to quarantine at home for 24 days due to a potential covid exposure. We had just reopened our doors after being closed for almost a year. She was counting on me as was the staff. I had to handle some situations that I would not have had to deal with if she had been able to be at work. It was uncomfortable at times and pushed me way out of my comfort zone. I did a lot “fake it til you make it” things, such as handle a state licensing visit and our annual health inspection. It was the first time that I truly felt the growth that has occured in my role since I started four years ago. She is back now and I am glad. Not really because the work was hard but more because I was lonely and I missed my co-worker and friend. She recently joked that we should re-define our roles as Co-Directors. If that isn’t a relational leader-follower relationship than I don’t know what is.