Proximity Demands Discipline
The weight and responsibility of working close to authority
Proximity to leadership is described, in most conversations about administrative roles, as an advantage. As access. As opportunity. All of that is true. What is spoken about far less often — and what I want to speak about directly — is what proximity demands of the administrative professional.
I spent the early part of my career in administrative roles, working close to formal authority before I held it. That particular kind of proximity left its mark on me in ways I did not fully understand until later. It gave me a view of executive leadership that most people never get — the behind the scenes. How decisions are made. How trade-offs are negotiated. Why some informal commitments precede formal ones. How relationships determine what is proposed, to whom, and when. That knowledge is one of the most valuable things I took away from that stage of my career.
It also carried weight I was not always prepared to bear. I came to understand that proximity without role clarity and an understanding of what that proximity requires is a risk — to the administrative professional, to the executive they work with, and to the institution that depends on both functioning with integrity.
The line between institutional knowledge held in service of leadership and institutional knowledge used as personal influence is not always obvious. Holding that line is one of the most demanding requirements of the administrative function.
The administrative professional occupies an unusual position in the institution. They know what the executive knows — sometimes before others in managerial roles in the organization do. They know what has been decided, what is still in motion, and what has been quietly set aside. They understand relationships, histories, sensitivities, and commitments that may never appear in a formal record. This knowledge is not theirs to hold as personal capital. It is theirs to steward — to carry in service of the institution rather than convert into personal leverage.
That distinction matters because access creates knowledge, knowledge creates trust, and trust can create informal influence. None of these is inherently problematic. In fact, each can make the administrative function more valuable. The risk emerges when informal influence begins to be mistaken for formal authority — when knowing becomes deciding, when access becomes entitlement, or when proximity to the person who holds authority begins to feel like authority itself.
Discretion is the professional discipline this requires. It means knowing what to surface and when, what to hold, what to protect, and what not to use simply because you know it. This is active, continuous work. Done well, it protects the executive's decision space while maintaining the integrity of the information environment around leadership.
Boundaries are the other requirement — and they are often eroded by the very trust that proximity generates. When trust is complete, when access deepens, when the informal influence that comes from being the person who knows begins to feel like actual authority, the temptation is to operate at the level of that influence rather than within the limits of the formal role. This is not always a conscious choice. It accumulates gradually, through small expansions that each seem justified by the circumstance.
Resisting that accumulation is an act of self-governance. It means maintaining role clarity and professional boundaries even — and especially — when the executive does not enforce them and the institution does not appear to notice their erosion. The real test of a boundary is not whether someone stops you from crossing it. It is whether you govern yourself when no one does.
That is professional maturity at this level. It is what makes proximity an asset to the institution rather than a risk. Over a career, it is also what distinguishes the administrative professional whose proximity strengthened the executives and institutions they served from one whose access gradually became permission to overstep.
Proximity to leadership is both a privilege and a burden. Its weight is real, yet it is rarely accounted for in how institutions design, develop, or evaluate the administrative function. Access to authority brings knowledge, trust, and influence. It also brings an obligation to govern all three.
Proximity does not confer authority. It confers responsibility.
That responsibility requires the discipline to hold the line between stewardship and ownership, service and self-interest, influence and authority. When that line is governed well, proximity becomes an institutional asset — preserving continuity, protecting institutional knowledge, and maintaining the trust on which leadership depends. When it is not, the very access that makes the administrative function valuable can become the source of its greatest risk.
Ambassador Yolande Y. Smith is a leadership strategist, former Ambassador, and founder of The Colmar Group Ltd. She is the creator of the PIE Model™ and the Excellence Series™, and the author of Administrative Leadership as a Strategic Asset and Beyond the Desk (Colmar Advisory Press, 2026). Learn more at www.thecolmargroupltd.com