Executive Support Communication Charter

Trace the channels people actually use

Map the actual paths used for executive work: email, chat, text, calendar comments, task systems, meetings, and calls. Identify where requests disappear, duplicate, bypass approval, or become impossible to audit. Note audiences and sensitivity because a board question cannot follow the same casual path as a lunch preference.

Begin with a misrouted sensitive request

A senior employee texts an assistant asking the CEO to approve a compensation exception. The charter allows acknowledgment but not approval or sensitive discussion by text. The assistant records the request in the authorized route, alerts the accountable people owner, and avoids implying that proximity to the CEO creates authority.

Separate acknowledgment from authority

A charter needs message examples at the boundary. Show the difference between acknowledging receipt and promising an outcome, between preparing language and sending it, and between an urgent alert and a completed escalation. Define how recipients can verify an unusual instruction said to come from an executive. Include accessibility and time-zone expectations so silence is not mistaken for refusal. Examples should use fictional details and should be revised after real misunderstandings reveal where the written rule remains ambiguous.

Assign a route to each request class

The charter assigns each request class a primary channel, acknowledgment expectation, source of truth, owner, approval rule, urgent signal, fallback, and record location. It defines when support may draft in an executive’s voice, when direct approval is mandatory, and who can send the final message.

Define the executive voice boundary

Drafting, approving, and sending are separate actions. The charter should say when support may use an approved template, when an executive must review language, and when a specialist owns the response. A message sent from an executive account can create expectations even when the assistant intended only to help. Preserve the approving owner and final version for consequential communications. Routine logistics can move quickly without giving support open authority to make promises in someone else's name.

Make urgency verifiable

An urgent label needs a reason, a decision deadline, and an authorized fallback. Define the signal used for travel disruption, safety concerns, board matters, customer escalation, and other approved classes. Do not treat repeated messages across several channels as stronger evidence of urgency. The recipient should be able to verify an unusual instruction through a known route. When the executive is unavailable, the charter names the backup owner instead of asking the assistant to improvise authority.

Account for time zones and accessibility

Publish coverage windows, expected acknowledgment by request class, and the route for an accommodation or alternate format. Avoid promising constant availability. A delayed response outside coverage should not look like refusal, and an automated acknowledgment should not look like resolution. For recurring international work, state which local time governs the service window. Review the charter with people who rely on screen readers, captions, or other accessible communication paths before making one channel mandatory.

Keep the record where the work belongs

The source of truth should preserve the request, owner, decision, and closure evidence without collecting every chat or text into a new shadow archive. Link to controlled records when possible. Set retention and access according to the underlying work, not the convenience of the communication channel. If a request begins in the wrong place, acknowledge it there, move it through the approved route, and avoid continuing a sensitive discussion in parallel.

Plan for tool failure

A charter should still work when the primary chat, email, calendar, or task system is unavailable. Name a bounded fallback, who may activate it, which request classes it supports, and how records return to the source system afterward. Do not solve an outage by moving confidential work into a personal account or an unapproved group chat. Test the fallback with fictional information. Remove temporary access and duplicate records after recovery, and record unresolved items before declaring normal service restored.

Review external-facing commitments

Messages to customers, candidates, directors, vendors, and public audiences may create consequences beyond the communication team. State which templates are approved, which facts require a current source, and which commitments need executive or specialist approval. The assistant should be able to correct routing or scheduling without rewriting a commercial, employment, governance, or legal position. Sample sent messages at the boundary and update examples when reviewers disagree about whether language was informational or a new promise.

Reject the universal response-time promise

Declaring one universal response time treats acknowledgment as resolution and encourages false urgency. Copying every channel into a master spreadsheet creates new privacy and retention problems. Requiring the executive to approve routine logistics defeats delegation. Allowing support to send new commitments in an executive’s voice creates the opposite risk.

Test five uncomfortable cases

Start with the most common and highest-consequence request classes. Agree on channel, authority, and evidence with the people who send and receive them. Publish examples. Test an urgent change, an unavailable executive, a suspicious sender, a confidential issue, and a routine request arriving in the wrong channel.

Revise from routing failures

Review wrong-channel requests, response promises missed, duplicate work, approval rework, unauthorized commitments, unresolved urgent alerts, and records that cannot be located. Update the charter when organizational roles or tools change. The goal is reliable routing and clear authority, not constant availability.

Publish the charter with ownership

Give the charter an owner, effective date, review trigger, and short set of fictional boundary examples. Point users to Executive inbox management playbook and Remote executive support operating rhythm for related practices. CISA guidance for recognizing and reporting phishing supports the unusual-instruction and phishing controls; verify the current guidance at the source. HireExecutiveTeam can help convert communication demand into a workable executive support scope, while executives and authorized specialists retain approval for commitments and sensitive matters. Confirm that every published route has a monitored owner and a fallback before retiring an older channel.

Related resources

• Executive assistant support
• Executive inbox management playbook
• Remote executive support operating rhythm