CEO Executive Assistant
The practical research question is: Which executive email actions may an assistant perform, and which messages require the executive or another accountable owner to approve?
This review uses current primary and authoritative guidance checked on 2026-10-02. Google and Microsoft document delegated mailbox capabilities without requiring password sharing. FTC guidance emphasizes limiting access to sensitive personal information and protecting what the organization retains.
Start with an outcome that another person can inspect. For this workflow, record message class, sender, sensitivity, requested action, deadline, draft owner, sender identity, approval owner, retention rule, escalation path, and completion evidence.
Consider this scenario: An assistant triages a CEO inbox containing routine scheduling, customer complaints, employment questions, legal notices, payment instructions, and board correspondence.
- Delegate and collaborate on email: Google Workspace Learning Center; checked 2026-10-02.
- Manage permissions for recipients in Exchange Online: Microsoft Learn; checked 2026-10-02.
- Protecting Personal Information: A Guide for Business: Federal Trade Commission; checked 2026-10-02.
Read platform capability separately from business authority
Google Workspace documentation describes delegation that lets another user read, send, and delete messages from an account, subject to configuration. Microsoft Exchange distinguishes permissions such as Full Access, Send As, and Send on Behalf. Those product capabilities answer what the system permits. They do not decide which messages the assistant is authorized to send for the executive.
The office therefore needs a business rule layered on the technical grant. A delegate may draft broadly while sending only scheduling confirmations and previously approved routine responses. Messages that create commitments, address personnel, change financial instructions, express legal positions, or disclose sensitive information should return to the named authority. The rule should refer to message consequence, not a vague instruction to “use judgment.”
FTC guidance on protecting personal information is relevant because delegated mailboxes contain far more than correspondence. Attachments and threads can expose identity records, financial details, employee matters, and customer data. Grant scope, device security, forwarding behavior, retention, and removal all affect the risk. Delegation should not lead to downloaded archives or copies in an assistant’s personal system.
Work a message that changes while being drafted
A CEO asks an assistant to draft a polite note confirming a customer dinner. Before it is sent, the customer replies that attendance depends on extending a contract deadline. The assistant can no longer treat the thread as routine scheduling. The requested response now carries a commercial commitment.
The assistant pauses the send, preserves the customer’s exact request, and routes the deadline question to the contract owner. A holding reply may acknowledge receipt and promise a response time if that language is authorized. Once the decision arrives, the assistant either sends the approved terms through the permitted identity or returns the final draft to the executive.
This boundary prevents category drift. A conversation may begin inside delegated authority and leave it after one sentence. The message table should describe stop conditions such as new money, obligations, dispute, confidential disclosure, or public position. It cannot rely only on the original subject line.
Make identity visible to recipients
Where the platform supports “on behalf of,” that label can help recipients understand authorship. Some offices instead use an assistant signature within the executive account. Choose a convention that fits the relationship and preserves clarity. Do not alternate invisibly between identities in the same thread.
Highly personal or consequential messages may need the executive to press send even when the assistant prepared every word. That distinction is not ceremonial. The sender assumes responsibility for timing, recipient list, and final content. The assistant can reduce the executive’s work without erasing the point at which executive judgment enters.
Shared mailboxes offer another model for team communication. They can make the organizational sender clear, but ownership and access still need rules. A shared address should not become a place where everyone can send commitments because no individual name appears.
Audit without reading everything
Review a targeted sample by message class, sender mode, and exception rather than creating an unrestricted archive. Look for sends outside approved categories, unexpected forwarding, access after role changes, and replies where the conversation crossed a boundary. Use platform logs where they provide reliable attribution; inspect content only to the degree authorized and necessary.
When the system cannot distinguish who sent a message, the office faces a control limitation. Reduce the scope of Send As, route more messages through drafts, or use a channel with better attribution. Written policy cannot compensate for a technical design that makes review impossible.
Removal testing should cover mailbox access, send capability, mobile sessions, groups, forwarding rules, and connected applications. Close temporary coverage grants on the stated date. A clean handoff tells the next assistant what authority exists now, not what the prior assistant happened to do.
Document emergency coverage before it is needed. If the executive becomes unavailable, specify which routine message classes may continue, which alternate authority can approve consequential replies, and which conversations must pause. Test the route with a harmless draft. Emergency access should have a start event, expiry, and review, so a temporary grant does not quietly become the permanent model for executive correspondence.
Set boundaries for drafts that carry executive judgment
Draft access can look harmless because the executive still presses Send. Yet a draft may frame a personnel decision, state a negotiating position, or omit a material caveat. Define which message classes an assistant may draft from instructions and which require the executive to supply the substantive position first. A scheduling reply and a settlement response should not share the same drafting rule.
Keep source material linked to the draft. When the executive changes a factual claim, the final message should not leave the assistant’s earlier notes looking like the approved position. Store the sent version and any required approval evidence according to the organization’s records policy, while avoiding duplicate archives in personal folders.
Treat forwarding and rules as delegation paths
Mailbox delegation is not the only way messages leave an account. Automatic forwarding, inbox rules, mobile profiles, shared-mailbox membership, and third-party integrations can expose or transmit messages. Review these paths alongside the visible delegate list. A former assistant with no listed permission may still receive a subset through an old rule.
Test rules with a harmless message that matches the configured condition. Document where it arrives and whether the recipient can reply with executive identity. Remove obsolete rules at their source and confirm that synced clients no longer apply a local copy. If a business process needs forwarding, use a managed destination and a named owner rather than an individual’s private archive.
Investigate disputed authorship
When a recipient disputes who sent a message, preserve headers, audit events, mailbox configuration, and the final content before changing access. Do not ask participants to reconstruct the event solely from memory. Determine whether the action was send-as, send-on-behalf, a shared mailbox, an automation, or a compromised session. Those mechanisms imply different authority and incident responses. The review should end with both the technical cause and the business rule that permitted or prohibited the message.
Bound authority during executive absence
An executive’s travel or illness often creates pressure to widen sending rights. Define absence rules before the event: which routine messages may be sent, which can be acknowledged without commitment, and which wait for a named alternate executive. State a start and end time. Permanent authority should not emerge accidentally from temporary coverage.
If an unexpected issue falls outside the rule, the delegate prepares the facts and routes the decision to the alternate. A holding message can confirm receipt without promising an outcome. Log any emergency expansion and review it when the executive returns, including messages sent and commitments created.
Remove access as an operational transition
Offboarding requires more than deleting a delegate entry. Reassign drafts, scheduled messages, shared labels, templates, and automation ownership. Revoke sessions and application tokens under the organization’s identity procedure. Then test from the former delegate’s account or an equivalent controlled test that reading and sending are no longer possible.
Tell internal partners who now handles the mailbox so they do not route work through the departed person. Preserve required business records in the governed system rather than keeping the account active for convenience.
Review queued and delayed delivery as part of the transition. A message scheduled by the former delegate may send after authority ends, and an outbox on a disconnected device may release when it reconnects. Cancel or reassign those items deliberately. Sample recipient-visible identity after the new owner takes over so signatures, reply paths, and delegation labels describe the current arrangement. This catches a class of errors that permission screens alone cannot reveal.