u/AskingForAFriend_210

I'm EA to CEO in a small corporate office. Our company has a big project underway, and the CEO asked me to join one of the workstreams to take meeting notes, distribute materials, track follow-ups, etc.

When I reached out to the PM to include me on the calendar invites, he told me, “the CEO has the invite, so you can join from his calendar.” OK... I guess. I joined the first call, took notes, distributed them afterwards, everything seemed on track.

For the second call, the CEO didn’t attend, but I joined the same way and started taking notes again. Towards the end of the meeting, PM said something along the lines of: “We should think about who we appoint for the admin part of the workstream -- to take meeting notes, send out materials, etc etc”. Basically describing the exact role I had already been asked to do... while I was literally on the call doing it.

There were 10+ senior management people on the call and it didn't seem like the right time & place to raise my hand (in retrospect, maybe it was, but I can't go back in time), so I just added it to the notes.

After the meeting, I sent the draft notes to PM (with CEO on cc) and asked whether it still made sense for me to join the meetings since he’d asked the team to nominate someone for the role. PM replied, “No, there's no need for you to join anymore".

I guess I have two questions at this point -- would appreciate your insights:

- I can't find a logical explanation why PM would act like this -- in my previous orgs, there'd never been such a clash and PMs were always glad to offload the notes and coordination to me;

- does it make sense for me to inform the CEO, or this reads like petty drama? I'm not sure how big it is of an issue to bring it up.

then excluded while doing it. My company has a big project underway, and my exec asked me to join the project meetings to take notes, distribute materials, track follow-ups, etc.

When I reached out to the project lead to include me on the invites, he told me, “Your exec has the invite, so you should see it.” OK... I guess. I joined the first call, took notes, distributed them afterwards, everything seemed on track.

For the second call, my exec didn’t attend, but I joined the same way and started taking notes again. Towards the end of the meeting, the project lead said something along the lines of: “We should think about who we appoint to take meeting notes, send out materials, do the admin work and so on”. Basically describing the exact role I had already been asked to do... while I was literally on the call doing it.

It didn’t feel like the right moment to interrupt and clarify with a group of 10+ senior management on call, so I just added it to the notes.

After the meeting, I sent the draft notes to the project lead (with my exec cc'd) and asked whether it still made sense for me to join the meetings since he’d asked the team to nominate someone for the role. He replied: “No, you don’t have to join anymore.”

I've been in many awkward situations at work, but being excluded from a role while actively doing it is a new one for me.