The Chief of Staff's perspective on the Chief of Staff
When a person who has personally worked as a Chief of Staff describes the role, the perspective often differs significantly from how boards, HR directors, or other management functions view it. While the environment often focuses on coordination, follow-up, and support for the CEO, the experienced Chief of Staff usually perceives the role as significantly broader and more complex. An experienced Chief of Staff rarely sees himself as an administrator, project manager, or internal consultant. Instead, the role is about creating organizational leverage. That means helping the management team make better decisions, focusing on the right questions, and ensuring that strategic priorities are actually implemented. From the inside, the Chief of Staff is often perceived as a position between several worlds at the same time:
- Between strategy and implementation.
- Between the CEO and the management team.
- Between formal mandate and informal influence.
- Between short-term operational needs and long-term strategic ambitions.
This makes the role unusual. Many management roles are based on direct operational responsibility, budget responsibility, or personnel responsibility. The Chief of Staff, however, is largely built on trust, judgment, and influence. An experienced Chief of Staff would therefore often say that the biggest challenge is not performing tasks but navigating relationships, priorities, and organizational tensions without becoming part of the problem yourself.
What an experienced Chief of Staff considers to be the most important contribution of the role
Increasing the management's capacity
Most experienced Chief of Staffs describe their primary mission as increasing the collective capacity of the leadership. This means helping the organization to:
- Make better decisions.
- Make decisions faster.
- Make fewer but more important decisions.
- Ensure implementation.
A role creates value when it makes others more successful. A common description is:
”My success is measured not by what I personally deliver but by what the management team succeeds in delivering.”
Managing organizational complexity
An experienced Chief of Staff often views the organization as a system. When others see separate problems, the Chief of Staff sees:
- Addictions.
- Bottleneck issues.
- Unclear mandates.
- Communication gaps.
- Conflicts between priorities.
Many issues that appear to be resource constraints turn out in practice to be coordination problems. Here, the Chief of Staff becomes a translator between functions and perspectives.
Giving the management an organizational mirror image
An important but often invisible task is to help the CEO and management team see what they themselves miss. This can involve:
- Cultural signals.
- Resistance to change.
- Decision-making patterns.
- Management behaviors.
- Growing organizational risks.
An experienced Chief of Staff therefore serves not only as an information gathering link but also as a strategic observer.
Creating focus
Many Chief of Staffs describe the organization's biggest problem as a lack of focus rather than a lack of ideas. The role therefore helps by asking questions such as:
- What is most important?
- What should we stop doing?
- Which decisions lack an owner?
- Which initiatives compete with each other?
The more senior the role becomes, the less the work is about coordination and the more about prioritisation.
Which abilities do an experienced Chief of Staff prioritize the most
People who have worked long in the role often mention the following abilities as more important than technical skills or methodological knowledge.
1. Strategic judgment
The most important ability is often not analysis but judgment. A Chief of Staff needs to decide:
- Which questions require the management's attention.
- What is signal and what is noise.
- When a problem has to be escalated.
- When the organization needs to intervene.
It's about wise prioritization rather than advanced models.
2. Building relationships
Almost all influence in the role is based on trust. A successful Chief of Staff often has strong relationships with:
- CEO.
- Management team.
- Key executives.
- Informal leaders.
Without trust, the role quickly loses its value.
3. Influence without mandate
This is often considered the core of the profession. The Chief of Staff needs to get things done without being able to order them done; hence the ability to:
- Influence.
- Negotiate.
- Anchor.
- Create common ground.
absolutely crucial.
4. Emotional intelligence
Experienced Chief of Staffs almost always emphasize this area more than many hiring managers do. The role requires the ability to:
- Reading group dynamics.
- Managing strong personalities.
- Understand informal power structures.
- Deliver difficult messages in the right way.
5. Enforcement power
The chief of staff must not get stuck in strategy. Organizations change only when decisions are translated into action. An experienced chief of staff is therefore equally comfortable with:
- Strategic discussions.
- Operational follow-up.
- Change management.
- Problem solving.
Is the Chief of Staff a role or a function?
This is one of the most interesting questions in the field. An experienced Chief of Staff would probably answer:
Chief of Staff is both a role and a function, but in different ways.
As an organizational function
In the organization, the Chief of Staff is a function. The function is about:
- Support the management’s work.
- Integrate strategic initiatives.
- Create coordination.
- Ensure implementation.
Even if an organization changes personnel, the need for the function remains. In larger organizations, the function can even consist of several people.
As the work of the individual
For the person themselves, the Chief of Staff is primarily perceived as a role. This is because success is highly dependent on the individual's:
- Review.
- Relationships.
- Integrity.
- Leadership.
- Personal credibility.
Two Chief of Staffs with the same title can perform the task in completely different ways. Unlike, for example, the CFO or the HR director, there is no universal model. The role is strongly shaped by:
- CEO needs.
- The organization's maturity.
- The purpose of the assignment.
- The person's own strengths.
The mature perspective
Many experienced Chief of Staffs therefore end up in:
The Chief of Staff is an organizational function that is exercised through a very personal leadership role.
The function can be described in an organizational chart. The real effect, however, arises through the person's ability to create trust and influence.
Differences between the public and private sectors
People who have worked as Chief of Staff in both sectors often describe that the core of the role is the same, but the environment looks different. In the private sector, the work often involves more about:
- Growth.
- Competitiveness.
- Transformation.
- Business results.
- The implementation pace.
The Chief of Staff often becomes an accelerator for strategic initiatives.
In the public sector, the role is more often about balancing:
- Political goals.
- Operational objectives.
- Regulations.
- Transparency requirements.
- Many stakeholders.
Here, the ability to navigate complexity becomes even more important. However, what both sectors have in common is that the Chief of Staff acts as an integrating force between strategy, leadership, and execution.
Summary
A person with experience as a Chief of Staff usually sees the role less as support for an individual and more as a mission to strengthen the entire organization's leadership capabilities. The skills that are most often prioritized are:
- Strategic judgment.
- Building relationships.
- Influence without formal mandate.
- Emotional intelligence.
- Power of execution.
- Integrity.
- Ability to handle complexity.
Perhaps the most important insight from experienced Chief of Staffs is that the role is not about being the one who makes the most decisions or who is the most visible. On the contrary, it is about creating the conditions for the right people to make the right decisions at the right time. For the organization, the Chief of Staff is a function. For the individual, the Chief of Staff is a leadership role. However, the most successful people do not see any contradiction between these two perspectives. They use the role to make the function effective and use the function to create organizational value.
