The Ultimate Guide to Selecting and Onboarding a Chief of Staff

It’s no exaggeration — few Chief of Staff roles are alike. As a result, the individuals who fill them vary a great deal as well.

However, great CoS candidates do share a few consistent traits. Successful individuals are typically senior leaders who combine strategic planning and laser-focused execution. They possess exceptional organizational abilities, strategic thinking, complex problem-solving abilities, and strong communication skills. These are critical as they fuel their ability to solve challenging problems at scale.

What Experiences Does a Chief of Staff Need?

While there is no single career path that helps someone become a CoS, there are a few core experiences that set this role up for success.

• Navigating cross-functional priorities. A CoS needs to have a great intuition for managing interpersonal and political dynamics within the business. They often have a track record of building strong collaborative relationships, often with the toughest of stakeholders.
• High-stakes communication. A CoS needs to be comfortable communicating with individuals on the executive team. Success in role requires experience presenting complex ideas in a way that can be digestible and compelling when hearing them for the first time.
• Subject matter expertise. CoS candidates benefit from strong industry experience, particularly if they've served in operational roles. They likely need first-hand knowledge of similar problems that typically impact the performance of a business.
• External consulting work. Individuals who excel at the CoS role often have a background in management consulting. This is because these individuals are used to walking into a new organization, assessing the situation, and applying a methodology to create solutions.

Finally, a great CoS candidate often benefits from working in highly ambiguous, high-stress situations, helping them build a strong ability to thrive in change.

Is Your Leadership Team Ready for a Chief of Staff?

It’s important to realize that learning a new CoS role comes with a lot of ambiguity. Helping onboard an individual requires a few key steps to help this individual realize their full potential.

Set a clear pipeline of high-priority initiatives

Pre-planning what this individual will support is one of the most critical aspects of getting the CoS role right. This prevents this individual from becoming a role in search of a business problem.

Organizations typically adopt this structure when they have a specific need or set of priorities that they're looking to accomplish. This means that individuals accepting a CoS role have a clear remit. This is critical because, while CoS priorities typically have clear desired outcomes, it is often ambiguous how they should be achieved. Without clear success definitions, a CoS could flounder — or work on too broad a range of priorities, diminishing their overall impact.

Establish specific and targeted metrics for success

Every executive team is different, which means that every CoS role requires a unique approach. This often makes it difficult to hold them accountable for specific actions or to evaluate their overall effectiveness.

To overcome this, CEOs need to establish specific and targeted metrics on the impact that this individual needs to create. These help a chief executive to hold the CoS accountable for their performance, as well as enable the CoS to better understand and navigate their priorities.

Ensure access to senior levels of the organization

Success in this role requires the CoS to understand the thinking of the executive team. A chief of staff needs to be in lockstep with the CEO, meaning they need regular access to this individual and the others on the executive team. A CoS often benefits from attending weekly meetings of the executive team, and having access to parallel workstreams that may impact their priorities.

However, some executives become territorial about providing this level of access to someone outside their business. This frequently requires a chief executive to be explicit about which communication channels are open to the CoS. This ensures that the CoS doesn’t experience blockers or siloing from leaders within the business.

Create clarity on what their role is (and isn’t)

The nature of the CoS role often requires this individual to manage upwards, working with leaders that have more positional power and influence. While a great CoS can influence without formal power, they often benefit from having “air cover” from the CEO, particularly when interacting with other senior executives.

It is also critical that their role is made clear to the entire leadership team. This is because other executives sometimes see the CoS as someone they delegate to or pull into new priorities on short notice. Again, the CoS is an extension of the CEO, and should be seen as acting on their behalf.

Providing robust support for a new Chief of Staff is crucial for ensuring their success and, by extension, the success of the organization. By actively integrating them into the organization and providing clear metrics for success, an incoming Chief of Staff can help you to cultivate a thriving, high-performing environment.

Interested in helping your Chief of Staff hit the ground running? Contact Tim Hewat at tim.hewat@lhhknightsbridge.com to learn more.

About the author:

Tim Hewat is a Partner at LHH Knightsbridge. He and his team support Executive Search within the Technology and Digital Transformation Practice, helping clients to find and transition the top leadership talent they need to unlock their full potential.