How do I move from EA to Chief of Staff?

Moving from Executive Assistant to Chief of Staff is a change of remit, not a step up the same ladder. The EAs who make it well start doing parts of the Chief of Staff job before anyone offers it to them, build evidence of outcomes rather than tasks, and then have a direct conversation with their leader about a properly defined role.

I have recruited Executive Assistants for over a decade and worked on Chief of Staff briefs for the last five years through our sister company, Lily Shippen. Some of the best Chiefs of Staff I have placed came from a senior EA background. Just as many excellent EAs would have been miserable in the role. There is real confusion in the market about this, and it is not harmless. Chief of Staff is too often presented as the natural next step for every ambitious EA, as though it were the top of the same ladder. It is a different job, with different pressures, and the EAs who move into it well are the ones who understood that first and prepared for it deliberately.

First, decide whether you actually want it

A Chief of Staff is not a senior EA, and the move is not for everyone. The role is more exposed, more political and less clearly defined than the one you have mastered. You are measured on whether the leader’s plan happened, not on whether their day worked. You spend much of your week telling people senior to you things they do not want to hear. You give up a craft you are excellent at for one you will be learning in public.

If that sounds like relief, keep reading. If it sounds like loss, you may be looking at the wrong next step. There is a great deal of room to grow in the EA role itself, and our EA and PA training exists for exactly that.

Start doing the work before you have the title

Nobody is promoted into a Chief of Staff role on potential. They are given it because they are already visibly doing parts of it. Three places to start, none of which need permission.

Own the leadership rhythm. If you currently schedule the executive meeting, start running it. Draft the agenda around decisions rather than updates, chase the pre-reads, record what was agreed and follow up before anyone has to ask. Within a quarter the meeting will work differently and people will know why.

Take the project nobody owns. Every organisation has work that cuts across teams and has no natural home: an office move, a systems change, the follow-through on a strategy day. Volunteer for it. It is the closest thing to a Chief of Staff audition you will get.

Write the brief. Before your leader walks into anything difficult, give them a single page: what the meeting is for, who will be in the room, what each person wants, where the risk is and what a good outcome looks like. Do it unasked. This is the habit that most separates the EAs who move from the ones who do not.

Build evidence in the language of the business

Chiefs of Staff are hired on outcomes. Start keeping a record now of the decisions you shaped, the projects you landed, the time you saved and the problems you headed off, with a number attached wherever one exists. Learn to read the management accounts and the board pack properly, so you can follow a commercial conversation and contribute to it. Commercial awareness is the gap I see most often in otherwise ready EAs, and it is the one that costs people the role at interview. It is also entirely learnable, which is why it sits at the heart of our Chief of Staff training programmes.

Have the conversation, and ask for a written remit

When you can point to a year of this evidence, tell your leader plainly what you want. Ask for a defined role, not a new title. The Chief of Staff appointments that fail are the ones handed to a brilliant EA as a promotion, with the same desk, the same remit and a new line on the business card. The EA work still needs doing, so they keep doing it, and the Chief of Staff work needs an authority nobody has given them.

Your proposal should therefore cover three things: what you will own, what you will stop doing, and how the EA work will be covered, whether by a new hire, a redistribution or a deliberate reduction. We have set out what the role involves, and where organisations get it wrong, in What does a Chief of Staff actually do?. Send it to your leader before the conversation if it helps.

Internal step-up or external move?

Most first Chief of Staff roles are internal, because the leader has already watched you operate above your title and trusts you with their agenda. If that route is closed, an external move is possible but harder. Hiring managers reading a CV full of EA duties will not see a Chief of Staff, however good you are. Rewrite it around outcomes, lead with the projects and decisions rather than the diary, and target founder-led or fast-growing organisations where the remit is broad and the leader needs capacity now. Be ready to describe, specifically, a decision you changed and a project you delivered without authority over the people involved.

How long does it take?

In my experience, EAs who make the move well have usually spent a year or more doing the work above before the title arrives. It can be faster when a leader is already looking for the capacity, and slower in large organisations where the role has to be created and approved. The timeline matters less than the direction. If you are doing the work and recording the evidence, you are moving.

Where to start

Begin by finding out where you stand. Our Chief of Staff Readiness Assessment is a structured assessment led by an experienced assessor and scored out of 300 across the capabilities that decide whether a Chief of Staff succeeds, among them stakeholder navigation, strategic communication, operational execution and how clearly you think under pressure. It costs £149 plus VAT and comes back with a written report setting out your three strongest areas, where the risks are, the one shift that would unlock the most growth and what to do next. From there, our Chief of Staff training programmes build the capabilities the role actually requires. If you would rather talk it through first, book a free 30-minute Discovery Call with Emily.

Frequently asked questions