What does a Chief of Staff actually do?

A Chief of Staff runs the office of a senior leader so that the leader’s decisions get made, communicated and carried out across the organisation. Where an Executive Assistant manages the leader’s time, a Chief of Staff manages the leader’s agenda: the priorities, the people and the problems that stand between a plan and a result.

I have recruited Executive Assistants for over a decade and worked on Chief of Staff briefs for the last five years. In that time I have watched the title spread from banks and consultancies into scale-ups, charities, universities and the NHS, and I have watched a lot of confusion travel with it. Some organisations use it for a very senior EA. Some use it for a junior strategy director. Most are somewhere in between and have not written it down. This is what the role looks like when it is working.

What a Chief of Staff does day to day

The work changes with the leader and the organisation, but five things show up in almost every Chief of Staff role I have placed.

They run the leadership rhythm. The weekly executive meeting, the monthly business review, the quarterly planning cycle and the board pack all have an owner, and it is usually the Chief of Staff. They set the agenda, chase the pre-reads, make sure decisions are recorded and follow up on what was agreed. The leader walks in prepared and walks out with actions already moving.

They carry priorities across the organisation. A chief executive can say something once. A Chief of Staff makes sure it lands in the right teams, in the right order, with the right context, and comes back to the leader with what is blocking it. They are the person other directors ring when they need to know what the boss actually meant.

They own the projects nobody else owns. A restructure, an office move, an investor round, a cost programme, an acquisition integration. Work that cuts across functions and has no natural home lands on the Chief of Staff’s desk. They are not the expert; they are the person who gets the experts to a decision.

They prepare the leader. Briefings before a difficult meeting, a first draft of the message to staff, a view on who in the room will object and why. Much of the job is thinking two steps ahead of someone who does not have time to.

They act as a sounding board. Senior leaders are lonely in a way that is hard to explain to anyone who has not sat next to one. The Chief of Staff is often the only person who hears the half-formed idea, the frustration with a colleague or the worry about the numbers before it becomes a decision. Discretion is not a nice-to-have in this job; it is the job.

What a Chief of Staff does not do

They do not manage the diary, book the travel or run the inbox. Where a Chief of Staff is doing those things, the organisation has given a senior title to an EA role, and the person in it will burn out trying to do both. In a well-designed executive office the Chief of Staff and the EA work as a pair: the EA protects the leader’s time, the Chief of Staff protects the leader’s agenda.

They are also not a deputy. A Chief of Staff rarely has line authority over the functions they coordinate. They work through influence, preparation and the leader’s backing, which is why the role suits people who already know how to get things done without a title that compels anyone.

How it differs from an Executive Assistant

The honest answer is that the best Executive Assistants already do a good deal of this. They anticipate, they brief, they manage stakeholders and they hold the leader’s confidence. The difference is one of scope and accountability. An EA’s remit is the leader; a Chief of Staff’s remit is the leader’s organisation. An EA is measured on whether the leader’s day worked; a Chief of Staff is measured on whether the leader’s plan happened.

For some Executive Assistants the move to Chief of Staff is a natural next step, because so much of the groundwork is already there. It is not for everyone. Plenty of outstanding EAs have no wish to trade a role they have mastered for one that is more exposed, more political and less defined, and they are right not to. For those who do want it, the skills transfer. The level at which they are applied, and the way the person has to position themselves to be given that level, do not transfer on their own. You can read more about the transition itself in How do I move from EA to Chief of Staff? The question most people are really asking is not what the job is but whether they are ready for it.

How to tell if you are ready

Three signs I look for when an EA tells me they want a Chief of Staff role.

First, you are already doing parts of it without the title. You run the leadership meeting rather than minuting it. Directors come to you to understand what the leader wants. You have been handed a project because nobody else would take it.

Second, you think in terms of outcomes rather than tasks. When your leader asks for a meeting, you ask what they want to come out of it, and sometimes you tell them a meeting is not the answer.

Third, you can hold a difficult conversation with someone senior to you and come out with the relationship intact. Chiefs of Staff spend much of their week telling directors things they do not want to hear on behalf of someone who outranks them both.

If you recognise yourself in two of the three, you are closer than you think. If you are not sure, our Chief of Staff Readiness Assessment is built for exactly this question. It 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. You come away 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.

What organisations get wrong

The most common mistake I see is treating Chief of Staff as a senior EA title. A Chief of Staff is not a senior EA. When the role is handed to a brilliant EA as a promotion, with the same desk, the same remit and a new line on the business card, it usually goes wrong for everyone. The EA work still needs doing, so they keep doing it. The Chief of Staff work needs a different kind of authority, which nobody has given them. The person ends up overstretched and under-recognised, and the leader concludes that the role does not work.

The second mistake is having both an EA and a Chief of Staff with no clarity about who owns what. Both roles sit close to the leader, both anticipate and both manage access, so without a written split the two end up duplicating effort or stepping on each other. Who runs the diary? Who owns the leadership meeting? Who speaks for the leader to the rest of the business? Decide that before anyone starts.

If you are an organisation considering the role, start by deciding whether you need more capacity around the leader or more capacity across the organisation. The first is an exceptional EA. The second is a Chief of Staff. Often it is both, as two people with two clearly written remits.

Where to start

If you are an EA or PA who recognises this role, start by finding out where you stand against it. The Readiness Assessment costs £149 plus VAT and comes back with a scored written picture of where you stand and what to develop next. From there our Chief of Staff training programmes cover the capabilities the role actually requires, from commercial awareness to leading without authority. If you would rather talk it through first, book a free 30-minute Discovery Call with Emily and we will tell you honestly whether the timing is right.

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