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Leading From Where You Are
Kai Miller
5 min read
The chief of staff by definition is mixing with and working directly for organisational leaders. But to what extent are chiefs of staff themselves leaders? How do they gain authority and with whom do they wield influence?
It has almost become a cliché that the chief of staff ‘leads without authority’, but it is not the case. Chiefs of staff have formally or informally delegated authority through their relationship with their principal. As participant Jeremy Sackey puts it below, ‘people look up to you sometimes without even realising, admitting, or acknowledging that they do. In some situations, they take your word and opinions to be the principal's word and opinions.’ This is what the real leadership challenge of the chief of staff is: to accept and work with the leadership that is delegated to them by their principal while also understanding and developing their own separate leadership identity. If they are not detached from the principal, people may not be willing to talk to them in confidence or feel ‘safe’ enough to alert them to problems or mistakes. But if they are too detached, they can be viewed as operating politically on their own account – even by their principal, which is when it becomes dangerous.
The chief of staff needs to attain a ‘mind meld’ with their principal so that they can be seen to speak with one voice. But at the same time they need to remain independent. Most organisations operate in a state of tension between two poles – stability and change, purpose and profit, operations and people, for example. The successful principal/chief of staff pairing embodies and resolves that tension, allowing the organisation to achieve ‘both/and’ rather than ‘either/or’. This is the paradox at the heart of the relationship, requiring both to be highly alert to both their own and each other’s strengths and capabilities.
‘Leadership in the chief of staff role is about not being at the top.’
In the chief of staff world, we talk a lot about leading without authority. We know that people don't have to listen to us. They need to listen to our bosses, but our job as chief of staff is to encourage them and nudge them in a direction that lies with what our boss wants. I think about that a lot, and the reason that the Chief of Staff Association means so much to me is that for the first time I'm with a group of peers who understand what it's like to be in the middle.
In most executive education programmes that I go to, everyone seems to be aiming to be a CEO or other high-profile leader. This is the first time I've been with a group of people who are satisfied with where they are. They want to be better at where they are but their goal is not to be at the top. And that immediately puts me in a safe place where we can think about how best to utilise the power and the tools that we have.
Leadership in the chief of staff role is about not being at the top, and about using all of your soft skills to persuade and influence rather than give orders, offering a carrot rather than a stick. And I find that fascinating because I think ultimately things are more effective that way.
If you think about it, managing is management of things, and telling people to do X, Y and Z and then evaluating them on how well they did it. Leadership is about people, and about getting them to want to do X, Y and Z so that you can leave the details up to them. Once you instil in people the desire to do something, they will not only figure out how to do it, they will succeed beyond your imagination. That’s what gives me most satisfaction in my role: seeing things get done by people who want to achieve our goals.
It’s linked with mentoring, and that can be a sort of leadership too. I love it when people ask my advice on something, and then then come back later to say that they’ve not only implemented it but taken it further. That’s so much better than simply telling someone to do something and then ticking the box when they’ve done it. That's a transactional power dynamic, which has its place. But it's more effective when you teach people, when you advise people, when you mentor people and they figure it out and then they run with it. When that happens you see people flourish and you see the organisation flourish because of it. I think that's more long lasting and ultimately better.
Chief of Staff, Healthcare, USA
‘The chief of staff needs to be to be a high performing generalist able to pivot leadership styles based on circumstances, while being consistent.’
I think it's hard to categorise the chief of staff because they often need to be high performing generalists able to pivot leadership styles based on circumstances, while being consistent. It really depends on a multitude of factors, most importantly our mission from our principals.
It can be challenging to categorise the chief of staff role as a certain leader type because it varies immensely depending on the principal, the team, the enterprise culture, and on what's needed in that moment. That's why ongoing education is so important in giving us an understanding our strengths and weaknesses. Oftentimes the chief of staff, being only human, would prefer to play to their strengths, when really the demands of the job call for a variety of sets of skills that require training and growth. Participating in the Chief of Staff Association programme at Harvard Business School commits you to spend time growing, especially where you might need a little more knowledge and tooling up.
Donna Robertson, Chief of Staff, Global Data Office, Visa
‘Taking the approach of deliberately fostering a sense of mutual respect gets you a very long way.’
As a chief of staff, people look up to you sometimes without even realising, admitting, or acknowledging that they do. In some situations, they take your word and opinions to be the principal's word and opinions. The result is that you are put in a position of leadership and influence – whether you like it or not. People are watching you all the time, and people are making judgements about you and your principal based on your behaviours and style of leadership. I think it's not the kind of role that allows for a lot of hard tactics: I think you have to be a master of negotiation and a master of reason. You need to be able to reason with a lot of people – upwards, downwards, sideways. And for someone like me, working with a number of different companies, I’m often talking to the managing directors and other senior executives in those companies. They don't report to me and there's no reason why they should see me as a leader or someone who can tell them what to do, even if I work with the central Group. So you have to build your own personal relationships with multiple stakeholders and leverage that into influence. They’ve got to trust you.
I find that people sometimes assume that the chief of staff would be domineering or should be very assertive, but I think that rather than trying to be regarded as a boss, taking the approach of deliberately fostering a sense of mutual respect gets you a very long way. You have to earn the team members’ respect because you're competent, and you also have to be respectful to them, so they mirror that respect back. And interestingly, I find that going out of your way to be intentional about the respect you give to them makes you more approachable and trustworthy – sometimes even more so than your principal. And that’s another interesting dynamic: a chief of staff sometimes has to be a different kind of leader to the people than the principal. The principal’s leadership cannot be your standard otherwise their shortcomings would also be yours; instead, you have to work to be an even better leader and also help your principal be a better and more self-aware leader. Leadership for a chief of staff is not just top-down – it’s down-up, sideways, in all directions, and it’s all at the same time.
Jeremy Sackey, Chief of Staff, CH Group (Ghana) Ltd
