Background of a Successful Chief of Staff

So, now that you understand the process to hire a Chief of Staff, let’s explore what makes an A-Player Chief of Staff? At Cedar, we look for the following types of work experience when finding our next generation of Chief of Staff (CoS) talent:

1.  Consulting

2.  Operations

3.  Tech

+ Healthy dose of EQ

CONSULTING

This experience gives a future CoS a general business sense and problem solving skill that they can draw from. Consultants can be strategic and they understand how to break down problems and be analytical.

They also know how to manage multiple C-suite stakeholders, do analysis and present that back to a wider audience.

OPERATIONS

This experience can give the CoS a really strong operational background. These folks understand how to create a project plan, how to wrangle resources, how to define outcomes and move a really large, complex program or project to completion while being on time and on budget.

This background makes them very cross-functional so that they know how to work with a lot of different people and they can spot risks and blockers.

They can create a rhythm, they can create a cadence of operation, and they really know how to rally a team around a common goal.

TECH

Typically tech companies are at the forefront of new ways and processes of working. This background gives the future CoS a broad exposure to tools and processes that save time and can promote other things like remote collaboration.

And so this could be familiarity with Slack, Airtable, Asana ... basically modern tools that the modern workforce has adopted. They can use those tools, spread their knowledge and implement them in their day-to-day work as a CoS.

EQ

Lastly, as a bonus component to this profile, we like to see someone with a really strong EQ. What that means is someone who can read people, understand their motivation and background, understand what their needs and wants might be, and be able to play to different audiences.

So there you have it… Consulting + Ops +Tech + EQ = A Player CoS.

I talk about this at length in my video here.