Chief of Staff roles can be very rewarding, but does the career path hold long-term promise? Can the skills and experience gained in the role lead to success in other roles or companies? Our team conducted research on 1,000+ professionals’ work history who were Chief of Staff at some point during their career in the past 10 years – most no longer in that role – to determine what other opportunities this role leads to.
In Part 1 of this series, we explored the types of challenges Chiefs of Staff generally face navigating their career. Factors like company scale, internal politics, transferable skill sets all impact the opportunities presented to Chiefs of Staff.
Over the past 5 years, the Chief of Staff role has exploded among companies large and small in industries all around the world. With career progression - especially generalist careers - becoming less linear, it's critical to look at the data to understand how leaders in these roles are progressing through their careers.
The next generation of Chiefs of Staff stand as beneficiaries of the leaders who have implemented this position among executive teams in organizations for the first time. They can learn from these trailblazers by applying what they have done well, improving upon what hasn’t worked as well, and using their CoS career paths as examples for their own.
The first burning question we sought to answer: How long are Chiefs of Staff typically staying in their roles?
