How to hire a Chief of Staff

Most executives hire a Chief of Staff with a vague job description and hope the role defines itself. You usually get one of two outcomes: an expensive assistant with no decision rights, running your scheduling and decks at $180,000 a year, or a strategic hire you used to run the machinery, who takes a bigger title elsewhere after 18 months.

Both failures start before the first interview. [SCOTT: how your role at Spring was scoped when the CEO brought you in, and what you'd have set up differently?] This is the process I'd run, in order. If the role itself is new to you, start with our Chief of Staff handbook.

1. Confirm a Chief of Staff is the right hire for the problem you have.
2. Write the mandate: why now, the principal, the decision rights, success at six months.
3. Set the level from the decision rights, then the pay band.
4. Source inside your company and network first, then post the role.
5. Interview in four or five stages, including your leadership team.
6. Test with a short work sample and references.
7. Make an offer that names the level, the pay, the equity facts and the likely next role.
8. Onboard for 90 days, and plan the next role so the person doesn't stall.

Do you need a Chief of Staff?

You need a Chief of Staff when you have become the bottleneck: decisions wait for you, the leadership team runs on your memory, and the work that crosses teams has no owner. If the problem is your time, hire an executive assistant. If the problem is execution in one function, hire a leader for that function.

The signals show up in your calendar and your leadership meeting. Actions from the weekly meeting drift, cross-team projects stall because each team owns a piece, and board preparation eats a week each quarter. Often you're not the first to notice. Zach Garippa, CEO of the procurement company Order.co, told our podcast that the idea came from advisors, and before writing a job description he called Chiefs of Staff in his network to learn what the role does day to day.

The executive assistant line is the one principals blur most often. Andrew Rea, co-founder and CEO of the tax software startup Taxwire, drew it clearly when he explained what he hired David Moon, his Chief of Staff, to be.

If you're torn between the two, see Chief of Staff vs executive assistant. If the work is real but only two days a week, a fractional Chief of Staff is the honest hire.

When should a startup hire a Chief of Staff?

There's no funding stage that triggers the hire, and I'd be suspicious of anyone who says "Series B". The trigger is structural: a leadership team of four or more, work that crosses their boundaries, and a cadence (planning, board meetings, a weekly leadership meeting) that someone has to run. That can happen at 25 people or at 250.

Our data shows Chiefs of Staff at every size. Companies with 1 to 10 employees pay an average of $144,841 and companies with 11 to 50 pay $141,705, according to our 2025 Salary Report (nearly 500 respondents). Small companies also hand out senior scope: about one in five Chiefs of Staff at companies up to 500 employees hold an Executive or CXO level, against 5% at companies over 50,000.

This week, write two sentences: what is happening in the business that shouldn't be, and what would be different in six months if someone owned it. That second sentence is the return you're paying for, and the answer when your CFO asks why the role exists. If you can't fill both, start with an executive assistant or a fix to your leadership meeting.

What should you decide before you hire a Chief of Staff?

Decide four things before you post anything: why the role exists now, who the principal is, which decisions the Chief of Staff can make without you, and what success looks like in six months. These answers set the level, the pay and the profile of the person you need.

Why scope decides whether the hire works

A Chief of Staff has no team and no budget line. Everything they get done runs on authority borrowed from you, and your leaders only lend it when they know what the role owns. When scope is unwritten, each leader draws the narrowest boundary that protects their turf, and the new hire negotiates the job one meeting at a time.

Scope also sets off a chain. The decision rights set the level, the level sets the pay band, and the band decides which candidates take your call. Skip the first link and the level gets set by the candidate's last title, which is how a Director-sized job ends up with a manager-sized offer.

We describe the work as four core responsibilities: priorities and decisions, running the operating rhythm, communication up and down, and cross-functional projects. Rank the four for your role. A founder drowning in cross-team chaos needs projects first; a CEO whose leadership meeting is theatre needs the rhythm first.

Name the principal too. Only 41% of Chief of Staff postings say who the role supports, and among those, just 44% name the CEO, founder or president, according to the Chief of Staff Network's 2026 Pathways Report (more than 700 postings that name a principal). A candidate can't judge a role without knowing whose role it is.

Then write the decision rights as three lists: Decide (they decide alone), Recommend (they shape it and you decide) and Not own (another named owner holds it). Our guide to the Chief of Staff mandate has a one-page template with these three tiers.

A worked example: one CEO's decision rights

Here's a composite illustration. A Series B software CEO runs a 120-person company with six direct reports. Board prep takes her a week, planning slips every quarter, and two cross-team launches have stalled because product and sales each own half. Her two sentences: "Planning and the leadership meeting run on my memory, so decisions wait for me. In six months, the leadership team should run the quarter without me chasing it."

She ranks the operating rhythm first, priorities and decisions second, cross-functional projects third and communication fourth. Then she writes the lists.

Read across the first column and the level falls out. Someone who sets every team's planning deadlines and runs the leadership agenda sits beside the VPs, which is Director in the level table below. Her six-month outcomes are checkable: planning closes on the date set, the board pre-read goes out five days early, and both stalled launches have one owner and a ship date.

Where principals get the scope wrong

Three mistakes show up again and again, and each has a tell.

1. The junk drawer. Every task nobody wants lands in the Decide column. If the list spans more than two of the four responsibilities, you're describing several jobs. Cut to your top two and move the rest to Not own with a real owner.
2. A COO in disguise. If the Decide list includes managing teams, owning a P&L or hiring for a function, you want an operator with line authority. Our Chief of Staff vs COO guide shows where that line sits.
3. An assistant with a bigger title. If the Decide list is mostly your calendar, travel and inbox, write an executive assistant role and pay it properly.

Even a clean mandate meets new work every week. Ali Sardinia, Chief of Staff at Order.co, told our podcast that when her CEO points her at a new problem, she asks right away what to deprioritize, and whether this is work she should do herself or direct. Write that question into the mandate as a standing rule.

Context moves the lists. Under 50 people, write a 90-day mandate and rewrite it at each review. At a large company, the Not own column matters most, because a strategy team or PMO already claims part of the work, so name the handoffs. A functional principal, such as a CTO or CFO, needs a narrower Decide list and a line on how this Chief of Staff works with the CEO's office. Remote teams need decisions recorded in writing, because there are no hallway conversations to borrow authority in.

In month three, check whether leaders still go to you for things the Decide list gives the Chief of Staff. If they do, either you never announced it or you keep overruling it, and the fix is yours. Our job description guide turns the mandate into a posting.

I'm hiring a Chief of Staff. Help me write a one-page mandate and an interview plan before I post the role.

About me and the business:
- My title and who I report to: [e.g. CEO, reporting to the board]
- Company: [stage, headcount, industry]
- What's happening that shouldn't be: [two or three sentences]
- My leadership team: [roles and how many]

Use this structure for the mandate:
1. Why the role exists now (two sentences)
2. The principal (me) and how I like to work
3. Rank the four core responsibilities for this role, with one example each: priorities and decisions, running the operating rhythm, communication up and down, cross-functional projects
4. Decision rights: what the Chief of Staff decides alone, what they shape and I decide, and what is not their job
5. What success looks like at six months (three outcomes I could check)
6. Expected tour length and the likely next role

Then propose an interview plan with four to five stages, what each stage tests, and a two to three hour work sample based on a real problem from my business.

Rules: don't invent facts about my company. Where you need information I haven't given, ask me instead of guessing. Flag anything in my answers that sounds like an executive assistant role or a COO role.

Share the draft mandate with your two most senior leaders before you post. If they disagree about what the role is for, you've found your first problem.

What level should a Chief of Staff be, and how much should you pay?

Set the level from the decision rights you just wrote, then pay to that level. Average Chief of Staff base salary runs from $91,462 at Analyst level to $193,999 at Executive level, according to the Chief of Staff Network's 2025 Salary Report (nearly 500 respondents). Among 2026 postings that list pay, the median is $180k.

Our Leveling Framework defines six levels by how much the person shapes decisions, from not involved to key influencer. That's the same axis as your decision-rights list, so mark each Decide item against the table below.

Company size moves the number almost as much as level does. Postings at companies with 11 to 50 employees have a median of $140k, against $215k at 5,001 to 10,000, according to our 2026 Pathways Report. The title is priced too: a plain "Chief of Staff" posting has a median of $174k, Chief of Staff roles that add strategy $250k, and VP, Director or Head-titled roles $230k. Our salary guide has the full breakdown by size, industry, city, bonus and equity.

Under-leveling is the most expensive mistake here, because every peer the Chief of Staff needs to influence outranks them. My take: level the role to the leaders it sits beside, and ignore the candidate's last title. If the band is lower than the work, change the work or the band before you post.

If the Chief of Staff's job is aligning your VPs, give the role a title and level the VPs will recognize.

Where do you find a Chief of Staff?

Check inside your company and your network first, then post the role. About a third of Chief of Staff hires are internal promotions (36%) and 64% come from outside, according to our 2024 hiring data. The internal third is the cheapest to check.

Brian Schneider, Chief of Staff to Tyler Denk at beehiiv, joined in revenue operations, did exceptional work and was the obvious choice when the seat opened. Internal hires bring trust, the scarcest input in this job. They also risk the stall covered later: a person promoted into a role "built around them" often keeps their old level, pay and half their old job. Re-level the role properly.

External hires usually come through a posting and a personal network at the same time. Sofia Badalamenti got a warm introduction to Nihal Mehta at Eniac Ventures; when Nihal hired her successor, the role went on our job board. Where to look, in the order I'd use them:

1. Inside your company. Who already does cross-team work your leaders rely on? Operations, strategy, revenue operations, program management and senior executive assistants are the usual places.
2. Your network and your investors'. Ask other executives who has been a great Chief of Staff, and ask Chiefs of Staff you know who they'd hire.
3. A posting. Post on our Chief of Staff job board, where Chiefs of Staff and people moving into the role look first, and share it with your network.
4. Our talent network. Candidates in our talent network have opted in to hear about roles from companies hiring through us.
5. A search firm, for senior roles where confidentiality matters. Weigh the fee against how confidential the search needs to be.

If you'd rather hand the search to someone who knows the role, we also run hiring for companies: a white-glove search service, and job posts that reach our member hub, job board, newsletter, social channels and talent network.

Which backgrounds should you consider?

Wider ones than most postings ask for. 27% of Chief of Staff postings ask for consulting experience, but only 7% of Chiefs of Staff came straight from consulting, according to the Chief of Staff Network's 2026 Pathways Report (about 2,650 career histories with a known prior function). Operations and strategy is the largest feeder, at 21%, followed by sales and customer success (10%) and marketing and communications (9%).

Consulting is a fine background. Screening for it is the mistake, because most of the people doing the job wouldn't pass the filter. Andrew Rea says he wouldn't have hired most of the junior investors who wanted David's job, because they were drawn to the status. What sold him on David was a record of raising money from LPs plus a willingness to "eat glass" and do whatever the company needed.

Screen for what the job demands: judgment under ambiguity, writing a busy executive can act on, cross-team work done without authority, discretion, and the stamina to do unglamorous work well. Our guide on how people become Chiefs of Staff shows what each background brings and usually lacks.

How do you interview a Chief of Staff?

Run four or five stages, each testing something different: motivation and fit with you, judgment, how they get work done through others, how they write, and how your leadership team experiences them. Our guide to Chief of Staff skills describes what strong looks like at each level, so you can set the bar first.

Chemistry can be tested with rigor. Zach Garippa listened for his company's values in Ali Sardinia's stories: she talked about what hadn't worked at her previous company rather than its successful exit. Ali interviewed him back, asking why he wanted a Chief of Staff, and was direct that she wasn't the person to build the operating plan. Treat that candor as a strong signal: a candidate who tells you where they won't fit will tell you uncomfortable things later.

Four questions, and what good answers sound like

Each question asks for a specific past event, which is hard to fake for ten minutes of follow-up.

1. "Walk me through a cross-team project you drove where nobody reported to you. Who resisted, and what did you do?" A strong answer names the person who resisted, what they needed and the trade the candidate made. A weak answer says "I aligned stakeholders" and never names anyone.
2. "Tell me about a time you told an executive something they didn't want to hear. How did you say it, and what happened?" Strong candidates raised it early and in private, and can tell you what the executive did next. If the story ends with "and they thanked me", ask what changed afterwards.
3. "Here are my priorities for the next quarter. Which would you cut, and why?" Hand over a real list. Good candidates ask two or three questions, then cut something you care about and explain the trade. Watch for anyone who cuts nothing, or only the items you clearly don't like.
4. "What kind of work would make you leave this role in a year?" This tells you whether their idea of the job matches yours, and whether they see it as a tour with a next step. "Nothing, I'm flexible" is the answer to worry about.

Probe each answer twice: "What would you do differently?" and "What did the other person think?" The second separates people who drove the work from people who sat near it. Our post with 33 Chief of Staff interview questions shows what well-prepared candidates will say.

Running the leadership panel

The leadership team panel is the most skipped stage and the most predictive, because your Chief of Staff will spend more time with your direct reports than with you. Give the panel something real: a live disagreement between two of your leaders, such as who owns a launch, and ask the candidate to run 20 minutes of it as they would in week three.

Watch whether they ask questions before taking sides, summarize each view fairly and name a next step. Afterwards, ask each panelist one question: "Would you take this person's call on a busy Tuesday?"

Put every finalist in front of your leadership team for an hour, because they'll spend more of the week with them than with you.

Judgment calls in the interview

• You love the candidate and the panel doesn't. Side with the panel, or find out exactly why before you overrule them. A Chief of Staff your leaders resist on day one starts with a deficit you'll spend months covering.
• The candidate is internal. Interview them as hard as an outsider, with the same work sample, and skip only the chemistry stage. Peers need to see that the seat was earned.
• The search is remote. Weight the written work more. Send the panel pre-read 24 hours ahead and see what comes back unprompted.

Tell leaders who weren't on the panel who's in the final round and why. Otherwise some of them will read the announcement as a decision made around them.

# Chief of Staff interview scorecard

- Candidate: [name] · Role: Chief of Staff to [principal] · Level: [from the mandate]
- Interviewer: [name] · Stage: [1 to 5] · Date: [date]

Score each area 1 to 4. 1 = clear concern, 2 = below the bar, 3 = meets the bar for this level, 4 = strong evidence above the bar. Write the evidence: what they said or did. Leave impressions out.

## 1. Judgment and prioritization
Can they decide what matters with partial information, and explain the trade-off?
- Score: [ ]
- Evidence:

## 2. Getting work done without authority
Have they moved cross-team work through people who didn't report to them? How?
- Score: [ ]
- Evidence:

## 3. Honest communication
Will they tell the principal and the leadership team what they don't want to hear, and do it well?
- Score: [ ]
- Evidence:

## 4. Writing and synthesis
Can they turn messy inputs into something an executive can act on in five minutes?
- Score: [ ]
- Evidence:

## 5. Operating rhythm
Have they run planning, a leadership meeting or a reporting cycle themselves?
- Score: [ ]
- Evidence:

## 6. Discretion and trust
How do they handle confidential information, people issues and conflict?
- Score: [ ]
- Evidence:

## 7. Fit with this principal
Do their working style and the principal's complement each other? Where will they clash?
- Score: [ ]
- Evidence:

## 8. Motivation and next step
Why this role now? What do they want to be doing in three years? Is that something this role can lead to?
- Score: [ ]
- Evidence:

## Overall
- Decision: hire at the planned level / hire at a different level / no hire
- The one thing that would make this person fail in the role:
- Questions for the next interviewer to probe:

# Chief of Staff interview scorecard

- Candidate: Priya · Role: Chief of Staff to the CEO · Level: Director
- Interviewer: VP of Sales · Stage: 4, leadership panel · Date: May 14

| Area | Score | Evidence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1. Judgment and prioritization | 4 | Asked which launch date was fixed before taking a side, then proposed a sequence both leads accepted |
| 2. Getting work done without authority | 3 | Ran a pricing change across three teams at her last company through a weekly review she set up |
| 3. Honest communication | 3 | Told the panel the product plan had no support hiring in it, with the ticket numbers |
| 4. Writing and synthesis | 4 | Sent a one-page summary of the panel debate within the hour |
| 5. Operating rhythm | 2 | Has contributed to planning; has never run a cycle end to end |
| 6. Discretion and trust | 3 | Kept the client anonymous in her conflict story without being asked |
| 7. Fit with this principal | 3 | Writes first and talks second; our CEO thinks out loud. Watch fast decisions |
| 8. Motivation and next step | 4 | Wants to run a P&L in three years; the GM path here fits |

## Overall
- Decision: hire at the planned level
- The one thing that would make her fail: running Q3 planning alone, for the first time, in month two
- For the next interviewer: probe the planning gap; ask for the last process she designed herself

Send the mandate and the scorecard to your panel before any candidate arrives, and agree the bar for each area at the level you set.

How do you test a Chief of Staff before you hire?

Give a short work sample built on a real problem from your business, then call at least three references, including one peer. The work sample shows how they think about your business. The references show how they behave under pressure, which interviews hide.

The work sample

Keep it to two or three hours with a 45-minute debrief, and pay for anything longer. Sofia Badalamenti set her own: in her first interview she asked Nihal Mehta what project he'd want her to start in her first couple of weeks, then did it over the weekend, as they told our podcast. That's the design brief: the first real project you'd give the hire, compressed.

A work sample predicts better than an interview because it copies the job's conditions: incomplete information, a deadline, and an executive who will read one page. Match the format to the top responsibility in your ranking.

• The leadership meeting, for an operating-rhythm role. Share last month's leadership meeting notes and actions (redacted). Ask for next week's agenda, a one-paragraph pre-read, and the three decisions the meeting should make.
• The priority cut, for a priorities-and-decisions role. Give 15 requests competing for the principal's next quarter. Ask them to rank them, cut half, and write the message telling the leadership team what got cut and why.
• The board update, for a communication-heavy role. Hand over messy inputs: a few metrics, two team updates, a customer escalation. Ask for a one-page update to investors.
• A cross-team problem with no owner, for a projects role. Describe a real problem that sits between two teams. Ask for a plan for the first two weeks and who they'd talk to first.

A work sample, start to finish

Take the Series B CEO from earlier (still an illustration). She builds a priority cut from last quarter's backlog, which she has already decided, and sends 15 anonymized requests on a Thursday with a Monday deadline: two board asks, a pricing change, an office move, three hiring requests, a partner integration, a customer escalation and six smaller items. Rank them, cut seven, and write the note to the leadership team.

One candidate returns a ranked spreadsheet with a scoring model and no note. Another cuts seven items and writes a 200-word message that names which VP loses what, offers one a date to revisit, and flags that two "separate" hiring requests are the same gap. That second note is the job.

In the debrief, she pushes on the cut that hurts most: "The VP of Sales will call me the day this goes out. What do I tell him?" A strong candidate suggests she call him before the note lands. She scores the sample on three scorecard areas only: judgment, honest communication and writing.

Judgment calls on the work sample

Keep the ask to one evening; the best candidates are employed and have options. Never use a live, unsolved problem you'd otherwise pay a consultant for. Use one you've already solved, so you can compare their answer with what happened.

For VP or Executive hires, swap the take-home for a 90-minute working session on a real decision, with your two most senior leaders in the room. For internal candidates, set the sample only for the part of the job that's new to them. Some principals test with a paid contract: Andrew Rea said David Moon started at Taxwire as a contractor, "for us both to test and see". That works at small companies inventing the role, and leaves the person half inside the room too long at larger ones.

The references

A former principal will say the person was indispensable, which is true of most competent Chiefs of Staff. What you need is how they behaved when they had to deliver bad news, push a peer who outranked them, or keep a confidence. The strongest reference is the one Zach Garippa got: Ali's former CEO rang him and said, "My chief of staff is available."

Ask questions that force examples:

• "Tell me about a time they disagreed with their principal. What did they do?"
• "When a leader on the team was blocking something, how did they handle it?"
• "What would you not give them to own?"
• "If you were their principal again, what would you set up differently from day one?"

The last answer doubles as advice for your onboarding. Never call someone at the candidate's current company without permission; discretion is part of the job you're hiring for.

This week, write up the problem you'd give your Chief of Staff on day one in half a page. That's your work sample.

How do you make a Chief of Staff offer, and how long does hiring take?

Put the level, title, base pay, bonus, equity facts, start date and the expected tour in writing, and agree a pay review at 12 months. A focused process takes about four to eight weeks from first interview to signed offer. That's our recommendation; we don't survey hiring timelines.

Write these into the offer letter or the note that goes with it:

• The level and title, matched to the decision rights in the mandate, with the band it sits in.
• Base pay inside that band, benchmarked against the salary guide. If you're below the band, say why and when it moves.
• Bonus, with how it's decided. 38% of Chiefs of Staff in our 2025 Salary Report got no bonus at all, so a clear one stands out.
• Equity, with the four facts a candidate needs to value it: the number of shares or options, the fully diluted share count, the strike price, and the last preferred price.
• The expected tour and likely next role. Two to three years, with the paths you'd support named.
• A 12-month review of level and pay, tied to the six-month outcomes in the mandate.

Count the all-in cost against the return you wrote down at the start: base, bonus, equity, benefits and any search fee. Five stages with about a week between each lands at four to eight weeks. Longer processes lose employed candidates; shorter ones usually skip the panel or the references, the two stages that predict the most.

My take: tell the candidate the next role in the offer. It's the strongest retention tool you have, and it costs nothing at signing. This week, draft the offer note before your final interview, with blanks for the numbers. If you can't fill the "expected tour" line, decide it now.

How do you onboard a Chief of Staff in the first 90 days?

Prepare before day one: tell your leadership team what the role owns and what it doesn't, give full access to the information you see, and set a weekly 1:1 for decisions and context, with status handled in writing. Then give the Chief of Staff one real problem in week one and let them earn the rest.

Your direct reports will decide in the first two weeks whether this person speaks for you, so announce the role in writing: what it owns, what it helps with, and how disagreements get resolved. Access means your calendar, the leadership documents, the metrics, the board materials and a seat in most of your meetings for the first month.

Plan for the side effect: at least one leader will read the new hire as your eyes and ears and start sharing less. Say in your first leadership meeting together what the Chief of Staff brings back to you and what stays between them and the leader. The first time you act on something told in confidence, the role stops hearing anything useful.

The first real problem arrives fast. Zach Garippa handed Ali a sensitive HR issue in her first week, so have the priorities conversation that same week. Keep the 1:1 from turning into triage with a short weekly update the day before. The Chief of Staff's own plan is in our first 90 days guide; yours is the checklist below.

# Onboarding checklist: principal of a new Chief of Staff

Chief of Staff: [name]  ·  Start date: [date]  ·  Review dates: day 30, day 60, day 90

## Before day one
- [ ] Send the leadership team a note: what the Chief of Staff owns, what they don't, how disagreements get resolved
- [ ] Grant access: calendar, email delegation if agreed, leadership docs, metrics dashboards, board materials
- [ ] Book a weekly 1:1 (45 to 60 min) plus 30-minute reviews at day 30, 60 and 90
- [ ] Write the first problem you want solved, in half a page
- [ ] Put the mandate (decision rights, success at six months) somewhere you'll both see it

## Week one
- [ ] Introduce them in person at the leadership meeting
- [ ] Hand over the first problem
- [ ] Agree how they'll send you their weekly update

## Day 30 review: ask
- What have you learned that surprised you?
- Which three problems do you see, and which would you fix first?
- What do you need from me that you're not getting?

## Day 60 review: ask
- Which part of the operating rhythm do you own now, and what's working?
- What should you stop doing?
- Where are leaders still going around you?

## Day 90 review: agree
- [ ] The written mandate, updated
- [ ] Goals for the next two quarters
- [ ] Progress against the three six-month outcomes
- [ ] The expected tour length and the likely next role

How do you keep a Chief of Staff from stalling?

Agree the tour and the next role when you hire, re-level the role as its scope grows, add support once the operating work outgrows one person, and bring them into decisions while they're still being made. Chiefs of Staff who stay two to three years are the most likely to step up afterwards, and most of the best next roles are inside the company where they served.

The median completed Chief of Staff stint is 20 months, and the middle half run 12 to 30 months, according to the Chief of Staff Network's 2026 Pathways Report (more than 2,100 moves). Those who leave within a year are the least likely to move up (38%). The odds peak at two to three years (57%).

You can keep the person you hired if there's somewhere to go. Chiefs of Staff who stay at the same company step up 61% of the time, against 48% for those who leave. Two thirds (67%) of those who become VP or Head of Operations, and 46% of new COOs, do it where they were Chief of Staff. If there's no path, the next step is elsewhere: when Chiefs of Staff take another Chief of Staff role, 83% of the time it's at a new company.

The stall usually starts when the scope grows and the level stays put. The work becomes operating machinery with nobody to hand it to, the 1:1 shrinks into triage, and the review asks for "more strategic thinking" from someone with no hours left. The principal can fix most of it:

1. Agree the tour at the hire: two to three years, with the likely next roles named (operations leadership, a functional role, a bigger Chief of Staff seat). Revisit it every six months.
2. Re-level with the scope. When the role takes on the planning cycle, a budget or the board, check the level against the Leveling Framework.
3. Add an analyst or coordinator before the work outgrows one person. It frees hours for the strategic work and teaches them to manage.
4. Bring them in before decisions. A Chief of Staff who only hears about decisions afterwards can't become a thought partner.
5. Hold a quarterly development conversation, separate from your 1:1, on their trajectory.

If you already have a Chief of Staff, ask them: "What would you need from me to be doing your best work a year from now?" Act on one part of the answer this month.