Cameron HeroldFounder of the COO Alliance & Invest In Your Leaders Training

CEOs Waste Great Chiefs of Staff Like This

11 Sept 2026 · 1 min

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In this segment, Speaker A warns that CEOs who do not understand how to properly leverage a chief of staff risk reducing the role to that of an executive assistant, diluting its strategic impact. He outlines three critical steps: finding the right chief of staff, igniting (activating) their potential, and effectively leveraging them. He mentions that he wrote a book to teach leaders these principles. Additionally, he highlights the reporting structure he finds most effective: having the executive assistant (EA) report directly to the chief of staff, which aligns support functions and maximizes the chief of staff’s influence.

Chapters

The leader who has a chief of staff, if they don't know how to leverage them and use them properly, they will fall into the camp of being diluted and more of an executive assistant. Finding the right match, igniting the right chief of staff, and then knowing how to leverage them is the perfect match. Okay. So it's one of the reasons why I wrote the book, to teach a leader how to get the most out of your chief of staff, how to find them, how to work with them, And typically, Cameron, the best reporting structure I've seen work is when the EA reports into the Chief of Staff.