This worksheet will help you assess if the chief of staff role is right for you, based on your competencies, capabilities, and passions. In Chief of Staff: The Strategic Partner Who Will Revolutionize Your Organization, I outline the universal competencies of successful chiefs of staff in Chapter 5, Finding and Hiring the Right Candidate. I also detail these competencies in callouts throughout the book. Other competencies can be useful, too, but these are the ones that apply more or less across all of the dozens of versions of the role I came across in my research. Having a grasp on these competencies is a prerequisite for this worksheet.
Likewise, it takes a certain mindset to be a chief of staff. You have to be able to do the job when things are going according to plan, and you can’t take things personally when they go awry. You need to be able to support type-A leaders when they are cranky or impatient for everyone else to catch up with their vision, when they swear at people, pound their fists on the desk, or yell. In other words, when their behavior or the circumstances aren’t ideal. n