Nobody Warns You About This Part of the Chief of Staff Role

Nobody warns you about this part of the Chief of Staff role, but it is the part that will define you faster than anything else.

I spent a long time thinking the hardest part of supporting senior executives was keeping up with the pace of it all. What I did not see coming was finding myself in the middle of a conflict between powerful people with no roadmap for what to do next.

Before I had language for how to navigate those moments, I was already operating on instinct, grounded in something I later learned formally through a framework called Breakdown Recovery. In plain terms, BR is about staying anchored in your own intentions relative to the goal, genuinely seeking to understand the other party's intentions, finding where those intentions meet, and working together in ways that serve each person to reach that shared goal.

Early in my career I had to pull headcount from a leader's team to bring the organization back to budget. I went to him directly. He was not pleased and we had words, the kind that make it very clear where you stand with someone.

But I told him without flinching that this was not personal, it was for the business, and I made him a commitment. His team would be first on the list the moment we had the green light to bring headcount back.

I kept that word. When the budget opened back up, his positions were restored first.

The very next day he walked back into my office laughing, and when I mentioned I was having difficulty with another manager, he grinned and said, why don't you yell at him like you yelled at me?

When another manager later tried to have me removed from leadership meetings, he was the first one to tell me to keep showing up and sit next to him.

The leader who came at me the hardest became the person who saved my seat at the table.

That did not happen because I won the argument. It happened because I stayed focused on the goal, kept my word, and refused to make it personal.

What is the most important skill nobody told you that you would need in your role?