Job postings for the role have surged since 2020, but experts say it only works when its purpose is clear
When most people picture a chief of staff, they picture someone standing just off camera in the Oval Office, or advising a four star general between briefings. A corporate boardroom rarely comes to mind.
That's starting to change, however. Job postings for the chief of staff position have grown 85% since 2020, according to data from the job site Indeed, and Korn Ferry has reported that postings for the role doubled last year alone, with the number of executives holding the title tripling since 2021.
But what exactly does a chief of staff do, and why do CEOs believe they need one now?
Ask the people who study and advise on the role, and the job looks different depending on who is answering. That starts with the job itself, which varies so much from one organization to the next that it resists a single definition.
One title, many different jobs
Steven Zhou, an assistant professor of psychological science at Claremont McKenna College who co-authored one of the only peer-reviewed studies of the corporate chief of staff role, said the position defies the role clarity that usually defines the C-suite.
"If you say chief financial officer, you're doing fine. Everyone knows what that means," Zhou said. "But you say chief of staff, and it's not clear."
Zhou's research, drawn from interviews, surveys, and LinkedIn profile data, found a bimodal split among people holding the title. Some are seasoned executives who reach the role after decades in their careers, and for them, it functions as a genuine seat on the senior leadership team. Others are early-career hires at startups and small businesses that don't yet have a full executive team in place, where the chief of staff becomes the next hire brought in to help the CEO grow the company.
Both types tend to hold outsized influence relative to their formal rank. Zhou found that chiefs of staff often serve as gatekeepers to the CEO's calendar, giving them informal power even when they sit below the senior leadership team on paper. That proximity to the CEO is its own form of leverage, distinct from the strategic influence CHROs have built through their own seat at the table.
"The chief of staff positionally is below the top management team in most companies," Zhou said. "But in terms of the amount of unique power they have on controlling the attention of the CEO, it's actually second to the entire company in some ways."
Dan Ciampa, former CEO of Rath & Strong, Inc. and now an adviser to boards and chief executives who has written extensively on the chief of staff role, cautioned against treating the role as a single, uniform position, describing three distinct levels: a largely administrative version, a mid level version built around managing major projects, and a senior version closer to the traditional military and government chief of staff, with the standing to shape strategic or cultural change. Only the senior version, he said, typically reports directly to the CEO or sits on the executive leadership team.
What's driving the demand
According to Ciampa, the role's rise has been building for roughly three decades rather than arriving with any single event. He pointed to two long running forces: leaders are handling more information than ever, and corporate boards have grown far more demanding.
"As boards have changed and become much more concerned with short-term investors, the pressure on the CEO for short-term financial results has increased dramatically over the last 20, 30 years, and therefore the role of the CEO has changed," Ciampa said.
That pressure often coincides with actual turnover at the top. CEO turnover hit a record high last year, according to HRD's own reporting, with executive search data describing the CEO role as having grown "materially more complex and harder" under sustained investor scrutiny.
That same link between turnover and complexity shows up in Zhou's own research. Nearly half of the chiefs of staff in his sample said the chief of staff role was created or strengthened following a change in CEO.
There's also a simpler explanation. The role may just be more visible than it used to be, thanks to Harvard Business Review coverage of the position dating back to around 2018, a book on the subject published roughly a decade ago, and dedicated professional networks that have grown over the past five to ten years.
"I think it's just more talk about it, more recognition that this is a role that exists outside of military and government, which is where it originated," Zhou said.
Does your company actually need a chief of staff?
Before creating the role, Ciampa says HR leaders need a clear answer to one question: what specific problem is this position meant to solve. He has seen the role succeed when a leader can name that problem precisely, and fail when it's added simply because a peer company or a rival executive has one.
"For those who do think it through and figure out the type of aide they need, it can be a very useful job," Ciampa said.
He recommends HR leaders push CEOs to answer a few concrete questions before starting a search. Is the leader spending enough time on top priorities? Is there enough unscheduled time to think? Is the information reaching the executive timely and reliable?
When the arrangement works, Ciampa said, it shows up in how much time the leader actually spends with the person in the role.
"In most cases where this works well, the CEO spends one on one time weekly with the chief of staff. In many cases, depending on what's going on, they're with the chief of staff every day, spending one or two hours a day," Ciampa said.
Zhou also asked chiefs of staff and the people who hire them what they look for in the role. Flexibility came up often, and so did a trait organizational researchers have paid growing attention to in recent years.
"It's the unique ability to navigate and build relationships across a variety of different people," Zhou said, referring to what researchers call political skill.
It's a quality HR leaders will recognize from their own work proving strategic value to the business, where relationships across an organization carry as much weight as the function itself.
Ultimately, the flexibility that makes the role hard to define is also what makes it valuable, Ciampa said, but only when an organization has thought through what it actually needs the position to do.
