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Finding your Tribe
Navigating the Jagged Frontier: A Special Report from the Chief of Staff Association Executive Education Programme at Harvard Business School
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Ask a chief of staff whether the position can feel isolating and most will say YES.
The role sits at a busy intersection but oftentimes the chief of staff must walk down a path alone. Research on senior leadership published in Forbes found that half of CEOs and senior leaders have experienced loneliness and isolation in their roles and 61% believed it had a direct negative impact on their performance. For chiefs of staff, the structural conditions of the role amplify this further. The chief of staff position is, almost by its nature, lonely, where the usual outlets for peer support are rarely available.One of the strongest sentiments that emerged in participant feedback from Harvard Business School was the value of meeting fellow chiefs of staff and establishing a new global network of peers.A community of practice
Over seventy chiefs of staff gathered from sixteen countries and across more than a dozen sectors. They came from technology companies and government offices, financial services and education, non-profits and multinational corporations. Some had been in the role for years, while others had stepped into it recently.What united them was not just a title or, in some cases, an industry; but a set of challenges unique to their position. These included, how to build trust with a principal, how to influence without authority, how to navigate the gap between the strategy and operations, and how to stay effective in a role that demands everything at once.This shared experience is the foundation of a community of practice, a term used in management learning to describe groups whose value comes not from formal teaching, but from the collective knowledge that practitioners share with one another.In participant feedback, the Harvard curriculum ranked high as the key value of the week, but participants consistently pointed to other benefits: the conversations in the corridors, the early-morning debrief groups, the dinners, and the moments of recognition when someone else described exactly the same challenge they had been sitting with for months. 'Learning became connection,’ one participant noted. ‘Discussion became community.’The debrief groups that ran each morning before sessions began were among the most valued elements of the programme. In these, participants worked through their personal case studies together, applying the previous day's frameworks to their individual organisational challenges. Peer learning allowed experience-based solutions to be shared in real time.Case study A: from imposter syndrome to peer connection
A, a UK participant, arrived at Harvard at a moment of personal and professional transition. They had just moved from a corporate role into a start-up environment and their previous position had been marked by a toxic culture and difficult working conditions. A came to the programme feeling isolated in the chief of staff role, battling imposter syndrome.Meeting other chiefs of staff at different levels and stages, some more experienced and others early in their careers, gave A a reference point they had not had before. They could see that the uncertainties they were carrying were not signs of inexperience, but part of how the role works. The feelings A had about getting things wrong were shared by people who, from the outside, looked entirely confident and capable.A returned from the programme feeling ‘motivated and qualified’ and less isolated. The cohort network continued to support them through their first ninety days in the new role and several connections from the week became ongoing sources of counsel and encouragement as they navigated the early months of a challenging transition.Case study B: trusting your instincts
The chief of staff role requires constant judgement calls made with incomplete information, in fast-moving environments without the benefit of a peer group inside the organisation. When you are new to the role, there is no easy way to know whether your read on a situation is right. You are operating on instinct and hoping it holds.B came to the programme a month into their role at a Series B technology company, operating with a fully remote team across the US. They were new to the chief of staff position and looking for something specific: a community of practitioners who could offer guidance and confirm or challenge whether their instincts were sound.Having a room full of experienced chiefs of staff confirmed to B that their initial plans and thinking were sound; validation they had not been able to access in their organisation itself. B’s peers gave them the confidence to trust their own leadership style and judgements. The role can feel lonely and isolating, they reflected. Having a community say that their instincts were correct was supportive in a way that nothing inside their organisation could replicate.B left Harvard not just with new frameworks, but with the fortifying knowledge that their approach to the role was right, and with a network of people who would remain a resource long after the week was over.Connections that continue
As the case studies on A and B demonstrate, the relationships built during the programme continued off campus. In the weeks and months following, participants stayed in contact, shared challenges, offered perspectives and continued the conversations that the week had started.This ongoing connection is not incidental: it is one of the clearest measures of whether an executive education programme has delivered something real. When people maintain relationships built during a week of intensive learning, it signals that the experience created genuine trust not just intellectual engagement.ReferencesRodriguez, Alba Contreras, “The CEO’s Hidden Struggle: Overcoming Lonliness through Connection”, Forbes, 25 February 2025Navigating the Jagged Frontier
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