Your first Chief of Staff role comes with a steep learning curve. Six things to know before taking on a CoS assignment.

No one is your boss, and everyone is your boss

The Chief of Staff role requires a unique manager-report relationship. Don’t expect a lot of hands-on direction — you support your leader instead of the other way around. You are there to provide leverage and set your own agenda based on the organization’s priorities. It’s also likely that everyone in the organization sees you as a resource. You have to balance listening broadly with executing narrowly so you don’t get bogged down by other people’s priorities.

Do fewer things than you are able to do

Pick one or two things to focus on for a period and go deep. Even if you have the capacity to drive change across many dimensions, don’t. The team can only absorb so much evolution at one time and will get frustrated if you throw too much at them. Go slow to go far.

It’s easy to succumb to being the ‘default person’

Beware of org-wide tactical projects with no natural owner [think: software rollout, new policy implementation]. Avoid being the catch-all for this work. It will distract you and isn’t high leverage. Solution: find a rising talent in the org and give them a chance to lead the cross-functional task. The associate gets exposure and a leadership opportunity. You get the thing done with your focus intact.

Make feedback your friend

You’re the approachable face of the organization. People are going to come to you with some crazy stuff, it’s up to you to find the nuggets of insight and use them. After an all-hands meeting, someone told me that the sun in the atrium was too bright and it was hard to read the monitors in the demo fair. Got it — turn down the sun next time. Kidding. I appreciated the feedback because it meant the actual content that day was useful.

Keep your eye on the outcome and don’t take it personally

Don’t get too married to any one product or deliverable. Your deck got ripped to shreds after you spent hours on it? The leadership team took your offsite in a completely different direction? Don’t let this throw you — your job is to move the ball down the field. Charging forward sometimes requires reacting to a stimulus and altering course. You are still driving the momentum and that is the important outcome.

Prepare to get vulnerable

To make it okay for people to open up, you have to go first. This is an important part of building relationships across the organization. Share parts of yourself. Demonstrate what it looks like to authentically show up. This is the stuff that builds deep bonds. It can also feel uncomfortable in the moment — get used to living in a state of vulnerability.