Am I a CoS?
(AI assisted draft)
I’m trying to understand how others would classify my role based on what I actually do rather than my title.
My official title is Referent der Geschäftsführung in German (Officer to the Management Word by Word) at a large university institute, which is very difficult to translate. Also, my guess is that I am actually doing a lot more than this title implies. Within the salary System of German public administration, I am ranked as an expert (Master degree) with 8years of relevant experience.
While we’re in academia, we’re highly business-facing: executive education is a major part of what we do, we work closely with companies and senior executives, and our organizational language and mindset borrow quite a bit from the corporate world. I work directly with Ministers, CEOs and Supervisory Board Members but also all the way down to our Student Assistants: I am basically working with everybody in every project we have, unless it’s Daily Business which is not my Turf.
Our hierarchy is roughly:
Director → Managing Directors → Team Leads → Teams
I primarily work with the Director and one of the Managing Directors, but I sit somewhat outside this formal hierarchy.
My background is in project/program management rather than administration. Before joining, I managed publicly funded projects involving budgets, implementation and complex stakeholder networks across government, business and civil society. Earlier in my career, I was also a military officer.
My current role has three main components:
Leadership support & strategy: I prepare the Director for speeches, panels and important meetings, draft briefings and decision papers, work on governance and strategic issues, and coordinate with senior internal and external stakeholders.
I am often connected with other executive Assistants, CoS, personal Assistants, executive Advisors and so on.
Cross-functional execution: I take ownership of ad-hoc or smaller projects that don’t have a natural owner, coordinate across teams and help unblock important or time-sensitive issues.
External relationships & programs: I follow up with relevant people we meet at events and try to turn those contacts into partnerships, speakers or contributors to our projects. I also manage a fair amount of events and programs – though in our case, education is essentially our product, so this often combines logistics, content, stakeholder management and strategic positioning.
There is a separate secretary responsible for the Director’s calendar and traditional administrative support, so calendar management, travel booking etc. are generally not my job.
What I find most challenging is my position within the leadership structure.
The Managing Directors naturally don’t want an additional layer between themselves and the Director. At the same time, Team Leads increasingly come to me when something important gets stuck or they need additional support. I try to help without becoming a shadow manager or interfering with their ownership. My perspective is supposed to remain cross-functional and focused on the institute’s overall development.
So I have influence without much formal authority.
I don’t manage teams, own the Director’s entire agenda or have a blanket mandate to act on her behalf. But I increasingly seem to function as additional leadership capacity: connecting people and topics, filling ownership gaps, unblocking issues, preparing the Director and translating external opportunities into internal action.
I do realize that without the directors and managing directors backing, my work gets more difficult because I lack „hierarchical authority”. This is one of the reasons I’d like to change my title to chief of staff. Same goes for external stakeholder relations.
Would you consider this a Chief of Staff-type role, an Executive Advisor role, or something else?
And for actual CoS: what is the key responsibility or authority that separates a Chief of Staff from someone doing what I’m doing?
Thanks !