Interested in coaching or additional resources for your Chief of Staff role? Before you consider paying out of pocket, it is worth checking to see if your employer will pay for this valuable resource for you. Below are some helpful points to consider.
Learn if your organization has a professional development budget
Speak to your organization’s HR leader to see if a budget exists for employee development. Often a budget may be designated to each department or each employee. If no such budget exists, you can still make the case for why your Chief of Staff coaching should be covered.
Talk to your boss about the opportunity to use coaching to become a more effective Chief of Staff.
As a Chief of Staff, your boss is likely the CEO or another senior-level leader. Therefore, having their buy-in on the importance of your development is critical to getting this expense covered (if it isn’t already). Refer to the talking points provided below.
If your organization has a development budget…
- I would like to discuss using my allotted professional development budget on a Chief of Staff coach.
If your organization does not have a development budget…
- To ensure I am the most effective and productive Chief of Staff, I would like to discuss enlisting a Chief of Staff coach as part of my professional development.
- Though we do not have a specified budget, I think utilizing a coach should be considered a training and development opportunity for my position.
- As you know, the Chief of Staff role is new to the private and nonprofit sectors, so few resources exist to help with our professional growth and development.
- Just like our sales team completes regular sales trainings for their success, my coaching will provide similar growth and development for my specific needs as a Chief of Staff.
Explain the benefits for your growth and development in the position
Next, it is important to outline the key benefits that having a coach provides.
Having a Chief of Staff coach will offer me the following:
- An objective sounding board
- An accountability partner
- Skills building
- Expanded leadership potential
- Continuous learning and self-improvement
- Stress reduction and other tools to create sustainability in a demanding role
Explain the benefits to the broader organization
The organization also cares about how your development will benefit them, and not just you. Therefore, be sure to translate your successful coaching into benefits for the greater organization.
Through coaching, I will become a more effective Chief of Staff with:
- Increased accountability to meet my performance objectives and outcomes
- Heightened leadership skills including emotional intelligence, executive presence, systems thinking, inspiring others, and navigating change
- Enhanced self-awareness of one’s strengths and weaknesses, in both skill and mindset
- Exceptional team leadership learning management best-practices, elevating capabilities, and properly administrating a team
- Strengthened engagement, fulfillment, productivity, clarity, and retention
- Exceptional communication, navigating difficult conversations, calm decision making, and running effective meetings
- Increased trust with clients and stakeholders
- Improved consistency and quality of work
—
Next steps
If you were given the green light by your supervisor or HR leader to cover your coaching costs, contact us to get started today!
If your boss or HR leader did not approve your coaching expense, contact us to learn about individual coaching options or to see if we can have a conversation with your organization directly.