Whitney Faires is a former Chief of Staff to the CFO of a Fortune 500 company, and has over 20 years of corporate experience.
In this episode of The Leader Assistant Podcast, Whitney talks about her experience as a CoS, the evolving dynamics between Chiefs of Staff and Executive Assistants, and the core competencies required for exceptional executive support.
LEADERSHIP QUOTE
Good leaders build products. Great leaders build cultures. Good leaders deliver results. Great leaders develop people. Good leaders have vision. Great leaders have values. Good leaders are role models at work. Great leaders are role models in life.
– Adam Grant
CONNECT WITH WHITNEY
- Whitney on LinkedIn
- Whitney’s website – whitneyfaires.com
- Book recommendation – The SPEED of Trust by Stephen M.R. Covey
ABOUT WHITNEY
Whitney Faires is an internationally recognized executive coach, keynote speaker, and leadership expert. With over 20 years of corporate experience, she has built high-performing teams, developed transformative leadership programs, and coached professionals to unlock their potential.
As a former Chief of Staff to the CFO of a Fortune 500 company, Whitney combines her practical insights with dynamic storytelling, helping leaders achieve breakthroughs in confidence, resilience, and impact.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Whitney Faires [0:00 – 0:36]: Hi, my name is Whitney Farris and today’s leadership quote comes from Adam Grant. Good leaders build products. Great leaders build cultures. Good leaders deliver results. Great leaders develop people. Good leaders have vision. Great leaders have values. Good leaders are role models at work and great leaders are role models in life. The Leader Assistant podcast exists to encourage and challenge assistants to become confident game changing leader assistants.
Jeremy Burrows [0:45 – 1:19]: Hey friends, welcome to the Leader Assistant podcast. It’s your host, Jeremy Burroughs and it’s episode 325. Of course, you can check out the show notes at leaderassistant.com/325 to get all of the links and bio info and everything for today’s guest. And speaking of today’s guest is Whitney, Whitney Ferris. Whitney is a former chief of staff to the CFO of a Fortune 500 company and she has over 20 years of corporate experience. So, Whitney, we’re excited to chat today. Welcome to the show.
Whitney Faires [1:20 – 1:22]: Thank you so much. I’m excited to be with you and your listeners.
Jeremy Burrows [1:23 – 1:25]: Awesome. And what part of the world are you in?
Whitney Faires [1:26 – 1:34]: I am in the Midwest, so we are starting to unthaw from the winter. I’m actually in Indianapolis, so good place to be in the summer.
Jeremy Burrows [1:34 – 1:35]: Are you from that area?
Whitney Faires [1:36 – 1:39]: I am, yes. I’m originally from about 45 minutes outside of the city.
Jeremy Burrows [1:40 – 1:46]: Okay, cool, cool. And then do you have dogs, cats, kids, all the above?
Whitney Faires [1:46 – 2:04]: All? Well, not all of the above. Most of the above. I have two kids, my daughter’s 10 and my son is 8. And then I got convinced to buy a dog after, you know, many years of begging. So we have a one year old golden doodle Max. So I made my husband take him out of the house so he doesn’t bark or make a guest appearance.
Jeremy Burrows [2:05 – 2:17]: Nice. Nice. Great. Well, what’s your favorite thing to do before we get into your, your career and talking a little bit about chief of staff and assistant and all that stuff. What’s your favorite thing to do when you’re not working?
Whitney Faires [2:18 – 2:30]: Anything competitive. So I love to work out, sit at my kids sporting events, play board games with my kids and my husband. Anything competitive is where you will find me. It’s, it’s kind of in my blood, if you will.
Jeremy Burrows [2:31 – 2:37]: Nice. So you probably win a lot and. Right. I’m sure you beat your kids in the board games and all that. Don’t go easy on them.
Whitney Faires [2:38 – 2:49]: I’m not the parent that’s going to be like, okay, you know, you can win. You know, they got to learn that it’s not fun to lose and you got to work your Way to winning. So I don’t win all the time, but I try to.
Jeremy Burrows [2:49 – 3:04]: Nice. Nice. Cool. Well, thanks for, again for being on the show today. Tell us a little bit about your career and. Yeah. Where you started early in your career and kind of your path and tell us about how you became a chief of staff and, and all that.
Whitney Faires [3:05 – 5:50]: Yeah, great question. So my career path has been a bit unconventional. I started out of college, I had a passion for medicine, never really wanted to be a doctor. And so I thought, how do I take my love for business into the medical space, the health care space? And so I started out in pharmaceutical sales. Much of my first 10 years was all in sales and sales leadership and worked my way up through a couple of companies. Intuitive has been my home prior to launching my own company for about 17 years. And there I started in the commercial organization and I had such a passion for leading teams. You can guess by being an executive coach and leading development programs for corporations in my speaking business that I love to inspire people to take action and help them become their best. And that passion really started as a leader in the commercial organization at Intuitive. And I was, you know, selling, leading. And I kind of had this curiosity, what’s on the other side of the business? And someone who wanted to be an executive someday, I thought, why don’t I go find out? I mean, I can always come back. And so I hopped over to a commercial operations division and myself and, and one other gentleman, we launched a new function, it’s actually a finance function to help our customers acquire technology. And we took that from an idea to a several billion dollar business and took it global in the course of, but really four to six years. And I was so proud of that work. But I miss the people development. It was much more operational. I was dealing with a lot of executives across the business, finance, commercial, in our president. And I thought, well, what’s next? And I wanted to follow my passion for people. And I was doing all this work on the side and I’m, I’m a firm believer that when you have something that you love to do, find ways to do it, even if it doesn’t pay you. Yeah. And I had all the reasons to not make time. I had young kids, I had a career that required travel and lots of other things. But I started coaching. I got my coaching certification while I worked at Intuitive. I launched a program at, at Intuitive just to give back my time to help people develop. And sure enough, a bunch of different work I was doing in, in the coaching space, in the development Space led to the CFO coming to me and saying, hey, we need you to solve some org health challenges that we’re having. Would you stand up a function? And so I did. I built really. What was my third function at the company in the time that I was there that was responsible for running org health programs, leadership development, as well as about 30% of my role was chief of staff to the CFO. So it was a really a unique blend that came from my experiences and the value that I could bring to the organization.
Jeremy Burrows [5:50 – 6:19]: Interesting. I’m curious the I want to talk about the chief of staff stuff too. But like, I’m curious how you said learning and development like kind of set that up. How broad was that? Just, was that for the whole company? Was that for certain executive levels or did it include, for example, as an executive assistant? I’m curious, did it include administrative assistants? Executive assistants? How did that trickle down in the organization?
Whitney Faires [6:19 – 7:27]: Yeah, so the scope of my coaching spanned the entire organization. So I had everyone from operational and more EA type professionals all the way through VPs in, in talent development, HR, commercial operations, in really across the world. I had clients in multiple countries. The development piece was really focused on our finance and enterprise services organizations. And we led programs all the way from our individual contributors, which could include EAs, for example, all the way through our senior director level. So kind of our, our entry level executive positions. And my team and I focused on building the skills to help them not only be effective in their jobs, but as people made the transition from an individual contributor to a people leader. That’s a whole different set of skills and one that’s often just assumed that people will learn because they’re good ICs. And that’s. That’s really not true. We really miss when we don’t set people up for success by building the skills of leading teams. And that was a big part of our focus as a development team.
Jeremy Burrows [7:27 – 7:57]: Nice. Nice. Great. So what about your chief of staff role was maybe in specifically the portion where you supported the CFO’s office. What’s maybe one of the, you know, your favorite parts about that specific part of your role, like you know, your, your chief of staff to the CFO’s office. Thinking back on that time, what was one of your favorite parts?
Whitney Faires [7:58 – 9:43]: Yeah, without a doubt my favorite part was solving problems. I feel like as a chief of staff, you have this unique opportunity to be front and center on creating solutions for some of the most challenging and pressing issues in that organization. Things like organizational health, creating plans to work hand in hand with HR on how we’re going to assess talent. And so oftentimes he would come to me with, here’s my observations, here’s what I’m hearing, here’s where I think we are. I need you to validate that. Here’s where I want to be. And my job was, was to get into the business and work side by side with various groups and assess and come back with the plan. And typically based on the initiative, I may take that plan and hand it off to someone who’s going to take the lead, who should be the kind of the. The person front and center. And other times, I take it all the way through the time we were executing and measuring success. And so for me, I, I’ve always felt that it’s. It’s really exciting to be able to look at things that are causing pain points for people and the org and flip that script and really make it a source of value. And, and I got to work with so many great people in the process. And I also got to learn so much about the business. I’m not a finance person by nature, so when I got this role working for the Chief of staff, I will say many of your listeners can probably relate. There’s an initial point where you’re like, I don’t even really know this business anywhere near the level of this person. It wasn’t like my sales experience. So I had to really work through a lot of that imposter syndrome around, okay, like, this is my role. How do I get prepared? How do I be confident showing up every day so that I’m able to deliver results and be. Be valuable?
Jeremy Burrows [9:44 – 10:24]: Love it. What about your work alongside and with executive assistance? So tell us a little bit about maybe even just the differences. There’s a lot of talk in the executive assistant world about, is Chief of Staff the next step? If you’re. If you want to kind of get out of the EA role. What are the differences between EA and Chief of Staff? A lot of EAs are like, well, I do a Chief of staff’s job. Why. Why don’t I have the title? And a lot of chiefs of staff are like, well, I’m more like an ea, but that’s, you know, I have the title. So what was your experience working in the COS role and supporting or working with executive assistants? And maybe even just the differences between the two?
Whitney Faires [10:25 – 12:45]: Yeah, well, I will say I think the partnership between executive assistants and Chief of staff is absolutely critical because those are probably the two people aside from the other executive team. Those Are the two people that are likely working with that executive the most. And so being in sync, understanding how each other, the roles and responsibilities, how we’re going to work together, how we support him or her most effectively is super critical. And I’ve had in all the roles that I’ve had because I’ve, I’ve had a lot of executive level responsibilities or projects that have been very visible and where I’ve had to partner and align with executives. I’ve worked with a lot of executive assistants and I think that they are, they can be make it or break it, you know, for the day to day of those executives because they are protecting their time. They are, you know, setting that executive up for success on a daily basis, giving them what they need so that it’s taking stuff off their plate and not just putting all the work on their shoulders. Right. So they play a very critical role and the partnership between the two is, is even more critical. I will tell you how you described people viewing well, I’m an ea, but I really do see os. I’m a Chief of staff but I’m more operational. That’s the reality is that, you know, the definition to me is that most executive assistants are doing more of the administrative operational responsibilities and it doesn’t mean that they aren’t playing a role in many of the big projects, but it’s, it’s usually a little bit more limited where they have a specific part to play. A chief of staff typically has more of a strategic role. They are driving initiatives from ideation to execution and they are seen as that advisor to the executive. They won’t always be the right hand person. I mean there’s plenty of people that I think was the right hand person to my cfo. But I do believe that if you do the job well, you are someone that they trust, that take input from, they take guidance from. And I think that’s the goal of Achieva staff is to be, is to become that person. So I would really think that looking at how much is administrative versus autonomous strategic driven work is probably the biggest difference in the two roles. Does that answer your question?
Jeremy Burrows [12:45 – 13:20]: Yeah. Yeah. How have you seen that even in your career as a chief of staff or even in your work with your speaking and consulting and training? What, how have you seen that role or those roles evolve like the dynamics between the two and yeah. How have they evolved over time and how would you, you know, even just as a follow up to that, how would you encourage assistance listening to discern whether or not a chief of Staff is for them. You know, is that the role for me?
Whitney Faires [13:21 – 15:07]: Yeah, that’s a good question. Well, I will say I have worked with organizations as I’ve led programs and oftentimes I, because I’m interfacing with the executive teams there who, who are bringing me in, I get connected with either an EA or a chief of staff. And what I have seen, I’ve heard of these like junior chief of staff roles where it’s kind of in the middle. The person working to be a full scale chief of staff. And I think the evolution is when you start working on, when you start emerging from the operational and logistical work into more of. I am evaluating a problem or a project and bringing new ideas and taking that through the delivery. When you start doing kind of that full scope of work is where I think it starts to evolve into that chief of staff realm. And I think it’s totally possible. I think that if it’s something that you’re interested in, discuss it with your leader. Hopefully your leaders are approachable. But I think that that high achieving executive assistance can absolutely put a development plan in place where they’re building their business acumen. They get opportunities to stretch their skills. Maybe it’s their problem solving or their skills for project management and they’re able to little by little take on pieces of that chief of staff role until it evolves into a junior chief of staff and then, and then potentially that full scale role. Some orgs, they, they may say we don’t need that position because of the way our executive team is set up. And that’s just good for you to know because then you’re at a decision point at how important is it for me to actually step into that chief of staff over time? If I build the skills and if it’s really important, then maybe there’s a role like that with another executive in the organization.
Jeremy Burrows [15:09 – 15:40]: That makes sense. Great, thanks for sharing that. What would you say kind of transitioning a little bit into core qualities and competencies that are required essentially for exceptional executive support? You know, would you go through some of those? Maybe this is some of the stuff that you do in your, in your coaching and leadership training. But yeah, what are the, what are the kind of the key competencies for executive support?
Whitney Faires [15:40 – 18:54]: Yeah, well, I think you know, everyone knows the core stuff. Your, your time management. You are driving their, you’re really driving their life. I most I know are managing personal and professional for, for those leaders and you’re, you’re ob obviously that connection between broader leadership teams. But when I really look at what differentiates are the executive assistants that I’ve worked with who are good versus exceptional. One of the things is clarity and alignment with the executive. And what I mean by that is how, how aligned are they with their executive on how they would like to be supported. So what are the most important things that this person does, what must be done every single day or every single week and knowing how that person really is best supported because we all have different work styles, we all have different expectations, and so making sure that the two of you are aligned on that just sets you up for success. So you’re doing the things that are going to bring the most value. I always find with executives, very few want nothing less than precise, succinct communication. So I think that, you know, I think about all the executives I work with and they are busy. They are so busy and they are making, making big decisions with little pieces of time. And so as an ea, to be able to go to them with a very succinct specific message calling out here’s the need or this is an FYI and, and just providing enough detail that they get it, it can ask more questions, but not just context heavy where they’re like, okay, I got it. You know, here’s, here’s how we’re moving forward. I think that communication piece just enables you to get that much more time with them because they’re like, all right here, she’s going to come in here, give me what I need and we move on. So it’s like, it allows me to be efficient in my day. And then I would say probably two other things. A solution oriented mindset is key. I am sure there isn’t one of your listeners out there who every day doesn’t get thrown for a loop like this meeting has to happen or we need this done and I got to find a way to bring all these people together to align before we go into this project. So I think that at times that weighs on people. It’s like non stop problem solving. But I think really embracing the mindset of I got this when something comes to me, instead of focusing on like why or the frustration that can exist when people make asks that you’re like, that’s not reasonable. But being able to shift that into all right, what are my options? How are we going to move forward? That I think creates longevity in the role where the, the grind of everyone leaning on you to make everything happen between them and the executive. It helps minimize that and just kind of balance out how you feel and, and can, can MA manage the role? And then last is just building relationships. I mean, you, you as an EA can be so instrumental in being able to connect your executive with the right people and streamline the work between executives. Because I think a lot of times the CFO is talking to CEO and the CEO and the CTO and cio. You know, it’s like there’s so many executives in bigger organizations. And when you all as EAs are working together, know your people, know, know how they all like to work. It just, it streamlines. It makes it nice and smooth.
Jeremy Burrows [18:55 – 19:11]: Yeah, those are, those are great tips. Thanks so much for sharing. Lots, lots to absorb, lots to think about. What, what would you say, you know, you do the executive coaching and speaking and development for corporate teams, I assume, right?
Whitney Faires [19:11 – 19:12]: Yes.
Jeremy Burrows [19:12 – 20:07]: So, you know, there’s a lot of assistants listening that, that are part of corporate teams, obviously. I’ve got two questions. I’ll ask them one at a time. If an executive assistant gets a request from their CEO or their CFO or whoever in the C suite they support that says, hey, we need to do some leadership development with our team. Go find someone. Right. This has happened before. I know this has happened to me. This has happened to other assistants I’ve spoken with. Obviously there are so many different people out there that can help and do provide different services and whatnot. But where do you start in that process? What’s step one? If your CEO is like, jeremy, I need you to find someone to do some leadership development for an afternoon in a couple months.
Whitney Faires [20:07 – 21:58]: Yeah, yeah, that’s a, that’s a really great question. So I would say if you have an HR department or a talent development department. And I say that because sometimes I work with small companies and they really have like one person that sort of is an HR role because they’re growing. Right. If you do have those departments, I think they can be a really great resource for you to say, have you worked with any vendors out there or do you all offer this type of training? Because that could be the easiest solution. It doesn’t mean it’s the best because sometimes teams don’t have the capacity and just, just make time and, and, and, and aren’t really in that talent development space, but it could definitely be a good option. And I would say the number one place to start. I would always ask a couple questions of the executive, and you don’t have to be ready in the moment. You can say, okay, and go back to your desk and kind of think it through. But I always want to know what’s your vision for the the program that you want to lead? What is. Do you have something in mind? Because there’s a lot of different ways that that corporate development can be led and oftentimes if they don’t have a vision, they have an expectation based they’ve had at different points in their career. And I always like to to really narrow down are there specific skills that you are trying to elevate in the training and then also what problems are you trying to solve? And I think vision problems to solve, skills to build gives you an initial idea so you can start researching individuals out there to work with. And I think that, you know, I would also find somebody in your organization if HR isn’t a big enough org to support you could be someone on the commercial side or on the operation side. Usually there’s connections and someone’s been in the org before and can probably at least brainstorm that or say hey I know a great company or I know someone that you can work with and at least leverage the network that way.
Jeremy Burrows [21:59 – 22:35]: Okay, great. So yeah, I love that Ask ask clarifying questions so you can get a little more info before you just start googling. So the second part was kind of the last. To wrap this up, how would you what’s your short answer to how do you present a business case to spend the money? Like what’s the roi? What’s the number one ROI reason indicator, whatever you want to call it, to hire someone like yourself or whoever to do a development with the team?
Whitney Faires [22:36 – 23:50]: Yeah, that is a really hard short answer question. I the easiest way is, is to understand the, the, the changes that they expect to see in the organization. So whatever the metrics are in the org, engagement, productivity, attrition, promotion rates, those types of metrics, do they have any metrics in mind that they intend to see a result from? And then you can, you can justify the ROI and someone like me can can say to you, hey, like you, you’re not going to see the ROI in reduced attrition for 12 months to see a steady trend. So look at the metrics is the easiest one. And then looking at behavior change post training. So there’s different types of assessments and surveys to get feedback from those to have observational data points from leaders of those going through the training or directs that then you can put together a business case for but roi. I could go on a tangent about this. It’s really hard to measure truthfully. You have to at some point say are there skill gaps that need to be closed if the answer is yes, you got to close them and you have to look at the data, which will be a lagging indicator of the impact.
Jeremy Burrows [23:51 – 24:07]: Nice. Awesome. Well, my last question actually had one more I want to share. I know people can’t see your background as they’re listening to the audio, but you’ve got a bunch of books in the background. What’s your favorite book on that shelf?
Whitney Faires [24:08 – 24:41]: Oh, so many. But I think one of the most foundational books is Speed of Trust by Stephen Covey. I go back to it time and time again. I think trust is often seen as we need to have it, but if we don’t, we’ll make it work. And we especially have that view when we struggle to build trust with someone or we have a dysfunctional relationship with someone we work with or in our lives, quite honestly. So it really gives you some great perspectives on how you approach those and the necessity for trust in any relationship and work our life.
Jeremy Burrows [24:42 – 24:44]: Awesome. Speed of trust. That’s what it’s called.
Whitney Faires [24:44 – 24:45]: Speed of trust. Cool.
Jeremy Burrows [24:45 – 24:57]: I’ll put those in that in the show notes for sure. Well, thank you so much, Whitney, for taking time to speak with us. What’s the best place for people or where’s the best place for people to reach out if they want to connect and say hi?
Whitney Faires [24:57 – 25:09]: Yeah, you can always find me on LinkedIn or visit my website@whitneyferris.com you can submit requests and always get in contact with me that way. So I’d love to connect with some of your listeners. And thank you so much for having me.
Jeremy Burrows [25:09 – 25:25]: Awesome. Yes, that’s great. And I’ll put everything in the show notes@leaderassistant.com 325 Again LeaderAssistant.com 325 to find all Whitney’s information and connect with her. And yeah, thanks again for being on the show and best of luck to you.
Whitney Faires [25:25 – 25:26]: Yeah, thanks again.
Jeremy Burrows [25:37 – 25:47]: Please review on Apple Podcasts gobos.com.
