How CEOs Build the Executive Team
Part two of the CEO mindset series: How Chiefs of Staff strengthen executive leadership and help build teams that scale
Of all the CEO’s responsibilities, none matters more than building the executive team.
Your team determines whether the company thrives and how it gets there. If the people you assemble aren’t a fit, or if you lose focus on leading them, everything crumbles: the vision fades, the culture drifts, decisions stall, stability slips. Building the executive team isn’t just another responsibility. It’s the foundation everything else stands on.
In Part One, we talked about setting and communicating the vision. In this article, we’re digging into the second pillar: building the executive team.
Nobody says it better than Patrick Lencioni in The Motive: leadership isn’t a reward for hard work. It’s a responsibility to serve others (and thus the organization), starting with building the team to lead it. When I first read The Motive, it fundamentally changed how I looked at leadership. It’s the smartest and most profound articulation of real leadership responsibility I’ve ever read and it sits at the core of how I think about building companies and teams.
True leadership building is about constant tuning, clarifying and strengthening.
The best Chiefs of Staff make sure it never drifts.
If building the executive team is the CEO’s most critical job, then the Chief of Staff is the one who keeps that job from slipping to the back burner. The CoS sees the gaps, senses the friction, reinforces the standards, and protects the leadership system the CEO is trying to build.
Leadership Is Not a Reward — It’s a Job
Leadership fails when it’s seen as a reward instead of a responsibility. Real leadership is giving your team what they need and carrying the burden few are willing to hold.
Patrick Lencioni cuts through all the noise with a simple question: Are you leading to serve or to be served?
For CEOs, building the executive team is one of the clearest tests of that motive. It’s not glamorous work. It’s slow. It’s messy. It’s uncomfortable. It means having hard conversations about performance and fit. It’s about team building. It’s about running great meetings. It means setting standards and holding people to them when it would be easier to look away.
The best CEOs never treat the executive team like a finished product. They stay close enough to sense when the leadership system is humming and when it's starting to slip.
This is the real work of leadership. Not just setting direction, but supporting the team that’s responsible for driving it forward. That’s what The Motive gets right. Leadership isn’t a title you earn. It’s a job you show up to do.
This is where Chiefs of Staff become essential. They do not replace the CEO’s role in building leadership but help the CEO stay in it. They keep leadership development front and center, even when everything else is screaming for attention.
Neglect leadership, and you don't just lose the team. You lose the future you're trying to build.
A System, Not Just Individuals
Hiring great leaders is critical. But it’s not enough.
An executive team isn’t just a set of strong players. It's a system. A connected leadership machine that has to move in sync toward the same goals. If alignment slips, if ownership blurs, if trust cracks open, it doesn't matter how good the individuals are. The system breaks, and everything slows down or falls apart.
This is where a great Chief of Staff makes one of their biggest impacts. They aren’t just watching individual performance. They’re watching how the leadership system holds up under pressure. They spot the early signs: decisions that drag, confusion about ownership, misaligned priorities between teams. They catch the subtle fractures before they become major breaks and bring it to the CEO with clarity and context so it can be fixed fast.
The best CEOs don’t just tune the product or the strategy. They tune the leadership system, and the Chief of Staff is the early warning system that keeps it strong.
Strong people aren't enough.
Strong systems of great people working together are what scale.
Fueling the System
Building the team is just the start. Keeping a team of great leaders working together — healthy, aligned, and thinking bigger than the day-to-day is what separates good leadership from great leadership.
This is where the Chief of Staff shifts from operator to amplifier.
If you want a leadership team to think big, you have to give them something big to think about. That means not just clarity, but belief. The CEO has to make the future feel real and help each leader see how their work ties into something bigger than themselves.
When I asked my friend Marty Ringlein, CEO & Co-Founder of Agree.com, about the biggest mindset shift he’s had in building and leading exceptional teams, he put it perfectly:
"If you can't do their job better than they can, you shouldn't be telling them how to do it. And if you find that you can do it better, well — those aren't the kind of people you should be hiring."
Leading great people means setting a clear destination, not driving the car for them.
But the part that really stuck with me was what he said next:
"If you want a team to think big, you have to give them something big to think about. However, the hardest part is communicating it. As leaders, we spend a relentless amount of time trying to find the path from point A to point B. But what becomes clear to us over time is still fuzzy to everyone else. The only thing more important than the roadmap is the roadtrip. It’s not just telling them where we’re going, but why we’re going there, how we’re going to get there, and why they matter to the journey."
That’s real leadership. It’s not enough to have a vision in your own head. You have to build the system, fuel it with constant communication, and keep your leaders connected to the bigger future you’re trying to create.
A great Chief of Staff doesn’t just keep the trains running. They help keep the message alive — making sure the team hears it, believes it, and knows how their work ties back to it every day.
What Great Chiefs Do
Building and leading the executive team will always be the CEO’s job. A strong Chief of Staff makes sure it stays their job, even when everything else competes for attention.
Here’s what great Chiefs do:
Surface the patterns. Quiet dysfunction doesn't fix itself. Spot it early. Name it clearly. Bring it to the CEO with context, consequences, and a point of view so the decision is clear, not chaotic.
Protect the leadership system. When ownership gets fuzzy or decision-making drags, step in. Help sharpen the edges again. Keep leaders clear on their lanes and standards.
Fuel clarity through communication. It’s not enough for the CEO to say it once. The COS helps operationalize the message, reinforcing the vision, the goals, and the “why” in meetings, updates, and one-on-ones.
Hold the leadership standard. When a leader’s behavior starts to slip under pressure, the COS doesn’t look away. They make sure the CEO sees it and acts on it before it damages the system.
Preserve the leadership culture. A Chief of Staff doesn't just help enforce individual standards. They preserve the deeper leadership values — reminding the team every day that leadership is a responsibility, not a reward.
When all five of these moves are working together, the Chief of Staff becomes the CEO’s sharpest tool for keeping leadership strong, clear, and connected to the team that drives the company forward.
Great leadership doesn't happen by accident. It’s built, protected and fueled every single day, and the best Chiefs make sure it stays that way.
I want to give special thanks to Marty for sharing his wisdom on building teams and leadership. He’s been preaching (loudly IYKYK) this message for a long time.
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