Today’s guest post is from Kristine Valenzuela, a career Executive Assistant and Chief of Staff, as well as the Founder of The Secret Executive. To learn more about Kristine and her work, visit The Secret Executive or follow her on LinkedIn!
Everyone keeps encouraging Executive Assistants and Chiefs of Staff to get better at their jobs – be more skilled, attend better training, or improve efficiency. Or you may have been told “what you need is a tool/framework/system.” I hate to say it, but none of that impacts your executive in a way that actually matters to them and let’s face it: what they think is all that matters. That’s the mic drop that no one else will tell you.
Can You Feel When the Environment Shifts?
You may not know this but EA and COS work is not solely merit-based. Because of who you work for, you have to operate in a signal economy and that makes all the difference in the world. Until you learn how to read, interpret, and adapt to the signals of executive environments – the type of thing executives really do care about – no amount of competence will translate into the kind of value this role actually requires. If that takes you by surprise, keep reading.
Our profession has been built on a simple ethos: work hard, get better, become excellent, and success will follow. We think merit will carry you, competence safeguards you and added skill will create opportunity. And to a point, that’s true. Merit gets you hired, builds credibility and creates a baseline of respect. But that only gets you so far. Merit does not create influence nor does it protect you from misalignment. Additionally, it does not translate consistently across executives. If merit alone determined success, high performers would never stall and their career trajectories would only go up.
Yet we see it constantly: exceptionally capable EAs who feel stuck or highly skilled Chiefs of Staff who feel underutilized. The same person, with the same competence, work ethic, and standards can thrive in one role and struggle in another. This is not because their ability changed, but because their environment did.
Speaking for myself, this has happened to me more than once. A puzzle analogy is a great way to think about this. The right pieces will fit together perfectly but similar pieces from different puzzles may not. We don’t blame the puzzle pieces – we understand they each belong to different puzzles. And this is how we should be approaching our profession. We can’t stay in our own lane then get frustrated when we hit a wall. We need to shape-shift in order to provide a better fit. The problem is no one is surfacing this issue. The truth is executives don’t operate in skill systems – they operate in signal systems.
Executives are the beneficiaries of your work but it’s not experiential in a way that matters to them. They experience their environment through signals such as risk, trust, loyalty, alignment, decisiveness, pressure, opportunity, power, and timing. That is what’s key to their job performance, not whether you gained another certification. Their world is not organized around operational excellence. It’s standardized around perception and interpretation. What feels efficient to a team often feels irrelevant to an executive. What they understand most is signal alignment. They want to know whether you understand their world and the pressure and risk that goes along with it. This is why they almost want you to read their mind. They need you to ‘get it’ without having to learn the invisible signaling they may not have the words to communicate themselves.
This is why competence alone fails in an executive environment. This is important framing: you’re not doing anything wrong by becoming more skilled. That’s never a bad thing. It’s just not what matters most. You’re simply operating with the wrong interpretive lens.
Most EAs and Chiefs of Staff are trained to optimize performance but executive environments don’t reward optimization. They want people who can feel when the environment has shifted. Many of you have probably been in meetings where people are talking and suddenly everyone gets up to leave. The room understood the discussion was over but the end felt abrupt to you. That’s unspoken alignment happening in real time. Whether they can put words to it or not, they knew influence structures had subtly realigned. In executive environments, value is created by alignment in the right moment. This is why you can be exceptional at your job and still be misaligned with your executive.
Signal Literacy is the Differentiator
This is where signal literacy becomes the real differentiator. Signal literacy is the ability to read environments, not just tasks. It goes without saying that those environments change depending on who’s in charge which makes reading signals so critical. What does that look like in the workplace? It could mean any or all these things:
- Noticing context shifts before they’re formally announced and understanding what they actually mean; is someone suddenly included or excluded from meetings they’d normally attend? And is the reason behind that change strategic or just a poor fit?
- To see where influence is really moving, not just where the org chart says it lives; alignment doesn’t always fall according to hierarchy; certain teams or individuals always have more pull than title would indicate
- Recognizing pressure points before they become priorities; disagreements happen but is anyone mentioning a delay will put a company OKR at risk?
- Recalibrate your relevance as the environment changes; are you watching questions go unanswered or are you reminding people that other projects are contingent upon this meeting arriving at a solution?
This isn’t about doing more work or trying harder. It’s about seeing and acting more intentionally.
One of the proudest moments of my career happened when an up-and-coming Director came to me for advice on a meeting he was attending. He was a technically-focused engineering superstar who was panicked about attending a meeting with top leaders from different areas of the company. He had no idea what to present to not only the Chairman but the CFO, CIO, CPO and CMO as well. He never had to cater to those areas and knew very little about their expectations. Little did I know I gave him advice based on being a signal operator despite being an EA at the time. I didn’t tell him to focus on the slide format, data or brevity. I told him about the signals I knew each of them would be looking for based on my prior observations. I recommended things like showing confidence in any financial numbers, mentioning that certain CapEx purchases would improve our tech stack, and how his team could improve communications to move discussions with Product forward. Those were the types of things I knew would capture each leader’s attention. The end result? The Chairman told him that was the best presentation he had ever seen him give.
Adaptability is the Real Performance Multiplier
Business environments are not stable systems. They’re incredibly dynamic. What mattered six months ago often doesn’t matter now. Things change all the time regardless of what type of industry you’re in. This is why adaptability becomes the real performance multiplier. I’m not talking about the concept of simply ‘being flexible’ and going with the flow. This is more about adaptability in the strategic sense: the ability to continuously adjust to the spoken and unspoken dynamics. This is the shape-shifting I mentioned previously. It’s also what was behind my well-placed advice. I had observed that room before and knew what would pique everyone’s interest.
All this means the most valuable EA or Chief of Staff in the room will no longer be the one who has the most skills. Executive environments reward those who are the most perceptive and context-aware. This requires a fundamental identity shift in how these roles are understood. We need to avoid descriptors involving support, execution of tasks or implementation. The positions that get to the next level are true navigators who can read weather conditions and guide the ship accordingly. This means you are not just supporting an executive. You are an operator inside their environment who can guide conversations, which is a distinction that changes everything.
Unfortunately, we’ve built an industry around operational excellence in roles that actually require environmental intelligence. We train for a variety of skills but we barely train for things like:
- power literacy
- executive psychology
- contextual awareness
- signal interpretation
- behavioral calibration
- situational alignment
We’ve over-invested in execution and under-invested in perception. And that’s why so many highly capable professionals feel disconnected. Honestly this concept applies to all professionals, not just EAs and Chiefs of Staff. It’s not because anyone lacks skill, but because people were never taught how to read the environments they operate in.
Situational Intelligence is Essential to Success
This is where what I call Situational Intelligence becomes essential. It’s a lens that’s applied to improve your way of seeing and can help you perceive things differently. Yes, it’s just like having bad eyesight and getting glasses. Everything becomes much clearer. Situational Intelligence sharpens your ability to read power dynamics, decode executive behavior, and anticipate decisions before they’re announced. It helps you to see what others miss so you can use that insight to move with intention and influence.
Our profession doesn’t need more skills. It needs more perception. Because in executive environments, success doesn’t belong to the most competent person in the room. It belongs to the most aligned one.
To learn more about Situational Intelligence, check out Kristine’s latest offering, The Situational Intelligence Guide for Executive Assistants & Chiefs of Staff. As an Executive Assistant or Chief of Staff, you are often reading the room before others and translating what you see into timing, framing, and guidance for executives. This training sharpens that skill, so your insight becomes more intentional rather than instinctive.
About the Author – Kristine Valenzuela
Kristine Valenzuela is a career Executive Assistant and Chief of Staff as well as the Founder of The Secret Executive, a platform revealing the hidden influence, insight, and leadership power inside organizations. With more than 20 years of supporting C-suite leaders across startups and public companies, she operates at the intersection of strategy, trust, and behind-the-scenes leadership.
Often calling her career the “best paid C-suite mentorship ever,” Kristine draws on decades of firsthand exposure to executive decision-making, organizational dynamics, and leadership personalities. Based in San Diego, California, she enjoys traveling, exploring new food scenes, and life with her daughters and two rescue pets.
