Ask a Chief of Staff: The Internal Standup w/ Thomas Knoll
🗓️ Join us on July 7th!
Every Chief of Staff knows the feeling: you're in the meeting, you're nodding along, and meanwhile there's a whole second conversation happening in your head. Sometimes it sounds like this:
"Why can't we move faster?"
"What if someone finds out I've never done this before?"
"Why does that person think they can ignore what I told them to do?"
"Don't you know who I am and what I did at my last company?!"
“Why doesn’t that person trust me?”
"Why do I always get stuck at this part?"
"Why didn't they convert?"
"What if we run out of money?"
"Am I the only person this happens to?"
Most workplace advice tells you to shut that noise down and find the right answer. Thomas Knoll teaches the opposite: give those voices a seat at the table, run the meeting, and get back to leading. He calls it the Internal Standup.
Think Pixar's Inside Out, but as a leadership practice. Different parts of you — the strategist, the imposter, the one who's furious, the one who's scared — get a quick turn to speak. You hear them out, make a clearer call, and move. The first time it takes five or ten minutes. With reps, it becomes a two-second internal conversation you can run mid-meeting without anyone knowing — or share out loud with your team to build real psychological safety.
✅ What attendees will leave with
A practical playbook for breaking into a CoS role - how to position your background, where these roles actually get filled, and what hiring principals are really looking for
A clearer picture of the mindset shifts required to move from advising to owning outcomes once you're in the role
An honest view of where consulting and strategy skills are a superpower in the CoS seat, and where they can quietly hold you back
👀 What to expect:
You'll bring a recent situation where you felt genuinely worked up at work.
Thomas will guide the group through the Internal Standup process, live.
You'll leave with a checklist to keep practicing on your own.
⚠️ A few things to know before you RSVP:
This is participatory. Please join if you're ready to do the exercise.
Please do not join if you're hoping to background the call while you work on two other things. There is no recording.
Think Gordon Ramsay leading a meditation retreat.
🎙️ More about the Speakers
Thomas Knoll is a 6x founder, executive coach, and veteran operator who has spent his career navigating the shift from ideation to scale. Over the course of his career, he has successfully achieved two exits, shipped over 100 products, and guided more than 1,200 mentoring and coaching clients. Driven by a deep focus on his personal Ikigai, Thomas pairs his executive-level successes with the invaluable lessons learned from over 10,000 failures to bring a deeply practical, real-world practitioner's perspective on what building and scaling a modern company actually takes.
💜 Ask a Chief of Staff
Ask a Chief of Staff is a premier executive search and career development platform dedicated to placing top-tier Chiefs of Staff and empowering professionals in strategic leadership roles. We serve ambitious professionals and high-growth companies by offering executive recruiting, mentorship programs, and career resources tailored to Chiefs of Staff. By addressing the lack of structured career paths for this role, we provide guidance, connections, and opportunities that accelerate leadership development and organizational success.
Learn more at askachiefofstaff.com.