Stephen A. Miles

Stephen Miles is the founder and chief executive officer of The Miles Group. Previously, he was a vice chairman at Heidrick & Struggles and ran Leadership Advisory Services. With more than 15 years of experience in assessment, executive coaching, top-level succession planning, organizational effectiveness and strategy consulting, Stephen specializes in CEO succession and has partnered with numerous boards of global Fortune 500 companies to ensure that a successful leadership selection and transition occurs. He has also led many chairman successions and board effectiveness reviews, partnering with boards of directors to help them with their overall effectiveness, committee effectiveness and individual director effectiveness. Stephen is a recognized expert on the role of the chief operating officer, and has consulted numerous companies on the establishment and the effectiveness of the position and supporting the transition from COO to effective CEO. He is a coach to many CEOs and COOs around the world, and his clients cut across all industry sectors. Stephen and his CEO advisory services were profiled in the Bloomberg Businessweek article “The Rising Star of CEO Consulting.” Prior to The Miles Group and Heidrick & Struggles, Stephen held various positions at Andersen Consulting. Stephen is author and co-editor of the best-selling business book Leaders Talk Leadership. He also co-authored Riding Shotgun: The Role of the Chief Operating Officer, as well as the cover article in the May 2006 issue of Harvard Business Review on the same topic. Stephen also co-authored the feature article in the April 2007 issue of Harvard Business Review titled: “The Leadership Team—Complementary Strengths or Conflicting Agendas? Great top teams work to their members’ disparate strengths—but those differences can cause discord, too, especially during succession.” His third book, Your Career Game: How Game Theory Can Help You Achieve Your Professional Goals, was released in April 2010 (Stanford University Press). He is currently completing a new book on CEO succession, to be published by Stanford. He also wrote the chapter on “Assessing the Leader” for Linkage Inc.’s Best Practices in Leadership Development Handbook, 2nd edition; Wiley 2009. Stephen is the author of the Stanford Graduate School of Business case study entitled “Multimillionaire Matchmaker: An Inside Look at CEO Succession Planning.” Stephen has been featured in Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek, Directorship, Boardroom Intelligence, Strategy + Business, The Wall Street Journal, Consulting Magazine, MIT Sloan, Ivey Business Journal, and CEO Magazine. He is a regular contributor to Bloomberg Businessweek’s “The Management Blog.” He is a frequent speaker on the topics of CEO succession, coaching C-level executives, talent management and complementary leadership at the top (high performance teams). He is an advisory board member at The Pythian Group, as well as a member of Big Think’s Delphi Fellows program. He holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s of business administration, both from Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada. He also holds a master’s degree in psychology from the University of Victoria. Stephen currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia. He has lived in Kenya, South Africa, Iraq, Argentina and Canada.