So, your CEO has hired or promoted you, and you’re a newly minted deputy executive. Congratulations! Whether your new business card says chief operating officer, chief information officer, or something else, at some point down the line, you’ll probably find yourself asking: “How will I know if I’m growing in this role?”

The answer to that question might have felt more straightforward when you were leading a specific business vertical. If your department’s budget, team morale, and KPIs were improving over time, these were reasonable indicators you were also growing as a specialized leader, tactician, and team builder.

However, as a member of the executive team, your new domain is fundamentally global and requires global skills. Your priorities are now focused on organizational indicators such as metrics that are indicative of broad team efforts. Some of these metrics may be used by the board of directors to evaluate the CEO’s performance, which includes their selection and leadership of your executive team.

In that environment, how does a new leader extrapolate feedback on their own contribution and performance for the sake of personal growth? It’s tricky even to benchmark to peers, since every deputy role to some extent takes on the unique characteristics of the CEO’s needs, expectations, and leadership philosophy.

Continued growth requires continuous feedback. If you need some help identifying reliable indicators at this new level, here are three ideas to try.

Recruit Mentors

In a best-case scenario, you should have a trusting partnership with your CEO, where you learn from one another. The CEO is invested in your growth, provides regular feedback, and teaches daily by example. Even then, a good boss is not the same thing as a mentor.

Written goals will help confirm that you and your CEO are on the same page. They also create baselines for regular feedback and reflection.

Nancy Spector, M.D., executive director of the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine program at Drexel University College of Medicine, describes a good mentor as someone who helps you step back and reflect and is focused solely on your growth. It doesn’t have to be a very formal relationship, but you should take the lead and put in the effort. Show your mentor you value their time and experience.

Ideally, you should have more than one mentor. Spector recommends developing a mentoring matrix to brainstorm potential mentors, mapping expertise with the areas in which you would like to grow.

Set Measurable Personal Goals Regularly

Write down two to three personal goals each quarter, articulating the areas where you will add value over the next three months. Written goals will help confirm that you and your CEO are on the same page. They also create baselines for regular feedback and reflection, not only about success toward those goals but also the inevitable leadership lessons, challenges, and achievements you encounter in the process.

Goals at this level may look like leading teams toward deliverables around strategy or operational change, conducting research to inform a key decision the CEO and/or executive team must make, or owning primary responsibility for an internal metric that reflects a need for transformational change across departments.

Work Toward a New Credential

Credentials and certifications will not help you measure performance in your current role, but they are a good mechanism for benchmarking theoretical competency. They are concrete measures that respond to your own effort. This kind of straightforward feedback can be a refreshing compliment to the fuzzier day-to-day realities of executive leadership, especially in a post-pandemic world unmoored from many previously reliable benchmarks.

If you have not already, now is a perfect time to work toward your CAE credential or put in that final push if you have been putting it off. As you hone your grasp on the exam’s core domains, you will likely find lots of opportunities to put theory into practice at your organization. And, of course, these points of action will benefit from coherent goals and reflective conversation with a seasoned mentor.

There you have it: three feedback mechanisms to chart your growth as a new deputy leader! You’ve got this.