The purpose of this research is to explore the roles and responsibilities of the governance layer of steering or leading staff in pubic organizations in Iran. In this research, steering staff means those people and parts at the top of the organizational hierarchy and in charge of policy functions (“Steering”) rather than service-delivery and compliance functions (“Rowing”). Approach of the research is mixed (both qualitative and quantitative). In the qualitative part, thematic analiysis has been used to interpret the data (collected by means of semi-structured interview). Also, in the quantitative part, a survey is conducted to test the findings of the previous part (here, data are collected by means of questionnaire). Findings and results of research shows that five major themes of Leading and Directing, Optimizing structure, Empowering subordinate unites, Performance management and monitoring, and finally Human Resource Management related functions are among the main roles and Responsibilities of steering staffs; Questionnaire respondents have evaluated the “Importance” of these variables very high, but in the “Current Situation” these variables suffer from lack of sufficient attention.