What Problems do Leadership Consultants Solve?
When a PortCo stalls, the kneejerk response is to terminate the leader.
Board members look at surface symptoms like poor communication, lack of presence, or an inability to produce results, and immediately start thinking about termination.
But this completely misses the actual problem, and costs you WAY TOO MUCH money to do so.
Rule number one of the Human Operating System: you are NEVER upset for the reason you think you are.
Leaders rarely fail because of a lack of skill. They fail because of the internal bottlenecks that keep them from using their natural talents.
True leadership consulting does not provide abstract advice. It diagnoses root psychological resistance and pulls specific levers to get the business moving again.
Beyond People Verse Profits
The primary issue with mainstream leadership development is that it glides right past this. I get it. Big firms have tons of overhead and were built to scale, not necessarily solve.
The result is topical ointments for concepts like work-life balance, handling conflict, building confidence. They’re great concepts, but they’re treated as separate from the commercial reality of running a company.
This creates a false binary in the corporate collective. Boards believe they must choose to either care for the bottom line, or make sure their PortCo leaders are home for dinner with their family. But not both.
But in order for leadership development to be truly useful, it must go beyond concept, and directly serve the reality that a business exists simply to provide a good or service in exchange for currency.
At The President’s Coach, we believe that true leadership consulting rejects the either-or choice and instead optimizes each leader's Human Operating System, as a way to protect and grow the bottom line.
The Core Leadership Levers
When a leadership consultant approaches the brass through the Human OS, they stop trying to teach external behaviors and start looking at which internal levers are stuck, and need to be pulled to naturally improve performance.
The Self-Advocacy Lever
“A company cannot grow under the reign of an old-school executive.” This is a commonly held belief, and on the surface, seems totally acceptable.
It might appear that a director cannot take the action they want to because of their domineering boss. But in reality, what we’ve found is that regardless of company or industry, it’s the director who unconsciously seeks out the dominant boss. Why? To insulate themselves from the self-trust required to execute their vision.
Pulling the self-advocacy lever realigns their internal trust, giving them the confidence to stand on their own to drive company growth, regardless of who hired them.
The Intrapersonal Conflict Resolution Lever
Sometimes a leader remains stuck in operational drama because it reminds them of their own internal comfort zone.
A director might believe they have massive external stressors, such as an unstable romantic relationship or a chaotic team dynamic. Upon closer inspection, the real cause is often that they are simply more comfortable having something to fix than allowing everything to be okay. Pulling the intrapersonal conflict resolution lever clears this internal noise so they can focus on creating profit for your investors.
The Asset and Capacity Management Levers
A newly promoted senior leader might be criticized for failing to not think big enough or constantly reverting to working in the weeds.
While it appears as an execution flaw, it’s actually an asset management one.
When a PortCo CEO feels insecure, he or she reverts to the behaviors that brought them love, safety, and validation when they were young. Which is more often than not, good ol’ fashion, nose-to-the-grindstone work.
To fix this, the leadership consultants focus needs to be capacity management: Building the PortCo CEOs ability to recognize their current mental bandwidth, and giving them the tools to expand it in the moment.
For example, a PortCo CEO who is trapped in back-to-back meetings six days a week can integrate physical movement, like keeping a kettlebell in their car or office to swing during transition moments. When their physical state shifts, so too does the head space in which they make decisions. And the result is natural, big picture thinking.
The Brutal Math of Executive Turnover
When boards choose to fire a leader instead of fixing these internal misalignments, they rarely understand the true financial impact of that decision. If they did, especially those who run small or medium sized funds, I honestly don’t think they’d do it.
Replacing a PortCo CEO is one of the most expensive mistakes a company can make.
The direct cost to replace a leader is 200% to 400% of their base salary
Executive recruiters command an additional 30% of the leader's entire first-year cash earnings (base + bonuses)
It takes an average of 42 days to find a replacement
It takes an average of 171 days for a new leader to fully get up to speed
During those 213 total days of transition, the company suffers an average 30% productivity loss
For a typical PortCo CEO, that adds up to roughly $950,000 and almost a year of operating at 70% capacity.
This massive drain severely damages exit timelines and can take a sizable chunk out of EBITDA.
In contrast, The Human OS solves the actual problems 96% cheaper and 8x faster than firing and replacing. That’s good math.
The Reality Check on Doing It Yourself
Skeptical board members, managing partners, and operating partners often hesitate to use outside expertise because they believe they should be able to fix it themselves.
While I understand, this logic completely disregards the immense opportunity cost of executive time.
Could I probably change a flat tire on my car by the side of the highway? Sure. But will it take twice as long as if a professional did it? Yes. Will it take four times the effort? Yes. And will it be an enjoyable experience? Absolutely not.
By letting an expert “handle the tire”, you free up your time and energy to focus on the actual value creation you bring to your investors.
The same rule applies to managing your top human capital. If fixing your leadership bottleneck was something you wanted to do, and had the unique diagnostic tools to do, it’d be done, and your timeline and exit multiple would be in check.
Bringing in a consultant isn't an admission of failure; it is an aggressive ROI strategy that creates the necessary room for the business to run as you designed in the thesis.
