Experts leading experts
Bench Strength Advisors helps experts become leaders of other experts.
Expertise comes in kinds. Command of the law and the practice area. A financial mind that sees what the numbers are doing. The rainmaker who generates the business. The scientist whose work moves the field. The physician or nurse whose clinical judgment patients trust with their lives. Every organization runs on people like this.
But every organization also needs people who can manage and lead all of its other experts. That is a different capability, and it is not for everyone. Some incumbent experts want it — they have the desire to develop and lead the next generation of talent. The question is whether they have the ability, and whether they will hit the ground running.
Some of what made them excellent in their native field transfers: judgment, standards, credibility with other experts. Some of it works directly against leadership effectiveness. And much of what leading requires was never part of the expert's craft at all, and has to be developed. The algebra is complicated. Getting it wrong is expensive.
So the work is practical and scientific at once: succession plans for key roles built on data rather than instinct; a first hundred days with a plan behind it; and coaching that develops these experts before, during, and after their promotion into senior leadership roles.
The firm
Bench Strength Advisors is a leadership assessment and development firm led by its two founders. We work where leadership appointments carry real consequences: law firm partnerships, PE-owned companies, and succession decisions. Based in Vail, Colorado and New York, working nationally — and, through August Leadership, globally.
Jeffrey Cohn
Jeffrey Cohn co-authored a Harvard Business Review article with Jon Katzenbach — a career spent on one question: who should lead, and what is the evidence? He served as a leadership and succession advisor at Spencer Stuart and at Heidrick & Struggles, working with CEOs, general counsels, boards, and senior partners on exactly that question. He was a fellow at the CEO Leadership Institute and a case facilitator at Harvard Business School, where he helped write the first leadership case study on Apple.
At Bench Strength he leads program architecture and facilitation, sponsor and board-level conversations, and the succession and governance work — the strategic and commercial side of every engagement. Within August Leadership, he leads the law firm practice and is building the firm's succession practice.
LinkedInDr. Carrie Muchow
Dr. Carrie Muchow is a counseling psychologist who applies the science of assessment to leadership. Her clinical training ran from Rikers Island to major New York hospitals; today she coaches senior partners at global law firms and leaders of PE-backed companies. The settings could not be more different. What people need in order to change is remarkably similar: someone who understands them, tells them the truth, and doesn't flinch.
She co-developed a leadership assessment profile with DHR International. Alongside the coaching, she serves as lead evaluator on federally funded (SAMHSA) behavioral health program evaluations — the measurement discipline behind the firm's assessment work.
Ph.D., Counseling Psychology, Teachers College, Columbia.
LinkedInHow we divide the work
Jeffrey brings strategic judgment on succession, governance, and partnership leadership. Carrie brings behavioral assessment and developmental insight. Both stay personally involved in delivery — especially where the individual, the leadership system, and the commercial priorities intersect. There is no junior bench, and no handoff after the sale.
The science behind the work
Jeffrey has thought about this science for more than thirty years — first at Harvard Business School, then at the CEO Leadership Institute and INSEAD; as co-author of the award-winning Why Are We Bad at Picking Good Leaders?; and in the corporate world, advising boards on CEO succession at Spencer Stuart and Heidrick & Struggles.
Carrie holds a master's and a Ph.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University, with advanced training in neuropsychology, and brings a deep understanding of the science behind leadership behaviors and mindsets — what can change, what it takes to change it, and how you would know.
Our partnership with August Leadership
Bench Strength works in tight partnership with August Leadership, a top global talent management consultancy in executive search and leadership advisory, with partners across the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa.
The pairing is deliberate, and it is the firm's design: our clients get founder-led, hands-on work — local responsiveness, both principals in the room — backed by a global platform's scale and by the cultural and cognitive diversity of a worldwide partnership. Engagements that need more than two people draw on August colleagues. Searches sit under August's roof, not ours: Bench Strength does not conduct searches; when a role is filled from outside, it is an August Leadership engagement, run through August's network of search consultants — and August reports a 96% placement success rate and 95% candidate retention after two years across its search practice.
A boutique's attention, a global firm's reach. Neither half works as well without the other.
Writing and conversations
Our articles, executive brief, and podcast live on the Thought Leadership page.
Thought Leadership