The Coul & Gold Group
Executive Advisory

The Chief of Staff
Relationship Is Your
Highest-Leverage Variable

Getting the conditions right is what determines
whether it performs. We help you build it correctly.
coulandgold.com  ·  Executive Advisory  ·  By Discovery Call
The Problem

A Chief of Staff Is One of the Highest-Leverage Investments You Can Make. It Is Also One of the Easiest to Get Wrong.

Not because of the person, usually. Because the role was scoped wrong, introduced badly, or handed to someone without the structural conditions to succeed. The authority was never clearly established. The mandate was ambiguous from day one. The relationship quietly drifted into expensive administrative support while the strategic function you actually needed went unfilled.

We fix that. Before it happens, or after.

A Chief of Staff hire at the level most executives are making this investment runs $175,000–$250,000 in salary alone. Add recruiting fees, onboarding time, and the organizational drag of a role that isn't functioning correctly, and a failed or underperforming CoS engagement costs north of $400,000 before you've accounted for the leadership bandwidth you spent managing it instead of running the organization.

More to the point: a Chief of Staff who is technically in the role but operating below it, absorbed in operational work while the strategic coordination function sits empty, is costing you that investment every year while producing a fraction of the return.

Our advisory engagement will tell you specifically what's broken, show you what it takes to fix it, and give you the tools to build a relationship that actually scales your capacity. The ROI calculation isn't complicated.
When We Work Together

Three Moments When This Engagement Has the Highest Return

We start with an intake conversation to understand what's actually happening, not the presenting issue, but the root one. From there, sessions are built around your specific situation.

Before the Hire
Getting the role designed correctly before anyone walks in the door
What authority, access, and mandate need to be explicitly established. How to introduce the CoS to your leadership team in a way that preserves their effectiveness before they've had the chance to demonstrate it. What the role actually needs to look like given how you operate, not how the job description says it should.
In the First Year
Whether the relationship is tracking toward what you actually need
What's working structurally, what isn't, and what adjustments close the gap before the dysfunction becomes entrenched. Whether your CoS is operating at the level the role requires, and if not, whether that's a capability problem, a structural one, or something you've inadvertently created.
When Something Is Off
Diagnosing specifically what's broken, not just that it isn't working
Which structural pillar is missing, where the trust architecture has gaps, and whether the fix sits with your CoS, with you, or with the conditions of the role itself. Most executives in this position already know something is wrong. What they don't have is a precise diagnosis, and without that, the interventions don't land.
The Methodology

Diagnostic Frameworks Built Specifically for This Relationship

Our advisory sessions draw on proprietary frameworks built specifically for the CoS relationship, not adapted from general leadership coaching. Each one addresses a different dimension of why this relationship succeeds or fails.

Framework 01
Five-Pillar Trust Architecture
A diagnostic model that identifies whether your CoS can function in the operating environment you've created for them, and what's missing if they can't. Maps trust conditions across five dimensions, each of which must be present for the role to perform.
Framework 02
Nine-Dimension Leadership Operating Signature
A structured diagnostic of how you actually operate as a leader, under pressure, across three clusters of behavior, and what that operating signature demands from the person in the CoS role. Most executives have never had this mapped with this precision.
Framework 03
CoS Readiness Taxonomy
A structured assessment that distinguishes between a CoS who needs development and one who was set up to fail before they started. Removes the guesswork from decisions about whether to invest further, restructure the role, or make a change.
150+
Chiefs of Staff interviewed across sectors and organization sizes
20+
Years of combined operating experience inside the CoS role
2
Practitioners, one from inside the role, one from the diagnostic architecture
What You Walk Away With

Concrete Outputs.
Not Just Better Conversations.

Every session produces something usable. By the end of the engagement you will have a set of working documents built around your specific organization, your operating style, and the specific CoS relationship you're navigating. Between sessions, you have direct access to both Rachael and Suzi, not a ticketing system, not a support queue.

A Defined Role Scope for Your CoS
What your CoS owns, what they don't, and how that boundary is maintained as the organization evolves. Built around your specific leadership structure, not a generic job description.
A Trust Architecture Assessment
A diagnostic showing precisely where the conditions for your CoS to succeed are present, where they're missing, and a concrete plan to close the gaps. Drawn from the Five-Pillar framework, applied to your specific relationship.
Your Leadership Operating Signature
A mapped profile of how you operate across nine dimensions, what your operating environment demands from the people around you, where it creates friction, and what a CoS needs to look like to function effectively in it. Most executives have never seen this about themselves with this level of precision.
Clear Expectations and Success Metrics
A written framework for what success looks like in the CoS relationship, at three months, six months, and one year, and how you'll both know when it's working and when it needs to be adjusted.
A CoS Relationship That Multiplies Your Capacity
The end state: a Chief of Staff who extends your reach, sharpens your decision-making, and gives your organization a coordination capacity it didn't have before. Not a well-meaning assistant. A strategic multiplier.
Who This Is For

Any Executive With a Chief of Staff, or Considering One

You don't need to already have a CoS in place. Some of our most effective engagements happen before the hire, when we can design the role correctly before anyone walks in the door.

What you do need is a genuine problem to solve. If the relationship is working exactly as it should, you don't need us. If there's a gap between what you expected and what you have, in authority, in output, in strategic contribution, that's where this work begins.

Considering hiring a CoS
You want to get the architecture right before the hire, scope, authority, introduction strategy, and the operating relationship design that determines whether the investment pays off.
CoS in place, relationship underperforming
Something isn't working and you can't quite name what it is. Or you can name it, but your interventions aren't landing. You need a precise diagnosis before you make a decision that's hard to reverse.
CoS in place, working well, want to go further
The relationship functions. You want to understand your own operating signature more precisely, unlock the next level of what the CoS can do, and design the conditions for genuine strategic partnership.
Investment

What This Costs,
and What It's Worth

Rachael Goldfarb built her career in the rooms where the CoS role had to work, the Clinton White House, the Gates Foundation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where she was employee #19 and helped build an agency from scratch. Suzi Coul served as Chief of Staff to a Deputy Prime Minister and Lord Chancellor, one of the most senior roles in British government, with complete operational authority across parliamentary, ministerial, and political responsibilities.

Between them, they bring a diagnostic depth and operating credibility that doesn't exist elsewhere in a CoS-specific advisory context. The engagement is scoped to your specific situation, and structured to put the right perspective in front of you at the right moment, not to deliver a predetermined program.

Fees are paid in two equal installments: half at signing, half after the third session (6-session) or the sixth session (12-session).

Engagement Options
6 Sessions · 3 Months
$12,000 – $15,000
1 intake + six 50-minute working sessions
12 Sessions · 6 Months
$22,000 – $27,000
1 intake + twelve 50-minute working sessions
Monthly Retainer · Ongoing
$5,000 – $7,500
Per month · For ongoing executive advisory relationships
Direct access to Rachael and Suzi between sessions
Written deliverables you own and keep
Built around your specific situation, no predetermined curriculum
Both practitioners engaged where the work requires it
Fees paid in two equal installments: half at signing, half after the third session (6-session) or sixth session (12-session).
Start Here
Book a Discovery Call
Thirty minutes, live, with Rachael or Suzi directly. No form to fill out first. Tell us where you are and we'll tell you what fits, and whether we're the right people for it.
Book a Free Discovery Call
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