Inside the 7th Annual PE-Backed Leadership Summit 

Earlier this month, we joined a dynamic group of senior executives – CEOs, CFOs, and other private equity leaders – at the 2025 Chief Executive Group PE-Backed Leadership Summit. In addition to attending, we hosted a roundtable focused on a critical question: What talent decisions keep portfolio company CEOs up at night? 

The discussion echoed many themes we see in our daily search work, surfacing three consistent challenges: 

1. The cost of delayed action on underperforming executives, 
2. The unique dynamics of CFO hiring in PE-backed companies, and  
3. The increasingly strategic use of assessments beyond traditional hiring decisions.  

Across the broader summit, conversations also reflected the shifting realities of today’s market, where AI adoption, longer holding periods, and evolving leadership demands are reshaping how PE-backed companies think about talent and performance. 

Here are the key takeaways from this year’s conference and what they signal for leadership decisions heading into 2026. 

Three Critical Talent Themes 

Our roundtable centered on the tough questions every CEO eventually faces: 

• When do you know it’s time to evolve your executive team? 

• How do you integrate new leaders into an established culture? 

• What ultimately triggers the decision to make a change? 

Three themes stood out: 

1. The Cost of Waiting  

When we asked participants about their most difficult talent decisions from the past year, the stories had a familiar rhythm:  

Long-tenured executives with strong cultural fit who couldn’t scale with the business anymore.  

Deep institutional knowledge that masked declining performance.  

Relationships that complicated necessary transitions. 

Despite recognizing these gaps, most CEOs said they’d waited six months to a year before acting. The hesitation made sense – concerns about disrupting team dynamics or replacing someone deeply embedded in the culture are valid – but every CEO acknowledged the delay was costly.  

Leaders who build the discipline to move thoughtfully yet decisively on talent changes gain real competitive advantage. The ones who wait almost always wish they hadn’t. 

2. The CFO Hiring Exception 

The group shared consistent insights around PE sponsor involvement in hiring. CEOs voiced that they generally prefer to lead searches independently, except when it comes to the CFO role. 

Multiple participants indicated they actively seek sponsor involvement in CFO searches, with some even preferring to defer to their PE partners for these decisions. The reasoning is clear: in PE-backed companies, the CFO serves dual constituencies and needs credibility with both the management team and the board. Early alignment with sponsors builds trust and ensures strategic cohesion from day one. 

3. Assessment as Strategy, Not Gatekeeping 

Assessments are no longer viewed as simple screening tools. CEOs shared that they’re increasingly leveraging them to inform onboarding, coaching, 360 feedback, and long-term leadership development. Used strategically, assessments provide insight into how leaders perform under pressure, adapt to change, and collaborate – turning what was once a hiring checkpoint into a platform for ongoing performance growth. 

Beyond the Roundtable: AI and Extended Holds 

While our discussion lasered in on talent decision-making, the broader conference surfaced additional critical themes: 

1. AI: From Concept to Operational Reality 

AI dominated the conversation, but the discussions moved past the hype toward real-world application: 

• One Fortune 500 CEO provided specific data on workforce transformation: his organization has grown 50% while reducing headcount in certain functional areas from 308 to 215 roles through AI-enabled automation. His critical insight? AI’s greatest value emerges when coupled with strong human judgment and intervention, not as a replacement for human capability. 
• This executive also challenged traditional mentorship structures, suggesting that experienced leaders should seek younger mentors with native fluency in AI and emerging technologies – a recognition that technical expertise increasingly flows upward. 
• Another presenter explored AI’s application beyond operational efficiency, demonstrating how sophisticated data analysis can reveal entirely new strategic opportunities hidden in underutilized data.  
• Multiple speakers noted that finance functions currently lead in AI adoption and maturity, but emphasized that the most significant value creation opportunities lie in transforming customer acquisition, retention strategies, and go-to-market approaches.

2. The Mid-Hold Leadership Question Another theme that stood out was the increasing gap between private equity hold periods, which are getting longer, and CEO tenure, which continues to shorten. 

Hold periods that once averaged three years now often stretch to five or seven. As a result, many PE firms are asking mid-hold: Is the CEO who got us here still the right leader to take us through the next phase? 

Turnaround leadership and growth leadership are not the same skill set. As portfolio companies evolve, leadership transitions are increasingly happening mid-cycle, not just at exit, requiring CEOs who can adapt, scale, and build for the long term. 

Looking Ahead: Implications for 2026 

The insights from this year’s summit point to five key imperatives for PE-backed leadership teams: 

1. Speed matters in talent decisions. The cost of delayed action on underperforming executives compounds rapidly, and the regret is nearly universal. Building the discipline to move thoughtfully but decisively on these decisions isn’t just about avoiding mistakes; it’s about creating space for the right leaders to drive value. 
2. Embrace strategic partnership with PE sponsors. Particularly for roles like CFO that serve dual constituencies, early alignment with sponsors on hiring decisions strengthens the entire leadership team. Effective CEOs recognize when collaboration creates better outcomes than autonomy. 
3. Leverage assessments as development infrastructure. Executive assessment, coaching, and development planning aren’t peripheral HR activities. They’re core capabilities for building teams that can execute through complexity and adapt when business requirements shift. The leaders treating these tools strategically are building more resilient organizations. 
4. Build genuine AI fluency. CEOs need strategic understanding of where AI creates authentic value and the judgment to separate substantive opportunities from noise. Technical expertise can be hired; strategic discernment has to be developed. 
5. Extended hold periods require a different leadership mindset. Strong current performance matters, but so does the demonstrated capacity to develop new capabilities as needs evolve. Regular, honest dialogue with sponsors about shifting requirements becomes essential rather than optional. 

The fundamentals haven’t changed: get the right people in the right seats and make tough decisions quickly. But in today’s environment, “quickly” matters more than ever, and “right” keeps evolving based on where the business is headed.