In Leadership With Consciousness Tony Humphreys posits that economic factors alone are not sufficient to explain the worldwide recession that started in 2008; indeed, he graphically points out that those economic processes are always enmeshed with powerful, often unconscious defensive emotional processes.

Tony Humphries argues that we can no longer blame institutions or governments for the economic crisis and that the fault lies with individual leaders who acted inhumanely and unethically. The book strongly argues that it is the mature process of being conscious of the need to resolve their unconscious defenses that lies at the heart of leadership effectiveness and development. The book sets out to facilitate leaders in this mature process by showing why and how unconscious defenses are created, how they can be identified, and how conscious resolutions can be found.