This sounds like you are trying to gaslight yourself. Gelsinger did not get rid of an "ineffective leader." Koduri left to go do something else.
From the outside this looks like a classic case of giving someone a window seat and sending the message, if not outright telling them: 'figure out your next career move'. He botched Arc badly (both in execution and messaging) and was briefly promoted then demoted. Had he tried to stick around, he most likely would have been let go and soon.
in this case, Intel's situation on GPUs is so dire that it makes total sense to clear the bench...the status quo was bleak