The First Conversation

Sixty minutes online, with no agenda. We talk about where you are: what has changed, what has not, and whether this work is the right kind of help for you now. There is nothing to prepare. If we decide to continue, the hour becomes the first session of the engagement.

Yes. It is a paid hour, and if you decide to continue, its fee is credited toward the engagement. If you decide not to, there is no further commitment. The fee is shown when you book.

No. The first conversation stands on its own. If we continue, we choose one of three engagements matched to where you are in the crossing: the Gate (thirty days, weekly), the Bridge (two to three months, every second week), or the Dwelling (three to six months, monthly). An engagement can be extended or changed as the crossing moves.

Online, from wherever you are, across time zones from Australia to North America. In-person sessions are available in Singapore.

Book the first conversation above. If you would rather start smaller, take the free Threshold Snapshot, or have a conversation with Naya first; both are built to be done before we ever speak.

Senior leaders at a threshold they did not choose: a role restructured or handed to AI, a dismissal, burnout, the suspicion of being found out, an exit or a loss, or a return home after years away. Clients have included leaders at LinkedIn, Uber, Coinbase, Gilead, Capgemini and Saint-Gobain, most of them working privately rather than through their organizations.

Yes. A role restructured, localized, or reshaped by AI is the most common reason people come to this work. The second is a dismissal, usually for reasons that had nothing to do with how well you did the job: a merger, a new chief executive with their own people, a layer removed. The coaching is about who you are once the role has changed, and what comes next, rather than the job search itself.

Yes, as a coach rather than a therapist. The burnout I see most is the kind that crept up while everything looked fine from the outside. The work is about the identity underneath the exhaustion: what the performance was costing, and how to rebuild a self that can perform without coming apart. If therapy would also help, I will tell you, and I can refer you to someone.

Yes. Imposter syndrome rises with seniority, and it is one of the doors people come through. The work treats it as a threshold rather than a flaw: the story you have been telling about yourself no longer fits the position you hold, and a truer one has to be built.

Yes. I have lived in five countries and worked in fifty-nine, and coaching leaders on identity and belonging across borders, including the return home after years abroad, has been part of the practice from the beginning. It is one door among several, not a separate service.

Yes. The Threshold Method maps what happens inside a person when the role that defined them ends, whether through a sale, a retirement, or an exit, and the Dwelling engagement is built for the season after: what to keep, what to build, and what to leave.

Take the Threshold Snapshot, a free four-minute reflection that shows you which territory you are in. If it names something you recognize, book the first conversation.

Private, one-to-one coaching built on the Threshold Method, for the identity side of a transition rather than the tactical side. It draws on adult development, the anthropology of rites of passage, and the science of how the body registers change. It begins with a first conversation and continues, if we both choose to, in one of three engagements.

The Threshold Method is a map of identity transition created by Aaron Perkins from twenty years of executive coaching across fifty-nine countries. It names the five territories people tend to move through in a major transition: the Crack, the Freefall, the Noticing, the Crossing, and the Inhabiting. They do not always come in order, and a person can stand in two at once. The Method tells you where you are, what this territory asks of you, and what tends to come next. Explore the Method.

Somatic Foreshadowing is a term coined by Aaron Perkins for the way a change in who you are is felt before it can be said. People in a crossing often notice tightness, fog, restlessness or ease long before they have words for what is shifting. The signals differ from person to person and cannot be read from the outside; the discipline is learning to read your own, as questions rather than verdicts.

No. Coaching works with meaning and emotion, but its focus is clarity and forward movement, not diagnosis or treatment. Aaron holds an ACC credential from the International Coaching Federation and follows its code of ethics, which includes referring clients to a mental health professional when that is the right help.

No. Most clients are still leading while we work, and intend to keep leading. Performance depends on the self that produces it; when that self gives way, the results go with it. The aim is a self that can perform without coming apart, and a life you recognize as your own.

Yes. What is said in sessions stays between us. When an organization sponsors the coaching, the terms are agreed in advance: the sponsor may receive a summary of themes at the client's discretion, and never the content of sessions.

Yes. Some clients are sponsored by their organizations; most come privately. I also facilitate resilience and psychological safety sessions for leadership teams going through restructuring or the reshaping of work by AI.

Chrysalis Leadership Studio is the executive coaching practice of Aaron Perkins, based between Bali and Singapore and working with senior leaders worldwide. It is home to the Threshold Method, the Thresholds newsletter, and three tools built on the Method: the Threshold Snapshot, Naya and Imago.

The Threshold Snapshot is a free reflection of ten questions, answered in about four minutes. It shows you which of the five territories of the Threshold Method you are in, what that ground asks of you, and three practices for while you are there. It is at snapshot.chrysalisleaders.com.

Naya is a coaching companion from Chrysalis Leadership Studio, built on the Threshold Method. You can talk with her at any hour, and return to her between sessions. She knows the terrain, remembers you in your own words, and never rushes you toward a plan. She is free during beta at naya.chrysalisleaders.com.

Imago is a reflective tool from Chrysalis Leadership Studio that gathers five reflections into one narrative portrait of who you are becoming. It is not a personality test; it is a mirror you return to as you change. It is at imago.chrysalisleaders.com.

Thresholds is a monthly essay by Aaron Perkins on the inner work of change, published since October 2025 on Substack and LinkedIn. Each essay ends the same way, with three practices, one question, and an invitation. Read Thresholds.

Aaron Perkins is an executive coach (ACC, International Coaching Federation), the creator of the Threshold Method and of Somatic Foreshadowing, and the founder of Chrysalis Leadership Studio. He has twenty years of leadership development and coaching experience across fifty-nine countries, was faculty at Thunderbird School of Global Management and EAE Business School in Barcelona, and works with senior leaders at a threshold they did not choose. He is based between Bali and Singapore. Read his story.

Yes. I am based between Bali and Singapore, so in-person coaching is in Singapore. Most clients work with me online, from Southeast Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and the Middle East.