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New Leaders: How to Make Tough Calls and Lead with Presence — Without Sacrificing Your Weekends, Health, or Sleep

Learn to interrupt the survival patterns keeping you trapped, so you can lead authentically without burning out. Rooted Leadership is a 12-month 1:1 leadership coaching program for new and future leaders ready to “stop faking it till they make it”, stay grounded through the pressure, and lead as who they actually are.

Is this you?

You took the role because you had something real to contribute and want to do this well.
But now you spend most of your week doing things that were definitely not going to move the needle for your team.
Like doing the task yourself because explaining it feels slower — and then quietly resenting everyone for not knowing how to do it.
Or giving feedback so gently that the person leaves the conversation thinking everything is fine. It is not fine. You both know it is not fine. But here you both are.
Or over-explaining every decision to everyone, yet feeling less confident than ever.
None of this is a you problem.
These are survival patterns — installed across generations by systems that needed people compliant, exhausted, and too busy putting out other people’s fires.
And the pattern isn’t running because you lack skill, commitment, or emotional intelligence.
It is running because your nervous system is doing what nervous systems do — treating any kind of pressure like a survival situation, and reacting accordingly.
The good news is that you can rewire your nervous system.
The even better news is that it does not take years of introspection, a sabbatical, or reading another book about daring to lead.
It takes two live one-to-one calls a month and the willingness to practice in real conditions.
That is what Rooted Leadership is for.

The hidden reason your patterns keep coming back…

You already know what needs to change. You have known for a while. And every time you try to change it and the pattern runs anyway — the self-criticism arrives right behind it.

"You should know better. You have done enough work to be past this." That voice is not helping you change. It is keeping you stuck.

Every minute you spend in that spiral is a minute your body is not available for the honest attention that actual change requires. You cannot interrupt a pattern while you are busy punishing yourself for having it.

This is where most leadership development fails you. It teaches you what to change but not how to stay in honest relationship with yourself when your pattern keeps returning. Or how to nurture an internal environment where change can actually take root. Like growing the capacity for rest. For grief. For uncertainty. For mess. For joy. For compassion. For the fullness of your humanity. In other words, the capacity to be a safe place for your own failures as a natural part of being human, to hold them with honest compassion... And return to your practice without failure becoming the story you tell about who you are as a leader.

That last one is the hardest. And it is the one that makes everything else possible. This is what we do in Rooted Leadership.
Because you cannot grow in a climate that treats every mistake as evidence of something wrong with you.
And you cannot lead others into genuine change if you have not built the capacity to hold your own.

The 3 anchors nobody teaches us

Most leadership training works at the level of the mind.
Better frameworks. Clearer communication scripts. More thorough preparation. Another model for difficult conversations.
But when the pressure spikes?
When the team member pushes back, when the crisis lands, when the high-stakes meeting starts and your stomach drops?
The frameworks disappear and your survival pattern takes over.
Why?
Because your nervous system does not just need to stop the old pattern.
It needs a direction to move toward, anchors that are bigger and older than us, a pull that is stronger than your survival pattern...
Especially when the pressure is highest and you’re mostly likely to default to your old patterns.
Anchor 1, Your Body: In Rooted Leadership, we practice that direction in your body as a felt sense of where you are going. It cuts through urgency, helps you say no, and helps you keep practicing even when your motivation has completely disappeared.
Most new leaders have been trained to override that intelligence rather than trust it. The result is decisions that feel off, boundaries that collapse, and a creeping sense that you are performing instead of leading.
Anchor 2, Your Ancestors: Your ancestors have always found ways to lead their families, communities, and themselves through displacement, genocide poverty, war, famine, and systems designed to grind them down. That wisdom is encoded in your nervous system. Most new leaders have never been shown how to access that intelligence. Rooted Leadership teaches you how.
Anchor 3, The Land: Your nervous system is biologically calibrated to exist in relationship with the natural world. When you are chronically cut off from that relationship, as most modern leaders are, you also lose access to your natural leadership and rootedness. The result shows up as chronic urgency, poor recovery, and the inability to slow down long enough to make decisions from your values instead of high pressures.
Learning to anchor in these 3 relationships will sustain your transformation far beyond this coaching program.

The patterns that cost you the most...

...Are the ones hiding underneath the patterns you know about.
Maybe you can recognize when you're over-explaining. But underneath it sits the specific moment from years ago when your judgment was publicly questioned and your nervous system decided that justifying yourself first was safer than trusting yourself. So you keep justifying. And the more you explain, the less confident you appear. And the less confident you appear, the more you feel the need to explain. The fear created exactly what you were afraid of.
This is what happens when you lead from what you are afraid of instead of what you actually want.
The fear runs the show. And the fear is very good at producing the exact outcome it was trying to prevent.
Rooted Leadership helps you see clearly what is actually driving your behavior and what breaks the cycle.
Because once you can see it clearly, you can lead from what you genuinely want instead.
And this shift changes everything downstream.

Leaders who do this work get to...

- Lead as who they actually are and not spend the whole meeting managing how they come across…
- Create a real impact with their work and still sleep well, eat real food, exercise, and end a Friday without feeling like they need a week to recover…
- Make tough calls without replaying it for the next 3 days and wondering if they should have done it differently…
- Relax into their favorite book on a Friday evening without their brains still running the meeting that ended three hours ago…
- Be taken seriously by their team members not through force, but through the quality of their presence…
- Close gap between their values and their daily behavior…
- Stop making decisions from urgency and pressure…
- Stop feeling like an imposter and feel a deep sense of belonging in any room…
- Look back in five years and see that they’ve built something important without abandoning who they are…

What clients have said about working with me

"In 4 weeks, I have felt more myself than I have in a very long time. I feel much more equipped to face the world outside of the shell I've long since outgrown."
"I was drawn to how you encourage people to connect with their true being and not the colonized version of themselves"
"In 4 weeks, it feels easier to offer myself self-compassion knowing that I'm taking steps towards Right Relationship with the land, my ancestors, and myself."
"You supported a couple of personal shifts I’ve been working on, in a gentle and aligned way. I especially appreciated the anti-ableist approach that took my energy and capacity into account."
"The last 4 weeks have been instrumental in helping me slow down and connect to myself without shame. I have never felt so held by the Earth and I'm more motivated than ever to take care of Her and readily offer Her my attention and appreciation"
"The practical support helped me integrate anti-capitalist ideals I’ve been working on for years. Sometimes it’s hard to put them into practice, so this focused time with support was excellent. I feel more attuned with my body’s experience of time pressure."

What Rooted Leadership entails

Two 60-minute calls per month
These calls identify the exact habit making you perform or second-guess yourself, how it hides in your body, and how to interrupt that pattern in real conditions — so you can lead from rootedness instead of reactivity.
Pre-call reflection form, submitted 48 hours before our call
This 25-minute form creates an intentional quiet space for you to pause, get completely honest about your journey, and own your growth before our calls. If you do not submit it, the call is canceled without a refund. Because transformation requires real rigor and skin in the game.
Bespoke practices and tools

Before your first call, you will complete a onboarding form where you'll share your access needs, your preferred learning style, your preferred somatic style, and more. This is how every tool, practice, and call gets calibrated to your specific needs. You'll get customized practices, trackers, and resources rooted in your body, lineages, and the unique environment you inhabit. These build your moment-to-moment awareness right in the middle of a busy workday. They show you exactly how your patterns change under pressure, so you can stop “faking it” and trust your leadership. This is how you'll notice and interrupt your patterns before they take over your life, health, and relationships.

Asynchronous chat/email support between calls
A space to receive support when you tried your practice in a real situation and you want to share what actually happened, or when a question comes up that can't wait until the next call.

The investment

$400 per month OR $4,500 upfront for 12 months
12 months gives us the time we need for repeated practice in real conditions, before your new response becomes more available than your old patterns. 12 months is how we see if your new patterns hold under pressure in the long run. This program is also designed to produce lasting change in your life within a defined timeframe, instead of creating dependency, as is common in the coaching and wellness industry.
If at any point there is misalignment between us, either of us can end the working relationship. And if you engage fully in the first 30 days and find this is not a right fit, you will receive a full refund. No hard feelings.

Upfront payment of $4,500 includes:

- One additional bonus month of coaching (26 calls instead of 24) - Your first call extended to a 90-minute deep dive into your story, patterns, and desired outcomes - $300 stays in your pocket to put toward whatever your leadership actually needs right now
$4,500 over a year is about $12 a day. Most new leaders spend more than that everyday managing their survival patterns with bandaids.
Like the coffee and snack that gets you through the afternoon crash that would not exist if you were not overriding your body's signals all morning.
Or the thousand-dollar weekend retreat that feels good for approximately four days before the same patterns are running your life.
Or the leadership book that named your patterns exactly and did not change what happened at the next meeting.
None of these are inherently bad choices — but how many of them changed how you lead, how you show up for your team, or how you feel about yourself at the end of a hard week?
Rooted Leadership is an investment in every aspect of your daily life, relationships, health, and career. How many other ways have you spent $12 that could help you accomplish that in a day?

Risk-free guarantee

Try the first 30 days fully. This means attending both scheduled calls with your reflection form submitted at least 48 hours ahead of time. Doing at least one of your customized somatic practices (which are designed to be embedded in your daily life) 3x a week in the first 30 days. Reaching out via text or email at least once between calls with a specific question or to share how your practice is landing in real life. In other words — actually do the work.


If you complete all of that and find that my coaching style is genuinely not the right fit for how you grow, send me an email before day 30. Tell me what you tried and what felt misaligned, and you will receive a full refund (excluding payment processing fees). No hard feelings.


This guarantee is for honest fit, not for people who attend one call, skip the practices, and decide it did not work. I am confident that the right person who engages with this work honestly will benefit. But some approaches genuinely do not work for some people, and that is worth knowing early. That is what the 30 days is for — to find out for yourself if this work is right for you.

Who this is for

This is for you if you are: - Already doing the political and intellectual work — and ready for the embodied practice to match it

- Willing to look at your own behaviors and patterns without avoiding discomfort - Ready to change behavior, not just deepen understanding - Consistent enough to show up even when it is inconvenient - Willing to be challenged without needing feedback softened - Ready to take responsibility for your emotions, habits, reactions, and relational impact

- Committed to practicing between calls — in real decisions, real relationships, real life - Have the financial and emotional stability to engage fully

This container is not the right fit if:

- You are looking for someone to manage your process.
- You want to understand yourself better without changing your behavior.
- You expect the shift to arrive without consistent practice between calls.
- You are currently in active burnout, trauma, or crisis. (I am not a therapist and it would be irresponsible for me to claim to be able to offer you support in these areas.)
- You want life hacks, templates, scripts, or shortcuts.
- You are unwilling or unable to practice real-time physical, somatic, and body awareness.

About TQ 子晴

Hi I'm TQ/子晴, which means a lifetime of clear skies after the storm. I have spent over a decade leading in high-pressure environments — and running the exact survival patterns I now coach people to interrupt.

I started as a public school teacher in Singapore. I made hundreds of daily decisions and held difficult conversations with parents and administrators. I put out everyone's fires daily. Needless to say, I was exhausted in a way that sleep did not fix.

In my next role in the finance industry, I was promoted from junior copywriter to assistant manager within months. I led international teams, managed complex projects across time zones, and delivered over $8 million in sales. I held my boundaries better, but I still burned out. When I left for another role, my manager asked me to take over his role to get me to stay.

I am also a lifelong activist and fundraiser. I have spent years building community, holding space during crisis, leading fundraisers without institutional support, navigating conflict inside movements, and sustaining commitment to work that has no finish line.

What kept me grounded throughout — and what no leadership training gave me — was the practice I had been building in my body for years. My ancestors' wisdom and creativity — while surviving famine, war, floods, and displacement — were always with me. My father taught me to move through the rainforests and coastal waters of Singapore with slowness and attention. The movement practices I trained in built steadiness under pressure. My somatic and Buddhist practices kept me honest and compassionate with myself.

None of this is theory for me. No one else carries this exact combination of experiences, lineages, and hard-won practices. Everything in Rooted Leadership is what I custom-built and refined for myself and my clients, to sustain us through every hard season.

Education & Training
- Bachelor of Fine Arts, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Post-Graduate Diploma in Education
- 60-hour Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy Certificate Program, The Embody Lab, directed by Nkem Ndefo, Kai Cheng Thom, Dr Scott Lyons
- Introduction to Ecotherapy, The Earthbody Institute
- Chinese Astrology and Divination with Yu Hua Meng 余華夢 of Tiger Eye Astrology
- (Past) Daily politicized somatics practice group - Somatic Shadow Work Masterclass with Kai Cheng Thom, The Embody Lab
- Weekly Dayan Qigong with Dr. Kathy Yep
- 6-month Qigong Instructor Training with Master Ping of Fang Yuan Center
- 120-hour Mind-Body Coaching Certificate Program, The Embody Lab

FAQs

Is this therapy? No. This is a somatic leadership program, not a substitute for therapeutic support. If you are in active crisis please seek that support first. This work will be here when you are ready.
I am a brand new leader — is this too advanced for where I am? No. This is designed for you. You are in the ideal moment to do this work. New leaders are still forming their leadership identity — which means the patterns have not fully calcified yet and the shifts come faster. The earlier you do this the more it’ll benefit you and the people around you.
How much time does this actually require? Two 60-minute calls per month. The pre-call reflection form takes approximately 25 minutes before each call. The practice between calls happens inside your actual leadership conditions. You don’t have to create time you do not have. But you are being asked to use the time you already have more intentionally.
What if I miss a call? Calls can be rescheduled with 48 hours notice. The pre-call reflection form must be submitted for the call to happen. If something genuinely comes up — reach out. Real life happens. What I ask is that you communicate rather than disappear.
Monthly or upfront — which is better? Both give you the same program. Upfront payment of $4,500 includes an additional bonus month of coaching, a 90-minute extended first call, and $300 stays in your pocket. If you have the capacity to pay upfront, it is the better value. If monthly works better for your cash flow that is a completely legitimate choice.
I am not in a formal leadership role — is this still relevant? Yes. This container is for anyone navigating leadership and relationships in any form — organizational, community, creative, or personal. The survival patterns do not care about your job title. This includes: - Anyone not in a formal leadership role who wants to develop the same capacity for grounded decision-making, honest communication, and genuine rest in daily life - New leaders or first-time managers
- Founders
- Executive directors
- Social entrepreneurs
- Movement leaders or organizers
- Educators
- Healers
- Artists/creatives
- Community stewards - Nonprofit leaders
- Coaches - Consultants
- Anyone preparing to step into a leadership role for the first time What is your refund policy? During the first 30 days, attend both calls, submit your reflection forms, do your somatic practices (which are designed to be embedded in your daily life) at least 3x a week, and reach out on Signal at least once between calls. If you've done all that and you still feel that this is not the right fit for how you grow, send me an email before day 30. Tell me what you tried and what felt misaligned, and you will receive a full refund (minus Stripe payment processing fees) with no hard feelings.

If you're here, it's probably because you can see your patterns clearly without flinching.

That’s rare. Most people never notice or interrupt unconscious patterns for their entire lives.
So if you’re ready to wake up and lead differently, Rooted Leadership is for you.

Click "Next" to apply. Spaces are limited to maintain high-touch, intimate support for every leader.