Singapore · Hong Kong · Asia-Pacific · Online

Executive coaching for Singapore and Asia-Pacific leaders

Somatic executive coaching for senior leaders carrying more pressure than they let on. Online, in hours that work for the region.

You're good at your job. What's harder is the cost of staying good at it: the 5am wake-ups with your mind already running, and the shortness with people you respect even as you watch yourself doing it. Steadiness has started to feel like something you perform.

You've probably done leadership development, maybe a coach or a 360 along the way. You understand your patterns well. And under real pressure, in the rooms that matter, the same reactions still run.

That's because the pattern lives below your thinking, in your nervous system. This is the work that goes where insight alone can't reach.

Regulation is a leadership capacity

The leaders people trust in a crisis are usually the most settled ones in the room. A regulated nervous system lets you hear bad news without flinching and hold conflict without escalating. Your decisions come from a clear head while the pressure is still on.

Most coaching works at the level of strategy and insight. This works underneath it. I'm an ICF Professional Certified Coach and a certified Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, trained in Internal Family Systems and as an Integral Coach, and I spent two decades inside the corporate world before this one. We work with how your system actually responds under load, and we train it. Repetition does the work here. 30 repetitions builds familiarity, 300 builds muscle memory, 3,000 builds embodiment. Most of the change happens between sessions.

Who this is for

• Senior leaders and executives in Singapore, Hong Kong and across APAC carrying chronic pressure
• Tech, finance and consulting professionals whose performance is fine but whose recovery has stopped working
• Founders who can't switch off, even when there's nothing left to do
• Expats navigating transition: new role, new country, separation, identity shifts
• Leaders who've done the development work and still hit the same wall under pressure

What we work on

Every engagement is shaped around the leader, but most of the work falls into a few territories:

• Executive presence. Gravitas that's felt without being performed. Presence is what a settled nervous system looks like from the outside, and it can be developed.
• Leading under pressure. How you respond in conflict and in the rooms where the stakes are real. We train the response itself, beyond the awareness of it.
• Communication and difficult conversations. Saying the hard thing without escalating or going quiet. Holding your ground without hardening.
• The gap between intention and impact. When 360 feedback keeps surprising you, the pattern usually sits in how your system shows up before you've said a word.
• Burnout and sustainable performance. Rebuilding the capacity to switch off and recover, so performance stops running on threat.
• Transitions. Bigger scope, new market, relocation, separation. The moments where the old way of operating stops working and something more solid has to be built.

Why a Melbourne coach for APAC

Further training: Harvard Kennedy School · Kansas Leadership Center · World Institute for Action Learning · Growth Edge Coaching
Additional certifications: The Leadership Circle Profile · Key Polarity Indicator · Structural Dynamics · Lectica

Practically: Melbourne runs two to three hours ahead of Singapore, so your morning is my late morning. Same-day scheduling across APAC is easy, and sessions run online via video.

For organisations

Corporate and sponsored engagements run through my consulting practice, Vertical Development Consulting. These are structured differently from private coaching:

• Three-way contracting. The leader, the sponsor and I agree the development goals together at the outset, so everyone is working toward the same outcomes.
• 360-degree stakeholder input. Where it serves the engagement, I interview managers, peers and HR partners, and I'm certified in The Leadership Circle Profile, so engagements can be grounded in a recognised 360 instrument as well as in how the leader actually shows up.
• Clear reporting boundaries. Themes and progress against agreed goals can be shared with the sponsor. The content of sessions is never shared. This boundary is set in writing before we begin, and it's what makes the work possible.
• Structured arc. Engagements run in defined phases with a midpoint review, rather than open-ended.

I'm an ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC) and work within the ICF Code of Ethics. If you're sourcing coaching for a leader in Singapore or the region, the chemistry call works the same way: the leader and I speak first, because fit decides everything.

Common questions

Is this coaching or therapy?

For international clients, coaching. It's body-based and trauma-informed in approach, but it's not psychotherapy and isn't a substitute for mental health treatment. If therapy is what you need, I'll say so and help you find it.

How do sessions run?

Online via video, typically fortnightly, with specific practices between sessions. The between-session work is where most of the change happens.

Is this confidential?

Completely. For organisation-sponsored engagements, themes and progress against agreed goals can be shared with the sponsor, but the content of sessions never is. That boundary is contracted in writing before we begin.

How long does an engagement last?

It depends on what we're working with, and we'll talk about it honestly in the first call. This isn't open-ended coaching by default.

Do you only work with Singapore?

No. Singapore is a natural base given my history there, but I work with leaders across Hong Kong, the wider APAC region, Australia and internationally.

Rudi Doku · Executive Coach (ICF PCC) · Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP) · Melbourne, Australia · Coaching online across Singapore, Asia-Pacific and internationally