Conflict is inevitable;
dysfunction is optional

Many leaders have moments of doubt: Is my leadership team broken because of me? It's a tough question, but an important one. The good news? If you're asking it, you're already ahead of most.

Discover our Perception Under Pressure series

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The Premise

Dysfunctional teams don't happen by accident. But they also aren't the result of one person's failure. Team dysfunction is a system-wide issue, and the key to fixing it isn't playing the blame game—it's diagnosing the real problem and addressing it objectively and systematically.

We help teams and organizations overcome conflict and avoid dysfunction. The former is inevitable, the latter a choice. Backed by science, grounded in humanity and focused on results.

Our Approach

Perception Under Pressure

Pressure is permanent — but distortion can be decoded.

The problem isn't the pressure. It's the distortion pressure creates in how you perceive reality — and how your perception diverges from everyone else's in the room. Using forensic psychology principles, MIT Sloan neuroscience, and the proprietary investigation method, we decode where perception distorts under pressure before it becomes a decision you can't take back.

For CEOs

The Pressure Decoderâ„¢

A forensic partnership for CEOs navigating high-stakes decisions. We decode your Pressure Signature™ — how you perceive, communicate, and decide under load — before distortion costs you.

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For Executive Teams

The Friction Decoderâ„¢

A 90-day forensic intervention for executive teams where strategy is sound, but performance is compromised by human distortion — bias, emotion, and ego under pressure.

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For CEOs

The Pressure Decoderâ„¢

CEO Perception Under Pressure Retainer

Every CEO knows the feeling: You walk into a boardroom carrying a dozen competing expectations. By the time you leave, you can't tell whether the voice in your head is instinct or interference. The Pressure Decoder™ was built to solve this — using forensic psychology principles, MIT Sloan neuroscience, and the proprietary investigation method to decode where your perception distorts under pressure.

01

The Clarity Trap

The Witness Reliability Problem

You think you're crystal clear. They heard something completely different. Just like eyewitness testimony, communication degrades instantly. Memory reconstructs. Context colors interpretation. The same sentence lands in five different brains in five different ways.

02

The Intention Trap

The Fundamental Attribution Error

You assume their behavior reveals their intention. It doesn't. We judge ourselves by our intentions, others by their actions — and we're almost always wrong about their motives. What you're interpreting as 'resistance' is actually their Stress Behavior.

03

The Reality Trap

Constructed Reality Challenge

You believe your view of the situation is 'the truth.' So does everyone else on your team. You can't all be right. Under pressure, confirmation bias intensifies. You see evidence that supports your view and dismiss everything else.

Your Pressure Signatureâ„¢

Every leader has a predictable pattern that emerges when stakes rise and bandwidth narrows. Using the proprietary investigation method, I map your exact Pressure Signature: your Usual Behavior, your Needs, your Stress Behavior, and your Expectations. Once we map this with forensic precision, pressure stops being personal. It becomes information you can work with.

Boardroom Forensicsâ„¢

This is not coaching. It's an embedded forensic partnership. We work in the live moment — not the post-mortem. I ask: Where is this coming from — your strategic instinct or your Stress Behavior trying to protect you? We separate signal from noise, reaction from reality, truth from the story your nervous system is constructing.

For Executive Teams

The Friction Decoderâ„¢

Executive Team Perception Under Pressure

The Friction Decoder™ is not a workshop. It's a forensic intervention for executive teams where strategy is sound, but performance is compromised by human distortion — bias, emotion, and ego under pressure. When the stakes are high, friction is inevitable. What determines performance isn't whether it exists, but whether the team can decode it fast enough to prevent it from becoming dysfunction.

Trust Architecture

Moving from assumption to evidence-based respect. Building precision trust — not "niceness," but reliability under fire.

Accountability Systems

Defining ownership without blame. Clear protocols for conflict, accountability, and escalation that hold under pressure.

Crisis Cohesion

Operating cleanly when under external heat — board, media, investors. Turning friction into alignment before the system breaks.

1

Surface

Weeks 1–4

Expose what's actually driving friction through confidential decoding conversations, behavioral data mapping, and live observation.

2

Decode

Weeks 5–6

Translate conflict into language the system can use. Immersive reset lab to confront distortion and rebuild trust.

3

Rebuild

Weeks 7–12

Stabilise the new rhythm under live conditions. Real-time recalibration and integration of behavioural shifts.

What We Do

The Science of Leadership Under Pressure

We work at the intersection of neuroscience, behavioural psychology and executive performance. This is not coaching. It is forensic analysis of how pressure distorts perception, decision-making and leadership behaviour at the highest levels.

We decode the biological and cognitive patterns that sit beneath conflict, misalignment and repeated executive breakdowns, then build precision interventions that recalibrate how leaders think, communicate and operate under pressure.

Everything we deliver is evidence-based, commercially grounded and designed to give CEOs and executive teams the clarity they cannot access from inside their own biology.

Lauren J. Kester - Forensic Executive Coach and Founder of Chasing the Sun

Founder's Note

Chasing the Sun began in the back of a yellow cab on the way to JFK. Sara Bareilles was singing that life was never meant to be wasted, and for the first time in years, I actually heard it. I had just walked out of another day where billion-dollar decisions were being made by leaders I deeply respect, and every one of them was being quietly sabotaged by their own biology.

I was trained to study extreme behavior in forensic psychology, to decode why humans make catastrophic decisions under pressure. Then I spent two decades in the rooms where pressure actually lives: Big 4 Partner tables at Deloitte, EY, and Korn Ferry, executive committees where entire industries swing on perception, not fact.

I could see the exact moment a CEO's perception collapsed. I could see the biological trigger underneath a conflict they blamed on personality. I could see how pressure rewired reality long before anyone noticed the damage.

This is what makes my work different.

I see patterns across groups and within individuals that others miss. I run forensic investigations into how pressure distorts leaders, then I call out what's happening so the same mistake doesn't happen twice.

My clients do not come to me for support. They come to me for clarity. They come because I can read the room and the brain at the same time, and because I tell them the truth before the consequences do.

Chasing the Sun exists for one reason: To give you access to the one thing pressure always steals: a reliable view of reality.

Lauren J. Kester
Founder, Chasing the Sun
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Astro Malaysia Holdings BNP Paribas Citibank AstraZeneca
Terra Firma P&G MIT Sloan Kelloggs

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