Who are we?

We ‘Play as a Team.’  It brings out the best in us and delivers leveraged results for our clients.

We are a national community of experienced Business Coaches who work with business owners, and leaders to create lasting impact. Together, we support and develop our clients (and each other) bringing and sharing the best thought leadership, frameworks and experiences to the table. Knowledge shared is wisdom amplified and that brings real value to all our clients.

All our coaches are members of the European Mentoring & Coaching Council (Asia Pacific Region) and abide by the EMCC Global Code of Ethics, Diversity & Inclusion Policy, GDPR Privacy Rules, and the Professional Charter for Coaching & Mentoring, as approved by the European Union.

Each of us is a full time professional coach and mentor and we’ve worked, learnt from, played and shared seriously good red wine with one another for a long time!

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Tom Wickham Headshot

Tom Wickham - Business Coach

Tom’s coaching is “High Performance”. He focuses on organisations and individuals seeking to be their best. Tom understands the mindset of performance and successfully translates his personal achievement as an elite athlete to working with teams and leaders in the workplace developing perspective and resilience.  

He combines his winning commitment built up over 16+ years of experience as a member of the Australian Men’s Hockey team and High Performance Head Coach for Hockey WA (2015-2018) with an intimate understanding of harnessing the power of team dynamics. Tom is a strategist and structured thinker and follows a methodical approach to bring about cutting edge results in his coaching. 

Tom thrives in team and high pressure environments and brings this energy to his coaching engagements inspiring his clients to excel and some. He loves connecting with people and supporting them to pursue their passions and dreams and gets great fulfilment out of seeing people achieve their aspirations. 

He is also a sought after keynote/guest speaker and is a current member of the Australian men’s Hockey Team, “The Kookaburras” and holder of an Olympic Silver medal from the Tokyo Olympic Games 2021.

Connect with Tom on LinkedIn

DorothyW

Dorothy Wardale - Business Coach and Facilitator

Dorothy is an Associate with Beckon Business.  She has been Director of Curtin University’s MBA Program. Prior to that she was a director in various roles in the university sector, an Associate Professor, a management consultant, team facilitator and executive coach.

Dorothy brings with her a diverse background, wealth of experience and research informed knowledge.  She has worked across the NFP, government, resource, and construction sectors.

Dorothy holds a doctorate in team facilitation and her specialization is now in developing people through coaching.

Clients engage Dorothy when they are looking for new strategies for leading and managing individuals, teams, groups or entire departments.

She especially focuses on helping clients to:

– lead engaged teams
– manage-up and productively contributing to teams
– navigate difficult conversations with colleagues
– transition a group through organizational change
– strategically network for career development
– develop their strategic or operational plans.

She balances wisdom and empathy to help clients maximize their learning investment.

Connect with Dorothy on LinkedIn

Steph Toutountzis Headshot

Stephanie Toutountzis - Business Coach and Mentor

Steph made the transition into Business Coaching from a lengthy career as a leader in an accounting firm working with companies at various stages from start-ups to publicly listed.

Steph firmly believes that people are the most valuable asset in an organisation and brings this into all her coaching engagements. Her approach is to understand the purpose and motivations of team members and align these with the overarching strategy of the organisation. Steph loves working with developing leaders and leadership teams to get the best out of the right people for the benefit of the business.

Her insight into the impact of the gap between leadership and teams, allows her to build bridges that support the organisation forward.

Steph’s strength is in seeing the big picture to help her clients step away from being caught in the detail.

Connect with Stephanie on LinkedIn

Ak Sabbagh Headshot 2

Ak Sabbagh - Director, Master Coach, Keynote

With over 20 years of coaching experience behind him, Ak works with Boards, Senior Executives, Teams, Business Units and owners of Mid- Tier businesses on their commercial, cultural and personal growth.

In a nutshell, he inspires Confidence, Leadership, Focus and Clarity within those he works with. Specifically, he enjoys working with people to create robust Growth Strategies for their business. This includes working on product positioning and brand strategies, developing robust channels to market, and structuring businesses to maximise revenue, sales (and ultimately profit).

While the outcome for many clients results in an increased asset/commercial value, Ak delights in seeing his clients get more out of life in general, in finding the time for their families and striking an overall balance in life.

Based in Western Australia, Ak’s clients include a diverse range of Resource Industry (Hard Rock & Oil and Gas) businesses as well as businesses servicing that industry.

He also coaches businesses within other industry sectors including Banking, Financial Planning, Accounting, Property Development, Legal, Biotechnology, Government (Federal, State & Local), Health & Education Sectors, Real Estate, Engineering and Construction, Advertising, Hospitality, IT, and Manufacturing.

Connect with Ak on LinkedIn

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Margaret Armitage - Senior Coach, Leadership and Mentoring

Transitioning into a coaching and mentoring career after two decades in management and business development in the competitive software industry in Australia and South East Asia, Margaret brings a long history of establishing new markets and territories and the ability to identify opportunities with potential.

She has worked at executive management level for publicly listed companies, helped grow small businesses into national market leaders and works with not-for-profit groups to build sustainability.

She joins in with Executives, Leadership Teams, Principals, Board Members and Volunteer workers in a cross-section of industries to strengthen their culture and purpose, and achieve growth by identifying unexplored avenues and developing new revenue streams.

Margaret’s years of experience enable her to get alongside established management teams and senior leaders as well as emerging leaders, to identify tools and techniques to hone their capabilities; stretch their goals; take up new challenges; and develop their strengths to full capacity enabling realisation of their potential.

Connect with Margaret on LinkedIn

Our Associates

Pat Skalsky - Associate Coach and Mentor

Pat is a Certified EMCC Master Practitioner Coach and Mentor and holds a Master of Business Coaching.

With over 10 years of full-time coaching experience behind her, Pat works with Boards, Senior Executives, and owners of Mid- Tier businesses on their leadership skills.

Pat finds as leaders get promoted to more senior positions, they find it increasingly difficult to navigate the leadership challenges in today’s fast changing environment, it is here she helps specifically with career progression (stress, new relationships, team dynamics, and work life balance), executive presence (confidence and visibility, self-awareness, profile and personal branding), management to leadership (working on the business vs in the business) and influential leadership (building reputation, enhanced skill set and presence)

Pat is a ‘diehard’ advocate for women in business, with her greatest sense of achievement seeing women own their value as they journey through their career. In this capacity, she has supported sole female Board Directors; newly appointed CEO’s and those executives whose roles include the challenges of diversity and inclusion that come with expanded regional responsibilities.

She is the Director of Sydney based Entrain – Coaching, Mentoring & Consulting.  Prior to Entrain, she was a Partner and a Senior Coach with AltusQ where she was also a Board Director from 2018-2019. She is currently Director and Board Member of Darlinghurst Theatre.

Connect with Pat on LinkedIn

Chris Collings - Associate Coach and Mentor​

Chris Collings is an accredited Advanced Coaching Practitioner, and holds certifications for the Leadership Circle 360 tool, and the Market Force ‘Agile Styles’ team effectiveness framework.

Based in Sydney, Chris works with a range of organisations from ASX listed companies, to rapidly growing mid-tier firms and a number of Not-For-Profit organisations. His coaching client base include firms in the Banking, Fintech, Music,  Insurance, Healthcare, Wine, Indigenous Health, Funds Management, Hospitality, Financial Planning, Construction, Legal and Children’s Health industries.

Chris delivers both personal and business growth via a process he likes to call ‘caring challenge’. He works alongside his clients to help them truly understand the contextual drivers of the business or decision at hand, and then move them towards accelerated growth.

Chris works with Boards, CEO’s and Senior Management teams on Growth Strategies, while his one-on-one work incorporates succession planning, career progression mentoring, and Leadership Development.

Recent assignments have seen Chris assist the Board of a large Family Office establish a succession and governance structure, assist the CEO of an ASX-listed technology company to clearly define a new strategic direction for the firm, mentor a newly appointed CEO of a rapidly growing Funds Management business to adapt into his role, and work with the CEO & management team of an Indigenous NFP organisation to clearly articulate & document their next growth strategy phase.

Before commencing his coaching career Chris was a Senior Managing Director for Deutsche Bank in London, Europe, Asia and Australia, where he guided large regional and national teams through rapid growth, cultural change and external crisis.

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn

Chris Spinks - Associate Coach and Mentor

Chris Spinks is an Accredited Coaching Director who specializes in high performing individuals and teams. His depth of knowledge in human performance has spanned 20 years of Olympic, Paralympic campaigns, World Championships and the highest level of domestic competition. He has worked with Olympic Champions and
Medallists, World Record holders and some of Australia’s highest profile professional athletes and coaches.

Chris works with Boards, Senior Executives, Teams, Business Units and owners of small and mid-tier businesses as well as sporting organizations on their strategic drivers, cultural standards, behavioural practices and personal development and performance.

Chris thrives on helping people perform at their best. Supporting individuals to achieve what was previously thought impossible, or at least very difficult is a driving passion. He enables people with the skills, attitudes and frameworks to perform as the leader they so desire to be.

Chris is fascinated by teams and is determined to ensure businesses reap the benefit that teams can provide both commercially and culturally.

Using a multi-modal approach, he coaches teams across Team Leadership, Team
Membership, Team Dynamics, Team Norms, Team Values & Behaviours and Team Effectiveness (Performance).

Based in Sydney, Chris’s clients include a diverse range of finance sector, arts, sport, manufacturing industry, technology and non-for-profit.

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn

Ivan Gavran

Ivan Gavran - Associate Coach and Mentor

Originally trained as a ‘numbers geek’ completing a Science (Maths and Statistics) degree, Ivan honed his skills across the Financial Services sector with roles at Commonwealth Bank, Macquarie Bank and Westpac. Ivan held various senior roles within these organisations, and was chartered to lead teams managing P&Ls, new product development and process re-engineering.

Ivan quickly became proficient at understanding revenue and cost drivers and what was required to improve commercial performance. On the other hand, the ‘softer’ elements such as inspiring his team to go above and beyond, influencing misaligned stakeholders and managing his own energy when under pressure were not managed so well. 

Ivan embarked on a journey of reading, education and reflection to strengthen the ‘softer’ side and began to see his effectiveness and happiness improve. The combination of his practical commercial business nous mixed with the softer skills became a pretty impactful combination and inspired him to help others.

Ivan’s Coaching career has taken him across all Industries, business models and growth stages from small to medium and Corporate/State Government. Ivan mostly works with mid-sized privately owned Businesses who have outgrown themselves. His speciality is helping these Leaders get out of the trenches.

He has held several board positions including the Australian Croatian Chamber of Commerce, and the North Ryde Community Bank Branch of Bendigo Bank.

Connect with Ivan on LinkedIn

Dan Wright - Associate Coach and Mentor

Dan is an internationally accredited business mentor and coach with over 30 years of industry experience. Throughout this time, Dan has completed studies in general management, business and law and has worked in leadership roles at a range of multinational firms around the world.

With a passion for knowledge and supporting others on their learning journeys, Dan’s primary goal for his clients is to see their businesses thrive and to help them experience greater enjoyment from working in their business.

He does this by really listening to his clients and working with them to get a clear, structured and achievable business vision. Once the vision is clear, he coaches them and their teams to bring in new skills as well as focus and accountability to achieve their version of success – whatever that may be.

He continues strengthening Australia’s partnership with the EMCC and the wider coaching community in Asia Pacific as Vice President Operations EMCC Asia Pacific Region from 2018.

Connect with Dan on LinkedIn

Michael Ahie

Michael Ahie - Associate Coach and Mentor

Michael is passionate about his country and is dedicated to the commercial and cultural success of organisations in New Zealand.

He is Chancellor of Massey University, a director of FMG and Chair of the Board of Spring Sheep Milk Co., the New Zealand Plant Market Access Council (PMAC) and He Waka Eke Noa, the steering group overseeing the Primary Sector’s climate change commitment and of Inland Revenue’s Risk & Assurance Committee.

Michael speaks regularly at industry groups and forums on leadership and the food & fibre sector. He draws on his experience growing up in a farming community in Coastal South Taranaki and his previous executive roles with Toyota New Zealand Ltd, the New Zealand Dairy Board and Wrightson Ltd. Michael continues to coach and mentor chief executives and their leadership teams and is a certified Leadership Circle® coach.

Michael completed the Executive Development Programme at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and is a regular attendee of the Te Hono programme at Stanford University. He received his Honours degree from Massey University.

Connect with Michael on LinkedIn

Jill Arkell - Associate Coach and Mentor

Jill is a highly experienced team and leadership coach. She works across corporate, government, education and NFP organisations to lift the performance of teams and leaders using simple and powerful frameworks that enable the authentic leadership that builds trust, improves accountability and gets results faster. 

She has 25+ years of commercial, coaching and training experience in team-based environments with a range of clients that include LinkedIn, Google, TfNSW, Sydney University, NBN, The Salvation Army, Defence, NAB, Harvey Norman, NSW Institute of Sport, Climate Council and many others. 

Jill has held senior roles in organisations including as a Director of a consulting firm and she is also an experienced international and national public speaker on High Performing Teams for associations that include The European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC), Australasian Legal Practice Management (ALPMA) and Association of School Business Administrators. 

Her relevant coaching and training qualifications include; BA DipEd, European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) Master Practitioner, Diploma in Executive Coaching, The Leadership Circle (TLC) practitioner certification and accreditation, Deep Democracy Co-Relate conflict resolution, Moving Questions and David Clutterbuck’s Alchemy of Team Coaching. 

Connect with Jill on LinkedIn

Nicole Allen - Associate Coach and Mentor

Nicole is a coach with a passion for seeing leaders achieve sustainable professional and personal growth. Her gift is in giving her clients the safe space required to develop awareness of their leadership – how effective it is – and how it is being experienced by the world around them.  With greater awareness, practical tools and new skills Nicole’s clients are able to move forward and embrace their leadership with clarity and confidence.

Nicole’s clients describe her as warm, engaging and empathetic, a great listener who always knows the right things to ask with “amazing” insight and wisdom. 

Nicole works with a diverse range of clients from leaders and senior executives in all levels of Government and NFP’s, large corporates and small to medium sized businesses. Nicole offers a structured approach working towards agreed coaching objectives that creates both support and accountability for clients, offering authentic opportunities for reflection and supporting clarity in their choices. 

Nicole is an accredited European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) Senior Practitioner Coach with over 8 years professional coaching expertise behind her. Nicole shares her depth of coaching experience in a voluntary capacity, as Vice-President of Accreditation EMCC Asia Pacific Region, supporting other coaches to achieve accreditation with this esteemed coaching body.

Connect with Nicole on LinkedIn