Tony Dickel

AREAS OF EXPERTISE

• Mindfulness for emotional balance, resilience and mental effectiveness
• Coaching executives for sustainable behavioural and performance development
• Coaching for “Self Limiting Unconscious Bias” and “Cultural Conditioning”
• Cultivation of Emotional Balance, Social Intelligence, resilience and Presence (including executive presence)
• Coaching for focus, awareness, resilience and balance using “Mindfulness based Approaches”
• Assessment feedback coaching using Genos EI Inventory, Hogan, Workplace Big 5, DISC, MBTI, FIRO-B and various 360 feedback tools
• Mentor Coaching and Training of Coaches / Coaching skills
• Coaching Supervision
• Cross Cultural Leadership, Mentoring and Coaching
• Top Level Career Transitions and Career / Executive Coaching

QUALIFICATIONS AND MEMBERSHIPS

• Immediate Past President : International Coach Federation Hong Kong
• President : Hong Kong International Coaching Community
• Former Hong Kong Director of the US-China Chamber of Commerce (usccc.org)
• Certified Bandwidth Coach (Hewitt)
• Trainer and Coach for “Cutivating Emotional and Mental Balance” (cultivatingemotionalbalance.org)
• ICF Credentialed Executive Coach (ICF is the most recognised coaching certification globally)
• Certified in the Hogan Assessments, DISC and a variety of other assessment and 360 tools
• Certified Corporate Based Mindfulness Trainer (CBMT) potentialproject.com
• Marshall Goldsmith “Stakeholder Centered Coaching” certified practitioner
• Masters Level Certificate in the Executive Coaching and Mentoring – University of West England @ Bristol
• Institute of Executive Coaching Credential (Level 3 – highest level)
• Certified “Cultivating Emotional Balance” trainer.
• Certified “MindUP” trainer (Hawn Foundation)
• Associate of the Royal College of Science
• Associate of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ACA)
• Honours degree in Biochemistry, Imperial College, University of London
• Advanced Level Psychology

CAREER HISTORY

• Founder Chairman of Transcend International Group (transcend-intl.com) : 2008 – Present
• Hong Kong Director of the US-China Chamber of Commerce (usccc.org) 2008 – 2012
• Founder Chairman of the Next Level Institute (nlinstitute.com) : 2010 – Present
• President and CEO MRI China Group – 12 years
• Deputy COO and CFO ABN AMRO Asia Limited – seven years
• CFO/COO Sotheby’s Asia Limited – two years
• Director, Corporate Development, Barings Asia Limited – two years
• Director and Group Financial Controller, Jardine Fleming – two years
• Manager, Price Waterhouse – three years

COACHING PHILOSOPHY

‘You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.’ Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642)

Tony believes that the role of a coach, mindfulness teacher and trainer is to help a client become truly “self generative” and “self corrective” through “vertical development” and excellent presence in relation to their goals. He believes that in order for professionals to develop “productive” behaviours, they need to develop or discover their deepest motivational drivers and connect these to their goals and then to required behaviour supporting these. Once this is established leaders should be able to continue on their journey of performance development for a lifetime, on their own, without the need for continuous long term intervention. Tony’s orientation is to challenge leaders around the nature of their goals, helping to clarify how they fit in with “why” rather than just the “what” and the “how”. Tony’s clients, trainees and students develop practices and behaviours which can be applied in a variety of situations rather than just within the specifically identified domains. Methodologies used are varied depend on the specifics of the case and can include feedback intensive Stakeholder Centered Coaching and training through to mindfulness and reflective / observation practices to shift self-limiting orientations, beliefs and biases, develop along the way exceptional attentional and emotional balance.

Tony’s expertise is in helping leaders to recognise that the road to achievement starts with setting challenging, relevant and highly “attractive” goals. But there is more. In order to significantly improve probability of achievement in todays world of information overload, opportunity and distraction, leaders’ goals need to be both linked to an underlying sense of “purpose” or “values” and they need to be set out clearly in terms of required behaviours, particularly interpersonal. In order to be resilient and deal with adverse situations it is necessary to remain conscious, moment by moment, of our “true” intents and goals (rather than those of whatever stories and emotions may be running our mind in key moments of choice. This, in turn, requires excellence in the “intrapersonal” domain, remaining conscious in every moment what we are longing to “offer” the world. These required behaviours need to be articulated, and measurable, and, ideally, subject to regular and appropriate feedback/feedforward loops. He helps people understand which “moment by moment” matters are creating interference for leaders in their drive towards important longer term goals, helping people to navigate the “morass” whose gravity can suck a leader in and prevent them from moving forward.

As well as, and normally integrated with, the above, Tony has recognised during his nearly 30 years of senior leadership experience in Greater China that a major “pain point” for executives and organisations in the region is deeply conditioned “unconscious bias”. Unconscious bias, particularly related to cultural bias, creates significant communication and perception barriers leading to often damaging and erroneous assumptions and creates self limiting paradigms and beliefs which may impact individuals, teams and organisations.

Tony’s point of view is that sustainable behaviour change around all the above potentially transformational areas is very possible and that it requires work not only at the level of tasks and goals but at the level of conditioning and conditioned structures of interpretation.   When it comes to truly “alchemic” change, one needs to work deeply and Tony’s work at this level starts with self-reflection and self-observation through creation of mindfulness and acute self-awareness which is critical to success, reduction of stress, and, ultimately, exceptional well being.

BACKGROUND

Tony’s current work is deeply grounded in many years in leadership positions in Asia across a variety of industries since 1986.
Prior to establishing the Transcend International Group in 2008, Tony’s previous role was founder and CEO of the award winning MRI China Group, a leading multinational recruitment solutions, outsourcing, talent management and talent market research organisation employing nearly 300 people across six countries in the region, with more than 150 in the mainland of China. He grew the organisation from scratch and was able to defeat many of the paradigms held both inside and outside the industry about its practices and drivers. It was during his tenure in this role that he discovered that the “coaching approach” was the best way to create, especially in a cross-cultural context, an environment of collaboration, teamwork and common ground where people are empowered, accountable and engaged. Tony successfully sold this business in 2010 and remains a member of its Board as a non-executive director.

Previous to this role Tony spent six years with ABN AMRO Asia Group, first as CFO and, later, as deputy COO, covering the region from Japan, China and Hong Kong to Indonesia. He has also held Board level positions with Sotheby’s Asia, Barings and the Jardine Fleming Group, each one a leading institution in its field during his time with them. Tony is also a former Director of the US China Chamber of commerce, is the current President of the International Coach Federation (ICF) and currently holds the position of Director and VP for Executive Coaching at the Hong Kong International Coaching Community (HKICC).

Tony is a regular speaker at HR and Leadership conferences around the region and is a keen birdwatcher, photographer and water-colour painter. He also teaches Mindfulness based approaches to teenagers in his spare time, helping them with overcoming stress and social pressures. He lives with his wife, cats and dog in Hong Kong.