About us
We are the Open Door Coaching Group! One of Australia’s leading workplace coaching organisations.
We believe in creating workplaces that we can be proud of!
Our Beliefs
Workplaces where people want to come to work; where innovation is encouraged; where people speak up and ideas are encouraged (not knocked down and swept under the carpet).
We believe in people’s strengths and that by playing to your strengths people build competency that leads to organisation results.
We believe in bringing out the best in people – that as leaders, it’s our role to bring out the best potential in people.
We believe in achieving results that are sustainable, measurable and tangible and we don’t believe in ‘airy fairy’ and ‘ra ra’ motivation – we are real and practical.
We coach managers and leaders to coach their teams, we do one-on-one executive coaching, fantastic workshops and we are a Registered Training Organisation. (Provider no: 21858)
We are champions of inspiring the culture of coaching conversations in the workplace where coaching is “the way we do things around here”.
We have coaching qualifications, business qualifications, proven track records and years of experience. But most importantly we have the passion, enthusiasm, drive and commitment to help you make a difference in your workplace. We do this with fun, honesty, practical skills, and a focus on relationships and innovation.
We continuously set new benchmarks for workplace coaching in Australia.
Our Courses
We designed and delivered Australia’s first Certificate IV and Diploma of Organisational Coaching (10835NAT) programs in workplace coaching, with government and ICF accreditations. Many years on, those programs continue to be endorsed by industry.
Our CEO, Natalie Ashdown wrote the book on inspiring coaching culture in the workplace with over 30 Australian case studies called Bring Out Their Best – Inspiring a Coaching Culture in Your Workplace.
Our story so far
From humble beginnings in the back room of Natalie’s home, with a fax machine borrowed from her brother and printing workbooks at his workplace after-hours, Open Door started as a vision to create workplaces that we can be proud of!
That was in April 2003 and inspired by Natalie being made redundant from her big corporate role. She decided not to continue to climb that old corporate ladder, but start a company that would make a real difference. Back then there was plenty of “dance on stage, rah-rah” personal development going on, but limited “real coaching”. It wasn’t really even on the agenda for HR and L&D professionals.
Natalie discovered the term “coaching” by reading Sir John Whitmore’s book “Coaching for Performance” and that was the start – the catalyst that provided some tools to start working on the vision. Whitmore signed Natalie’s dog-eared copy of his book about 8 years later and wrote the Forward for her book “Bring Out Their Best– Inspiring a Coaching Culture in the Workplace” (released in 2010).
Since these early beginnings we have grown into one of the leading coaching and coach training organisations in Australia, with a high performing team of professionals that people just love being around.
Open Door was never a “small business” doomed to fail and join the statistics of companies that don’t make it past the first two years. Open Door was never a “one-man band” and we didn’t “put up a shingle and call ourselves coaches”. No, we are – and always have been – a Team and a Group and have built relationships and partnerships with our clients who we consider to be colleagues and over the years, friends. We’ve grown to have representation around Australia and through our business partners, in Malaysia and Singapore.
Our Company values – Integrity, Relationships, Openness, Innovation, Passion, and Fun – are lived and demonstrated in everything that we do.
We created Australia’s first ever coaching qualifications specifically aimed at workplace coaching (and at the same time, Natalie had a baby – delivering the coaching qualifications was harder!! !!)
And we stick to what we are good at and play to our strengths. So from the very beginning we’ve been committed to the outcomes of our clients and assisting our clients to achieve their personal, professional, team and organisational goals.
It’s our role to coach, inspire, motivate and lead and it is how we achieve excellence as a company. As a specialist executive coaching, mentoring and coach training organisation our roles are not diluted by trying to be “all things to all people”.
