Desiree Paulsen Facilitation

  I find that when people are heard properly half the work is done and then helping them find their wisdom and own response flows easily (Desiree Paulsen, 2023) During March to August 2023, the bulk of my work has been about helping teams to reconnect with each other and have honest conversations. The purpose of the gatherings may be different but underneath it all is about rebuilding relationships and reconnecting teams to each other, their organisational purpose and their work. Transitioning teams from online to in person engagement is another big area of work as many teams are once more coming together in person. Being together in person helps teams to be more human together, hear each other better as full embodied beings, find consensus much easier and work at more depth relationally. These sessions are practical sessions to build team skills and build capacity to have honest conversations, work more authentically together and communicate more constructively. Finding ...

 The last three years have been enormously challenging and at the same time filled with so many enlightening experiences and lessons. I learnt how to fully transition my work to online spaces. I learnt how to be brave and work during the dark days of the pandemic even when I was tired, demotivated and fearful. I learnt to find the blessing in illness when I was hospitalised with Covid Pneumonia in 2021 during one of my busiest work years when I was probably overworking myself and needed a rest. I learnt to self heal and revitalise myself to begin to work again post the illness but finding new ways to be with myself and be with the work.  All of this would not have been possible if I were not surrounded with the love of family, friends and colleagues - my phone became my lifeline once I was better enough to be able to communicate once more. Colleagues  stepped in to do some of my work when I couldn't. Medical staff, fellow patients, family and friends did so much for me an...

A few years ago I facilitated a workshop for an organisation that I was accompanying through a transformation process. At the end of the workshop I gave the group an individual reflection exercise in nature and fortunately we were at a most beautiful beach resort so I took the opportunity to find a place of rest and do some reflection of my own. I found myself pushing my feet into the lovely therapeutic beach sand and watching the waves and thinking what a wonderful analogy the ocean presents us with about transformation and change. More recently I went to the beach with a friend after a long hiatus and jumped and swam in the fresh blue ocean allowing the waves to bash against me and it was the most exhilarating feeling - I felt refreshed and energised.  This is exactly the work of facilitating transformation in organisations. When visiting the beach you have to be willing to embrace and step into nature, get sand in your feet, trust even though you may not know what lies bene...

Facilitating Race and Transformation Processes Vision board done in 2018 I have been doing race and transformation work most of my life, but professionally as a facilitator now for about 10 years and as an organisational development practitioner for 17 years. I became an activist at the age of 10 after the 1976 riots and the area around our school was under siege from apartheid police forces –  At the same time my primary school teacher provided most of my formative political education in essence providing our young minds with much needed decolonized education - my first act of activism was to distribute pamphlets for boycotting Fattis and Monis, a food company that was treating its workers unfairly.  My grandfather Dr Norman Murison, a community doctor and banned activist in the 1960’s was the other person beside my parents Norma Tobin and Ernest Tobin who were conscientising me and showing me what the apartheid government was doing to our people and our cou...

How do we begin to heal as a nation? How do we begin to truly ‘see’ each other? Sharing the pain, sharing the hurts, getting angry? We are all wounded in different ways – we carry the pain in different ways and we express it in different ways! In the movie ‘Colour of Fear’ (a documentary about a race based process) by Stirfry Productions they quote Rumi who says: The cure for the pain is in the pain. Most of my work as a transformation facilitator has been about this – sitting in circles with people, allowing them to share their feelings and emotions, become angry, share rawness, cry and be sad, vent and be mad, express love and joy, laugh and be silly. This catharsis has been powerful for those involved. My realization as a facilitator has been about the power of just holding a space for each other (which forms a huge part of the process), not having to answer, argue or present any viewpoint and debate – but just to merely share our personal experiences and stories and listen. T...

Purpose of this course:  We are being called upon to transform from the personal to the organizational level – for many this is new territory! For those leading – new ways of being and doing is required. For those facilitating –new approaches and methods are needed. This workshop is about finding a deeper form of engagement with diversity and transformation processes in organisations as well as exploring the inner work required at a personal level. We have to move beyond the rhetoric and ‘just talking about it’. This workshop will emphasize the  doing  of transformation so that any one no matter where they are in an organisational system can initiate change and transformation. Venue: The CDRA Centre ( www.cdra.org.za ) -  52-54 Francis street, Woodstock Dates:  Wednesday 6 Dec  (9.30am – 4.30pm) , Thursday 7 Dec  (9.30am – 4.30pm),  Friday 8 Dec  (9.30am – 1.30 pm) Cost: R3000 per person  To register mail  desireepaul...