The work of transformation

-

Some thoughts from my work this month of October:
I have worked with NGO leaders, Organisational development practitioners, Students, Lecturers, Educators - the processes I have facilitated have happened in an international school exploring what transformation and diversity means, a course on facilitating transformation in organisations, a university honours course on organisational management,a university first year course on diversity exploring diversity in organisations, a university engineering faculty exploring decolonisation, a corporate investment company diversity training programme.
The work of diversity and transformation whether individual or organisational is a continuous journey that takes one deep within and challenges us to collectively find meaning together.
The work is about the redefining of humanity out of a deeply divided and fragmented, unequal, violent, constrained past to building one that is peaceful, free, whole, equal, connected and coherent.
It is about acknowledging and accepting what has happened and being honest about what we need to process in order to heal, what we need to give up and unlearn, what new learnings need embracing and new skills we need to develop.
This process will need education and conscientising about what needs transforming - there are still people out there who question whether we need transformation, whether it wasn't better in the past and even the word transformation itself engenders fear and uncertainty, there are people who are deeply defensive and in denial, there are people who are apathetic, and there are those who are radical and energised.
A part of the work is about unpacking this term 'TRANSFORMATION' and what it means for us as a country and globally for our planet. The work is about becoming deeply uncomfortable as we become aware of ourselves - our privilege and power, and our internalised dominance and oppression, our internalised racism. A major area is about systemic oppression and understanding that we all play a role in keeping things the way they are or committing to move things forward constructively. This means that we may have to go over old ground and return to certain areas again and again in our quest to work through it and beyond it and carve a new path and way of being together that brings equal opportunities and access in more practical real ways. Bringing people together in conversation is the best way to do this. It is in community that we will find healing and find our deepest sense of self. It is collectively that we will find the solutions within. It will require patience, deep listening, the willingness to be transformed, the commitment to stay with the process and find a role for yourself that is different and useful - working with power differently.
We have now officially moved beyond just diversity training to the real work of transforming systems - this requires us as facilitators to understand how organisational systems work, how power operates and the appropriate responses and interventions that will bring change at every level. This work is emergent and demands us to design tailor made responses as we work with organisations over time. As facilitators we need to be continuously learning and innovating so that our processes remain alive and fresh.
#diversity and transformation facilitator #organisational development practitioner 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Journaling as reflective practice

-
Image
Journaling as reflective practice Journals and diaries have been used ever since people could find ways of capturing their thoughts and ideas. Many people have used it as a deeply personal process, others to capture important moments and events in their lives. Journals can also be used as part of a conscious practice of reflecting and learning. As organisational development practitioners, often we are very action oriented and may not always make time to capture or document through writing. Our work may already be consumed with many other writing tasks like field reports, developing materials and donor reports and the thought of starting a journal may seem like an indulgence. If we can begin to see journaling as part of a reflective practice and not an indulgence we can begin an exciting self-directed learning process. Journals can become an important reflective tool for practitioners who want to become more conscious of how they practice. The advantage of a journal is t...
Read more

The role of the facilitator in working with organisations in crisis

-
Image
The role of facilitators working with organizations in crisis (A reworked piece I wrote a few years ago for a newsletter for the previous organisation I worked at www.cdra.org.za) ) In organisational systems crisis should be seen as a natural part of normal organizational development. Some organisations manage to work through crisis whilst others may allow it to destroy them or refuse to see or recognize the crisis (opting for a denial or 'head in the ground' approach). Crisis may be full blown or it may be simmering underground and often presented under the guise of “we need new leadership, we need restructuring or we need teambuilding”. The symptoms are: relationships have broken down, colleagues no longer see the good in each other only the bad, gossiping has reached monumental proportions, cliques have formed often around those who have more power and those who have less (often around differing ideologies, philosophies, rank/position, gender, culture, race, ...
Read more

Transformation: Resilience, Tenacity and the Art of never giving up

-
Image
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...
Read more