Deshun Deysel is one of South Africa’s top conference speakers and has addressed audiences around the world over the past eleven years. Deshun Deysel is also currently researching performance management in partnership with the Vaal University of Technology and is working towards a Masters Degree in performance management.
Deshun Deysel holds a Higher Diploma in Education from Rand College and Rand Afrikaans University and spent five years as a schoolteacher during which time she realised her dream to climb Mt. Everest (in 1996).
Deshun Deysel joined the I Can Foundation in 1996 and ran youth development workshops and women’s training programmes for two years. Deshun then spent six years with The Pacific Institute SA as a process facilitator and accreditor and also as a conference speaker at The Pacific Institute, USA.
Deshun’s consulting skills have been honed through interventions with both multinationals and South African Top 100 companies.
In the past 10 years Deshun has been on eleven major mountaineering expeditions, visiting five continents in the process, and reached a personal record of 8 300m above sea level in 2003 in Mount Everest’s ‘Death Zone’.
Deshun Deysel is a recipient of Four Outstanding Young South African’s Award (FOYSA) in 1997 and is a Friend and Ambassador for the Laureus Sports for Good Foundation. In addition she is an active honorary member of the Golden Key International Honour Society.
Besides membership of the National Speakers Association of South Africa (NSASA) Deshun is also a member of the Business Women’s Association of South Africa (BWASA) and the GIBS Women Empowered Forum.
Among her short term goals are:
- to climb the Seven Summits (the highest mountain on each of the 7 continents) over the next 2years. The program is currently being finalised and begins with Deshun leading an international group of trekkers to Everest Base Camp in April and an expedition to climb Mt Elbrus (Russia) is scheduled for July/August.
- completing an AFF (Accelerated Free Fall) licence with the Johannesburg Skydiving Club.
Deshun lives in Johannesburg with her 2 adopted cats, Rosie and Nina.
Presentation Topics and Details
Deshun Deysel is best known as the only Black female high altitude mountaineer in the world and has climbed many of the world’s most challenging peaks in extremely gruelling conditions.
Having tackled an Everest expedition with no experience whatsoever, Deshun knows what it’s like to confront “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” with little track record. “For me new frontiers and big scary situations are comfort zones and I always tend to push myself to, seemingly, impossible limits. I function on the premise of what I don’t know, I can learn.”
Deshun has been up Everest twice in seven years and in 2003, on the Discovery Everest expedition, achieved a personal high altitude record of 8 300m above sea level. It was a mere 550m from the top that treacherous weather conditions forced her to turn back!
Her signature talk ‘From Couch Potato to Mountaineer’ has wowed audiences from 23 countries in the past 10 years.
She says “when you climb Everest everything, including your sanity is confronted. Your being is tested on all levels and the mountain peels away at your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual layers until very little is left unexposed. In addition the female physiology adds to the difficulty in coping with the extreme conditions on big mountains.”
Life in the corporate environment can be very similar
- setting goals beyond market expectation
- aligning teams around a daring vision
- merging different styles of “leader-ship” and “follower-ship” into a corporate strategy
- dealing with the loss of team mates due to the corporate climate or industry pressures
- management of pain, discomfort and risk
- effective use of energy for a seamless transition from one task to the next
- dealing with ‘weakness’ - your own or that of a team mate
- how to live to climb another mountain – recognising that long term gain may require short term forfeit
These factors and many more, can cripple the efforts of an organisation in the same way they often cripple the success of a mountaineering expedition.
“The key is to remain focused on the goal when things become chaotic but to be flexible at the same time. And then, if the result is disappointing, to use the experiences and lessons learnt to strengthen your resolve for the next challenge.
The world’s greatest leaders do this naturally. The best high altitude mountaineers are expert at it. There is never any guarantee that you’ll make it to the top but the experience you gain in the attempt cannot be bought. There is always opportunity in the midst of setback.”
Deshun draws on her experiences as a mountaineer, leadership facilitator and coach to highlight the use of setbacks as an opportunity to innovate and create.
Speaking topics
Tackling the summit is very different from arriving at the summit. In both life and business the majority of focus is on that future achievement while forgetting that preparation is an important part of the journey.
This topic deals with
- confronting fear
- dealing with comfort zones/effective zones
- moving forward without guarantees
- innovating, not imitating
- increasing efficacy
- working flexibly
If the dream is alive these factors tend to take care of themselves. Instead of chasing the mountaintop let it come to you. All that’s needed is a different approach to the challenge.
- From Couch Potato to Mountaineer
- the birth of a dream
- get off the couch!
- do I really have the guts?
- sometimes it takes as long as it takes!
- on the strength of the Sherpa
- crossing the crevasse – what if I fall?
- feel the fear and do it anyway
- Death Zone deprivation
- when failure isn’t failure
This presentation is light-hearted and pokes fun but it speaks into the issues of fear, doubt, discomfort and, sometimes, disappointment that face us when we go after big goals.
How do women cope in extreme environments? Well, how do women cope at all?
As we always do – with patience, flexibility, respect and humility. Believe it or not, all these attributes make female climbers more adept at high altitude mountaineering than their male counterparts! Yep, it seems the female of the species even has the required physical attributes for the long, hard grind that expeditions like those are all about. Most of my fellow male climbers agree. So how is it then that still more men than women climb the highest mountains in the world? Some would say that we already know we can do it so don’t have to prove anything!! However to find the answer it was necessary to study the phenomenon of women participating in extreme sports.
Mountains & Manicures is really about looking closely at the kind of women that are drawn to testing themselves in extreme conditions. It also looks at how they cope when the going gets tough and the disciplines required to stick to the task, irrespective of immense pain and discomfort.
As a result the real question has become: is this how women cope in general?
How do women deal with life and work in general? Are there any lessons that could be learned from this? Do women have some secret that makes it look so easy? Being a woman is an extreme adventure!
All the presentations include exciting pictures and video images of Deshun’s various expeditions.
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