Deshun Deysel

Presentations by Deshun Deysel

Deshun Deysel

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 the most gruelling conditions. Having tackled an Everest expedition with no experience whatsoever, Deshun knows what it’s like to tackle 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 that ‘what I don’t know, I can learn.’”

Deshun has been up Everest twice in seven years and, on the 2003 Discovery Everest expedition, achieved a personal high altitude record of 8 300m above sea level - a mere 550m from the top, having been forced to turn back due to treacherous weather conditions.

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. You're being tested on all levels and the mountain peels away at your physical, emotional, mental, spiritual layers until there’s very little left. 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 leadership 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 long term gain may require short term forfeit

These factors, and many more, can cripple the efforts of an organisation in the same way as 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.

Tackling the Summit

Tackling the summit is very different from arriving on the summit. In both life and business the majority of time is spent focusing on that future achievement and forgetting that the preparation is an important part of the journey.

• Confronting fear
• Dealing with comfort zones / effective zones
• Moving forward without guarantees
• Innovate, not imitate
• Increasing efficacy
• Working flexibly

If the dream is alive these factors tend to take care of themselves. Instead of chasing the mountaintop, I’ve learnt to let it come to you. All that’s needed is a different approach to the challenge.

Mountains and Manicures

How do women cope in extreme environments? 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. Most of my fellow male climbers agree. Most.

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 discipline 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 secret knowledge that makes it look so easy?

Being a woman is an extreme adventure!