Paul Donovan
Owner and Director
Paul founded The Change Company in 1999. His mission, and now his team’s, is to change the conversation into one that enables leaders and their teams to better envisage then realise their vision.
Paul specialises in working with senior executive teams, facilitating their conversation to enable the highest quality dialogue and decision making. In that context, he loves to work with real and emerging individual and collective tensions to facilitate the richest learning possible. As a consequence, executive teams are powerfully supported to grow, and thereby provide their upmost leadership to their organisations.
Paul has provided a range of tuition, facilitation and coaching services to organisations that include: First State Super, Mirvac, Lend Lease, Mundipharma Australia, Stockland Property Development Group, Cochlear Australia, Wentworth Community Housing, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Nestle Purina Petcare, Australian Institute of Management, TasNetworks, Thales Australia and many others.
Paul completed his Doctorate from the University of Technology Sydney, Centre of Learning and Change, in 2014. His research had an emphasis on the implications of ‘undiscussable’ topics on learning and group decision making for senior executive teams.
Paul has published several research articles in academic journals and has also written for management publications. Please click on the below links to view these.
Publications:
Peer reviewed journal and chapters in peer reviewed edited books;
1. Practicing Power: Undiscussables, Power and HRD (Chapter 7, p.176-198). 2015
Cambridge Scholars Publishing: Realising Critical HRD – Stories of Reflecting, Voicing, and Enacting Critical Practice. Edited by: Jamie L. Callahan, Jim Stewart, Clare Rigg, Sally Sambrook, and Kiran Trehan
We are thrilled to announce….We have won the Academy of Human Resource Development R. Wayne Pace Outstanding Book of the Year Award.
2. Leaders Behaving Badly: Using power to generate undiscussables in action learning sets. 2014
Taylor & Francis: Action Learning Journal, Volume 11, 2014 – Issue 2
3. Beyond Undiscussables? Why surfacing undiscussables in working groups is more important than ever. 2013
ICBM 6th International Colloquium on Business and Management (ICBM) – Conference Paper
4. ‘I think we should take this offline . . .’: conversational patterns that undermine effective decision making in action learning sets. 2011
Taylor & Francis: Action Learning Journal, Volume 8, 2011 – Issue 2
Management Journals
Paul’s qualifications and accreditations include:
- Accredited in Situational Leadership II (Ken Blanchard) 1998
- Accredited in Myers Briggs Practitioner 1999
- Accredited in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen Covey) 1999
- ‘Trainer as Educator’ (Colin James) 1999; ‘Trainer as Facilitator’ (Colin James) 1999
- Accredited Trainer in Leadership Effectiveness Training (Dr. Thomas Gordon) 1999
- Process Oriented Group Facilitation Training (Max Schupback PhD.) 2000 onwards
- NLP Practitioner and Master NLP Practitioner 2002
- Accredited Deliverer of Team Management Index Systems 2001
- Accredited Deliverer of ‘The Effective Facilitator’ (Michael Wilkinson) 2004
- Master Trainer in Leadership Effectiveness Training (Dr. Thomas Gordon) 2004
- Accredited Practitioner in The Leadership Circle 360 Model 2010
- and M.App.Sc. from Sydney University
- Doctorate in Education from the UTS Sydney, Centre in Learning and Change, where he researched the effect of ‘undiscussable’ conversational topics on executive group decision making 2014
“Helping teams engage in conversations that connect and create exciting new possibilities is simply one of the most satisfying things in my life.”
