Leadership Conversations

Coronavirus (Covid-19)

Following government advice and for the wellbeing of our team and participants, St George’s House will remain closed until 31st July.

Leadership Conversations within the House will resume in October.  Below we set out the dates and themes from October through to July 2021.

Some Conversations are marked “Fellows only” because attendance is restricted to Leadership Fellows. Others are marked “Fellows+” because we are very happy to welcome Fellows’ nominees, such as a member of their top team or a key business partner.

 

In the meantime and to complement our Autumn programme we offer:

A new suite of Leadership Conversations, ‘For such a time as this’…

‘Vicars’ Hall at Home’ – Leadership Conversations via Zoom

With the House currently closed to guests we have put together a programme of Zoom Conversations, from September to January.

In addition to the core series we are offering a set of more intensive small group conversations for those who want some dedicated space to work on specific questions you find yourself facing. The full agenda’s can be found below.  To reserve yourself a place or if you have any questions please contact Nicola on: nicola.pryer@stgeorgeshouse.org

New Leadership Themes from January 2021:

Wisdom in Leadership

Wisdom in leadership is about cultivating our presence and awareness to see more broadly and deeply into what is really happening and access a quality of response that is not available when we are caught up in the immediacy of their concerns.

Leading in these times

This theme will focus on conversations that have a specific relevance to ‘the times we find ourselves in’. They give us a chance as leaders to sense into how the wider forces at work in ‘these times’ are making themselves felt in our own leadership and organisations.

Growth

This will be a more practical theme, looking at how we expand our resourcefulness, competence and confidence by enquiring into core leadership challenges and dilemmas that we all face – learning from our shared experience and best practice as we do so.

To read more about these new themes please click here.

 

Leadership Conversation
The 'Leader to Leader' Exchanges. September - January
18th Sept, 16th Oct, 20th Nov, 18th Dec, 15th Jan - From 12.00pm - 2pm
A series of 5 monthly leader to leader exchanges in which we can honestly examine our own responses as leaders as events unfold, in response to a simple prompt - ‘how am I doing?’ By answering this at different levels, and hearing ourselves do so, in the company of peers who have no other agenda than unlocking wisdom, we access profound insights and breakthroughs – the knowing we don’t know we know till we find ourselves expressing it.
Fee: £195 for the 6 session series
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
Deeper Learning - Facilitated small group sessions
Each session will be run on an ‘as needed’ basis. Simply register your interest and we will contact you to book in a time
One thing that many people have clearly valued on the conversations to date is Pete’s sensitive but probing facilitation and this is what we want to continue in these sessions. Facilitated by Chris or Karen, for groups of no more than five, these will provide a space to help you to go to a deeper level in addressing questions that are of real significance to you. This may be things that are stirring in you or concerning you, that you know you have not quite bottomed out – and which you sense may require some reappraisal of your own stance or perspective.
Each session will be run on an ‘as needed’ basis. Simply register your interest and we will contact you to book in a time
Fee: £75 per session
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
Achieving more purposeful connection as leaders
From 6.00pm on Sunday 11th October 2020 until 11.15am on Wednesday 14th
This three-night Conversation will draw on three powerful themes in our series so far: achieving a deeper CONNECTION with others through the principle of "connect not convince”; developing a keener sense of our personal PURPOSE as leaders, that is so key to how we focus our energies and define success, and achieving this all with a real sense of HUMILITY and desire to become ever more empowering of others. We will use this special time to make it possible for everyone involved to achieve multiple breakthroughs as we each review and refresh our own thinking about how we would most like to develop our future journey as a leader. Our aim is that by the end our personal strategies for achieving more purposeful connection as a leader over the coming year will be sharper and clearer than ever. Fellows +
Three-night Leadership Conversation fee: £1325
See the AgendaSee this theme so far
Leadership Conversation
Your role as a culture change leader
From 6.00pm on Thursday 29th October 2020 until 3.30pm on Friday 30th
Building on the insights arising from five previous Conversations on this theme, we focus now on how each Leadership Fellow joining this Conversation wishes to develop your personal role as a leader of culture change. How have you defined this leadership role of yours so far, and what have been the key barriers in the way of you achieving what you want? As always, we will gain so much by drawing on the wisdom and experiences of other Fellows, learning especially from what hasn’t worked, and the lessons learnt, as well as what has worked well. We hope that each Leadership Fellow joining this Conversation will end up with a clearer personal strategy for developing your role as a leader of culture change, more confident than before that this will put you in a better position to achieve a real groundswell of support for your approach, with unified visible support on the part of your wider leadership team. Fellows +
One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745
See the AgendaSee this theme so far
Leadership Conversation
51
High trust leadership - driving up performance
From 6.00pm on Monday 2nd November 2020 until 11.15am on Wednesday 4th
This Conversation follows on from our theme around authenticity and trust in leadership, and is designed for Fellows who see yourselves as high trust leaders and wish to develop new ways of placing a commitment to higher performance at the heart of your culture. We will ask everyone joining us to bring one or two specific examples of how you have encouraged a high trust, high performance culture. Once we have swapped notes, we will pick out a small number of the most effective practices that you have adopted and ask how we might best ramp them up. We will draw on our commitment to very high trust working in Leadership Conversations to stretch ourselves as far as we possibly can! The result will be a raft of challenging propositions for achieving a very high performance culture, made possible by a commitment to high trust working driven by yourself and other members of your top team. Fellows +
Two-night Leadership Conversation fee: £995
See the AgendaSee this theme so far
Leadership Conversation
52
The humble disruptor
From 6.00pm on Monday 30th November 2020 until 3.30pm on Tuesday 1st December
This draws on our theme around disruptive leadership as well as the outcomes of various Conversations that have engaged with humility in leadership. Our stereotype of the disruptive leader tends NOT to be one in which we associate that leader with a high degree of humility! Imagine that you could combine a readiness to be more disruptive, and to say some things that others don’t particularly want to hear, with a desire to demonstrate humility, for example by encouraging others to push back if they are not persuaded by your proposition. Would this make you more effective as a disruptor? What sort of disruptive leader would you most like to be, and which other qualities would you most like to draw on to maximise your impact? As well as exploring humility within disruptive leadership, we also want to explore the disruptive side to your humility. How might you best demonstrate your humility in a way that encourages some of your disruptive colleagues to keep their own ego on a tighter rein? Fellows +
One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745
See the AgendaSee this theme so far
Leadership Conversation
53
2021: Taking on our inner postponer!
From 10.30am until 4.30pm on Wednesday December 9th 2020
Every December we have a one-day Leadership Conversation in which we ask what your priorities are for the coming year. It has always been booked up 6 months beforehand, so please don’t delay too long if you want to join this one! This year we want to make things even more difficult for ourselves by asking which among our top priorities for 2021 we are most likely to postpone and - knowing ourselves as we do - keep on postponing. We will then explore what we might each do to ensure that in 2021 we TAKE ON OUR INNER POSTPONER! We hope that we will each end up with two or three resolves that we might ordinarily try to postpone and now intend to act on decisively in the early weeks of the New Year. Fellows +
One-day Leadership Conversation fee: £450
See this theme so far
Leadership Conversation
54
Leading in Climates of Love and Fear
From 6.00pm on Thursday 21st January 2021 until 3.30pm on Friday 22nd January
Beginning our new series on ‘wisdom in leadership’, this 24 hour conversation will explore what it means to lead with not just a focus on the usual leadership elements of task, process, people and culture etc, but with a subtle and profound awareness of the age old dynamics of love and fear as the deepest drivers of human activity. Fellows +
One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745
Leadership Conversation
55
Retrench or Re-imagine?
From 10.30am until 4.30pm on Tuesday February 2nd 2021
It is said that we are living, and therefore leading, in one of the largest social science experiments of the past 75 years and that the time and cost of recovery from COVID 19 is the crisis of our time. This conversation invites us to explore the deeper forces underpinning our reactions and responses, decision points, and the impact and implications of our choices. When faced with responsibility for leading ourselves and others through a time with this level of dislocation, do we re-trench and make safe or re-imagine and explore. Fellows only.
One-day Leadership Conversation fee: £450
Leadership Conversation
56
Re-imagining Team
From 6.00pm on Monday 15th February 2021 until 3.30pm on Tuesday 16th February
This conversation will take us into a radical exploration of the notion of team. One of the most significant consequences of the lockdown has been the different way leaders have found themselves engaging with their teams. We will share, explore and develop our own experience of ‘teams without boundaries’. In particular we will look at what we have learned about building common purpose and trusting relationships across some of the familiar structural and political schisms of organisational life. We will also look at the increasing spread of informal small, nested teams, (quads or triads) as a powerful force in mobilising organisational change and rapid adaptation. Fellows +
One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745
Leadership Conversation
57
'Their Future in Their Hands' - Leadership and the Younger Generation
From 10.30am until 4.30pm on Thursday March 3rd 2021
A consistent theme in our dialogue with leaders from all walks of life has been their growing concern and desire to do what they can to support the emerging generations in these deeply challenging times – whether it is young people struggling to find a foothold in the harshness of the current climate, or emerging leaders seeking to get to grips with the enormity of the challenges they see ahead in refounding businesses, stimulating enterprise and renewing our social infrastructure to make these fit for the future. In this Conversation we will enquire purposefully into what this means for us as leaders – both in terms of our own direct leadership and how we influence the leadership dialogue around us. Fellows +
One-day Leadership Conversation fee: £450
Leadership Conversation
58
For such a time as this...
From 6.00pm on Sunday 21st March 2021 until 11.15am on Tuesday 23rd March
This two-night conversation provides the space for you to be confident, still and discerning enough to detect the call of these times. You are invited to take a pause from life’s demands and come to a generative and creative space to reflect on your life, past, present and future. It is for those who want to pause, take stock, reflect and awaken to a freer and fuller expression of their leadership in these times today. During the pandemic, many of us have been incredibly busy and focused on keeping the show on the road, and with adjusting finding longer term plans, but may not have found the space to pause properly and access your deeper, grounded wisdom about what is really needed from you in these times – which may well be less not more… Fellows +
Two-night Leadership Conversation fee: £995
Leadership Conversation
59
Addictions & Freedom
From 6.00pm on Thursday 6th May 2021 until 3.30pm on Friday 7th May
Why would anyone want to come to a Conversation on addictions? The immediate answer is that they are the cause of much of the dysfunctionality that most inhibits our effectiveness, both our own and our organisation’s. It is the subtlety of compulsive and addictive behaviours that gradually lull us into a state of sleepwalking. The pandemic of course exposed many of these for what they were, but it is not long before we settle back into them – old and new patterns. One of the key skills of a leader is the ability to see this kind of sleepwalking and to wake people up – however unpopular this may make us. Jim Collins famously coined this as ‘facing the brutal facts’ in his book ‘Good To Great’. During this Conversation we will consider the cause and effect of addiction, the realities and repercussions in our workplaces, and our role as leaders in shifting these patterns. Fellows +
One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745
Leadership Conversation
60
Wisdom in Leadership
From 6.00pm on Sunday 23rd May 2021 until 11.15am on Wednesday 26th
One of the clearest messages from our conversations with Fellows was how much they valued the three day Conversations – the quality and depth that is possible when we really settle into the unique atmosphere of St Georges. This exclusive Fellows retreat will run once a year for people who want to take this quality time and space, together with a group of like-minded leadership peers, to reflect more deeply on your leadership calling and contribution. This Conversation is for those times in our leadership journey when we sense something different is being called for from us: a sense of stepping up or stepping into something beyond ‘business as usual’ - maybe a sense of something not being as it should in the world, or a sense of expansion and radical new possibility. Fellows +
Three-night Leadership Conversation fee: £1325
Leadership Conversation
61
Connection and Community
From 10.30am until 4.30pm on Tuesday June 1st 2021
The capacity to collaborate is crucial to survival in a threatening environment, and almost everyone we speak to refers to new connections and relationships opening up once the illusion of our self-dependence was shattered by Covid. This Conversation will be of interest to those seeking to work across boundaries, whether hierarchical, functional, demographic or cultural – particularly trying to sustain some of the generative practices and possibilities opened up during the pandemic where so much goodwill, initiative and innovation became possible. What deeper changes are we trying to make, within and across our organisations, to sustain new forms of collaboration and connection?
One-day Leadership Conversation fee: £450
Leadership Conversation
62
Fostering Wisdom
From 6.00pm on Thursday 10th June 2021 until 3.30pm on Friday 11th June
This conversation will focus on our unique role as leaders in fostering in our own organisations the kind of quality of learning, insight, attention and reflection that we are able to access in this community here at St George’s. How do we create ‘safe space’ within our own systems for people to be able to pause and look more deeply at who they are and what is needed of them – not just in a developmental setting, but in the day to day running of a demanding organisational setting. Fellows +
One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745
Leadership Conversation
63
Organisations as Conversations
From 6.00pm on Thursday 8th July 2021 until 3.30pm on Friday 9th July
“In language we build our own identities, our relationships with others, the countries that we live in, the companies that we have and the values that we hold dear. With language we generate life.” Fernando Flores
This Conversation will look at the extraordinary power we possess as leaders to shape both our own and others’ experience of reality through language. It will aim to help us be more alert to the power of language and more attentive, purposeful, and often more subtle, in our interventions. Fellows +
One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745
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