Leadership Conversations

 

Leadership Conversations 2026

Below we set out the dates and themes for our Conversations through to December 2026. 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.

Participants June to December 2026

Here is the current list of participants booked to join us for Leadership Conversations from June to December 2026.

Details are also are available on the Agenda page for each Conversation.

 

Leadership Themes:

Our programme is organised around 2 core themes:

Wisdom and Personal Growth

Providing a space for a deeper authentic enquiry into the character, purpose and ambition of our leadership.

Practical Wisdom For These Times

Providing an opportunity to share practical experience, expertise and learning around key contemporary issues.

To read more about these themes please click here.

 

Leadership Conversation
130

Courage: Decision-Making Under Scrutiny and Unclear Evidence

From 6.00pm on Thursday 25th June until 4.30pm on Friday 26th

This leadership Conversation will invite us into deep, reflective exploration of what it truly means to make courageous decisions when evidence is incomplete, the stakes are high, and every move is subject to external and internal scrutiny. In contemporary organisational life—whether in health, public service, or the private sector—we are increasingly called to act in ambiguous circumstances, to hold responsibility for the unknown, and to justify choices that may be challenged by regulators, boards, or the public, long after the moment has passed.

By coming together in honest enquiry and reflection, we will probe the ground on which we stand as leaders, individually and collectively. By sharing stories, struggles, and insights, we will surface strategies for holding complexity, stepping into uncertainty, being the voice that is listened to, and finding purpose, wisdom, and integrity even as the world watches and waits.

 

Fellows +/ Facilitators: Karen Stefanyszyn & Tony Wood
Core Theme: Practical Wisdom For These Times

One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £855

See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
131

Leading Through Crisis and Uncertainty
**Limited Availability

From 6.00pm on Thursday 10th September until 4.30pm on Friday 11th

In a world increasingly shaped by uncertainty whether through pandemic, conflict, cyber threat, social upheaval, or personal crisis the work of leadership is being tested in new and often unpredictable ways. As Fellows, we are called not just to respond to crisis when it arrives but to cultivate cultures that are ready, adaptive, and human-centred even amid ambiguity and shock.

This Conversation dives deeply into the art and practice of leading in and through crisis. Drawing on models of complexity (such as CYNEFIN), we look honestly at what happens individually and collectively when the ground shifts under our feet. The session explores both immediate crisis response and the longer, ongoing challenge of sustaining clarity, courage and compassion as leaders, even when precedent is lacking and outcomes are unclear.

 

Fellows +/ Facilitators: Karen Stefanyszyn & Tony Wood
Core Theme: Wisdom and Personal Growth

One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £855

See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
132

Mosaics of Hope

From 2.00pm on Monday 28th September until 12.15pm on Wednesday 30th

Taking inspiration from the 2025 St George’s House Annual Lecture, this Conversation will explore how we cultivate and sustain the essential quality of hope as the basis for our leadership – and that of others. Our focus will be on ‘true hope’, not avoiding the painful realities and challenges of darker times, but wholly engaging with them in the necessary process of transforming things for the better – going ‘through’, not ‘round’ and taking people with us as we do….

We will also be spending time exploring the ‘mosaic’ of hope – how we engage with others, each one of us playing our fullest part in a picture we may never wholly grasp – until we have built it. The scale and complexity of the challenges we face today can make us feel overwhelmed, tempting us to withdraw into our own ‘rightness’ and  ‘othering’ those who do not share it. So we will be looking at the role of forgiveness and generosity in hope, how we make moves that allow it to root and breathe in others.

 

Fellows only/ Facilitators: Chris Blakeley & Karen Stefanyszyn
Core Theme: Wisdom and Personal Growth

Three-day Leadership Conversation fee: £1330

See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
133

Leadership and Loneliness: Isolation or Empowered Solitude

From 6.00pm on Monday 12th October until 4.30pm on Tuesday 13th

Leadership is inevitably lonely at times. It comes with the territory. But when and how is this healthy or unhealthy?  When for example does a resolute clarity in the face of difficulty become isolation or brittleness?

In this Conversation we will explore and learn practical approaches to cultivating solitude while finding healthier support networks. We will leave better equipped to integrate a healthy alone-ness into our leadership practice, nurturing both individual strength and meaningful connection with others.

 

Fellows only/ Facilitators: Chris Blakeley & Karen Stefanyszyn
Core Theme: Wisdom and Personal Growth

One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £855

See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
134

Reluctant Leaders?

From 6.00pm on Wednesday 11th November until 12 noon on Friday 13th

In this Conversation we are going to talk ‘imposter’!  A persistent feature in our honest conversations is the acknowledging of our experience of ‘imposter syndrome’ – when, for whatever reason, we find ourselves thinking ‘I am not up to this!’ Or related to this, the ‘accidental leader’, where, finding ourselves in a position with everyone looking to us for leadership, we ask ‘why me, how did I end up here…?’

It is a facet of leadership as old as time itself – described memorably in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, where Malcolm, wrestling with the call to rescue Scotland from Tyranny, has first to overcome his own self-judgements, and “abjure the taints and blames I laid upon myself for strangers to my nature…  My first false speaking was this upon myself.”

During the Conversation we will enquire into our own experience, past and present, of facing into this phenomenon – and the strategies we can deploy to respond appropriately to it.

 

Fellows only/ Facilitators: Chris Blakeley & Karen Stefanyszyn
Core Theme: Wisdom and Personal Growth

Two-night Leadership Conversation fee: £1145

See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
135

Releasing Entrepreneurial Leadership: Creating Spaces for Innovation & Change

From 9.45am until 4.30pm on Wednesday 2nd December 2026

The leadership challenge we want to explore together in this conversation is how we inject and sustain an entrepreneurial spirit and create environments that welcome rather than resist change. With careful nurturing, even the most apparently disruptive ideas can flourish.

The Conversation will focus on our role as leaders in cultivating a climate in which innovation and rapid adaptation is a way of life. This will involve us examining and releasing our own energy and belief in the face of self-limiting patterns as well as how we encourage this in others – not just those in our direct teams but also those whom we engage with across organisational systems and boundaries.

 

Fellows only/ Facilitators: Chris Blakeley & Tony Wood
Core Theme: Practical Wisdom For These Times

One day Leadership Conversation fee: £520

See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
136

Leadership as a Stabilising Force

From 6.00pm on Monday 25th January until 4.30pm on Tuesday 26th

One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £855

Leadership Conversation
137

Working with Agentics

From 6.00pm on Monday 15th February until 4.30pm on Tuesday 16th

One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £855

Leadership Conversation
138

Wisdom in Leadership

From 6.00pm on Monday 22nd March until 12 noon on Wednesday 24th

Two-night Leadership Conversation fee: £1145

Leadership Conversation
139

Being Community

From 9.45am until 4.30pm on Wednesday 21st April

One day Leadership Conversation fee: £520

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