Leadership Conversations

 

 

Leadership Conversations 2023

Below we set out the dates and themes for our Conversations through to December. 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 in Conversations from February 2023

Here is an up-to-date list of participants joining us for Leadership Conversations from February to June 2023.

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

 

Leadership Themes for 2023:

Our 2023 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 new themes please click here.

 

Leadership Conversation
Leader to Leader Exchanges via Zoom
21st Oct, 25th Nov, 16th Dec, 6th Jan, 3rd Feb, 3rd Mar - From 12.00pm - 2pm
The Wisdom of These Times
This is a unique opportunity to be in a longitudinal learning conversation with fellow leaders over a period of 6 months. A forum in which we openly share and honestly examine our own responses as leaders to events and experiences as they unfold over time, allowing us each to benefit from the longer term wisdom that emerges as we track our true trajectory though events, rather than being swayed by more immediate peaks and troughs. Fellows only
Fee: £295 for the 6 session series
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
89
Making Sustainability Second Nature in our Leadership
From 10.00am until 4.30pm on Tuesday 7th February 2023
One theme in our conversations with Leaders is a recurring sense of dissatisfaction that we are not ‘doing enough’ to engender environmental sustainability into our way of life in our organisations and, indeed, in our own personal leadership. How do we get beyond good intentions, words and platitudes into transformed will, behaviour and daily decision-making. Our purpose on this Conversation is to immerse ourselves honestly in this dissatisfaction, to mine our own experience of it, reflect deeply on what lies behind it and to challenge ourselves radically about what is possible if we can shift our mindsets. A particular theme will be how we develop and embed a ‘sustainability mindset’ that informs the very pulse of our ways of working – recognising that many of the deeply embedded patterns, habits routines of life in our organisations were formed from historical attitudes that were very different to what is needed today. Fellows only.
One-day Leadership Conversation fee: £450
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
90
Listening and Leading with Wisdom in Diversity
From 6.00pm on Wednesday 22nd March 2023 until 11.30am on Friday 24th
At our recent Fellows dinner this theme came to the fore with passion, concern and a desire to explore... The focus on belonging, diversity and inclusion is one of the great shifts in institutional life over the last decade – and yet there is still a growing and deepening sense that ‘we are not getting this right’. On one hand there are people in minority groupings disappointed and frustrated that good words lead to little change in behaviour. On another there are people in majority groupings disappointed and frustrated that, however they try, they cannot be free of perceptions of dominance and bias. Both can lead to a crippling wariness and self-consciousness. Moreover the ‘boundary’ labels we use to describe and sensitise ourselves to inclusion/exclusion can be counter productive and create unforeseen in-group/out-group dynamics. More positively, there is recognition of the value that can be released into organisational decisions and activities by embracing more neurodiversity and human ‘difference’. How do we get this right? Is it more about listening than enacting? This 2 night Conversation will create a unique opportunity to go to depth on this theme, to explore diversity at a wisdom level, beyond the ‘field of right and wrong’. Is there a better way? Fellows +
Two-night Leadership Conversation fee: £995
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
91
Leading with Wisdom on The Board
From 10.00am until 4.30pm on Thursday 20th April 2023
This Conversation seeks to provide a space for us to share our experience and insight of the changing dynamics of leadership on the Board – for those of us who work on Boards, or want to work on them and also for those of us that work with or through them. In these times of complexity, uncertainty and rapid change, there is now so much focus and sophistication in supporting the quality of leadership, engagement and dialogue within our organisations, but to what extent is this also true of the life of our Boards? Is there more we should be doing to renew and realign the way we lead on the Board, given the scale of change we are now facing into? In this conversation we will share experiences, insights and concerns from our experience on and with the Board in order to discern any significant themes and priorities emerging. What is the wisdom that is really needed on the Board in these times and how could we be enhancing our effectiveness in the light of this? As well as sharing the wisdom from our own experience we also hope to invite an input from an expert in contemporary Board dynamics to provoke our thinking in response to this question. Fellows only
One-day Leadership Conversation fee: £450
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
92
Finding Stillness
From 6.00pm on Tuesday 2nd May 2023 until 11.30am on Friday 5th
We are the first generation to see and act on a global scale, with all the complex interactions, interconnections and multiple impacts that come with that – at pace. How do we find the centre of gravity and inner compass to navigate through this potentially constant overwhelm?

This 3 night conversation is designed as something of a personal leadership retreat to help us get the very best from the unique space at St George’s. It will both give us time and space to explore significant questions we are facing right now in our leadership and also seek to equip us with foundational practices that will enable us to maintain a greater sense of peace, presence and equanimity as leaders whatever life may send your way. Fellows +
Three-night Leadership Conversation fee: £1325
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
93
Standing in the ‘discomfort’ of leadership – together
From 6.00pm on Thursday 8th June 2023 until 4.00pm on Friday 9th
This topic came to the fore in conversations at our recent Fellows dinner gathering, the first since the pandemic, when we are discussing what we would most like to have our next Conversation on…. It has always been a truth of leadership that it requires us to step out of our comfort zone, but there is something in the current context that seems to have taken this to the next level. That is partly due to the level of complexity and unpredictability we seem now to be facing into and a growing sense that there are almost no comfortable decisions to be made these days. Our role as leaders of course is to stand in the discomfort, take the uncomfortable decisions at the necessary time and hold for the reverberations of these – without ‘leaking’ our own emotional reactions in the process. This in itself is a constant work and something we will explore in this Conversation, because there is no doubt that expectations on us have grown, particularly in relation to big issues such as mental health, diversity, sustainability, whilst economic and commercial forces seem to be getting simultaneously harsher… What does it really take to sustain our own focus, balance and equanimity in the midst of this? Fellows +
One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
94
Ethics in Leadership
From 6.00pm on Monday 26th June 2023 until 4.00pm on Tuesday 27th
This Conversation was first held in 2021. It is an offering at the heart of leadership and one that Fellows have asked to be repeated.
At the core of this Conversation is the question, “How do I find and retain my ethical focus in my life and my work and so live at peace with myself?” Leading in any system has us face ethical dilemmas, choices that cause a level of inner conflict. Choices that cause us to question, what I should do, what is called for, when to speak up, when to stay silent, what kind of person I am becoming, what I really want to embody as a leader. Fellows +
One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
95
Going from Strength to Strength - Becoming a Better Leader
From 2.30pm on Wednesday 13th September 2023 until 4.00pm on Thursday 14th
Recognising that each leadership journey is entirely unique, this Conversation provides a format in which you can bring your own leadership questions, of whatever nature, and explore these in a safe, productive space with fellow leaders - in a climate of generosity, openness and uncompromising respect. This involves bringing core strengths and insights from the past with the stirring awareness and energy of the present into new situations and challenges in the future - going from strength to strength. The focus is simple - to become, and to help each other become, better leaders. Fellows +
One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
96
Leadership and Mental Health
From 6.00pm on Monday 25th September 2023 until 4.00pm on Tuesday 26th
From our recent conversations with Fellows, this is a sacred topic that is very clearly on our hearts and mind. We are all more conscious than ever about mental health as a priority for our-selves and in our leadership. We are doing what we can but there seems to be a sense that ‘we are not quite getting this right’. In this Conversation we will explore these questions and more, with the dignity and respect ever present in our Conversations, and with the support of a mental health expert. Fellows only.
One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
97
Wisdom in Leadership and Legacy
From 6.00pm on Sunday 15th October 2023 until 11.15am on Wednesday 18th
This exclusive Fellows retreat will run once a year for people who want to take some ‘heads-up’ time and space, together with group of like-minded leadership leaders, to reflect more deeply on what you are all about as a leader – in terms of focus, energy, connection and contribution. It 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 wanting to explore new possibilities. It will also take us into the important question of legacy, not in a vain way, but in the question of ‘what really matters’, ‘what is of lasting significance’ and ‘what is our footprint’ as a leaders in this time. Of course, Windsor is the perfect place to stimulate this kind of perspective.
Three-night Leadership Conversation fee: £1325
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
98
Conflict Eats Culture For Breakfast!
From 6.00pm on Monday 30th October 2023 until 4.00pm on Tuesday 31st
This quote came in a conversation with one of our Fellows when we were exploring the true drivers of culture and the ultimate test of it ‘watch my feet, not my lips!’ We thought it the perfect topic for a Conversation because it is probably at the root of so many of our leadership challenges. To what extent is conflict, or more accurately fears and attitudes and assumptions towards conflict the real driver of the patterns that shape culture and performance?

We will look at our experience of ‘moments of truth’ when a culture that we believed to be one thing revealed itself to be very different. We will also explore our learning from time when we went along with things that in retrospect we knew we should not or stepped into things that then ‘blew up’. As we do so, we will surface the patterns of distortion and avoidance that turn ‘conflict’ from something creative and generative into something toxic. We will look at the subtleties of different types of ‘conflict’ and the sources of it. What happens when it gets embedded in relationships and how ultimately it forms an often unhealthy symbiosis with culture. Fellows+
One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745
Leadership Conversation
99
Spotting the ‘game changers’ in our leadership today
From 10.00am until 4.30pm on Wednesday 13th December 2023
This Conversation will take us into a practical exploration into what we sense to be the big game changers we face as leaders right now and, more importantly, why, and how we are sensing and discerning them? It is quite likely that how we are perceiving the world is itself a product of old patterns, so an important element of this Conversation will be helping each other ‘see our seeing’ and if necessary see with new eyes. We will also explore where we may need to be setting up new enquiries in our organisations and how we test our thinking and assumptions on an ongoing basis. Fundamentally this is a Conversation about keeping our eyes open and our thinking fresh in the context we face today. Fellows only.
One-day Leadership Conversation fee: £450
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