Leadership Conversations

Participants in Conversations from January 2020

Here is an up-to-date list of participants joining us for Leadership Conversations from January to June 2020.

Details of Fellows joining us are available on the Agenda page for each Conversation.

 

Themes for Conversations through to December 2020

Below we set out the dates and themes of our Leadership Conversations through to the end of next year.

As you will see, Background Papers and Agendas are available for Conversations through to June 2020.

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.

 

Leadership Conversation
43
Achieving your top priorities in 2020
From 10.30am until 4.30pm on Tuesday December 10th 2019
This Conversation is now fully booked. Please click on the agenda button below for the participants list
One-day Leadership Conversation fee: £400
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Leadership Conversation
44
From conflict to creativity
From 6.00pm on Thursday 23rd January 2020 until 3.30pm on Friday 24th
Drawing on our theme on Innovation and Creativity in Leadership, this Conversation is especially designed for Fellows whose instinct is to AVOID conflict whenever possible! How can we manage conflict in ways that are real and open, so that we reassure conflict averse team members without diluting the “raw edges” to conflict that are essential to achieving creative outcomes? How can we draw out the different perspectives behind healthy conflict to enable our team to develop a clearer sense of shared values and common purpose? What are the implications for ourselves as leaders, in defining more clearly our own values and where we draw our “lines in the sand” as leaders? Fellows +
One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745
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Leadership Conversation
45
The persuasive challenger
From 10.30am until 4.30pm on Tuesday February 4th 2020
This Conversation is now fully booked. Please click on the agenda button below for the participants list
One-day Leadership Conversation fee: £450
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Leadership Conversation
46
Becoming more courageous as leaders
From 6.00pm on Monday 24th February 2020 until 3.30pm on Tuesday 25th
Taking forward our immensely powerful theme around courage in leadership. At a range of Leadership Conversations we have said that the one thing we need quite a lot more of as leaders is courage! How should we develop our mindset as leaders, so that we constantly replenish our inner reserves of courage and feel more confident drawing on them? What are the most common moments when we let ourselves down and need to make sure that we step forward more confidently? How can we best engage with our closest confidantes and invite them to tell us if and when they feel we have let an opportunity pass and failed to show the courage required of us? How might we best reciprocate and support them in finding their courage in moments when they would like to step up more? Personal courage and team courage: these will both come to the fore as we assess the challenges we should set ourselves if we are to become more courageous as leaders. Fellows +
One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745
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Leadership Conversation
47
Crafting your story as a leader
From 10.30am until 4.30pm on Thursday March 12th 2020
More and more of us feel under pressure to tell our stories as leaders. We are reluctant to come across as self-centred and yet we know that we are required to offer some sort of summary of our personal leadership journey. Should we expect to share some of our previous leadership experiences to establish our credentials for our current role? If we share some of our past experiences, how much should we be prepared to say about things that have gone wrong as well as those that have been a resounding success? Should we have one all-purpose personal story for any audience and maybe another which offers some real vulnerability for those we want to let up close? Building on our theme of “Your brand as a leader”, we will engage with all of these challenges as well as supporting each other with crafting the core propositions in our personal leadership stories. Fellows +
One-day Leadership Conversation fee: £450
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Leadership Conversation
48
High trust leadership: driving up performance
From 6.00pm on Sunday 22nd March 2020 until 11.15am on Tuesday 24th
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
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Leadership Conversation
49
Facilitating strategic ideas-building
From 6.00pm on Thursday 30th April 2020 until 3.30pm on Friday 1st May
Continuing our theme around leaders as facilitators, we ask how we can each develop our role as facilitative leaders, able to draw out the creative energies of colleagues and partners in ways that they find both empowering and stretching. We will ensure that we give quality time to supporting each other in developing our distinctive styles as leaders whose own enjoyment of strategic ideas-building becomes infectious in the eyes of others! This is incredibly important if we are to support colleagues who don’t naturally gravitate towards anything with the label ‘strategic' attached to it, and require engaged leadership on our part if they are to take on board the principles of self-challenge and risk-taking that are so essential to successful ideas-building. Fellows +
One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745
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Leadership Conversation
50
At No 50: from insights to action
From 6.00pm on Sunday 17th May 2020 until 11.15am on Wednesday 20th
At this Leadership Conversation we will ask what are our top 10 leadership insights emerging from our first 49 Conversations for Leadership Fellows since we started this series in October 2016. Two weeks before the session Pete will circulate a paper suggesting what he sees as the top ten insights across the series. We will then assess them in turn, asking which ones are most useful for you and why. In the final stages of this Conversation we will ask what we as a group see as OUR TOP 5 INSIGHTS, and how we might each draw on them to maximize their impact on our performance as leaders. A special publication will be issued by the House based on the outcomes of this landmark Conversation. Fellows only
Three-night Leadership Conversation fee: £1325
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Leadership Conversation
51
Rebalancing our lives as leaders
From 10.30am until 4.30pm on Tuesday June 2nd 2020
Drawing on one of our most challenging - and irresistible! - themes on the dangers of workaholism and how those of us who are workaholics to one degree or another can achieve remarkable breakthroughs by rebalancing our lives as leaders. In our two earlier Conversations on this theme we explored the idea of “colour coding” all of our lives so that we really do focus on how much time and energy we are giving to our families, friends, volunteering and ourselves - “me time” - AS WELL AS our time as leaders in our professional lives. If we are to demonstrate the self-leadership necessary to rebalance the whole of our lives as leaders, what are our personal priorities that we need to act on from the moment we leave this Conversation? And what do we each think a “better version of me” would look like by Christmas 2020? Fellows only
One-day Leadership Conversation fee: £450
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Leadership Conversation
52
Leading with integrity - and walking the walk
From 6.00pm on Tuesday 16th June 2020 until 3.30pm on Wednesday 17th
We might talk the talk, but do we REALLY walk the walk? This is the challenge that we intend to put to ourselves at this fourth Conversation on our theme of leading with integrity. In the third Chapter of this report we set out a series of challenging behaviours that Fellows have identified as necessary for us to be satisfied that we’re leading with integrity. What more should we each be doing to ramp up the standard of integrity that we expect of ourselves and really set an example that those around us WANT to follow? Should we - as we asked ourselves last time - set higher boundaries in those relationships where levels of integrity are okay but not as high as we judge them to be in some other relationships? Fellows +
One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745
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Leadership Conversation
53
Leading culture change
From 6.00pm on Thursday 9th July 2020 until 3.30pm on Friday 10th
Building on the insights arising from five previous Conversations on this theme, we start by asking what are the two or three aspects of the culture of our own organisation that we would most like to change. After comparing notes, we ask what we would need to change in the overall leadership of our organisation for us to feel more empowered as leaders of culture change. We then IMAGINE that these changes have come to pass, and we have complete support from the top for driving the changes in culture that we would most like to see. What arguments should we now advance to build maximum support across the organisation for these changes and how do we need to develop our own leadership style to ensure that we embody this new culture? What messages do we draw from our answers about how best to unify our leadership team around a new strategy for leading culture change? Fellows +
One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745
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Leadership Conversation
54
Evaluating our success as leaders
From 6.00pm on Monday 7th September 2020 until 3.30pm on Tuesday 8th
Building on the insights in Chapter 5 of “Raising our performance as leaders”, in which we explore some of the tensions between our success and happiness as leaders. We will start by asking how many of us regard ourselves as successful leaders. For those who say yes, what are the key achievements or symbols that enable us to say this? For those who say no, do we have a sense of what we would need to achieve to be able to say yes? When we focus on the prize yet to be won, how realistic is it - or is it one of those things that is almost within reach and never quite there? We will end up asking what stretching goals we would each like to set for ourselves in September 2021 that would enable us to see ourselves as truly successful. Would their achievement make us happier than we are now, or might they compromise our happiness in some way? How much can we view our success and happiness as leaders as one? Or is there something about how we view leadership that means we can't let ourselves enjoy the two together? Fellows +
One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745
Leadership Conversation
55
Leader in the mirror!
From 6.00pm on Monday 21st September 2020 until 3.30pm on Tuesday 22nd
In his famous song Man in the Mirror, Michael Jackson sung "if you want to make the world a better place ... take a look at yourself and then make a change”. That will be our cue for this Conversation focusing on SELF-LEADERSHIP and our personal strategies for making better leaders of ourselves. What have been Fellows’ most effective strategies for self-leadership so far, and what are the key lessons that we each take from the stories that others share? Specifically, what changes should we each be making in our habits as leaders to make us more effective in persuading others to follow suit? By the end we hope to have sharpened up some general principles for getting tougher on the leader in the mirror, as well as supporting each other with sharpening up specific resolves in relation to our SELF-LEADERSHIP. Fellows +
One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745
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Leadership Conversation
56
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
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Leadership Conversation
57
Creating the right TEAM TONE
From 10.30am until 4.30pm on Tuesday October 27th 2020
We often talk of how we occasionally need to tone ourselves down - or up - to ensure that we achieve our true purpose as leaders (Chapter 3, From good to exceptional). As well as working on our own tone as leaders, shouldn’t we also be working on the tone of our top team? Whilst a good number of CEOs pride themselves on being tolerant, flexible, inclusive and consistent, quite a number of their teams are seen by many staff to be intolerant, inflexible and guilty of double standards, for example colluding with poor performance by other Directors whilst not tolerating this from senior Managers. How can you best challenge your team to create with you a more unified TEAM TONE? How should your TEAM TONE reflect core principles such as transparency, accountability and mutual trust? What are your top three personal priorities to enable you to lead your team through the process of creating a more positive and harmonious TEAM TONE? Fellows +
One-day Leadership Conversation fee: £450
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Leadership Conversation
58
Courage - from personal virtue to team habit
From 6.00pm on Sunday 8th November 2020 until 11.15am on Tuesday 10th
This follows on from our February Conversation on "Becoming more courageous as leaders”. We will ask what more each of us could do to support our team in becoming more courageous, so that a personal virtue becomes more of a shared habit. We will end up identifying how we might each draw on our courage as leaders to help transform it into a TEAM HABIT that builds greater accountability, integrity and candour. In the process, we hope to explore some powerful and yet practical ideas for building greater team courage. For example, could we encourage more testing out of new ideas on the basis that the person proposing an idea is expected to be the first to speak up if it proves to be a damp squib? This would take some courage for people who don’t like to say they've got something wrong! Could all team members be expected to show more courage by volunteering any under-performance on their part, as a basis for calling out under-performance on the part of others round the table? A Conversation designed for Fellows who want the team around you to become unstoppable! Fellows +
Two-night Leadership Conversation fee: £995
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Leadership Conversation
59
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
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Leadership Conversation
60
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 Only
One-day Leadership Conversation fee: £450
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