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 April 2023

Here is an up-to-date list of participants joining us for Leadership Conversations from April 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
May 2023 to November 2023

12th May, 23rd Jun, 28th Jul, 15th Sept, 13th Oct, 17th Nov - From 12.00pm - 2pm

This is a unique opportunity to be in a longitudinal learning conversation with fellow leaders over a period of 6 months. In this next series, we invite you into the question of ‘what does it truly mean to act your age?’ - a concept from the work of Joanna Macey, which assumes we all have a buried wisdom within us that is absolutely and particularly necessary for the times that we are in. Our last series focused on questions life is posing us, this series invites us to step into questions that lie within – what it really means for each of us to ‘act our age’ as leaders at this time in history. Fellows only.

Fee: £295 for the 6 session series

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/ Facilitators: Chris Blakeley & Tony Wood

One-day Leadership Conversation fee: £450

Leadership Conversation

92

Finding Stillness - the time and space you need as a leader

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 +/ Facilitators: Chris Blakeley & Karen Stefanyszyn

Three-night Leadership Conversation fee: £1325

Leadership Conversation

93

How to handle, and equip others for, 'discomfort' as a leader

From 6.00pm on Thursday 8th June 2023 until 4.00pm on Friday 9th

This topic came to the fore in conversations at one of our Fellows dinners, the first since the pandemic, when we were 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 our current context seems to be taking this to a new level! Partly due to the level of complexity and unpredictability we now face, there is a growing sense that there are almost no comfortable decisions to be made these days.

Fellows +/ Facilitators: Chris Blakeley & Karen Stefanyszyn

One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745

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 +/ Facilitators: Karen Stefanyszyn & Hueston Finlay

One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745

Leadership Conversation

95

How can I become an even 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 +/ Facilitators: Chris Blakeley & Tony Wood

One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745

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/ Facilitators: Karen Stefanyszyn

One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745

Leadership Conversation

97

Wisdom in Leadership - My Leadership Journey and its 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.

Fellows+/ Facilitators: Chris Blakeley & Karen Stefanyszyn

Three-night Leadership Conversation fee: £1325

Leadership Conversation

98

How to harness the creative force of conflict

From 6.00pm on Monday 30th October 2023 until 4.00pm on Tuesday 31st

‘Conflict Eats Culture For Breakfast!’ 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+/ Facilitators: Chris Blakeley & Karen Stefanyszyn

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/ Facilitators: Chris Blakeley & Karen Stefanyszyn

One-day Leadership Conversation fee: £450