Leadership Conversations

 

 

Leadership Conversations 2023-2024

Below we set out the dates and themes for our Conversations through to December 2024. 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 November 2023 to February 2024

Here is an up-to-date list of participants joining us for Leadership Conversations from November 2023 to February 2024.

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 new themes please click here.

 

Leadership Conversation
Leader to Leader Exchanges via Zoom
September 2023 to February 2024
15th Sept, 13th Oct, 17th Nov, 15th Dec, 19th Jan, 16th Feb - 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
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
99
Facing up to 'Gamechangers' - Fully Booked
From 10.00am until 4.30pm on Wednesday 13th December 2023
The context in which we lead is constantly changing. Some challenges are signalled clearly, such as the target of ‘net zero’ or the impact of AI, others are more subtle, almost invisible, like changing demographics, and attitudes towards work and service.

This Conversation encourages us to be alert and to think innovatively about:

  • What are the big game-changers we face as leaders?
  • How we are sensing and discerning these (or not…)?
  • How and where might we be perceiving the world in old patterns and missing the new?
  • What do we, as leaders, need to recognise, and help others to identify?
  • How effectively does our use of language and change narratives serve us in finding wise responses to major issues
  • How do we keep challenging our thinking and assumptions to stay sensitive to shifts in our context?
  • Where need we be setting up new enquiries in our organisations in relation to these?

    Fellows only/ Facilitators: Chris Blakeley/ Karen Stefanyszyn & Tony Wood
One-day Leadership Conversation fee: £450
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
100
Gaining a Common Purpose in Your Organisation
From 6.00pm on Thursday 25th January 2024 until 4.00pm on Friday 26th
In this Conversation, at the start of the year, the Vicars' Hall provides the space to re-examine, refresh and renew purpose, the higher intent of your organisation. Most of us will have vision and purpose statements for our organisations and teams but to what extent are they fresh, alive, followed and shared - and truly relevant to the needs and perspectives of our society today?

  • Does your stated purpose inspire, give a real sense of why you exist and what you stand for?
  • Is it sufficiently powerful and authentic to capture hearts and minds of employees, prospective employees, customers and stakeholders?
  • And, is it lived? Is it the guiding north star, that touches everything you do, at the heart of decisions, relationships and acts? Is it in lived close in, in the apparently mundane as much as in the far-reaching signature acts of contribution to the needs of society?

    **PLACES STILL AVAILABLE**
    Fellows+/ Facilitators: Karen Stefanyszyn & Tony Wood
One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745
As of 1st January 2024: £810
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
101
Wisdom of Management - Talent Development
From 10.00am until 4.30pm on Wednesday 28th February 2024
This is the first of a series of Conversations intended to harness and share the practical wisdom of the more ‘managerial’ aspects of our leadership roles.

In this one day Conversation we will seek to:

  • Unearth the secrets of real talent development with fellow CEOs and leaders
  • Explore strategies to nurture and develop talent within your own organisation
  • Delve into the creation of a culture fostering growth and innovation
  • Share practical insights to improve recruitment, training, and talent development
  • Unlock your organisation's full potential.

    **PLACES STILL AVAILABLE**
    Fellows only/ Facilitators: Tony Wood & Chris Blakeley
One-day Leadership Conversation fee: £450.
As of 1st January 2024: £490
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
102
Beyond Mastery
From 6.00pm on Tuesday 12th March 2024 until 12 noon on Thursday 14th
Beyond mastery is when we are no longer bound by ‘rules’ because we have grown through them. When the apprentice no longer mimics the master but has the capacity to invent new, novel responses beyond what has been known before. As leaders, we are shaping organisations to serve an ever-changing world and inviting people to bring their fullest intellectual and emotional capacities in support of that. Does the way we are leading stimulate mediocrity and expediency or mastery and ingenuity?

In this conversation, we will:

  • Examine what has been lost in a world of economy and expediency
  • Discern where competence is enough and where mastery really matters
  • Explore how we grow and develop our human capacities from novice to mastery
  • Challenge our own leadership approaches to ensure we are inviting mastery not conformity from those around us – where it is most needed
  • Discuss how we shape inspiring working environments that stimulate real learning and mine true talent

    Fellows+/ Facilitators: Chris Blakeley & Karen Stefanyszyn
Two-night Leadership Conversation fee: £995
As of 1st January 2024: £1080
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
103
Leading on the Board
From 10.00am until 4.30pm on Wednesday 10th April 2024
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, and for those of us who work with or through them. Is there more we should be doing to renew and realign the way we lead on the Board, given the complex landscapes we face?

We will share and consider:

  • Experiences, insights and concerns from our experience on and with the Board
  • The role and purpose of the Board in facing today’s complex business challenges
  • The relational and power dynamics within and between the Board and Executive
  • How authentically we can show up in and to the Board
  • Ways to enhance decision making and leadership skills at this level

    Fellows only/ Facilitators: Tony Wood & Karen Stefanyszyn
One-day Leadership Conversation fee: £450
As of 1st January 2024: £490
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
104
Leading in Times of Transition
From 6.00pm on Tuesday 7th May 2024 until 12 noon on Friday 10th
There is a hard-won wisdom in navigating transition, a wisdom that only comes from experience. That is what we are seeking to uncover, share and sharpen in this three night Conversation, giving us a unique space to delve deeply into this wisdom, whilst also applying it to the reality of our own lives.

Amongst other things, we will explore:

  • Timing – when to act and when to be patient
  • Perspective – to see things as they are, not as we or others may want (or fear) them to be
  • Presence - getting beyond our ‘gut reaction’ to lead with calm and clarity
  • Hope – sustaining momentum when the way is blocked or unclear
  • Maturity – embracing natural life transitions along with external changes
  • Power – how it shifts and flows and what happens as we lose it/gain it

    Fellows only/ Facilitators: Chris Blakeley & Karen Stefanyszyn
Three-night Leadership Conversation fee: £1325
As of 1st January 2024: £1440
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
105
Risk, 'Failure' and Innovation
From 6.00pm on Thursday 23rd May 2024 until 4.00pm on Friday 24th
Being in a safe environment where we can share stories of ‘failure’, the ‘B’ side of our story, without shame or anxiety is both cathartic and enabling. We can look back and see qualities and possibilities that came about as a result of failure and recovery. Growth is rarely a straight line. Here, we acknowledge and value the learning from setbacks along the way personally and reflect on the complex attitudes to ‘failure’ in our organisations.

We will share insights into how successful organisations and leaders have turned their failures into opportunities for growth and innovation, created a culture of experimentation that encourages risk-taking and promotes a growth mindset.

We will:

  • Discuss the critical role of controlled non-harmful failure
  • Explore the turning of failures into opportunities for growth and innovation
  • Consider cultures promoting experimentation and controlled risk-taking
  • Share experiences and insights on leveraging failure for innovation

    Fellows+/ Facilitators: Tony Wood & Karen Stefanyszyn
One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745
As of 1st January 2024: £810
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
106
Ethics in Leadership
From 6.00pm on Tuesday 11th June 2024 until 4.00pm on Wednesday 12th
As leaders we often face ethical dilemmas. Each year this Conversation considers how we as leaders can find and retain our ethical focus in life and work and so live at peace with ourselves.

We will consider:

  • Who we are becoming as leaders as we make decisions, inside and outside of relationships, inside and outside of power
  • The thoughtful operation of conscious principles and the deeper intuitive voice of conscience
  • Honestly, the tension between who we aspire to be and what we actually do
  • The system we are leading in and the ethical dilemmas it presents
  • What it takes to build and maintain the ethical character of any organisation, even when survival is threatened
  • How we are collectively shaping the moral and ethical foundations of our society and institutions that we will be handing on to future generations

    Fellows+/ Facilitators: Hueston Finlay & Karen Stefanyszyn
One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745
As of 1st January 2024: £810
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
107
Enough is Enough
From 6.00pm on Thursday 12th September 2024 until 4.00pm on Friday 13th
As leaders we can often feel that we are over-stretched, under-resourced, and that we and our teams just have far to much to do. Such feelings can extend into our personal lives too. This pressure can lead to anxiety, stress, and even ill-health.

A counter to this is the concept of ‘enough’ - as leaders, stewards of our organisations, and as individuals, looking through the lens of ‘enough’, we will explore how to live and work in a sustainable way over the long term. How to be enough, do enough and have enough individually and collectively in these challenging times.

We will look at our experience of:

  • the prevailing mindsets of scarcity or excess and their effects
  • the internal and external forces driving behaviours
  • being enough, working with the imposter phenomenon, and developing true presence
  • doing enough, in environments of constant demand and ambition
  • having enough, sustainable growth, wisdom, connection
  • knowing when to stop, ‘the art of done’
  • on the basis of this understanding, we will then uncover the real-life wisdom available to us to apply the enough mindset to our life and work

    Fellows+/ Facilitators: Chris Blakeley & Karen Stefanyszyn
One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745
As of 1st January 2024: £810
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
108
Staying Human with AI
From 6.00pm on Tuesday 24th September 2024 until 4.00pm on Wednesday 25th
Artificial Intelligence (AI) in all its forms has been with us for some time now in the cloud based systems and services we use everyday. The change today is that it is now central to the workplace. Our organisations will start to use AI as assistance in the first place and then, as its “intelligence” increases in function, to replace many jobs - hopefully releasing human creativity and ingenuity for higher value activity…..

How will we as leaders work personally and professionally with this tidal change? What will we as humans do when the bulk of the current world's information work is completed by AI?

It is here now so let’s have a conversation about how we can bring about positive change and wisdom utilising AI. In particular to:

  • Discuss AI's emerging role in the workplace with fellow leaders
  • Explore how we harness AI for good change and wisdom in leadership
  • Consider the risks and fears relating to AI (whether founded or not)
  • Explore our roles when AI takes on a significant portion of information work
  • Ponder 'What does it mean to be human?' in the AI era
  • Collaborate on strategies for adapting professionally to AI's tidal change
  • Discuss what controls might be needed in our organisations

    Fellows+/ Facilitators: Tony Wood & Chris Blakeley
One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £745
As of 1st January 2024: £810
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
109
Wisdom and Courage in Generative Leadership
From 6.00pm on Sunday 13th October 2024 until 12 noon on Wednesday 16th
The four big words in this title represent a powerful constellation. Take any one away and something ‘less-than’ starts to happen in the world. In this Conversation we will explore the growth, balance and flow of these qualities in our own leadership and in the culture we engender around us.

Progress is all about breakthrough, the way a shoot breaks through the soil. That is what we mean by generative, or regenerative, leadership. What it takes to release the latent potential or solution that lies below the ‘crust’ of old patterns, assumptions and behaviours that are no longer serving us.

Courage is about the honest determination to do what it takes and not to settle for the ‘less-than’.
Leadership is the call we all share to make a difference in the world.
Wisdom is the mysterious, hard-won quality that has us able to know:

  • When, how where, breakthrough is needed and how to spot the signs
  • When to be bold, strong, fearless and when to be calm, patient, nurturing
  • When to break the soil or prune the tree and when to tend or train
  • When to stay the course, when to flex with the flow

    Fellows only/ Facilitators: Chris Blakeley & Karen Stefanyszyn
Three-night Leadership Conversation fee: £1325
As of 1st January 2024: £1440
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
110
Regenerative Leadership
From 6.00pm on Wednesday 27th November 2024 until 12 noon on Friday 29th
What does it really take to lead in the 21st century?

This Conversation seeks to open up a new thread for the Fellowship, which we will follow through in subsequent events. In this first one, we will explore what it takes to release a different quality of thinking in the way we lead today. We can view it as a movement from an ‘acquisitive’, to a ‘sustainable’ and into a ‘regenerative’ mindset.

We will consider:
  • How we stay mentally alert to the possibility of regenerative breakthrough
  • How we work with ‘stuckness’ and the ‘frustration energy’ this contains
  • How true breakthrough emerges - in robust dialogue of apparently conflicting ‘truths’
  • How we bring ‘living system’ wisdom into our organisational routines
  • The bigger picture: our role as stewards, leading with future generations in mind

    Fellows+/ Facilitators: Chris Blakeley & Karen Stefanyszyn
Two-night Leadership Conversation fee: £995
As of 1st January 2024: £1080
See the Agenda
Leadership Conversation
111
Leadership in a Regulated Environment
From 10.00am until 4.30pm on Tuesday 3rd December 2024
Are you a CEO or leader working in a rigorously controlled environment such as public service, health or tightly regulated industries? Do you find yourself grappling with power dynamics and feeling powerless at times, despite a title that would suggest otherwise.

Join us for a deep dive into the subtleties of leadership in such a context where wisdom and collaboration are key, and where power and regulatory dynamics can often leave us feeling frustrated or powerless, or both! We will share experiences, insights and practical tips for navigating the complex landscape of regulations, policies, and stakeholders.

We will share the unique space of St George's House to:
  • Explore with fellow CEO’s the nuances of leading in regulated environments
  • Discuss balancing competing needs, effective collaboration, and power dynamics
  • Share practical tips to navigate complex regulatory landscapes
  • Delve into specific challenges and opportunities that arise in controlled sectors
  • Learn and develop strategies from each other for driving innovation, building effective partnerships, and achieving success.

    Fellows only/ Facilitators: Tony Wood & Karen Stefanyszyn
One-day Leadership Conversation fee: £450
As of 1st January 2024: £490
x
MENU