Leadership Conversations 2026-2027

Below we set out the dates and themes for our Conversations through to July 2027. 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 September to December 2026

Here is the current list of participants booked to join us for Leadership Conversations from September 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

“It’s Up To Us”…
Leader to Leader Exchange via Zoom

Friday 16th Oct, 13th Nov*, 4th Dec, 15th Jan, 12th Feb, 12th Mar, from 12 noon – 2pm
(* 1pm – 3pm)

“It’s Up To Us…” This was the call to action that Gary McKeone, Warden of St George’s House, left us with at the end of this year’s Annual Lecture. So we thought we would take up this challenge as the theme for this year’s leader to leader series.

Leader to Leader is a unique opportunity to be in a longitudinal learning conversation with fellow leaders over a period of 6 months.

In his lecture Lord Sumption gave us a compelling summary of the major themes unfolding in our times, with a focus on the threat to the foundations of our democracy, its failures in addressing some key environmental, social and economic challenges and the consequent vulnerability of our social fabric to polarisation and extremism…

Having these dynamics so clearly laid out before us we are left with the key question – how do we, each in our own worlds, respond? That is the invitation we would like to share and explore together in this year’s series.

£330 for the 6 session series

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 – *Fully Booked*

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

In a world that feels increasingly volatile, politically, economically, technologically, leaders are being asked to provide something that many of us are struggling to find within ourselves: stability. Not the false stability of pretending everything is fine, but genuine steadiness or what we place our faith in that enables others to think clearly, act wisely and hold their nerve.

This Conversation will explore what it means to be a stabilising force as a leader. Stable on the inside in order to provide stability on the outside. This is not about rigidity. Stabilising is not static. There is energy in instability, creative, necessary energy. The question is not how to eliminate uncertainty but how to stand in the middle of it without losing ourselves, so that others can do the same.

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

One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £855

See the Agenda

Leadership Conversation

137

Working with Agentics
(The Grief of Obsolescence)

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

Something is happening that we can all feel but few of us have fully reckoned with. Artificial intelligence is no longer a future possibility, it is a present reality that is reshaping what it means to work, to lead, and to be valued. Agentic systems – AI that acts autonomously, that makes decisions, that does in seconds what used to take a skilled human hours or days, are already here. By the time we gather for this Conversation, they will be unmistakably part of the working lives of most of us.

This is not a conversation about technology. It is a conversation about what happens to human beings when intelligence becomes cheap.

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

One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £855

See the Agenda

Leadership Conversation

138

Wisdom in Leadership

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

We talk about nurturing wisdom. It is at the heart of what the Society of Leadership Fellows exists to do. Yet if someone asked us, “What is wisdom actually?” we might struggle to answer. We know it is not the same as knowledge. It is not the same as experience. It is not the same as intelligence. But what is it? And how do we cultivate it – in ourselves, in others, in the organisations we lead, and amid the forces of these times that seem to be pulling us in a very different direction.

Over the two days, we will explore what wisdom means to us, where we have encountered it, and what it would take to make it a more deliberate and conscious part of our leadership practice.

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

Two-night Leadership Conversation fee: £1145

Leadership Conversation

139

Being Community

From 9.45am until 4.30pm on Wednesday 21st April

What constitutes community? Is it a feeling of belonging, a dedication to service, a deep-seated connection? Perhaps it is fundamental to the human experience, the need to belong, to be a part of something bigger than ourselves?

This Conversation will delve into the presence or absence of community within our professional lives, why this matters and our responsibilities as leaders in cultivating it. Community implies a sense of shared purpose and a quality of relationships built on mutuality, openness and trust. It can be a powerful enabler of high performance.

We will explore what it actually means to be in a community and the level of attention we need to give it. Not the theory of it, but the practice. How do we shape our own systems and structures to allow the possibility for genuine community to emerge? What brings people together rather than sets them apart?

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

One day Leadership Conversation fee: £520

Leadership Conversation

140

Nature is Calling, Are We Listening?

From 6.00pm on Sunday 23rd May until 12 noon on Wednesday 26th

If you overplant, the soil is denuded. The nutrients diminish. The benefit to the human is less. Nature knows this. We seem to have forgotten it.

This Conversation will explore what we can learn – as leaders, as human beings – from the deep time and wisdom of the natural world. Not as a metaphor alone, but as a living system that has been solving the problems we now face for millions of years: how to regenerate after depletion, how to sustain without exhausting, how to grow without destroying the conditions for growth.

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

Three-night Leadership Conversation fee: £1525

Leadership Conversation

141

Moral Leadership

From 6.00pm on Thursday 17th June until 4.30pm on Friday 18th

This Conversation is not about moralising leadership but instead will explore the moral dimension of leadership in a world where truth is contested, compliance is rewarded, and the cost of standing up is rising, where sensitive political or societal issues are ever present.

We will explore, not through abstract theory or philosophy, but through the honest examination of our own experience, giving space to reconnect with the standards we hold ourselves to, to witness the ways in which those standards are being tested and to reassess the moral principles of both our leadership and those shaping society for future generations.

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

One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £855

Leadership Conversation

142

Seeing Through the Noise

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

There is so much ‘noise’ generally in the world today, and specifically in our lives as leaders. How do we develop the art of discerning what really matters beneath all the clamour and obfuscation – some of it deliberate, some of it just human reactivity and misunderstanding?
This Conversation will explore the art, and it is an art, of finding a clear line of sight through the clamour and fog. Not by blocking it out, which is naive, but by learning to see through it: to detect the deliberate obfuscation, to not get caught up in unnecessary distractions, diversions and disputes and to cultivate a quality of attention that cuts through what matters. There is an art to listening to the ‘tone’ of the noise, or the energy within it and getting to the root of this.

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

One-night Leadership Conversation fee: £855