Leadership Elevates
The Leadership Circle
Ninety minutes a month with your leadership team. Not training. Not a workshop. A standing monthly conversation that goes where your team actually is.
Most leadership teams report, update and leave. The harder conversations happen in corridors afterwards, or they do not happen at all.
Culture is not built at an offsite. It is built in the room, month after month.
5–8 leaders
Online or In-Person
Your leadership team is carrying more than it used to
Decisions come faster. The ground moves monthly. And AI is changing the work itself while most people in the room are quietly unsure what to make of it.
Executives are pushing adoption. Their people are worried about being left behind.
Culture is the thing that holds both together.
What usually happens instead
Most leadership teams are a group of capable individuals who happen to meet. They report. They update. They leave.
The harder conversations, about drift, about avoidance, about who is not carrying what, take place in corridors afterwards. Or they do not take place.
It is not laziness and it is not cowardice. There is simply no room in the calendar where the team is expected to be honest with one another, and so nobody is.
Nothing breaks. That is what makes it hard to act on.
The team performs. The numbers land, more or less. And underneath, the same few things go on happening.
- The problem that could have been named in March surfaces in September, by which point it costs considerably more to fix.
- Somebody good leaves, and everyone is surprised except the three people who saw it coming and said nothing.
- A decision gets made, unmade, and made again, and nobody can account for the eleven weeks.
And the culture forms regardless. It is forming now, out of whatever behaviour the room is currently willing to walk past.
Every session is shaped around where your team actually is.
The work moves through three dynamics, month after month.
What it looks like when it works
The change is structural rather than dramatic.
- The leadership meeting gets shorter, because what used to be avoided in it now happens elsewhere.
- Problems surface in week two rather than at the quarterly, and nobody flinches when they do.
- The team disagrees openly, decides quickly, and does not need you in the room to manage either.
- People know they matter, not because it is written on a wall, but because their leaders have been trained to make it true and are held to it by each other.
It is not a transformation. It is a company that works.
On ninety minutes
Most leadership team work is delivered as a project. An offsite, a set of psychometrics, a document, and within a month everyone is back to how they were.
A full day each quarter produces a plan. Ninety minutes each month produces a habit.
Culture does not change at the offsite. It changes across the ninety days afterwards, and that is where nobody is standing.
Before we meet
Each member of your leadership team completes a short assessment beforehand. Ten minutes, individually, in confidence. We start the conversation with what they said.
What leaders have said
I have run this format for years, with leadership teams inside companies and with groups of senior leaders from different organisations. The comments below are from the latter.
Asked what would have improved it, two said the same thing. That it should have lasted longer.
AN ADD ON, FOR THE FOUNDER OR CEO
Executive Coaching
“I once coached a founder who kept a standing slot with me every Wednesday morning. He told me it was the hour he looked forward to most in his week. Not because I had answers, but because it was the only place he could think out loud without managing anyone’s reaction.”
Johan Odén
The higher you go, the fewer people you can speak to openly. Your leadership team needs you certain. Your board needs you confident. Your family needs you present. And the thinking still has to happen somewhere.
This is where the decisions get sharpened, the relationships that are costing you get worked through, and the conviction everything else rests on gets rebuilt.
It is also where the two halves meet. When I am in the room with your leadership team each month, I see how you lead rather than how you describe it. That makes the private hour a different conversation.
START HERE
Ninety minutes with your leadership team
Not a presentation. An actual session, run properly, so you can judge the work rather than the pitch.
Your team has the conversation it has been putting off, and everyone leaves with one commitment made in front of the others.
If it is the right fit, I will send you the full engagement and what it costs. If not, your team will still have had a useful ninety minutes.
There is no charge for the first session and no obligation after it.
