The leaders' circle

Who It's For

Chief executives, council leaders, chairs and directors, a small trusted peer group

Overview

The leaders' circle is a small, confidential group of chief executives, council leaders, chairs and directors who set their own agenda for the year. Six half-day sessions begin with leading from the inside out and the circle choosing its themes. In the middle sessions an expert guest opens each theme and the circle works through it as peer consultancy, drawing on Avanti Academy content on choices under uncertainty, keeping your own balance through change and conflict, and AI beyond the hype. Four coaching sessions and open access to every Avanti Academy topic run between. The final session looks back and forward, using BANI and resilience to frame what comes next.

Aims

This programme aims to give senior leaders a trusted space to think with peers about the hardest parts of their role, strengthening their judgement, steadiness and sense of purpose, and to leave with a personal leadership agenda for the year, held by the circle and supported by coaching.

In summary, you will be able to:

1. 1Assess the strategic choices in front of you, distinguishing risk from deep uncertainty and structuring decisions that are messy, interconnected and politically charged.
2. 2Use peer consultancy and coaching to work through your own leadership challenges, including whether and how AI belongs in your organisation.
3. 3Plan a personal leadership agenda for the year that sustains your values, balance and resilience through change, conflict and a brittle, anxious world.

What you'll develop

Over the programme, you and your cohort will be able to:

1. 1Distinguish stated from revealed values and use Goleman's five components of emotional intelligence to assess how you show up under pressure.
2. 2Distinguish certainty, risk, uncertainty and ambiguity, and use four questions to place a live decision on that spectrum.
3. 3Explain how a leader regulates distress within a productive range and keeps role distinct from self.
4. 4Explain why AI is a leadership question rather than an IT project, and why existing duties of fairness, lawfulness and accountability still apply.
5. 5Explain what the main productivity studies found, including who gained most and where AI made capable people worse.
6. 6Explain the three elements of the working alliance and what the research says about its link to coaching outcomes.
7. 7Explain Gallwey's formula of performance as potential minus interference, and his Self 1 and Self 2.
8. 8Explain how established models account for the results of the UK four-day week pilot, carrier flight deck operations and Costco's response to the 2008 crisis.