Background Note and Agenda for
our 8th Leadership Conversation,
a residential Masterclass from
6.00pm on Monday June 5th 2017
until 3.30pm on the 6th
Leading a
Winning
Team
Society of Leadership Fellows, St George's House, Windsor Castle
Society of Leadership Fellows
leaders nurturing each other’s wisdom
This Masterclass will support you in driving up the performance
of your leadership team, by
l Sharpening up what you see as the gap between your team’s current performance and what it would need to be as a truly winning team
l Exploring changes in your own leadership behaviours towards your team to achieve the impact that you want
l Thinking through personal strategies for winning over key individuals in your team who you feel are holding it back at the moment
l Developing carefully focused practical plans that you can take away and use to make an immediate difference.
Our discussions will be co-facilitated by two of our Leadership Fellows, Krysia Hudek and
Sharon Amesu, who both offer professional coaching to leadership teams in their own right.
They will be supported by Pete Ashby, Leadership Programme Director of St George’s
House, who has worked with a wide range of teams and Boards over the years in driving up
team performance.
Engaging with your most difficult challenges
If you sign up to join this Masterclass, our commitment is to help you in engaging with the
most difficult challenges that you face in leading a top performing team.
Within a confidential setting, we will build the trust among us to be able to share with
each other what we each think is holding us back. This is essential if we are to develop our
own leadership roles to support our teams in becoming the very best that they can be.
Because we are all looking for slightly different take-aways we can be there for each other
in ways that are incredibly creative, as shown by the testimonies on our Latest Feedback
page.
2 Leading a Winning team
Society of Leadership Fellows
leaders nurturing each other’s wisdom
Moving the team on from a group of “super Managers”
One of the reasons so many Chief Executives lead mediocre teams is because they
let them spend too much of their time in meetings behaving as “super Managers”,
concentrating on their own personal areas of accountability and reluctant to share
responsibilities with others.
Key to creating a winning team is your role in stretching and driving your team, reminding
them that when they come together they need to step out of their day job as managers
and step into a role of sharing leadership responsibility with yourself and the wider team.
This is why we will support each other in developing our personal approaches towards
becoming more effective team leaders, so that we are better able to harness team
members’ individual strengths into a formidable collective force.
Championing each individual member of the team
In order to lead a winning team, Chief Executives and Directors needs to encourage the
more entrepreneurial members of your team to develop their own distinctive way of
leading and driving others, whilst seeing themselves as part of a tight coherent force that is
there for each other.
To win, all need to believe that, together, the team is greater than the sum of the individual
parts.
The first person who needs to believe this is you, because this makes it possible for you to
champion each member of your team in their own right at the same time as championing
them working together as a single team.
Offering you a new support network
One of the key benefits of the Society of Leadership Fellows is that every Conversation
offers those joining us an informal network of peers that you can call on for continuing
confidential support long after the session has ended in the Vicars’ Hall.
After previous overnight Conversations, the bonds of trust and friendship created among
the group have sometimes continued for many months afterwards, as members have shared
how they have taken forward their resolves from the final session.
If you join us on June 5/6, we hope that you will also find yourself stepping into a new
informal support network that endures for a long time to come.
Leading a Winning Team 3
Society of Leadership Fellows
leaders nurturing each other’s wisdom
Agenda
Monday, June 5th 2017
2.30pm onwards. You can check into your room in St George’s House
4.30pm
Tea in St George’s House for those joining Evensong in the Chapel 5.05pm
Evensong (optional)
6.00pm
in the Vicars' Hall
Refreshments, then start of the Conversation. After agreeing our groundrules, we assess the key strengths and weaknesses of your respective teams. How far do you think your team is from being a winning team?
7.30pm
After feedback and debate, we agree on the two or three main weaknesses of our teams to address in groups over dinner
7.45pm
Free time/ drinks until dinner is served promptly in the House at 8.30pm
10.00pm
Private floodlit tour of St George’s Chapel (optional)
Tuesday, June 6th 2017
7.45am
Breakfast is served in St George’s House
8.45am
Vicars' Hall
We hear the outcomes of discussions over dinner, agree the question for our next round of small groups and “get on a roll”
11.00am
By late morning we will be engaged with the critical challenge of how you each ramp up the performance of your team so that this ambition is shared by them all
12.30pm
A hot buffet lunch is served in the Vicars’ Hall. In small groups, we ask what are the main leadership lessons to be drawn from our discussions so far, and the one or two key personal insights that will guide you in developing your leadership of your team
1.15pm
We share personal insights and then allocate ourselves to our final round of small groups
1.45pm
Our final burst of creative thinking in new small groups, developing practical strategies for driving up the performance of our teams
2.30-3.30pm
We hear each other’s plans and sharpen up the strongest ideas enabling you to manage the tension between giving individuals the space to shine in their own right and harnessing their brilliance in ways that create a winning top team
We will finish on the dot of 3.30pm
4 Leading a Winning Team