Why I’m taking my leadership retreats across the world

A few months ago, I had a conversation with my coaching supervisor, the amazing Kirstan Marnane, about the busyness of working life. “For you to be at your best,” she asked me, “how much time do you need to be in a place of stillness?”

The key words in that question were “at your best”. Like most people, I have muscle memory, meaning I can show up and perform in my work, even in the most hectic periods. But am I at my best? No.

Personally, I need to spend 20% of the Monday to Friday working week in a place of stillness - away from the churn of projects, emails, meetings - in order to be fully present in the remaining 80% of my work. And this, in a nutshell, is the thinking behind the retreats I am running with Transcend.Space, my leadership coaching company.

One year ago, I took an official position as CEO of Transcend.Space (in the process going part-time with my research and teaching at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School). I wanted to give more attention to Transcend.Space because, amid the disruptive challenges organisations are constantly facing, there is a necessity for leaders to be in a place of stillness.

2023, therefore, was a year of exploration to put this into practice. I invited colleagues and partners to retreats in the stunning surroundings of Brecon Beacons, south Wales, in April and West Lexham, Norfolk, in November. These provided a prototype (you can read my headline reflections and learnings from these retreats in my August, September and October newsletters) for the global leadership retreats Transcend.Space is launching for companies in 2024.

Transcend.Space is starting in the UK and Australia this year and then Asia, the Middle East and North America in 2025. Here is its mission statement and purpose:

We are a globally diverse collective of leaders, coaches and consultants who believe the world is at a critical inflection point. This is due to the movement away from unsustainable, uncompetitive and outdated models of business and government, towards ones that:

1. Bring into alignment high performance and positive planetary and societal benefits and impact
2. Create cultures where the right to be, belong and become is at the heart of the organisation
3. Focus technology on being in service to people and the planet

Therefore, our purpose is to work with organisations and leaders who are at different points in the cycle of evolutionary and strategic decline and growth, to accelerate their progress through it, and increase the net positive impact they have on their stakeholders. We deliver this purpose by creating spaces for the following:

1. The development and amplification of thought leadership that puts a spotlight on the leaders and their organisations that are embodying the future, and the processes that can enable the evolution of other leaders and their organisations who want to evolve in a similar direction
2. The delivery of retreats for leaders, consultants and coaches who need to spend time in a state of “being”, rather than just ‘doing’. This is to focus on deeper questions regarding who they are, how they lead, the impact that they have and the legacy that they want to leave, thus enabling them to go deeper and further on their individual and organisational journeys of evolutionary change
3. The creation and delivery of interventions that enable the acceleration of evolutionary change within multi-industry and multi-government client organisations. These are in areas such as leadership coaching, in-company leadership retreats, masterclasses, and AI and digital solutions

Back in the fifth edition of this newsletter in 2021, I wrote about a mountain metaphor I use in my teaching. The first mountain represents legacy business models which are running out of road. The second mountain represents business models of the future which need to be achieved to transcend disruptive challenges brought about by technology, climate change and political instability. This is the mountain today’s leaders need to ascend and my aim with Transcend.Space’s global leadership retreats is to help serve the transition between the two. By pausing to think, we can start to consider what that transition looks like.

A message from the author

Thank you for reading the 57th edition of the Leadership 2050 newsletter. You may be interested to know why I am writing it. As a senior fellow of management practice at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, my research and teaching focuses on how leaders transcend 21st century challenges such as disruptive technology change, the climate crisis and creating diverse and inclusive environments… alongside the ongoing challenge of delivering profitable growth. At Saïd, I direct the Oxford Advanced Management & Leadership Programme and, in this capacity, work with leaders from many geographies, industries and governments. All this has given me a deep understanding of how good leaders create value - and bad leaders destroy it. One could argue that never before has this topic been so important on a global stage, hence why I am undertaking this work.