Leadership: No More Heroes
24th November 2026, 10am-4:30PM
Hotel Du Vin Avon Gorge
An Exclusive Leadership Workshop with Professor David Pendleton
Leadership has never mattered more. Organisations are moving faster, traditional plans can become obsolete almost overnight, and leaders increasingly need to adapt, respond and bring the best out of others in real time.
Key Takeaway
By the end of the workshop, participants will have developed a richer understanding of leadership as a shared endeavour and a clearer view of how they can contribute to it in practice.
· Understand the Primary Colours® approach and use it as a practical language for leadership.
· Recognise their own leadership preferences, strengths and potential blind spots.
· Explore how personality influences leadership behaviour and impact.
· Identify ways to work with, work on and work around personal preferences.
· Translate insights from the day into clear commitments and next steps.
AGENDA
1000 Arrival & Coffee
1030 - Leadership: foundations and shared language
Key words and core assumptions
Personal experiences of leadership
The Primary Colours Model®
Identifying my home domain
1230 - Lunch
1330 - What do I bring to leadership?
- Personality: how it shapes leadership practice - My NEO personality feedback
Exercise: Working with, on and around personal strengths and preferences (Data shared in small coaching groups)
1515 - Tea
1530 - Debrief from coaching groups
1600 - Implications, commitements and next steps
1730 - End
Dr David Pendleton
Professor Emeritus in Leadership, Henley Business School
David is a psychologist, educator, consultant, author and business leader. He completed a doctorate in Psychology at Oxford University and has spent the rest of his career applying his discipline in a variety of practical contexts. He is Professor Emeritus in Leadership at Henley Business School and an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College Oxford. He is also Advisor in Leadership to the Faculty of Medical Leadership and Management.
As a business leader, David has been on the top team of a FTSE100 business and co-founded and ran his own consultancy for twenty years. He has spent over thirty years as a consultant and business psychologist. He specialises in working with top teams and has assessed many hundreds of executives from all over the world. He has worked on 5 continents and has worked in all sectors: commercial, public and charity. He has taught at Oxford and Harvard Business Schools and worked with CEOs and top teams of organisations from 15 employees to 350,000.
David has published several books. Most recently, he has written ‘Leadership: No More Heroes,’ published by Palgrave Macmillan (third edition 2021) in which he has described the Primary Colours approach to leadership; and ‘Work-Life Matters’ also published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2021. He is currently preparing and recording a podcast series on psychology and leadership for Henley Business School.
A keen jazz singer and enthusiast, he has created an approach to leading change dubbed ‘Leadership Jazz’ which describes four organisational responses to change: evolve, rehearse, experiment and improvise. Leaders seeking to equip their organisations to be agile need to foster the ability to move easily and appropriately between these responses.
