Breakout: What Should We Stop Doing - Sustainable Leadership in Unrelenting Times

Senior local government leaders are very good at starting things. We launch programmes, initiatives, restructures and reforms at pace. What we are much less practised at is stopping.

After years of sustained pressure, from austerity, reorganisation, demand growth and ongoing transformation, many leaders are exhausted, even if they don’t say it out loud. Too often, the behaviours that burn leaders out are the very ones that are implicitly rewarded: constant availability, personal heroics, absorbing risk, shielding others at all costs, and carrying more than any one role reasonably should.

This session is rooted in lived experience of leading through large scale organisational change and system complexity. It focuses on a simple but uncomfortable leadership question: what do we need to stop doing in order to remain effective, human and worthy of trust?

This is not a session about resilience frameworks, productivity tools or doing more with less. It is about the conscious leadership decisions that shape organisational culture every day what we model, what we tolerate, and what we quietly reinforce.

The session combines short provocations with structured reflection and facilitated peer discussion. Participants are invited to examine their own leadership behaviours, the signals they send to their organisations, and the unintended consequences of “always on” leadership.

Rather than offering another model or checklist, the session creates space for honesty, shared learning and practical reflection. Participants will leave with one clear, personal commitment to stop doing something that no longer serves them, their teams or their organisation.