Design Institute of Australia is excited to share first access to LeaderSHIFT 2026, Growth Faculty’s landmark one-day summit designed for the reality leaders are facing right now.
Great design leadership goes beyond craft — it’s about influence, clarity, culture, and the ability to guide teams through uncertainty. LeaderSHIFT brings together the world’s most recognised thinkers to support the leaders shaping Australia’s creative, design and innovation landscape.
In a rare keynote appearance, Esther Perel will share Relationships at Work — a practical framework for building trust, creating psychological safety, enabling candour, and repairing rupture inside high-performance creative teams.
The challenges we're addressing – familiar across design, UX, architecture, branding and creative industries:
Culture fatigue and fractured collaboration
Hybrid work, remote creativity and AI acceleration without alignment
Teams stretched thin, influence not landing with stakeholders
High expectations and shrinking margins for error
Five world-class thinkers bring you actionable frameworks for design-led leadership and leading high-performance teams through uncertainty:
Esther Perel – Relationship intelligence & human connection
Ben Crowe – From Pressure to Freedom: Shifting the Way You Lead
Steve Martin – Influence through behavioural science
Dr Susan David – Emotional agility under pressure
Michael Bunting – Self-awareness that drives team performance
What you’ll take away:
A relationship-centred blueprint to strengthen trust and candour
Practical tools for navigating AI’s impact on design workflows
Behavioural science techniques to align clients and stakeholders
Simple mindset shifts to unlock clarity and grounded confidence
A repeatable model for high performance in ambiguity and uncertainty
Why this matters now:
Crisis mode won't scale. The edge belongs to leaders who build trust faster, influence ethically, and execute with clarity under pressure.
Event details:
Sydney — Wednesday 25 February 2026 | 9:30am–5:30pm AEDT
Melbourne — Friday 27 February 2026 | 9:30am–5:30pm AEDT
VIP tickets are strictly limited – designed for leadership teams seeking facilitated proximity to Esther Perel and the full faculty.
*Special partner pricing is available for DIA on Platinum and Standard tickets.
EARLY BIRD ends December 19th 2025