The Circle Reset

Every leader reaches a point in the year where the gap between who they intended to be and who the pressure of the season has required them to become becomes impossible to ignore. The decisions have not stopped. The team still needs holding. The organizational demands have not let up. And somewhere underneath all of it, the leader, the real one, the grounded one, the one who chose this work for a reason, has been quietly buried under the weight of it all.

The Annual Circle Reset was built for that moment.

This is a five-day immersive leadership experience hosted exclusively on the SOAR Academy platform, designed to give you one dedicated hour each day to step back from the noise, go inward, and do the kind of reflective, restorative work that makes everything else possible. It is asynchronous, which means it fits inside your real life without disrupting it. No scheduling conflicts. No time zone pressure. Just one intentional hour each day, for five consecutive days, guided by the Leadership Revival Framework and led personally by L. Michelle Smith.

How It Works

The Reset moves through the three lenses of the Leadership Revival Framework across five days, building a complete leadership arc from the inside out.

Day 1 and Day 2 — Self Work We begin where all meaningful leadership development must begin: with you. These two days are dedicated to the interior work of honest self-examination. Who have you become under the pressure of this year? What have you been absorbing that was never yours to carry? Where has the distance grown between your values and your daily decisions? Through curated video content, coaching prompts, and guided micro-practices, you will begin to name what has accumulated and start the process of setting it down.

Day 3 — People Work Leadership is never just about you. Day 3 turns the lens outward to examine how this season has shaped the way you show up for and with the people in your care. How has the pressure you have been carrying affected your presence, your trust, and your relational capacity as a leader? This day offers both honest reflection and practical tools for rebuilding and deepening the relational foundation your leadership depends on.

Day 4 — World Work The final lens asks the largest question: what does your leadership owe the mission, the community, and the world beyond your immediate circle? Day 4 features an exclusive recorded conversation with a special guest from L. Michelle’s professional network, a leader whose work and wisdom will expand your thinking about what legacy-minded leadership looks like in practice. This is the day the Reset lifts your eyes from the immediate and reconnects you to the larger purpose your leadership was always meant to serve.

Day 5 — Live Integration Session We close together. On Friday, September 25, L. Michelle hosts a live 60-minute integration session for all Reset participants. This is the moment where everything from the five days comes together, where the insights surface, the breakthroughs land, and the community that has been doing this work in parallel finally gathers in real time. This session is also a natural, organic invitation for non-members to continue the work inside The Circle, where this kind of experience happens in some form every single month.

What You Receive

• Five days of curated, asynchronous leadership content grounded in applied neuroscience and positive psychology
• Daily coaching prompts and micro-practices rooted in the Leadership Revival Framework
• An exclusive recorded guest conversation on Day 4 with a leader from L. Michelle’s professional network
• A live 60-minute integration session with L. Michelle personally on Friday, September 25
• Access to a private Reset cohort community on SOAR Academy for the duration of the experience
• A leadership experience you can return to, as all content remains accessible after the Reset closes

Who This Is For

The Annual Circle Reset is for leaders who are navigating a demanding season and know that the way through it requires more than strategy. It is for the leader who has been performing steadiness while privately absorbing uncertainty. For the one who has been so focused on holding everyone else that they have lost touch with what grounds them. For the leader who is ready to invest one hour a day for five days in the kind of interior work that produces lasting, sustainable change.

It is not for leaders looking for a quick fix or a passive content experience. It is for leaders who are ready to do the real work.

About Your Guide

L. Michelle Smith is an ICF credentialed executive coach, bestselling and award-winning author, Fortune 100 advisor, and the creator of the Leadership Revival Framework. She has spent more than 25 years working with leaders across American Express, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Bank of America, Netflix, Merck, and AT&T. She is the founder of The Circle, the host of The Culture Soup Podcast, heard in more than 70 countries, and the author of Call and Response: 10 Leadership Lessons from the Black Church, published by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins.

When you show up for the Annual Circle Reset, you are not getting a curriculum built by a team. You are getting L. Michelle, personally, in the room with you for five days.

Registration

Circle Members: Complimentary, included in your membership. Register below so we know you are coming.

Early Bird Registration is open now: $97 through August 31, 2026, sign up.

General Registration: $147 from September 1 through September 20, 2026

VIP Add-On: $397, which includes a private 30-minute 1:1 laser coaching session with L. Michelle personally, scheduled after the Reset concludes. Limited to 10 spots.

A Note from L. Michelle

The leaders I work with are some of the most capable, committed, and caring professionals I have ever encountered. And they are tired in a way that a vacation does not fix and a weekend does not touch. What they need is not more information. They need space, intentional, structured, guided space, to return to themselves and remember why they chose this work in the first place.

That is what the Annual Circle Reset is. Five days. One hour each day. And the possibility of walking into the final quarter of this year as the leader you were always built to be.