--- title: "Deleting a role or a circle" description: "Delete a role or a circle from its page in Structure. Deleting a circle takes its roles, its sub-circles and every assignment to them, the interface offers no way to restore it, and in most organisations the deletion travels as a governance proposal." category: structure-governance section: chart-and-circles type: Tutorial lastUpdated: 2026-08-05 locale: en canonical: https://support.talkspirit.com/en/structure-governance/how-to-delete-a-role-or-a-circle --- # Deleting a role or a circle ## Deleting a role or a circle You delete a role or a circle from its own page in **Structure**, using the three-dot **More actions** menu in the page header. In most organisations the deletion does not land on the chart when you confirm it: it travels as a governance proposal and applies once that proposal is adopted. What you should settle before you start is the other half. Deleting a circle takes everything under it, and the interface has no way to bring any of it back. > **Warning:** There is no undo. Nothing in the interface restores a deleted role or circle, and the confirmation dialog does not list what the deletion will take with it. Check the circle's **Roles** list and its **Meetings**, **Goals**, **Projects** and **Metrics** tabs first. If you are reorganising rather than removing, move the pieces out before you delete, or use **Move circle** instead. ## What deleting takes with it Deleting a **role**: - Every member's assignment to that role ends, and each is recorded as having left it. - Its purpose, domains and accountabilities go with it. - Copies of it invited into other circles are deleted too. - Its documents, including any policy attached to it, are **archived** rather than destroyed. An active proposal publishing one of those documents is withdrawn. - Tensions raised from the role, or assigned to it, are kept. They lose their link to the role. Deleting a **circle** does all of the above for the circle and for everything beneath it, at every level: - All its roles and all its sub-circles are deleted, and every assignment to them ends. - Its future scheduled meetings are cancelled, which also removes them from attendees' connected calendars. Meetings that already happened are kept as history. - Notification preferences set on the circle are removed. Two things do **not** follow the circle, and nothing moves them for you: **Goals** and **Metrics** owned by the circle, and **Projects** and boards assigned to it. They are not deleted, and they are left pointing at a circle that no longer appears in the chart. Reassign them before you delete. For a fuller walk through the circle case, see [What happens when you delete a circle](/structure-governance/what-happens-when-deleting-a-circle). ## Who can delete, in the interface The **Delete** action appears when you are a **decision maker** of the circle concerned: - To delete a **role**, you need to be a decision maker of the circle that holds it. - To delete a **circle**, you need to be a decision maker of its **parent** circle. Every member assigned to a circle counts as a decision maker of it until someone sets them otherwise, so this is a wider group than it sounds. See [Decision makers in a circle](/structure-governance/what-is-a-decision-maker-of-a-circle). > **Note:** Being an organisation administrator is not enough on its own. A circle's **More actions** menu does show **Delete** to administrators, but the deletion is submitted as a proposal to the parent circle, and only a decision maker of that circle can create one. An administrator who holds no assignment there gets a permission error on submitting, not a deleted circle. Ask for a decision-maker assignment in the parent circle, or ask someone who has one to submit. The **top-level circle** cannot be deleted. Its **More actions** menu offers no **Delete** at all, because there is no parent circle for the deletion to be proposed to. ## Delete a role or a circle 1. Open the role or circle page from the chart, from the directory, or from a search result. 2. Click the three-dot **More actions** button in the page header, then **Delete**. ![The More actions menu open on a circle page in Structure, with Delete at the bottom of the list in red](/images/structure-governance/how-to-delete-a-role-or-a-circle/01-circle-actions-menu-delete.png) 3. Read the dialog. **Delete circle** and **Delete role** both show you the name, purpose, domains and accountabilities of what you are about to remove, and nothing else. The roles, sub-circles, members and meetings that go with it are not listed here. ![The Delete circle dialog, showing the circle name, its purpose, its domains and its accountabilities, an optional reason field, and the Cancel, Save as proposal and Submit for review buttons](/images/structure-governance/how-to-delete-a-role-or-a-circle/02-delete-circle-dialog.png) 4. Optionally answer **Why are you deleting this circle?**. The reason is carried on the proposal for circle members to read. 5. Choose how the deletion travels, using the buttons at the bottom. ## How the deletion travels The dialog offers three ways out, and all three take you to a proposal rather than to a changed chart: - **Submit for review** creates the proposal and submits it to the circle in one step. - **Save as proposal** keeps it as a draft, so you can add more changes before submitting. Use this when the deletion is one move in a larger reorganisation. - **Add to a proposal**, in the arrow beside **Save as proposal**, attaches the deletion to one of your existing drafts for the same circle. In some circles the primary button reads **Validate** instead of **Submit for review**. It does the same thing: it creates the proposal and submits it. It does not mean the deletion is applied on the spot. What happens after submission depends on your organisation's **Proposal adoption** setting: the proposal is decided by the circle, adopted immediately, or adopted at the end of a review period if nobody objects. Administrators set this in **Structure** > **Structure settings** > **Decision settings**, and a circle can override it. See [Decision Settings](/structure-governance/what-are-decision-settings). Two cases apply the deletion at once: - A circle whose **governance change mode** is set to **Direct modification**. You still fill in the dialog and press **Submit for review**, and the proposal is still recorded, but it is adopted the moment you submit it. There is no review round, so nobody gets a chance to object. - **Architect mode**, which administrators switch on from **Explore organisation**. Deleting from a role or circle **peek** there skips this dialog: it shows a short confirmation, *Are you sure you want to delete this circle?*, and applies the deletion when you click **Delete**. That confirmation lists nothing either. ## Deleting during a governance meeting A deletion can also be one of the changes carried by a proposal built on a meeting agenda item, using the **Delete a role** or **Delete a sub-circle** card in the proposal wizard. The chart changes when the proposal is adopted, not when the meeting closes. The proposal articles own that route: see [Restructuring a sub-circle in a governance meeting](/structure-governance/how-to-restructure-a-circle-in-governance-meetings) and [Creating a proposal](/structure-governance/how-to-create-a-proposal). ## Instead of deleting If the work still exists and only its place in the chart is wrong, do not delete: - **Move circle** and **Move role** keep the entity and its assignments intact. See [Moving a role or circle to another circle](/structure-governance/how-to-move-a-role-or-circle-from-one-circle-to-another). - A sub-circle that has grown too heavy can be **reduced to a role**, or reorganised by moving roles in and out of it, through a proposal. ## What's Next? - [Editing a role or a circle](/structure-governance/how-to-edit-a-role-or-a-circle) - [Moving a role or circle to another circle](/structure-governance/how-to-move-a-role-or-circle-from-one-circle-to-another) - [Governance Meetings Overview](/structure-governance/introducing-governance-meetings) - [Submitting and tracking a proposal](/structure-governance/how-to-submit-and-track-a-proposal)