---
title: "What happens when you delete a circle"
description: "Deleting a circle takes its roles, sub-circles and every assignment beneath it. Goals, metrics and projects stay behind, and the interface cannot undo it"
category: structure-governance
section: chart-and-circles
type: Reference
lastUpdated: 2026-08-05
locale: en
canonical: https://support.talkspirit.com/en/structure-governance/what-happens-when-deleting-a-circle
---

# What happens when you delete a circle


## What happens when you delete a circle
Deleting a circle takes everything beneath it: every role, every sub-circle, and every assignment to them, at every level. A few things survive in a changed form, three things are left behind untouched, and nothing in the interface brings any of it back. The confirmation dialog lists none of this, so this article is the list.

> **In summary:** deleting a circle ends every assignment under it, cancels its future meetings, archives its working agreements and keeps its tensions without their link. Goals, metrics and projects assigned to the circle are neither deleted nor reassigned, so move them before you delete.

> **Warning:** There is no undo. Nothing in the interface restores a deleted circle, and the deletion applies to the whole branch beneath it, not only the circle you selected.

In most organisations the deletion is not applied when you confirm it. It travels as a governance proposal and lands on the chart once that proposal is adopted. See [Deleting a role or a circle](/structure-governance/how-to-delete-a-role-or-a-circle) for the procedure and for how the proposal travels. Everything below describes what happens at that moment.

## What goes with the circle

| What | What happens to it |
|---|---|
| Its roles and sub-circles | Deleted, at every level beneath the circle |
| Assignments to the circle and to those roles | Ended, and each member is recorded as having left |
| Copies of its roles invited into other circles | Deleted with the original |
| Its purpose, domains and accountabilities | Deleted with the circle |
| Its notification preferences | Removed outright, for the circle and everything beneath it |
| Its meetings scheduled from now on | Cancelled, and removed from attendees' connected calendars |
| Sharing granted to the circle or its roles | Withdrawn from every working agreement that named them, including agreements owned by other circles |

Everyone who loses an assignment is notified, in the app and by email, with one message per assignment lost: *You have been removed from the circle Product Development*. A member who held the circle and two roles inside it receives three. On a large circle this arrives as a burst, so tell the people concerned before you submit the deletion rather than after.

## What is kept

Three things survive the deletion, in a changed form:

- **Meetings that already happened** stay as history, with their reports and their attendance. Only meetings scheduled in the future are cancelled.
- **Working agreements and policies** attached to the circle are **archived**, not destroyed. You can still find them in **Structure** > **Working agreements** using the **Archived** filter. An active proposal that was publishing one of them is withdrawn.
- **Tensions** raised from the circle's roles, or assigned to them, are kept. They lose their link to the role, and that link cannot be re-established.

## What is left behind

Three things do not follow the circle, and nothing moves them for you:

- **Goals** owned by the circle
- **Metrics** owned by the circle
- **Projects** assigned to the circle

They are not deleted. They keep pointing at a circle that no longer appears in the chart, which is the worst of both outcomes: the work is still there and its owner is gone. Reassign them before you delete.

## Before you delete

![The Product Development circle page in Structure, showing its tab bar: General, Members, Working agreements, Attachments, Metrics, Checklists, Projects, Goals and Meetings](/images/structure-governance/what-happens-when-deleting-a-circle/01-circle-tabs.png)

Open the circle's own page and work through its tabs. Nothing here happens automatically.

1. On **Goals**, open each goal and change its **Owner** to another circle. See [Adding, editing, or deleting a goal](/goals-analytics/how-to-add-edit-or-delete-a-goal).
2. On **Metrics**, do the same for each metric. See [Adding, editing, and deleting metrics](/structure-governance/how-to-add-edit-and-delete-metrics).
3. On **Projects**, replace the circle in each project's assignees.
4. On **Meetings**, note any recurring meeting you want to keep. It will be cancelled, and recreating it elsewhere is your job.
5. Move out any role or sub-circle worth keeping, using **Move role** or **Move circle**. Moving keeps the role 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).

If the work still exists and only its place in the chart is wrong, move the circle instead of deleting it.

## Who can delete a circle

You need to be a **decision maker of the parent circle**, because the deletion is submitted as a proposal there. 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.

> **Note:** Being an organisation administrator is not enough on its own. **Delete** does appear in a circle's **More actions** menu for administrators, but an administrator who holds no assignment in the parent circle gets a permission error on submitting. Ask for an assignment in the parent circle, or ask someone who holds one to submit the deletion.

The **general circle** cannot be deleted, because it has no parent circle for the deletion to be proposed to.

## What's Next?

- [Deleting a role or a circle](/structure-governance/how-to-delete-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)
- [Decision makers in a circle](/structure-governance/what-is-a-decision-maker-of-a-circle)
- [Circles in Talkspirit](/structure-governance/circle-overview)