--- title: "Circle Admins" description: "A circle admin manages one circle: its settings, its other circle admins, and who counts as a decision maker in it. It is not the same as being a decision maker, nor the same as being an organisation administrator." category: structure-governance section: chart-and-circles tags: [permissions] type: Reference lastUpdated: 2026-09-17 locale: en canonical: https://support.talkspirit.com/en/structure-governance/who-are-circle-admins --- # Circle Admins ## Circle Admins A circle admin is a member of one circle who can change how that circle is set up: its settings, who else is a circle admin, who counts as a decision maker in it, and whether the circle is deleted. The status applies to that circle alone and grants nothing anywhere else in your organisation. It is given in two ways: an existing circle admin adds you on the circle's Settings page, or you are assigned to a role whose template carries the **Grants circle admin** setting, in which case the status comes with the assignment. See [Creating and managing role templates](/structure-governance/role-templates-overview). Three things are easy to merge into one, and the product keeps them apart. - **Circle admin** covers one circle's configuration. That is this article. - **Decision maker** covers one circle's governance: adding roles, creating proposals, voting. Everyone assigned to a circle is a decision maker of it by default. See [Decision makers in a circle](/structure-governance/what-is-a-decision-maker-of-a-circle), which sets the three statuses side by side. - **Organisation administrator** is an organisation-wide status granted outside Structure, and it carries administrator rights everywhere. Neither of the first two implies the other. A circle admin who is not a decision maker cannot add a role to the circle, and a decision maker who is not a circle admin cannot delete it. If your organisation has renamed "circle", the labels follow the new word: rename circles to squads and you get "Squad Admin" and "Upgrade to squad admin". ## What a circle admin can do In the interface, a circle admin can: - Open the circle's **Settings** page and save its **Governance overrides**: how changes to roles and sub-circles are processed, the auto-validation delay, and who may edit a draft proposal. - Change the circle's **Privacy** settings, which control who outside the circle can see its operations and its attachments and working agreements. - Choose the circle's **Elected roles** and **Assigner roles**. - Add and remove the circle's other circle admins. - Set and unset **Decision Maker** on the circle's members. - Delete the circle. Circle admins also reach **Meetings** then **Templates** without needing meeting-creation rights, so they can manage the meeting templates scoped to the circles they administer. For what each of those settings does, see [Personalising a circle's settings](/structure-governance/personalizing-your-circles-settings). ## What a circle admin cannot do Being a circle admin does not let you add a role to the circle, edit the circle's own name, purpose, domains or accountabilities, create a proposal, or vote on one. Those all depend on being a decision maker of the circle, which is a separate status stored alongside circle admin on the same assignment. ## Where you can see who is a circle admin - **The circle's Members tab.** A grey **Circle Admin** badge sits beside the member's name, in a column that carries no heading. Members without the status show nothing there. - **The circle's Settings page, General tab.** The **Circle Admins** picker lists the circle's current admins and nobody else. - **A member's profile, Roles tab.** A role card shows an **Admin** badge where that assignment carries circle-admin status. Read it as circle admin, not as organisation administrator. ![The Members tab of the Services circle. Two rows: the first member has nothing beside their name, the second carries a grey Circle Admin badge in a column with no heading, between Name and Roles.](/images/structure-governance/who-are-circle-admins/01-circle-admin-badge-members-tab.png) There is no organisation-wide list of circle admins. To answer "which circles does this person administer", open their profile's **Roles** tab rather than checking circles one at a time. ## How someone becomes a circle admin - **By creating the circle directly.** Whoever adds a circle from the chart becomes a circle admin of it automatically. This does not happen for a circle created by adopting a proposal: that circle arrives with no members and therefore no circle admin, so somebody has to be added and appointed before it can be run. - **By being appointed**, from either surface below. - **Through a role.** A role can be configured so that whoever fills it becomes a circle admin of its circle. Nothing in the interface shows or sets that configuration, so if someone holds the status and neither created the circle nor was appointed, this is the reason. Contact support if you need it checked or changed. The person must already hold an active assignment in the circle, so add them to the circle first. ## How to appoint or remove a circle admin From the circle's **Members** tab: 1. Open the circle and select the **Members** tab. 2. Click the three dots at the end of the member's row. 3. Select **Upgrade to circle admin**. To take the status away, select **Downgrade to member**. The same menu carries a second, separate item for decision-maker status: **Set as Non-Decision Maker**, or **Set as Decision Maker** if the person has already been demoted. Two statuses, two menu items, and changing one leaves the other untouched. ![The row menu open on a member of the Services circle, listing Copy URL, Upgrade to circle admin, Set as Non-Decision Maker and Remove from circle.](/images/structure-governance/who-are-circle-admins/02-row-menu-upgrade-to-circle-admin.png) From the circle's **Settings** page: 1. Open the circle, click the three dots in the top right, and select **Settings**. 2. On the **General** tab, find the **Circle Admins** card. 3. Add or remove people in the picker. Each change saves immediately, so this card has no Save button. ![The Circle Admins card on a circle's settings General tab, holding one name as a removable chip in a picker that spans the card.](/images/structure-governance/who-are-circle-admins/03-circle-admins-picker-settings.png) ## Who can appoint a circle admin In the interface, those menu items and the **Settings** entry appear for organisation administrators, the circle's existing circle admins, anyone holding one of the circle's assigner roles, and, where your organisation has switched on all-members assignment, any member with an active assignment. A circle that has no circle admin yet is open to any of its members. Only organisation administrators and the circle's existing circle admins can complete the change. If the option is offered to you on any other basis, the save is refused. Ask an administrator, or an existing circle admin of that circle, to make the change for you. ## What's Next? - [Decision makers in a circle](/structure-governance/what-is-a-decision-maker-of-a-circle) - [Personalising a circle's settings](/structure-governance/personalizing-your-circles-settings) - [Deleting a circle](/structure-governance/what-happens-when-deleting-a-circle) - [Role Overview](/structure-governance/role-overview)