Reflections from the KDVI team at the 2025 ILA Conference in Prague
Oriane, Liz and Paul were very pleased to be in attendance at this years’ conference. The event was a great success and lots of great conversations were had. The team share their insights and takeaways from the event below:
Oriane Kets de Vries
There was an undercurrent running through the sessions at the conference: a shared unease about the state of the world, where autocratic tendencies are on the rise and democratic institutions, once assumed stable, are weakening. In several sessions, the conversation shifted from leadership development to how we might foster critical followership and, when needed, resistance.
In a session led by Keith Grint, we explored the paradox that autocratic leaders are often elected democratically, only to dismantle the very systems that brought them to power. We reflected on historical cases of fascism in Europe and the lessons they might hold today. History offers a sobering truth: organised resistance movements have typically been driven by small minorities (often 1%-5% of the population), while the majority remain passive.
In autocratic systems, people often stay silent not out of malice, but out of:
- Fear of repression
- Lack of trust in institutions or peers
- Learned helplessness or the belief that change is impossible
- Comfort, complicity, or fear of economic loss
- Propaganda and information control
On a note of hope, Gene Sharp’s research on nonviolent resistance shows that successful movements capable of creating real tipping points have often required no more than 3.5–5% of the population. However, these resistance groups must organise themselves for active, sustained, and strategic action.
So how can we proactively equip ourselves to question power and act together?
- Education is one answer: teaching young people to think critically and ethically, and to stand up and speak up for their beliefs.
- Community is another: isolation makes resistance nearly impossible.
- Civic involvement also matters: citizenship not as a legal status, but as a practice.
Our organisations, public and private, still lack mechanisms for honest, upward feedback.
Where are the feedback loops that prevent grave errors or the repetition of ineffective practices? Given the imbalance of power, how do we ensure the honest perspectives of those lower in the hierarchy are heard? Where is the governance that holds leaders and owners to account? Surely, we are creative enough to design checks and balances that keep leaders honest and nurture the ethics and critical thinking needed to question authority.
Speaking up can mean questioning the purpose of yet another change project or bureaucratic process. Speaking up can also mean calling attention to toxic or abusive behaviour. Toxic leaders are excellent at managing upwards. Toxic behaviour often goes unseen by superiors unless people at lower levels of the organisation are given a voice.
In another session, we explored the evolution of leadership as a field of study.
- Academics such as Ronald Riggio, Joanne Ciulla, Jonathan Gosling, and Keith Grint agreed that over the past 40 years, the focus has shifted from management to leadership, with management seen as “command and control” and leadership as “inspirational.” There was consensus that we must also examine the shadow sides of leadership and adopt a more balanced, critical perspective.
- We questioned whether consultancies and academics sometimes perpetuate the problem by creating oversimplified or recycled leadership models because their livelihoods depend on them. Do we challenge ourselves enough?
- Some of the distinguished professors argued that academic theory has become too detached from the messy realities of practice, and that scholars should engage more directly with leaders and empirical research. Others welcomed the idea of testing theory through practice.
- There was also frustration that business schools remain reluctant to update curricula to ensure MBA students and future leaders develop the ethical backbone, self-awareness, and emotional maturity to guide organisations toward meaningful outcomes. As AI increasingly automates technical skills like finance and accounting, are our education systems equipping young people with the moral compass and critical reflexes to form and defend their own views?
I was moved by Susan Vinnicombe’s lifetime achievement award for her Female FTSE Board Report, which tracks women’s representation in senior leadership. It is a vital tool for holding organisations accountable for gender diversity and for measuring progress over time. Sadly, there is still far to go: only nine female CEOs in the FTSE 100, and 19 across the FTSE 350 (around 5.4%). As my colleague Claire Pointing once said, women are often the canaries in the coal mine of organisations, voicing issues that are difficult not only for women but also for men.
In David Collinson’s session, we explored shifting identities and the rise of toxic masculinity. How can men redefine traditional roles without feeling they betray their fathers? What positive role models can they look to? Could society’s investment in childcare be part of the solution, enabling men to take on meaningful caregiving roles, providing new models of fatherhood, and helping them find fulfilment both at home and at work?
It was wonderful to spend time with my colleagues Elizabeth Florent and Paul Vanderbroeck, and to celebrate my father and his Board Chair Award — the first of its kind! It’s rare that we have the luxury of time together.
Manfred and I took a walking trip through Prague to visit the Kafka Museum. It was an unexpectedly moving visit for him. Manfred wrestled with the oppressive weight of Kafka’s inner world, the fragility of the human spirit, and his own foreboding sense about the future. He captured these reflections in a short article, which you can read here.
It was also good to present with Liz, whose perspective complements mine, and to share our joint insights about psychodynamic–systemic group coaching: its challenges, its benefits, and its power to surface what lies beneath. Group work offers some answers to the questions raised throughout the conference: it allows us to listen deeply, give voice to people’s experiences, learn through feedback, and ignite systemic change.
I leave with the hope that KDVI can continue to play a role through our diagnostic, group, and team coaching methodologies in building trust and community for honest dialogue that helps organisations identify and address systemic issues and resist authoritarian or toxic leadership.
A heartfelt thank you to Danica Purg for her part in inviting us to the conference.
Paul Vanderbroek
I was struck by how much history threaded through the research at this year’s leadership conference. Sometimes it appeared directly through scholars drawing on historical cases to illuminate contemporary behaviour. At other times, it surfaced indirectly through social scientists using historical methods in their research. For example, in How Human History Shapes Trust, Collaboration and Influence, Ted Baarmans traced the development of collaboration and trust between leaders and followers over time and has been more essential to human survival than we may have assumed.
I had the privilege of chairing the session Perspectives on Female Leadership, where four scholars from the University of Richmond presented their work:
- Bo Yun Park interviewed the spin doctors behind female presidential candidates in France and the United States to understand how they managed public expectations.
- David Wilkins used interviews to assess women’s power within Native American communities.
- Vlad Choubly’s study of gender quotas in Namibia’s dominant political party found that increased female representation positively shaped women’s attitudes toward equal representation, while having no measurable effect, positive or negative, on men’s beliefs.
- Crystal Hoyt explored how attitudes toward the organisational status quo influence leadership assessment: individuals more inclined to challenge the status quo rated women leaders more highly than men, and vice versa. To me, these findings suggest that when working toward gender balance, it’s often more effective to recognise and work with underlying biases than to pretend they don’t exist.
The ILA conference, with its large and diverse audience, was a rich platform for sharing and learning. The chance encounters between venues created valuable moments of reflection and exchange, walking in and out of sessions felt like a generous breakfast buffet for the brain. Attending with colleagues added another layer, helping us connect insights back to our work.
It felt like stepping into a reflective bubble, a brief refuge from the world’s noise, yet the world filtered in through the themes we discussed. Being in Eastern Europe brought a particular poignancy. In Western Europe, the living memory of the occupation has faded with my parents’ generation; here, many still remember it vividly. The Czechs are rightly proud that the Velvet Revolution toppled a totalitarian regime faster and more smoothly than anywhere else after 1989, and they remain conscious that democracy requires ongoing effort. The local ILA chapter wove this Czech perspective thoughtfully into the programme through talks and site visits. My visit to the Museum of Communism was a sober reminder of the fragility of freedom and democracy.
At the book show, many people asked how I turned Julius Caesar, surely one of history’s most over-examined figures, into a leadership case study. The key was applying a contemporary leadership model, the 12 leadership behaviours from KDVI’s Global Executive Leadership Mirror (GELM®).
Elizabeth Florent
The session “Leading together: Past Lifetime Achievement Awardees Reflect on the future of the field” brought together a panel of five leadership scholars with, as they estimated, about 250 years of experience in the field.
And yet, their reflections did not point to a clear way forward. Instead, two unsettling themes emerged. First, they rattled their own cage, asking, “Who are we doing our research for? Ourselves.” In retrospect, they admit, much of academic theory building is meant for other scholars. When we attempt to look with an unbiased eye at practical applications for people in organisations, the field has put forth insights that are often unsuitable or incomprehensible. Following on this line of critique, one of the panellists, Joanne Ciulla, remarked that now, at the end of her career, having accomplished everything one needs to do for a stellar academic record, she is at last free to do and say what feels most valuable and relevant. Do we, observers, students and practitioners of leadership development, truly focus on what Manfred Kets de Vries has called the “authentizotic” organisation? It is sobering to consider that the disconnect between theory and practice is derived, at least partially, from self-aggrandisement. Are leadership scholars too concerned about competition with one another, hence avoiding courageously clambering into the trenches alongside the people they study?
This leads to the red thread of trust that ran through many of the ILA sessions. Trust must be acquired legitimately. What does that mean? In the session on European / NATO perspectives on Military and International leadership, the reality and fundamental necessity of trust was brought sharply into focus. One panellist quoted the old Dutch proverb: Trust arrives on foot but leaves on horseback. Trust in individuals, suggested US Navy Captain (ret.) Basil Read, is at the core of leadership. When military leaders train and then trust their troops to independently make appropriate decisions in the field, then the leaders are less likely to micromanage and become overwhelmed themselves. And what of the building of trust among individuals? Comradery – a state of deep connection which takes time to build, but which can withstand even the chaos of war. Addressing trust on the international scale, Sarah von Felton, of the Swiss Military Academy, Zurich, said that the Swiss, who are constitutionally barred from military alliances, focus on trusted partnerships. Trust is the glue that holds partnerships and alliances together. In the absence of trust, it was suggested, different parties look for (sometimes temporary and often shifting) “best deal” arrangements, evidence of which we currently see on the world stage.
Hence, there is a recognised need for leadership development initiatives that do not impose leadership theory, nor promise that trust can be built in a day. Mats Alvesson matched his metaphor of “organisational sludge” or the proliferation of procedures and regulations that, left unchallenged, slow the flow of work. He described leadership scholars, coaches and consultants as “administrative plumbers” who can identify the core activities that must be unblocked. “Leadership” is often about what can be added, he argues, when in so many situations, the opposite would be more effective – take away rules, demands, expectations. Summing up, Mats links theoretical complexity with a succinct approach to action. As scholars and practitioners, our approach should be: 1) What is going on here? 2) What are the natives up to here? 3) What do the natives think they are up to? He focuses on leadership phenomena, not recipes for improvement.
At KDVI, we also focus on leadership phenomena, and not recipes. But in practice, this can be a hard sell. Oriane and I spoke to a receptive group about the strengths and challenges of group coaching, and in parallel, how difficult it is to design and sell this type of intervention to clients. Yes, we know in theory that group coaching (the topic of our session with Oriane) should result in deeper insights and greater trust. Yes, we know – after (collective) decades of practice, that this approach does work, and is sustainable. But it is very difficult to open a space for conversation with key organisational actors who are equally steeped in their own opposing worldview. They would like individual or cultural change to be sequential and predictable, but KDVI practitioners know that it is always messy and iterative.
In the real world, therefore, every conversation we have about our interventions, even conversations about trust, must begin with empathetic listening. Drawing on some of the insights from various ILA sessions, we might ask: What is your organisation designed to do? How do you do things? Who benefits from the way you do things? Who do you trust, and why? Here, negative capability is a core competency for KDVI; we must hold a space for clients to come to awareness of their organisational sludge, and to trust us to be administrative plumbers.