Great session at ILA Global conference 2021 in Geneva 20 -23 Oct 2021 with over 400+ workshops, over 1000 participants both face2face and virtual from all over the world, with great presentations and great conversations! Followed by virtual conference (with recordings) for 25 -26 October 2021!
My highlights included
- Anuradha Gupta, Deputy CEO, GAVI The Vaccine Alliance, defining leadership as three things “one, bringing people together so that they are more than the sum of the parts – addressing bigger challenges that they only do together; two, developing a compelling case for change that people can buy into and come to-gether for; and three, delivering on commitments, by over-delivering and under-promising, to ensure credibility”
- John Ld Alderdice, former Alliance leader in Northern Ireland, who spoke of emotions being much more powerful than reasons in driving political change, and of how Gerry Adams and Dr Ian Paisley former mortal enemies when separately asked why they had agreed the Good Friday Agreement both replied “For the grand-children”.
- Linda Lausell Bryant (with Philip Coltoff author of “Social Work: A Call to Action”) and colleagues Marc Ross Manashil, Asiya Vickers, and Erik Omid Yazadani-Biyuki of NYU Silver School of Social Work spoke about adaptive leadership in the sphere of social work and interventions, and the need to identify “What is I care enough about for which I am prepared to take on the risks of leadership”, examining the barriers and the stake-holders (their values and loyalties, allies and resisters, and losses that must be addressed) and the action learning framework of Plan/Do/Study/Act. Navigating change involves doing small experiments, choosing to learn or act, turning up or down the heat, testing our assumptions about what will happen, and personally adapting.
- Peter Schlosser, Arizona State University, spoke of the decade maximum left to address climate change with greatly ramped up actions on three areas, i.e. renewables, carbon capture and waste conversion, and that the technical knowledge already there needs major global political will and leadership to make it happen;
- Pavan Sukhdev, CEO GIST on metrics to capture fully and focus companies on their natural, financial and human capital impacts
- Nicole Capriel Ferry, Dan Karreman and Minna Paunova of Copenhagen Business School considering leadership and large-scale systems change, and “systematic change”, with barriers to participation of women (Nicole raised why is we talk about gender and hold womens leadership conferences and not particarchy and mens leadership conferences) and the question of whether it is too late to address the larger issues especially climate change (hope v apocalypse);
- with similar themes and questions raised by Johnathan Gousling in interview with Ronald E. Reggio (author of 365 days) , in anaysing our reactions to and perceptons of big challenges will make little/some/major/catostrophic differences to our societies and species, and the need for and challenges of Deep Adaption.
- Jean-Anne Stewart and Lynn Thurlowayof Henley Business School, spoke of the development of their world-renowned leadership programmes, of open-ended action learning as being central and of the learning from Covid virtual action learning sets
- Gillian Secrett and Victoria Hurth of Institute for Sustainability Leadership, in excellent workshop chaired by John Heiser ILA, whereby Victoria outlined a triangle of ultimate and intermediate ends and means as a way of focusing, while Gillian lead the discussion of Bill Sharpes (2020) Three Horizons and challenged the group to specify what particular leadership tasks were required for each stage. The importance of monetising the longer-term and using user, employee and other stakeholder feedback was emphasised in the feedback.
- Liz Cavallaro of the US Naval War College spoke of the pedagogic approach to leadership development in what she described as the navy’s “leadership laboratory”, and the review udnertakenin the last year to deepen the commitment to diversity and mutual respect, and the “Golden Tread” of diversity and acceptance that brings togehr all modules, lectures case studies and extra curricuala experiential learning. Andrew Ledford US Naval Academy gave a memorable quote “We have to be wary of “leadershiptainment”. Had a great conversation with Justin Richard Stoddard US Air Force Academy on how to train leaders for very stressful combat situations, by repeatedly rehearsing ever-increasingly stressful scenarios, and by internalising “first twist the dial” and similar calming self-talk.
- Karim Wasfi founder of Peace through Arts a performed some beautiful evocative violin music and then in a rich riveting mutli-layered discussion with Eliane Ubalijoro, of Future Earth spoke of living in Iraq and how to understand the suicide bombers and what drives them and how to encourage “the choice for life” in all of the societies we live in; and the importance of empowering unconscious leadership and releasing differnet aspects of ourselves through music and sound and others ways of transforming ourselves, with deep listening to others and ourselves as being core.
The virtual sessions continued the Conference from Sunday 24 Oct to Teusday 26 Oct , and contain a another rich choice of sessions with on leadership in education, peacekeeping, public organisations, women in sports and many more topics!!
Overall, a fascinating experience and immersion in the latest international thinking about leadership education and development!!
Check out dates for ILA 24th Annual Global Conference Washington D.C. USA Oct or Nov!