On October 15-18, 2025 Steven P.M. de Waal PhD will be contributing at several events at the 27th ILA (International Leadership Association) Global Conference in Prague.

1. He will present insights from his books Make Health Care My Care! Seven Routes to a Healthy Health Care System (published in Dutch, 2023) about innovations by civil leaders in health care and Civil Leadership as the Future of Leadership (Amazon, 2018), which delves into how new ICT and media technologies have disrupted traditional power dynamics.
2. He will chair a roundtable about the question ‘Is Trust in leaders shifting from virtue to competence?’. A lively discussion exploring how public expectations of leaders may be shifting from valuing their virtues to emphasizing their competence, and what this means for trust and leadership in the future.
3. And as chair of the ILA member community on Trust & Leadership, co-founded with Ted Baartmans, he will co-host the workshop ‘How Human History Shapes Trust, Collaboration and Influence’. This panel discussion brings together three experts from diverse fields to explore how historical trust-building, cooperation, and social resilience have influenced leadership-followership dynamics. What if our understanding of leadership and followership has been shaped by myths rather than historical reality? Traditional narratives emphasize hierarchy, dominance, and competition as the primary drivers of human survival. However, emerging research suggests that collaboration, trust, and emotional intelligence have been the true catalysts of human success. Leading together means interdependence.

Read more about De Waal’s overall focus for these events ‘Is Trust in leaders shifting from virtue to competence?’ or download the paper he submitted for the conference.