ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY: We acknowledge and honour all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Traditional Custodians of Country and recognize their unique and continuing connection to land, waterways, skies, culture and community. We pay our respects to Elders past and present.
April 1-2, 2026
Global Followership Conference Asia Pacific
Meanjin/Brisbane at Queensland University of Technology,
next to the beautiful City Botanic Gardens
Schedule
April 1: 8:30-5:30
April 2: 9:00-4:00
16 sessions to choose from including organizational interventions, personal development, research, indigenous knowledge and perspectives, case studies, hands-on workshops, and interpersonal growth.
The role of followership in creating psychological safety
Preventing toxic leadership and toxic followership
Leading and following for PhD supervisors/students
First Nations followership
Resilience in followers
Global followership
Collaborative followership
Co-creating leadership & followership
Neuroscience and followership
Leadership-followership systems thinking
Featured Speakers
Ira Chaleff
Ira Chaleff has spent decades asking this essential question: What is our responsibility when leadership goes wrong? He will share his most recent work on Followership at the Fault Lines of Democracy, Education, and AI
Ruth Sims
Ruth has developed a professional practice which makes followership ideas and research accessible through writing and workshop development and facilitation. She has more than 25 years experience in organisational development and communications, and will present a workshop on Leading and Following in the PhD Relationship.
Ree Jordan
Ree Jordan is a Senior Lecturer in Leadership and Management at the UQ Business School whose research reshapes how we understand leadership, followership, and change in complex organisations. Ree brings more than 20 years’ experience as a leadership and change consultant and is recognised internationally for her research on maverickism. She will speak on the provocative question: What if your most difficult follower is your greatest asset?
Marc & Samantha Hurwitz
For more than 15 years, Dr. Marc Hurwitz and Samantha Hurwitz have been boldly reshaping how the world understands leadership and followership. Learn from them How Leadership and Followership Form a Single, Powerful System.
Alex Haslam
Alex Haslam is Professor of Psychology and Laureate Fellow at the University of Queensland. He has written 16 books and over 350 peer-reviewed articles exploring the contribution of group and identity processes to social and organizational functioning — with a particular emphasis on leadership and health. He present a session on Zombie Leadership: Dead ideas that continue to haunt us — and how to overcome them.
Melissa Derby, Ngāti Ranginui
Melissa Derby is currently serving as the Race Relations Commissioner for Te Kāhui Tika Tangata | New Zealand Human Rights Commission. She brings a decade of experience in human rights advocacy. Her previous role was in the School of Education at the University of Waikato, where her teaching and research focused on children’s early learning and development, Māori education and success, and literacy as a human right.
Wendy M. Edmonds & Alain de Sales
Alain de Sales and Wendy M. Edmonds challenge one of the most uncomfortable truths in organizational life: destructive leadership is enabled by the systems and followership dynamics around it. Their session will explore Navigating and Disrupting the Toxic Triangle in Leadership
Elissa Farrow
Elissa Farrow is a futurist, author, speaker, coach and strategist. She has over 25 years experience in user centred research, organisational innovation, mediation, change design and facilitation. Her doctoral research explored organisations of the future and the implications of artificial intelligence for leaders, teams and the adaptation approach. She will give a session on Voices at the Centre: Collaborative Followership in Practice.
Conference Co-Chairs
Alain de Sales, Lecturer, QUT Graduate School of Business
Dr. Alain de Sales blends extensive real‑world expertise with academic insight. Over two decades he has led strategy, digital transformation, and policy initiatives for multiple organisations across the globe in both the public and private sectors. He was the Managing Director and co‑founder of My Civic Voice, which aimed to improve national civic‑engagement, and co-founded Total e-Strategy to consult on digital transformation. He is the former chair of the Global Courageous Followership Hub – Teaching Followers Courage.
At QUT’s Graduate School of Business, Dr. de Sales lectures on leadership and followership, drawing on his PhD research into courageous followers confronting destructive leadership. He holds a Computer Science BSc (First‑Class Honours), an MBA, an MBIT and a Graduate Certificate in Teaching in Higher Education, all awarded with High Distinction, underscoring his commitment to both practice and scholarship.
Otto Henfling, Managing Director, Trusted Leadership
Otto Henfling is an Australian Strategic Governance Consultant and former CEO with more than forty years of leadership and maangement experience, including over sixteen years leading for-purpose organisations at CEO and Board level. He works with boards and executive teams on governance, risk and strategic planning, with a focus on cultivating trust-based, mission-aligned cultures. Otto’s doctoral research explores leadership and followership as reciprocal influence relationships through which individual purposes converge into common purpose within the human services sector. As Co-Chair of the Global Followership Conference, he is committed to fostering dialogue that bridges scholarship and practice, highlighting how followership deepens our understanding of leadership and organisational life. He based in the Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia.
Travel and Accommodations
When making plans to attend the conference, please make sure you have you have the necessary, up-to-date, travel documents (e.g., passport, visa, etc.) to travel to Brisbane in Queensland, Australia.
Hotels
The Global Followership Conference does not have a set hotel for attendees. Below are recommended hotels for you to explore. Please note that booking direct with the hotel (especially if you sign up as a member) may give the best rates.
See Google Maps for directions from the Conference to accommodation options.
Selected Hotels in the Central Business District
Royal on the Park 152 Alice Street Brisbane, QLD 4000
Capri By Fraser, Brisbane 80 Albert Street, Brisbane QLD 4000
ibis Styles Brisbane 40 Elizabeth Street 4000 Brisbane (has accessible accommodation)
Selected (Accor) Hotels in the Southbank Area
Mantra South Bank Brisbane, 161 Grey Street 4101 South Bank
Rydges South Bank Brisbane, 9 Glenelg Street, South Brisbane, QLD 4101
Novotel Brisbane South Bank, 38 Cordelia St 4101 South Brisbane (has accessible accommodation)
Local Transport
Water ferries travel frequently between Southbank and Garden Point
In addition to taxi/uber there is a train service between the airport stopping in the CBD and Southbank
Visiting Brisbane
Tourism
Weather
Indigenous Peoples & Places in Brisbane
Your Welcome to Country was by Tribal Experiences
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities
Experience Aboriginal culture in Brisbane and the Gold Coast
Asia Pacific Steering Committee
Alain de Sales (CO-CHAIR), Lecturer, QUT Graduate School of Business
Otto Henfling (CO-CHAIR), Managing Director, Trusted Leadership
Lana Leslie, Kamilaroi woman, Founder and Managing Director, Gunnedah Hill Business Solutions
Jeff Scobie, Former CEO at Macarthur Disability Services
Ruth Sims, Organisational development and communications professional at Followership Whisperer
Marc Hurwitz, Chief Insight Officer, FliP University & Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, Conrad School of Entrepreneurship & Business University of Waterloo
Samantha Hurwitz, Chief Encouragement Officer at FliP University
Graduate School of Business
at Queensland University of Technology
At QUT’s Graduate School of Business we are leaders in life-long learning, enabling our students to reach their full potential.
Our mission is to co-create accessible and impactful executive education experiences alongside industry, government, non-profit sectors and our community. These industry-collaborated programs aim to benefit organisations and society in our complex world.
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