Business at a Crossroads: a Global Snapshot of Leadership, Themes, and Tensions

I will be joining the President’s Summit in Copenhagen next week. It’s one of Northern Europe’s leading business conferences, with more than 3000 participants every year. This year the conference is promising participants to meet the visionaries of the future, with a mix of topics covering innovation, business growth, and personal development.

Over the years I’ve noted that business conferences and summits are highly trend sensitive, and that the organizers tend to pick up topics that they believe create curiosity, but are still relevant and attractive to a large business audience in their region. This, for instance, led me to participate in a large number of business conference during 2014-2017 before writing my first book, Navigera in i framtiden, which was published in 2018.

A jolt of inspiration recently also led me to explore a deceptively simple question: What do today’s many business conferences and summits tell us about the state of business and the world — and about the future of leadership?

The answer? Quite a lot.

But to make sense of what we’re seeing, we need more than trendspotting. We need a lens that can help us see not just what is being talked about — but how the underlying meaning-making is evolving.

One such lens comes from the field of Vertical Leadership Development — a body of adult and leadership development research exploring how individuals evolve in their capacity to see, hold, and respond to complexity.

And here’s the leap: what if we apply this idea not just to individuals, but to organizations, regions, and even economies?
What if we could detect a kind of collective developmental gravity — showing us where different societies, industries, and systems tend to operate from, and what tensions they are currently navigating?

This is exactly what I’ve attempted to do here — mapping the themes, stages, and contradictions visible in leading business conferences across the world.

First a few short words about Vertical Leadership Development.

Seeing the World Differently: A Vertical Development Lens

To make sense of the deeper topics and patterns emerging across recent global business conferences and summits (2024-2025), I’ve been using a lens drawn from Vertical Leadership Development (VLD). It’s a perspective that helps us see not just what leaders do, but how they make meaning — and how this meaning-making evolves over time.

Most of us are familiar with what we here call horizontal development: learning new skills, acquiring knowledge, becoming more effective. Vertical development, on the other hand, is about expanding the very way we see, think, and respond to the world. It’s not about what you know, but the perspective from which you know it.

Here’s a simplified overview of the four key stages of Vertical Leadership Development most relevant to our present times:

Specialist

“I am what I know and can do.”
Focused on expertise, rules, and doing things the right way. Specialists build depth in their domain but often struggle to step back and see the larger system. Often found in: technical experts, analysts, functional managers.

Achievist

“I am what I achieve.”
Goal-oriented, strategic, and focused on performance and success. Achievist leaders drive results and innovation within existing systems. They value autonomy, growth, and competition. Often found in: senior managers, entrepreneurs, and executives in high-performance cultures.

Catalyst

“I am who I choose to become — in service of something greater.”
Catalysts begin to question the very system they’ve mastered. They are purpose-driven, emotionally aware, and see leadership as a vehicle for transformation and systemic change. Often found in: transformational leaders, intrapreneurs, conscious business founders.

Synergist

“I am part of a living system — co-creating with others and life itself.”
Synergists integrate systems thinking, deep presence, and long-term stewardship. They work to align inner and outer transformation and lead with humility, purpose, and deep care for future generations. Often found in: regenerative businesses, mission-led movements, and the rare visionary CEO.

These stages are not about hierarchy or superiority — they are about increasing and expanding capacity to lead in complex, interconnected times.

This is by the way the type of executive coaching that I’m trained in and apply in my work.

Applying this lense to the scene of business conferences and summits across the world provides interesting perspectives. While these terms come from adult development theory, I’ve in the analysis translated them to the collective level, to see how they might help us understand not just what a region is doing — but what it is capable of seeing. This allows us to go beyond surface-level themes and ask deeper questions about readiness, alignment, and evolution.

A Developmental Spectrum of Business Across Regions

In short, I asked ChatGPT-40 to help me identify the top ten business conferences/summits for selected regions across the globe. I started with the Nordics and Baltics, then the US.

I then moved to a broader picture, including the EU, Asia, Middle East, Africa and South America in the analysis. Right or wrong? At least a first attempt to make sense of the bigger picture.

And kaboom! After spending some time to zoom in and out, and comparing regional agendas, a pattern began to emerge.

Each region seemed to operate within a different center of meaning-making — reflecting both historical context and current strategic priorities.

What the analysis shows is quite interesting.

In “emerging economies” the agendas most often reflect an Achievist mindset — focused on performance, growth, and entrepreneurial success. In parts of Latin America the agendas seem to show signs of Catalyst logic.

In “regions in transition” (including the US) the agendas are mainly Achievist, but show signs of evolving toward a Catalyst logic — recognizing systemic challenges and tensions in embracing ESG, purpose, and inclusion.

In “leading-edge economies” (like the Nordics and parts of Europe) the agendas exhibit early features of a Synergist stage — where regenerative business, stakeholder ecosystems, and future generations enter the conversation with greater authenticity. Still the Achievist logic is prevalent underlying the exploration of the edges.

Hence, the analysis shows that the business conferences in most regions are navigating the tension between Achievist logic (performance, strategy, growth) and emerging Catalyst perspectives (purpose, systems change, inclusion).

A few, like the Nordic countries and some parts of Europe, are beginning to pioneer Synergist approaches — integrating regeneration, stakeholder ecosystems, and long-term consciousness into the very fabric of business.

This may not be surprising for those interested in this space.

What Might be Blocking the Shift Between Stages?

This, however, made me want to explore what might be blocking the shifts between the stages on a more collective level in business. I have to admit I was extremely curious on deep diving into the polarization of the US, but that I chose to stay out of it.

Now, I have personally come to understand potential “blockers” between stages as developmental tensions and potentials for growth.

Because growth between stages doesn’t come automatically. It rather demand of us to experience tensions and ultimately accepting the limitations of our current perspectives; exploring what lies beyond them; and integrating the new meaning-making logic, while letting go of what doesn’t serve us anymore. That’s often painful on an individual level. Just imagine how painful it has to be on a collective level.

On an individual level, each stage transition comes with its own set of tensions and challenges. In our global scan, certain blockages may slow or even prevent collective developmental growth, for instance:

From Achievist to Catalyst

• Identity entanglement with success: Achievist leaders often derive their self-worth from performance and achievement.
• Fear of loss of control: The shift to Catalyst means embracing complexity and ambiguity, which can feel threatening.
• Limited psychological safety: Deep inner work and emotional intelligence are not typically nurtured in Achievist cultures.
• Short-term incentive structures: Many organizational systems reward performance over purpose or systems awareness.

From Catalyst to Synergist

• Attachment to being the change-agent: The Catalyst identity can become rigid, especially when based on opposition to the system.
• Overwhelm and burnout: Without adequate support, Catalysts may carry too much of the transformation burden.
• Difficulty trusting emergence: Synergist thinking requires surrender and co-creation rather than control and drive.
• Underdeveloped somatic and spiritual integration: The Synergist stage calls for embodiment and presence, not just insight.

Across both transitions, we also find what we can call “meta-barriers”:

• Cultural norms that resist post-conventional thinking
• Lack of developmental scaffolding and support ecosystems
• Absence of collective developmental intent

Recognizing these patterns helps us not only understand that we might be stuck in a liminal space— but how we might design more supportive conditions for transformation.

Why This Matters Now: Leading from a Space In Between

Over the past years, I have come to belive that we are living in a liminal time — a threshold space between what has been and what might become.

The old paradigms of business and leadership, built on predictability, control, and linear growth, are increasingly misaligned with the polycrisis realities of our world. Climate collapse, social inequality, geopolitical instability, and technological disruption are not just problems to solve — they are symptoms of outdated worldviews.

Yet the new paradigms — regenerative, systemic, conscious — are not yet fully formed, widely understood, or institutionally embedded. This liminal space is very uncomfortable. It resists certainty and demands a kind of leadership that can sit with ambiguity, hold paradoxes, and navigate the unknown.

In vertical development terms, this is the space between stages — a developmental crossing where identities loosen, worldviews stretch, and deeper integration becomes possible. It’s here that many leaders and organizations now find themselves: too aware to return to “business as usual,” yet not fully resourced, supported, or developed to embody what comes next.

To respond wisely, we need leadership maturity at scale.

We need to build businesses that are not just efficient, but conscious. Not just profitable, but regenerative. Not just fast, but deeply attuned to the complexity of the living systems they are part of. Businesses that are not only best in the world, but best for the world.

The good news? The seeds are already there. Across conferences and summits, we see the signals of a new worldview taking root. The cracks in the Achievist mindset are becoming visible — and through those cracks, a more Catalytic and even Synergistic logic is beginning to emerge.

This will take time. But the liminal is a fertile space — if held with care, reflection, and community. Without this, we risk regression to previous stages (a tension I belive we are curently witnessing in the US). With the right scaffolding, however, the liminal becomes a crucible of transformation.

Looking toward the frontiers of business thinking, the Synergist stage — and what lies beyond it — is already present in smaller groups of pioneering thinkers and practitioners. Among them is Giles Hutchins, whose new book Keys for Future-Fit Leadership articulates a rich vision for what’s next.

I will be meeting with Giles at Springwood Farm outside London in a few weeks. More about that then.

Elisabet Lagerstedt

Elisabet Lagerstedt is the founder and director of Future Navigators. As a trusted advisor, consultant, and Executive Coach, she helps business leaders navigate beyond business as usual to build Better Business and co-create a better future - through insight, strategy, innovation, and transformation. Elisabet is also the author of Better Business, Better Future (2022) and Navigera in i Framtiden (2018).