Novya Leadership Lab – an executive retreat for Association Leaders
Association Leaders provide strategic direction, governance support and member value. Leaders need to be diplomats, crisis managers, internal coaches, and external ambassadors—often all in the same day. What is so often missing in the association world is professional and personal development opportunities that are structured around the specific set of leadership challenges faced by heads of associations, where unwritten pressures can also be named and addressed.
That need is exactly where the Novya Leadership Lab comes in. Taking place from 18–20 November 2026 at the historic Oude Abdij Drongen near Ghent, Belgium, this three-day residential invites leaders to step away from every day demands and explore issues in greater depth.
Built around three core pillars—Authentic Leadership, Empowering & Growing Teams, and Leading Agile Transformation—the retreat addresses what sits behind formal responsibilities:
- Authentic Leadership & Personal Compass: Step back to explore your values, strengths, and identity. Practise setting boundaries and holding difficult conversations so you can navigate volatile contexts with integrity and clarity.
- Empowering Teams Under Pressure: Develop concrete tools to support lean, high-performing teams, adapting current practices into a structured, deliberate way of working and transform existing practices into a more structured, deliberate way of working.
- Agile Transformation & Modern Systems: Explore how to move your organisation forward when governance systems were built for a slower world.
- Individual Coaching & Peer Trust: Work in a small, non-judgemental cohort of peers with tailored coaching to turn deep insights into direct, practical action in your organisation.
Novya Leadership Lab Retreat
Dates: 18–20 November 2026
Location: historic Oude Abdij Drongen, near Ghent, Belgium
Registration & Enquiries: Visit the Leadership Lab website https://leadership-lab.novya.eu/ to register. For direct enquiries, contact [email protected].
As partners of the AAE, Novya is offering AAE members a special discount to the November event. Please email [email protected] for details.
Thanks to the author: Lisa Lisa Kretschmann, Director of Novya, who together with Benita Lipps, CEO of Novya, ran the highly-rated Leadership and Governance session at this years Association World Congress in the Algarve. We are delighted to continue the Novya - AAE partnership to advance Association Leadership.
