First published: March 2026 Last revised: June 10, 2026
The Territory We're Entering
What practitioners are noticing
Leadership situations are often experienced as increasingly complex and multi-layered
Competing demands create tensions that don't resolve through analysis alone
Clarity alone doesn't always create movement
Something in the situation itself may be getting overlooked
These are not problems to be solved. They are conditions to be understood. The VRLL begins here, with a commitment to look more carefully at what is actually happening in leadership situations.
This is the starting point for shared inquiry: a space to notice, reflect, and stay with the complexity long enough to see what becomes visible.
We enter this territory together — as researchers, practitioners, coaches, consultants, and leaders — paying attention to what unfolds in real time and to what the situation reveals when we resist the urge to simplify it too quickly.
The Virtual Research & Leadership Lab
What Are We Actually Doing Here?
01
The Situation
Leadership doesn't happen in a person. It happens between people, in real time, in specific conditions. That's what we want to study.
02
The Gap
Most of what we know about leadership was captured after the fact. We're interested in what happens as it unfolds.
03
The Method
VRLL creates a shared, virtual space where we can enter situations together, observe them from inside, and reflect without leaving the moment — using immersive technology as a research medium, not a product.
Why this matters for research
This is an open inquiry, not a closed framework. We don't yet know exactly what we'll find — and that's the point. By studying leadership in the moment, across multiple perspectives and methods, we can pay attention to what appears, what shifts, and what becomes visible only when we stay inside the experience long enough to notice it.
We are not testing a hypothesis. We are learning to ask better questions.
One Starting Point
From One Framework to an Open Field
Systemic Constellations is one of the practices that gave rise to VRLL — an established method for making hidden dynamics visible, externalising the relational forces, tensions, and patterns that shape how a system behaves. The VRLL takes this practice into a virtual, shared space — not to replicate it digitally, but to ask what becomes possible when we bring multiple methods and perspectives into the same inquiry.
1
Systemic Constellations
One founding practice. Participants represent elements of a system — people, roles, forces, dynamics — and through movement, position, and felt sense, what is hidden becomes visible. The constellation reveals what analysis cannot. It is one powerful way to begin.
2
The Virtual Space as Research Environment
VRLL is not a software product. It is a shared, virtual environment with specific properties — presence across distance, reduced social signalling, immersive co-presence — that may change what becomes possible in leadership inquiry. That change is what we are here to investigate.
3
Representative Perception as Leadership Practice
When someone takes on a role in a structured inquiry — inhabiting a position, sensing what it carries, responding to the field — they are not rehearsing leadership. They are doing it. This is one of the central claims that makes embodied, situational methods more than technique: they are sites where leadership actually happens.
13Leaders as a Starting Point
One Framework. An Open Field.
The Virtual Research & Leadership Lab begins with the experience and insights of the 13Leaders framework. Yet the lab is not limited to one model. It invites multiple perspectives, disciplines, methods, and leadership traditions into a shared space of inquiry.
What 13Leaders contributes
A structured way to explore leadership functions and situational dynamics
A framework for understanding developmental needs across leadership roles
An initial research contribution grounded in practice
A founding impulse that opens the space for broader collaboration
What VRLL adds
VRLL expands this inquiry into a broader collaborative research field. It is designed as an open space for multiple perspectives, models, methods, and research traditions. 13Leaders serves as one starting point — not the boundary — for a shared inquiry into leadership and human development.
VRLL begins with 13Leaders — and opens far beyond it.
What the Virtual Space May Do to Leadership Inquiry
These are not conclusions. They are hunches — observations from early practice that suggest the virtual environment is not simply a container for leadership inquiry, but may be actively shaping what the work can do. Each deserves careful investigation.
Presence Across Distance
VR may allow participants to enter a shared spatial field regardless of geography — without the flatness of a video call. If spatial presence is central to constellation work, this matters. But does it hold? And what is lost?
Avatar-Mediation and Dissolved Barriers
When participants are represented as avatars, status signals, physical appearance, and role projections may recede. This could lower the threshold for genuine participation — or it could introduce new distortions. We don't yet know.
Reduced Visual Cues, Heightened Resonance
With fewer visual details to read analytically, participants may be thrown back onto felt sense — the capacity to resonate with a situation rather than interpret it. This is precisely what constellation work depends on. VR may amplify it.
These are the questions we are bringing into the lab. Not to confirm what we expect — but to find out what is actually there. And we invite others to bring their questions too.
An Invitation to Step In
This is not an invitation to observe leadership from a distance. It is an invitation to practice it — by stepping into a role, inhabiting a position, and sensing what the situation carries. Whether through Systemic Constellations or other embodied, relational methods, representative perception is not a simulation of leadership. It is the thing itself.
Take on a Role
Enter a shared inquiry as a representative — of a person, a force, a dynamic, a perspective. Notice what you sense from that position. That noticing is the data.
Stay with the Field
Resist the urge to analyse or explain. The practice is to remain present to what is happening — in the situation, between participants, in yourself.
Reflect Together
After each session, we pause to ask: what became visible? What shifted? What does this tell us about leadership — and about what the virtual space does to this work?
You don't need prior experience with any specific method or technology. You need genuine curiosity and a willingness to be in the situation.
Stage One — Open Exploration
Step into an Open Space
This is the beginning. We are opening the lab as a free, shared space for anyone who wants to think alongside us — researchers, practitioners, coaches, consultants, HR professionals, educators, and leaders. If you work with organisations, lead teams, or simply find these questions alive in your own practice, you are welcome here.
No agenda. No fee. No obligation beyond genuine curiosity.
Tuesdays 15:00 to 17:00 CET / 10 am to noon EST / 7 am to 9 am PDT
The Virtual Research & Leadership Lab is grounded in rigorous academic research, contributing to and drawing from leading-edge scholarship across leadership, organisational development, systemic methods, and immersive technologies. The following sources offer entry points into the broader scholarship that informs and surrounds this inquiry.
Rost, P., Mueller-Christ, G., Barry, K., & Filsinger, C. (2026)
Leadership Sense-Making in Complex Systems, Integrating Situational Diagnostics and Exploratory Constellations. In Constellation Work in Practice: Theory-Informed Insights into the Variety of Possible Applications in Organisations. Springer. Forthcoming
Rost, P., Hunger-Schoppe, C., van Bebber, T.
(2026)
Jenseits bekannter Organisationsmuster (28. Kongress für Familienunternehmer 21. Mai 2026 an der Uni Witten/Herdecke) Workshop Dokumentation
van Bebber, T., Tappe, E.-H., Druyen, T., Kleve, H., Rüsen, T., & Hunger-Schoppe, C.
(2024).
Efficacy and experience of system constellations in virtual reality (VR): Study protocol for a randomized controlled feasibility study. Pilot and Feasibility Studies, 10(1). Read Paper
Rost, P., van Bebber, T. & Demir, R.
(2024)
Transformative VR Reise Live-Coaching-Session in VR der Gesellschaft für Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse in Deutschland e.V. (GLE D) Online-Fachtag 9. November 2024 Dokumentation, PDF und Video
Müller-Christ, G., & Pijetlovic, D.
(2018)
Komplexe Systeme Lesen: Das potential von Systemaufstellungen in Wissenschaft und praxis. Springer Gabler. Springer
Rost, P.
(forthcoming)
Leadership as Sensemaking-in-Action, A Transversal Perspective on Coordinating Across Plural Social Logics. Conceptional Paper
Questions To Be Explored
These are the questions that brought this circle together. They sit at the intersection of multiple methods, disciplines, and traditions — from systemic constellations and immersive technology to leadership theory, organisational development, and human development. None of them have settled answers. All of them are open to multiple perspectives.
Does spatial presence transfer?
Systemic Constellations depends on participants physically inhabiting a shared field. Does VR preserve this quality of presence — or does it simulate it in ways that matter?
What does avatar-mediation change?
When participants are not physically themselves, what shifts in the constellation? Does the reduction of social signalling open something — or close something?
Is resonance possible without a body?
The felt sense that guides constellation work is deeply somatic. Can it operate through an avatar? What does it feel like when it does — or doesn't?
What new configurations of inquiry become possible?
VRLL is not limited to one geography, one institution, or one tradition. If the virtual space changes who can participate and how, then the question becomes: what new forms of collaborative leadership inquiry does this open up?
A Question of Where We Look
The way we frame leadership determines what we look for — and what we miss. Conventional frameworks locate leadership in the leader's mind: in decisions made, problems solved, strategies formulated. But what if the most important things are happening elsewhere — in the space between people, in the texture of the situation itself, in the dynamics that no single model can fully capture?
Leadership as Individual Capacity
Decision-making as the central act
Problem-solving as the core skill
The leader as the primary unit of analysis
Clarity precedes action
Leadership as Situational Emergence
Navigating tensions as the central challenge
Sensemaking-in-action as the core capacity
The situation as the unit of inquiry
Meaning emerges through movement
Core Insight
The Situation is the Guru *
The central proposition is that leadership is not a fixed trait or a set of skills hierarchically applied — it is something that emerges within situations, shaped by the forces, relationships, and dynamics at play in real time. This insight is not the property of any single framework. It is a shared starting point for inquiry.
Relational
Leadership arises between people — in the quality of connection, the patterns of interaction, and the weight each voice carries in a system.
Embodied
It is felt in the body before it is understood in the mind — in posture, presence, proximity, and the physical reality of being in a situation together.
Dynamic
Situations shift. What is needed changes moment to moment. Leadership that is alive must be responsive to these shifts, not fixed to a prior plan.
A Gap in What We Know
What existing research tends to capture
Existing leadership research has produced valuable knowledge. It helps us name patterns, compare cases, and build useful concepts for understanding leadership in context.
At the same time, it often studies leadership at a remove — through frameworks, retrospective accounts, and abstracted models.
The gap is not that these methods are wrong, but that they may be missing something that only becomes visible in the live, unfolding moment — something that multiple disciplines and methods are now beginning to reach toward.
Frameworks
Conceptual models help us name and categorise leadership. What they can't capture is the felt sense of a situation as it moves.
Case Studies
Retrospective accounts reveal patterns. What they lose is the texture, pressure, and ambiguity of the moment itself.
Simulations
Controlled environments allow practice. What they often lack is the genuine uncertainty of a situation that hasn't been scripted.
Join the Virtual Research & Leadership Lab
Explore leadership not as a fixed model, but as an evolving field of inquiry, reflection, and responsible action.
Open to researchers, practitioners, coaches, consultants, HR professionals, educators, and leaders.
No agenda. No fee. No obligation beyond genuine curiosity.
Tuesdays 15:00–17:00 CET / 10 am–noon EST / 7–9 am PDT