Julia Bicher’s passion for the hospitality industry is rooted in her childhood, when she was fascinated by the restaurants and hotels she went to with her parents. That fascination grew into a desire to create “unforgettable experiences”, leading her to study hotel and tourism management.
In 2005, after a short stint in the hotel sector, Bicher joined Congrex, a company headquartered in Basel, Switzerland that organizes medical conferences across Europe for up to 30,000 attendees. From a coordinating role in the registrations department, she rose through the ranks, becoming CEO and Partner in 2017.
When she took on the position, the chairman of Congrex’s board of directors advised her to sign up for IMD’s High Performance Leadership. An alumnus of the program, he told her it was “one of the best things you can do as a leader”. For Bicher, who was expecting her second child, the timing was not ideal. It was only when she was in her third year as CEO that she was able to head to Lausanne for the six-day program.
“Looking back, it would have helped me so much if I had done it right away. I’m sure I could have done a lot of things better,” said Bicher.
Opening up
“I don’t think you can anticipate what happens at High Peformance Leadership,” she reflected. “But when you get there, it’s a unique blend of so many great things.”
She remembers spending around 60% of the program in a small coaching group.
“That’s where all the magic happens. You really open up and start reflecting on yourself,” she said. “The coaches are brilliant in the way they ask questions and, step by step, lead you to big moments where you realize ‘This is why I’m like this’ or ‘this is why I do that.’”
Bicher credits her group’s coach for making them feel comfortable enough to open up.
“We all started telling each other so many things that we had never shared with our colleagues or even in our private lives,” she said. “That created a huge bond between us.”
A time to grieve
High Performance Leadership is co-led by George Kohlrieser, Distinguished Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at IMD. A clinical psychologist and veteran hostage negotiator, he views grief as a natural and necessary process for dealing with loss, which goes beyond the death of a loved one. In his leadership philosophy, grief includes any significant change or separation, such as losing a role, a team, or a sense of identity. Unresolved grief holds people hostage emotionally, preventing them from moving forward. To adapt to change and sustain high performance, leaders must acknowledge and work through grief, transforming loss into growth, and strengthening resilience and relationships.
Discussions about this during the program made Bicher realize she had never grieved the death of her mother 20 years earlier.
“Talking about her wasn’t something I did or something we would do in the family,” she explained.
“The program encouraged me to do some grief work when I came home. After that, I became emotionally available for my colleagues. I understood through High Performance Leadership that you don’t have to be a strong, always perfect leader – it actually helps to show your vulnerability, your doubts. You really can be a human being as a leader.”
From “Ice Queen” to “Nice Queen”
Having emotional availability noticeably transformed Bicher’s leadership style.
“We women have the issue that we are either the ‘Ice Queen’ or the ‘Nice Queen’. And I was the Ice Queen,” she said.
“Thanks to High Performance Leadership, I also became the Nice Queen. I can mix both, being competent and strong, but also being emotional and empathetic.”
In her interactions, Bicher also applies techniques she learned from watching role plays between faculty and program participants.
“I was fascinated by how the faculty spoke, how they managed to pick up on the emotions of the other person,” she said.
“Things like acknowledging the feelings of the other person and not just rushing into solutions – which I used to do – but really trying to understand what the person’s issue is, asking follow-up questions, paraphrasing, and giving choices. It’s very powerful.”
Corporate impact
Bicher has embedded the secure base leadership principles she learned on the program into her work. This leadership approach cultivates a safe, supportive environment that encourages innovation and creativity. Every month, she teaches the characteristics of secure base leadership to managers at Congrex. To further anchor this mindset across the organization, her High Performance Leadership coach runs a session with the entire management team each year.
Another concept Bicher took back to Congrex is the importance of balancing caring and daring.
“We realized that, as a company, we were strong on the caring side but the daring side was really missing,” she said. “It inspired me to work more on the risk-taking side.” This has opened conversations across Congrex about how employees can challenge one another constructively and use thoughtfully designed stretch assignments to step beyond their comfort zones.
“The realization of how daring is important, how failure is important, and that it’s okay if something goes wrong is also something that has changed our company’s culture,” she reflected.
Impact beyond work
Being able to finally grieve for her mother prompted Bicher to reconnect with her father, with whom she had a difficult relationship after their loss, as well as other family members. She also believes High Performance Leadership has helped her a lot as a mother.
“Since then, I’m always trying to teach my kids that they have choices, that they are not victims of anything and that it’s up to them to deal with situations. It’s also very helpful to give choices to kids and not just tell them what to do.”
A next-step experience
Five years after attending High Performance Leadership, Bicher was ready to learn more. Advanced High Performance Leadership , a program for alumni of High Performance Leadership and Kohlrieser’s online Inspirational Leadership, was an obvious choice.
“I was really looking for new input on the concepts we learned that I could then pass on to my colleagues,” said Bicher. “I was also very curious to have a kind of external review from participants and faculty to see whether I have progressed as much as I think.”
The program, which Bicher described as “fine-tuning”, confirmed that her learnings from High Performance Leadership were firmly ingrained and allowed her to identify areas for improvement.
Advanced High Performance Leadership explored certain topics, such as the role of emotions in leadership, at a much deeper level, or examined them from a different angle.
“For me, the two programs are like yin and yang – they really complement each other,” she said.
A particularly useful exercise involved creating a vision statement within 90 minutes.
“It could be for yourself, for your company, your team – anything,” explained Bicher, who intends to repeat the exercise for certain situations at Congrex using the technique she learned. “In 90 minutes, I got a leadership statement for myself, which I know is going to guide me for the next couple of years.”
Summing up her experience of both IMD programs, she said:
“High Performance Leadership and Advanced High Performance Leadership are not just leadership training – they transformed how I lead, how I live, and the kind of impact I choose to have. Learning how to grieve made me emotionally available again and shifted my mind’s eye toward the positive and the choice not to be a psychological hostage.”
