 I'm so happy that you keep asking me, because I think also from the first year I was here, that this is a great gathering, and I told the organizers, and I will tell you that I have moderated a lot of conferences, and this is indeed very professional, and the turn of your show and the excitement and delivering questions is overwhelming, also like the most top-attended CEO conferences in Denmark, so I just think you should know that. But here today we have the great, the grand leadership panel debate, and now one in one I will call up the participants, and then let's give them a hand. And over here I'd like to see Jeff Gravenhorst from ISS. Welcome. With the ISS for many, many years, and also in the past year's group CEO, but you've been there for 17 years. 12 years. So ISS is in your blood, and ISS is of course one of the world's largest employers, and here in Denmark and one of the world's largest cleaning and facility corporations. So here I would very much like to see Anders Eldrup, former CEO of Dong Energy, and of course today professional board member in several number of different companies, and oh, I'm sorry, it's probably something with the microphone, so there's signs. Yeah, sorry. And before joining Dong Energy as CEO, you were the permanent secretary of state for the Danish Ministry of Finance. So, and I'm looking over at the, can I ask Bjørsten to be here? No? I wasn't talking about, so here we have Bjørsten, you'll go here instead. Bjørsten, very welcome, CEO of Parallels. So, you're a Norwegian born but speaks very American, but that's because you are now based in Seattle, and Parallels is a 14-year-old, quite successful software company. That's right. So, and finally, Peter Barton, please join me on stage. And of course Peter is the Danish head of defense since 2012. Before that he was employed by NATO based in the US, and you like to call yourself a soldier. So, please give them all one more warm welcome. And again, yes, you know the pigeonhole system, so just start typing in there and we'll get back to it in just a short while. To begin with, I'd like to take the round and ask you how you define yourself as leader, and then of course what is good leadership. I trust you all see yourself as good leaders, so in that sense, Bjørsten, what defines good leadership? It's a very big question, and I was actually a little bit anxious when I saw the line up here defining leadership inside of one hour with this kind of firepower on the stage. For me, leadership is essentially about three things. One of them is to define and explain a direction. The other one is the empathy to understand the team, the people that you lead. Because if you don't understand them, if you don't understand what's on their mind, what are their hopes, what are their dreams, you'll have no chance of guiding them towards the direction that is your common goal. And the third aspect is to have the integrity to actually carry out the journey together. Integrity includes openness, honesty, and treating each person that you work with as an individual and not only as a means to carry out the task. So direction, empathy and integrity, those are the three main components of leadership. Do you look for these three key points in all the leaders that you work with and also, of course, in yourself? Absolutely. And I think I've personally had the opportunity to hire and work with leaders who have these in abundance, and I've had the opportunity to not hire and sometimes unhire or fire, as we sometimes call it, people who display consistent failure in any of these three directions or in any of these three components. You basically laid people off because they didn't have one of the three key points to say, you know the direction, empathy or integrity? Yes. Thank you very much. Anas? I think it was very well phrased, but to put it in my words, I have had the privilege to work for several years in public sector, as you mentioned, and for a number of years in a private company. And of course, leadership is not exactly the same whether you are in private or public sector. But if I should define a common denominator, I would say that what I have learned from these things is that the big thing you can do as a CEO or as a leader is to set targets, to set the direction, and to communicate this to the people you are leading. So setting targets, clear targets, communicating it by storytelling, that has been crucial in my experience. I have had the privilege to head organizations, be it private or public, which had had to change a lot. And in order to make the crew follow such a change process, communication, storytelling, setting the target, that has been the main focus for me. So you put the communications up on the board as well. Peter Parkstrom, what defines good leadership for you? I think it's about achieving the overall objective in an environment which is very much defined by uncertainty and adverse conditions. I think the leader needs to, as the gentleman next to me has said, need to set the course and prioritize. That's very important. But also believe you need to keep the organization focused and you need to be able with your leadership to answer the question, why are we doing it? You need to explain, you need to set up some kind of narrative and explain why we are doing it. It needs to make sense to the individual why are we moving in this direction, why are we making a turnaround. This is the leader to answer that question. And that's also very needed in the military, in the armed forces where you are? Oh, very much. If you want people to move forward and they know that there are people out there who might want to kill you, they need a pretty good explanation. Why did you do it? It's true, but still also maybe there's an old fashioned way of thinking but in the military you also do what you're told. We do. You need to be told why. You're not having like a ground group discussion. You go to the right or the left, you do what the general tells you. That's a good thing, by the way. There is a planning phase where we are very open and you should allow to be challenged in all ways. But then when you have made the decision, you want people to obey, you want people to execute, you order, that's for sure. But you should, before that, before you take the decision, you need to be open and you have to distinguish. So in the Danish military, 20,000 people today. Next to you, there's a guy who has 540,000. 20. 30,000. 529. I think every time we meet Jeff, it becomes lower and lower. I know, we have the best things from companies, but that's it. Alright, but that's over half a million employees. What defines good leadership for you? I think we've said a lot of things up here already and I've of course concurred to all of it. Maybe I can put it in a different phrase from my side. I think we have to remember that our job as leaders is one and one only. That is that we need to get more out of all of the individuals than the individuals could do on their own. So that's number one. That's direction setting that's actually managing, that's the managing part of our job. But it's not enough. Today you need to do one level more and that's leadership. The managing part is actually quite easy. The leadership part is this common goal, the common purpose, living the common purpose of why we're doing what we're doing. And I know it's a cliche and I know that a lot of people heard this before, but I keep using it. As leaders we build cathedrals. We don't cut stones. And it does say everything. That is the sense that you can't actually learn anywhere, but you can teach yourself as you go along via storytelling, via understanding purpose, and via understanding it's living human beings. You're trying to actually get to get more out of than you could do on your own. So unleash the power of the human touch. Before I turn to your questions, I just need to do one more round because as you already addressed yourselves, here we have public, we have private companies, we have people who have been in both. And also it's a very broad range of branches. We have one of the young industries presented by parallels and then probably the world's most old business or something that's prostitution, but I think maybe the army was... I don't know which... Thank you for that parallel. But never mind. So how has leadership in your fields changed over time? I'm not going to comment on your age or anything, but you have been around for a while, and can you please explain to me, because just in the past few years I think the whole management and leadership, just the word management, I know if people think management is like a forbidden word out there because we don't manage, we lead. But can you please explain to me in your different fields how it has changed over the past decades? Jeff, let's begin with you. First of all, management is extremely important. I think it's actually an inward, it's definitely not an outward. Being leaders with a lot of big thinking and words and boss words and whatever it is, and being motivational, it's great when you're a motivational speaker. It's not enough where you're actually leading a company. So you have to be able to know what you're doing here as well. It's not enough to just get a little people clapping and cheering and whatever it is. You have to deliver results. So both is important. And I think the old world and the new world are equally important. We just got to mix it in the right way. It's not new to talk about empowerment. Not at all. I mean, Jankarsson was one of the big inspirations for me. Whether or not it succeeded, but it certainly succeeded for a while. But it's been there forever. The cathedral thinking is not from this century. The fact that we're all human beings with a brain and want to actually contribute, that's a fact when you're born. The eager to do something for purpose is killed by bad managers. So it's about how do you actually get the old instructions combined with, I actually do this because I know why I'm doing it. And because I know why I'm doing it, I will keep doing it even better. That's the key thing. So it's a combination of things. But there's still space for the old-fashioned management, as I hear you say. Buer, how does that work in your company? Do your IT engineers like for you to tell them what to do? I think it's been a lot of writing and talking about how in the internet era and internet business, leading millennials, well I guess most of the people in this room would fit that bucket, is incredibly different from everything that's gone before. I actually don't think that's the case. I think if we believe that the world has fundamentally changed, that human motivation, that what's important to business has fundamentally changed just because we invented some new technology, I think we're fooling ourselves. I had the fortune of being part of the last internet boom, which happened around year 2000. And the same stories were being told then. Oh, these people are so different. They need pool tables and you know, games and so forth. Otherwise they're not going to be performing. It turned out to be not true then. It turned out that the companies that built on sound leadership principles and managed to value as opposed to some fad were the people who built really good businesses. Google would be an example just to pick one. So I think the principles of leadership are relatively invariant over time. The principles of good business leadership are relatively invariant over time. What has been happening more and more over the last maybe 20 years is a focus on value creation and a very, very individualized and devolved concept of value creation. And I think that's actually where the importance comes in of every individual in the organization understanding purpose and understanding the why question becomes important because then you have all your 520,000 people being able to really drive and say every day I go to work and I deliver more value than I get paid. And that's how value gets created on the company basis. Peter, how does that work for you? In your business it has changed. Yeah, well when I was a young officer I saw the senior officers and they were having a pretty good job. They came in late and they left early. So I thought, oh, that's me in the future. But it really wasn't. I think it's becoming much more demanding now. The expectation has raised a lot. We are being challenged by our individual. They step forward and they challenge us on what we are doing. And the media put us on the front page so there's no way to escape. You really need to add value. You need to be there. You need to be committed to your job. It's no easy way. I'm not saying it's not lovely but it's much more demanding. And that has changed. And Annas, you know something about being on the front page? I have tried that, yes. That's quite interesting. I can recommend that for everybody. Well, I think maybe people have said that for many years but actually I do think that things are changing more rapidly now than we saw in the past. And I think the stress also from the media is much higher than we were used to. And this, of course, challenges the leadership to give a few examples. What we're seeing in Europe now all over but old Europe is being exposed to globalization. Meaning that a lot of the things we used to do in the good old days you are not able to go on doing that. And when I was in the energy sector a lot of changes took place there. Just to give you two numbers. When I started in 2001, Dong was a gas company. That part of Dong does not exist today for 13 years later. Then we acquired Elsam and the power stations in 2006. And today they are making no money so that part of the company almost does not exist any longer. So what was Dong 10 years ago is not there today. What was Dong five, six years ago is such a little thing today. So the only thing, so what is Dong today is quite different. Didn't exist at that day but is now the new Dong. And I think you see that in a lot of areas in the public sector that we finalized with that. In the good old days when we built the welfare state and so on you could exceed the expenditure, you could raise the taxes and it went on pretty smooth. Today you cannot increase the taxes, you cannot increase expenditures but we become more and more old people, more and more sick people so the stress on the system is much higher. So I would say due to globalization, due to technology, due to the stress on the public sector it has become more difficult to become a leader. And what that means for leadership we will get back to I'm quite sure now you have had time to vote on each other's questions and also put up some good ones and we'll grab one with the most votes now because Jeff already answered it. If I can assume that you meant that Jan Carlson is somebody that you look up to as a manager then the rest of you can answer. So which leaders do you personally admire, Peter? Well I don't have one in particular, I don't have one individual. You can make two, that's fine. No, yeah, but I'm going to explain myself a little bit. I think you shouldn't aim at one individual and try to make a copycat into yourself, it will not help you. My point to you is you need to be honest, you need to build your own and create your own leadership profile and some are very charismatic, outspoken and they are brilliant in doing so. Others are more academic and their approach is more reflecting and they are doing a good job and you will just fail if you are not outspoken charismatic and trying to be like that. So the question is wrong because it will not add value so you will need to find in here what's my personal value, what is my characteristic and then you need to develop on that. But can't you find inspiration in people you think are doing it? So where have you found inspiration? Yeah, you're coming back to me aren't you? I don't like that. No but I don't have that. I don't have that one individual where I say I don't have that name. When I meet people I admire them because they are good communicators, they are brilliant, they are smart, they are clever, they do things but it's not like I have that one single individual who gives me that wow effect. So I'm going to rephrase when I ask Annas because I don't want the same answers. So Annas, which people, managers, leaders have you met in your life that inspired you? I have met people who burn for what they are doing and that is what has been most important for me to meet what we call in Danish I don't know what's the English word Ilse People who really have a dedication and who work through water and everything in order to accomplish their tasks. Can you remember one you've met that you can share with us? I have the same thing as Peter I wouldn't take one in front and I think what is good quality is also dependent on which time where you are placed one decade you need this type of people one another decade you need this type of people that is important all the time. So what do you think? I will forget about rephrasing the question you already heard it give us a name. People I've met I'll get back to that my first example and it's actually kind of back to my own model for leadership direction, empathy and integrity someone who led perhaps the most important project in history not the particularly positive project but it was called the Manhattan project and the Manhattan project was in dire straits because it had so many brilliant people in it who couldn't get along and who were basically revolting against their military taskmasters when they appointed Robert Oppenheimer Dr. Robert Oppenheimer to lead the project and he had this incredible although he had his own demons and actually even mental problems he had this incredible ability to get the best out of each one of these very unique individuals and that led to the construction of the atomic bomb which eventually concluded the Second World War but he's even though the project itself had in a way both a terrible and very positive outcome the leadership by Dr. Oppenheimer I think is one of these stories that can be read and studied for how you lead in very difficult circumstances people I met myself it's going to sound kind of strange but because he's got a very bad rap at the moment but I think five years down the road he's going to have a very different reputation Steve Ballmer was the head of Microsoft for 14 years as the CEO for another 20 all the years as the almost CEO and he's actually another individual that I've spent some time with myself that I think really exemplify great leadership although he doesn't get credit for it at this very moment I think he will alright so I have problems with the tablet because I can't get the next question up and then the next one which is of course also very interesting because up here there are four men I don't count because I'm just the moderator but there are not so many females among top management when you come to the level below I know there's a lot of female leaders but on top management we don't have so many leaders and there we go do you have any particular advice for women who would like to become top manager yes shall I pull one out or anybody yes Jeff what about ISS what's the track record of females in your head management extremely bad but I'll give some advice anyway and I think the advice is the same as I would give any young man for that matter it is be authentic to yourself and make sure that you carry yourself along the road we heard it also from Peter earlier today I don't think it's such I think companies have a different task to be done you as individuals don't you can't actually plan it you can't push it we as leaders have a job in my mind that we have to do I don't believe in quotas but I do believe that we have to make an effort because diversity really matters and if that matters in any way shape or form whether it's age or education or race or gender doesn't matter but on the individual perspective that's what you're good at and continue to focus on that and that will bring you where you're supposed to go particularly in this part of the world other than that I don't think there's any advice that you could do not whether you're a woman or a man just deliver what do you think about will this happen automatically when we stand here in 20 years will two of you be women honest that was a weird question yes it will happen today in higher education women are by far the ones who outnumber the boys in the universities I think it's 60-40 or percent something like that so looking ahead we will see that women are the best educated have the best skills from the universities and eventually they will also climb to the leadership posts and it is possible today I have a wife that is a CEO yes she's one of the few everybody knows we have been working with a family with two CEOs and it's doable and she I tell her the reason why she has been so successful is that she has such a caring husband but you have to find a mix there but it is doable today and we'll see more and more of that this is quite interesting because that is one of the things you always say when you ask a top CEO how do you manage oh I have a supportive wife at home and otherwise it couldn't happen but you manage there are not so many of you in Denmark we managed to have all together six children and a dog and things like that so it's doable what about you you are in the software world of course there are more females now than when you started in 2000 I assume but this has been a big discussion on the west coast in particular the last few months because both Google and Microsoft and Amazon and a couple of the other tech companies Facebook they have been asked and they have been disclosing the percentage of females in top management and it turns out that the percentage of females in software all up has actually gone down over the last 20 years which is I think surprised to a lot of people in top management it still hovers around 17-18 percent in most of these companies just not a great statistic particularly the tech industry I believe has a fair amount of work to do to encourage everybody from young girls during school to engage with technology and not get turned off by all the geeks and all the terms and hack their own xboxes and what not but really engage with technology on their own terms and then all the way up through how we promote and help women succeed there are a lot of tools you can employ in this I think in Denmark if you have the board level minimum we don't have quotas we have that in Norway where you are from and they have it there was actually a lot of skepticism when that first happened when the government essentially mandated that 40 percent of board non-executive directors had to be women for a listed company what do you think of that? I think it's great can I just have a little tour of the panel? Anas what do you basically think of that? that there are rules demanding how many women in board of directors I'm not in favor of such a 40 percent rule but I think it's good that we have intentions expressed in our governance structures and those companies have that that we want to work towards a more equal distribution and I think this soft regulation is working pretty well and it is moving now as I see it but Peter in your business we would like to have more female in young forces but I'm still against having this by force I think it will be in a way a contradiction to the old aim it will take time and you would want that to happen tomorrow and you should wait and women will be there and in some decades we will defending men's position in boards because so much going on two days ago I talked to Dr. Sheikah Al-Maskari in Dubai and she was the first CEO in United Arab Emirates and she is now running several multi-billionaire companies and she was attending a world congress on females business potentials so there is so much it will come it will take time and we shouldn't force it by rules it will be counterproductive and the GFU already entered it so we have a question here that has had many votes as well I'm going to put it up I think we already tried to answer it but since it's up there maybe we won't exactly clear on it so I'm going to put it up just to be absolutely sure that we address it in a full the changes in leadership like if you had to be very specific and just give me one keyword in your lifetime career what basically changed do you think is the most important keyword that changed in being a leader in the past decades yes Peter communication you need to be a good communicator Jeff storytelling that was Anders's word I think so I'll invent a new one I think you have to be even more pushy on the strategy because the world is changing as I mentioned so this setting the direction in a changing world but then again you can't really make the ten year strategy anymore so you make strategies all the time right I'll give you one word but I have to be able to explain it later you have to be Danish you have to be Danish you're allowed to explain it now then I think more than me don't understand what you mean yeah used to be 20 years ago at least when I started working that if you were American or French or Japanese you had the safe career in big multinationals that were based in one country and basically ran the world with that country's mind frame that's gone most global companies are now truly global they're filled with people from all over the world and what used to be an advantage to come from a majority culture is now a disadvantage because you're less likely to understand people from other cultures you've been less exposed to them 17% of Americans have a passport pretty much every day has a passport so being from a small culture being Danish or Dutch or Norwegian or Icelandic is actually turned from being a disadvantage working for big global companies to being a decided that's happened the last 20 years and there's really good news for all of you in this room alright but communication came along as one of the new things that leaders needed to do and besides that of course what else can the people in this room the students what can they basically already now begin to practice and be good at if they want to develop leadership skills and of course besides Peter being through to themselves but what should they practice I don't know what they should practice but they should practice that is my key message I think you should just go out there and do whatever you can and face people who would disagree with you and stand up and try to explain why you should do this and that and that will put you under pressure and then you can be even more ambitious later on but just go out there and practice tremendously face people you disagree with that's a good advice Jeff I think one of the things that always happens to us as people and as leaders is that we tend to grow older that's probably a given and with that comes the explainer gene that means you come from a world where everything is exploration into a management world where you have to explain why there are differences between what you promised and what you're delivering exploring you're looking for explaining so it's an attitude thing and I think a key the more you can keep that gene inside you're saying I'm here to explore from I get born to I die the more fun life will actually be even including business views because they will be there I'm quite certain that they will be there forever because we have to make a shareholder value but the day where all business managers and leaders sit around and say okay I didn't make it but you know what there's a tendency in this as opposed to the explanation was that the sun went down too early or whatever it was don't know get that gene in half full not half empty come up with solutions positive energy yes Annas what can you practice at home I would catch up where Peter Tubor left saying that if I was in the audience here as a young student I would be pretty careful to get some experience outside Denmark I think the world you will be a partner of years ahead that is a very different one from the one we see today but what is sure is that it's a much more globalized it will need that you have not this local view on things as many Danes have today it's important to get out and reach out and be part of this new world and I think we are too old for it but it's up for you Danes so in order to become a good leader you need to go up role for a while etc and Bjorn I think there is so many opportunities for you here today to have smaller or bigger leadership roles you can do things like this put on the symposium I think there are 26 of you who have been working on this for a year now it's a great example of a leadership task that happens in the context of the university but there are so many others as well from just putting on a party for your friends on Friday night all the way up to doing big big things like this and leading in the university so look for those challenges every day because they are right in front of you great and then we have questions from the audience in the old fashioned way by asking in a microphone that's fun as well yes please thank you I allow myself to change the direction of the debate just slightly because last Monday at the warm-up event for this symposium Professor Tom Anderson in economics he said that business leaders of today have great responsibility because they have great conditions for changing the economic situations of Denmark and therefore he for example pointed out that they should educate less educated employees so I would like to hear what your view would be on this and how would you deal with it so to understand it correctly of course maybe not to be with the three of you you need to hire you cannot ask so many demands of the people you hire in order to help people that are unemployed is that the question yes and also do they have like the responsibility of helping unemployment in Denmark yes exactly and also maybe perhaps beyond what would affect the productivity of the company negatively yes well Jeff maybe you should start answering that because your company pretty much hire a lot of people who can't find a job so many elsewhere I see two points in your question one is of course a very delicate one which is is my job to improve productivity in Denmark or is my job to improve productivity in ISS and obviously my job is to do it in ISS and about 4% of the workforce in ISS is in Denmark and the rest is outside so that's always a dilemma now because it's a global world so looking at what can actually help Denmark in specific is a fun project of work at work I have a different responsibility haven't said that it's important no matter where we are particularly in my business there's no doubt that in a business like ours and being great leaders and so forth we can have a business purpose and we can have a mission to accomplish in our business it's about facilitating the purpose of our customers so when we clean an hospital we should be healing patients that's great but outside that you need now as great leaders to create a bigger purpose of course to fight illiteracy to make sure that everybody that's on the lowest sort of step on the ladder that they get an opportunity to get one or two or three steps up whatever they want to achieve on their own accord so I think companies have a responsibility to be attractive places to work at the end of the day it's about share of the value to actually create this greater purpose and in our case it is to fight illiteracy you've seen it today from Mahler in another dimension of their greater purpose of life but that's how we internally work with it so yes that political question Peter I was just wondering like do we see the military also as a place where we keep unemployment low? No not really but no but there's a point to the question if I understood it right you know sometimes we are asked to take young men in because we are told they could do it with a bit of good discipline so we can help them and we can probably help them to mature I have no doubt but it's not our core task and we are not paid for that so at the end of the day it is kind of challenging my budget so if I am to do this on behalf of this nation just give me the money I can do this but if I am to do this with the same structure which are going to fight to survive in Iraq in Afghanistan then I am not sure it's the right balance and I will question that And Anders you moved also in the public sector for many years what do you think of the discussion is the private companies also there to help unemployment in Denmark for the people who have difficulties finding a job? Maybe I can answer the question in a more broad framework instead of specifically looking into educating people take the whole corporate social responsibility which is a broader issue and I think taking that angle and our companies have a and they take on a big responsibility and it costs some money but the funny thing is that when you look into the companies who have taken the lead on social corporate responsibility being towards the workforce or being towards environment these companies are actually also doing some of the best jobs when it comes to making profits so there is not necessarily a contradiction between being advanced towards social corporate responsibility and making good money and maybe even in the future it will be exactly the opposite the companies who are responsible in that way will be honored by their customers So is this related to what we are talking about right now? Yes a little It's a question about globalization these days we are talking a lot about companies going abroad moving outside the country of Denmark and my question is do you think that Danish business leaders have a responsibility to the Danish state or is the philosophy just that money makes the world go around? Right Yes that's a very interesting question so are companies like your ISS are you obligated to stay in Denmark forever just because you were born here? No The company is owned by shareholders actually today I guess the shareholders split and this is much more foreign than it is not a guess I know so this is an international company it is not a Danish company it's got Danish roots so that's why we're here so you can call it whether the money works the world go around I don't think so it also makes the world go around but of course values and concepts and leadership principles are extremely important but my responsibility is purely towards the company making sure it's got longevity and the shareholder value has been created from that so whether that's placed in Denmark or to book to I'm sorry it's my responsibility having said that we're still here our head office is still here and the reason why it's still here is that there's a lot of values that ISS is built on which is the exact values we're living off like you heard with Ale the values of a Nordic management a Nordic origin with values where we take care of our employees and you have 55,000 employees in Indonesia is worth a lot we've got 55,000 people in India so that value of being Nordic maybe even Danish actually sells a lot of products out around the world so yes it's probably the latter but luckily Denmark does have a good reputation so and Peter we're going to skip you on this one because I assume that you don't think the Danish military should be up sourced or placed in France but you are Norwegian born you are based in Seattle how do you think of this discussion now would you see upon that in the States well actually I want to refer back to something I said already because I think the answer from the panel was clear the question you could ask is there's a good thing or a bad thing would it be better if more Danish companies were chauvinist or parochial in their approach to favor Danes over other people and favor Denmark over other countries the answer to that is it's a huge advantage for you that that is no longer so it used to be so French companies, hard French management and promoted French people it's not so anymore look at the number of Indians who are now running large fortune 500 companies based in the US and I'm sure you've seen an increase in Danes that run big companies outside Denmark as well national born companies do they have a special obligation to stay in the country they're born due to they don't have that obligation to promote their own citizens they don't have any it's just not there, they have an obligation to their shareholders which is great for you because the more meritocratic and the more global these companies are the more opportunities for you because you come from a place where you're used to dealing with a lot of different people unlike a lot of the bigger countries in the world so it's a net gain for you how do you see the discussions you are on the board of many companies also in Denmark yes but I see I couldn't add much to my two colleagues here I share the views so the question is no they don't have a special responsibility to stay here as a leader it's not the responsibility that's on top of their list so let's go back to the things we're talking about about leadership you had some great advices on what to practice at home and that was face people who disagree the glasses half full not half empty be international several other things but can you learn to be a good leader or is it something that you are born with basically where do you think you can learn to be a leader I think you can have talent as a leader and particularly you can have talent to be a good communicator as we talked about before but just because you're good at opening your mouth it doesn't necessarily mean that anything good comes out and there's a lot of people that believe that is all there's to leadership it's not it's like being a football player or anything else you can have a huge talent but what really matters is hard work so can you do it with less talent I mean I do actually believe that specialists can become great leaders they just need to work on their deficits season they have to get the right coaches around and then there's a different management structure around them the leadership team around an introvert it can actually compensate for that so I don't think there is one type of person you can learn it absolutely and remember it is a discipline so even if you're great at it keep learning and you can get better Peter what do you think I tend to disagree with Jeff because I think you of course you can learn and of course you can improve but I think if you take a group like this form here and I think you could separate like half of you would be brilliant leaders and the other one could probably become good leaders but I think there is if you look into it and we use it because we the way we are looking for new officers we try to figure out who got the potential to become great leaders and we are looking into intelligence integrity will power and that kind of stuff and then we build on it I think it's much better to take those who we believe had the potential to become great leaders and then we teach them to become officers the military discipline and not the other way around but that is my opinion I think yes there are difference by nature you are born with some certain talent great so we have a no we have a yes what do you think Anas I tend to agree with both of them I think to put another angle to this that one of the most important things for a leader is that he has the ability to gather clever people around him because you can't do a lot yourself what you can do is appoint your closest leaders and you can learn to be good at that so therefore I think you can learn a lot of these skills and especially you can learn the very important and crucial skills of appointing the right and the most bright people just around you so you get the right inputs so a good leader is a good listener and we can all listen so everybody can become a good leader if they learn to listen to journalistic angle be well I think first of all the military point of view on this is easy to reconcile with the notion that you can be a good leader and you can learn it almost no matter what the starting point is because it's very context sensitive you probably wouldn't choose Gandhi or Mother to Visa in your group that you would turn into officers but they were fantastic leaders in other contexts so I think that's the way to think about there are people who would be very good at leadership in one context and people who would in another context but it needs practice and practice and practice and it needs something that's actually harder than it sounds and I think it's hard every day and that's self-awareness the ability to understand your own strengths, your own weaknesses your own effect on people is something that you should never practice hard enough because you have to work on it every single day so it needs to be practiced it needs to be learned but it is very context specific alright so whether you were all born for it or not you are all in top management today and now the question is basically did you choose to become a leader at some point in your younger years or did it happen accidentally and also I'd like to put it together with another question that I have down here and that is at what point in your career did you realize that this was the way it was going and that you had the potential in you so was something you choose and where did you realize this is what I'm actually about to do who would like to start Peter? I had two ideas either I would sit here like you studying in university or then came this idea and I was coaching sports clubs I was among people I had difference in my school days high school I became across you know got small leadership roles to play and I realized this was actually challenging and I was good at it people listened and I was feeling good about it this interaction so I thought about it well I need to find a place where I have this leadership and I would like to have people around me and see if I could talk them into and create a kind of atmosphere and then make them move in a certain direction I like that How old were you at that time? I think it was about 17, 18 16 yeah and then that was also that was where you realized that you were able to do it and that's also where you choose that you were going to go for the top I thought in the army we have people around you you are given a responsibility as a very young sergeant and just go out there and experience it and even though I noticed that some officers if they you know later on they could go and swap to the civilian companies so it wouldn't be and either or actually if I wouldn't like it years to come I could probably go into the civilian companies but I have been there ever since Anas you became the permanent secretary of state when was that clear to you that this was going to happen when did you decide that yes I never never decided actually it just came around that way so I would say I don't know should we believe that because I heard from people working in the ministry of finance and that's a pretty tough environment yeah sure I started I started there many many years ago and when I started I had an ambition to lead a small group that was what I was looking for I didn't have a plan that I should and I never actually believed that I should end up as permanent secretary which is the top job but I went for the for the small leadership in the small group and I liked that and then I would say it was far to a large extent it was coincidence and things developed that way it was not due to any plan at all but of course the day I put in my application for the job as permanent secretary that day I had the dream for not much before all right people what about you what's your story yeah I don't think I thought of myself as a leader until probably five or six leadership jobs into my career if I start from the first band that I formed and the rock club that I started and the student association I chaired this was stuff I did because I loved it yeah but so you were a young leader you were in the school yeah but I didn't think of myself in that way I thought of myself as somebody who loved playing music, loved listening to music loved travel and and how old were you when you formed your rock band 12, 15 so when did you realize hey maybe I'm a leader maybe this is what I'm going to do 15 years later maybe 15 years later okay that's a bit slow yeah I'm a bit slow that says about self awareness I'm trying to get better at that and Jeff so it's a hard one to answer but I don't think I ever realized it to be honest it's a bit strange when you have 521,000 do you realize it today if you know it today but it's some things that happens I mean if I love working I just love taking responsibility and I just love to get in the middle of things or most things some things I'll just keep out of and obviously I won't get leaders in that so it's about staying true to yourself and just continue to do what you enjoy and then what comes along and I'll actually change careers I mean I've jumped from one position up or down the ladder I don't really care what people think I do look inside I look at myself and I think can I do this yes I can leadership job I never ask that question never ever I never aspire for it I aspire for having fun and I aspire to stand here and hopefully have some sort of impact on you going forward in the future that's what I like and that is probably leadership but I never took a decision and also one more great questions from the audience when you're a good leader can you change branches and then automatically become good leader in another company or are you kind of growing into the DNA of a certain organization or company that you are with so or is it something you can take with you this is a formula yeah Anas I I would say yes you can change and I'll do it because I did change myself so I had this long experience in the Minister of Finance I think it worked out very well I'll talk about that in a moment in another audience and then I decided after 25 years actually in the Minister of Finance that now I wanted to become a businessman and so I did that and I think I had some success with that and you think let's see if you will answer it honestly but when you came to Dong from the Danish Ministry of Finance did you feel that the leadership you practiced in the Ministry that you could just copycat it over on Dong some of it was new of course this about the numbers on the bottom line that was a different game for instance communicating I get communication and getting people to follow you and making a strategy for that was the same tools that I used in the Ministry all right Peter could you go into a private company I know that you've been tested for this and you could basically test this you could go into a private company I think I would agree that you could do this and I think you have so many great examples that people really swap the disciplines and the strategic leadership is definitely the same but I guess if you are moving you would and great leader will do that will be a little bit more humble and they will make sure that people that get around them like Anna said will kind of cover for that and they will make their own introduction program they will be smart enough to adapt and shortly they will be they will be flying and so basically yes you could do it I can have a little story from the real life this spring I was with Jörn V Knudstorp also an earlier attendant here at Orhus Impulsion I was with Jörn V Knudstorp in China of course the CEO of Lego and we talked about this him changing jobs because it would be rather easy for him to get another job somewhere in the big world and he basically said that he didn't want to do that and he also said you know what Nina I think maybe I would be a clown in another company and I think I was very honest of him to say and because he is so much passionate and he is so personalized into the Lego brand what do you think of that it felt really true when he said it I was like oh yes Jörn you would be a clown in another company but what do you think Jeff what about you could you go out in a totally another branch and run it as successfully as ISS only if I have the passion and I think that's what he is talking about if you agree I need the passion I need to like what I do I need to respect for it I mean getting up every morning again and helping people getting a job and being able to actually get bread on the table it's not that big purpose in Denmark but it is in a big part of my organization I am extremely proud of that and that purpose of course drives all the energy and I can do that in other companies obviously I could do that but I had to have the passion otherwise I wouldn't feel for it I think the one thing though that we have to remember and that is about the clown part just because you're the good leader of communication sort of character you've got to remember that the devil's is in the details so you can't just be the clown running up here again with the cheering you've got to know something about the business so if you're willing to put that effort into it then you can change but you've got to do that viewer what you take on it would you fit into a more old fashioned company I've worked in many different businesses I was in the oil business I've been a consultant media software internet I don't think I was equally good in all of them so my take on this would be that there are some people who are exceptional leaders in certain contexts that can be pretty good leaders in other contexts and there are some exceptions that can be good leaders almost everywhere but the norm is probably that there is there is a context that's best for you so of course if you're lucky you find that context early and you go for it alright so we need to round it out now unfortunately we could keep doing this all afternoon I think and I was just looking at the next questions that were about to come and I think that the answer basically to that was you just have to marry somebody who's also a CIO because then there will be this common understanding of the thing right Anna's but the question is how you manage the personal and business life all together but final questions you have all been asked to come with one advice that everybody in here can take with them home you've already come with some good ones to practice at home but if you had to come with one advice from your experience from your time as leader for leaders of tomorrow what would it be and should we start with you one advice one piece of advice I think it's been said already but practice every day because there are opportunities in front of you every single day leadership there are leadership opportunities literally around you every day so basically what do you do you try to see if you can get a group with you down to lunch actually yeah I was just reflecting on this because I was sitting down with my neighbor he's next Microsoft executive and his 13 year old daughter decides that she literally wanted to get she wanted to get out on the lake with a boat and she says okay guys let's motivate here and get this mess cleaned up so we can go out on the lake on the boat and that's a 13 year old that's exercising leadership in her family so that's the very micro level and then you have these that we discussed already and then you go all the way up to what you see on the stage but they're there every day I can see that very very easily getting completely annoying for everybody around you but well she doesn't do it all the time she did it then and she got out where she wanted to go on the lake on the boat if she just said I don't want to go on the lake it wouldn't happen Anna's one piece of advice to frame it shortly I would say be dedicated to what you do and be sure that it's in parallel with your own values I have asked myself a number of times if I ever was asked to be the CEO of a tobacco company would I I haven't been asked so it hasn't been that difficult but would I accept such an offer imagine the wages were high and everything was nice would I imagine such a job I hope I would say no because it's not I don't think it's so good to to work for things that is against people's health and things like that so be dedicated to what you do and be sure it's in accordance with your own values your wife might get the CEO job then alright Peter well I would agree to what Beaver said about the practice so my next one will be to create your own leadership profile look inside yourself and find out where are you strong position what are your personal values what means something to you otherwise you will need to bring that forward once you have your leadership engagement and responsibility you need to be honest tell the story of the narrative of the company whatever you need to be honest you need to be truthful for yourself find your own leadership profile and Jeff be authentic but that also means if you're not a leader don't become one there's so much pressure around from everybody in a particular society like ours that career and career moves are the only thing that happens and career moves are only to become the CEO title and the big car and the money whatever it is I've seen so many miserable people being CEOs around the world don't become one have your own life, have fun and make sure if you do that you will also succeed in having a great life basically that's most important so just to round it up so practice every day be dedicated, create your own profile and be authentic but can we all agree that you think it's fun? absolutely but that's it for in here right now, thank you very much all four of you