Welcome to My Substack on Leadership: Resilience in an Age of Change

Why we must evolve not only how we lead but how we conceptualise leadership.

Beginnings are hard. A blinking cursor on a fresh blank page can be intimidating—even for those of us who thrive on ideas, reflection, and conversation. But in times of uncertainty, beginnings are also necessary. This space is my beginning: a place to explore leadership, resilience, and the systems that shape us.

Why This, Why Now?

Leadership is not just about influence or decision-making. It is about how we relate to ourselves, to others, and to the world around us. Over the years, I have explored leadership through multiple lenses—cultural, academic, psychological, historical, and personal. I have worked with executives navigating complexity, studied how stories shape decisions, and reflected on the blind spots in our leadership paradigms.

But recently, something has been pressing at the edges of my awareness: our systems are breaking down, and the way we think about leadership must adapt and evolve.

We live in a time of creeping authoritarianism, environmental crisis, and economic instability. In a recent article, Daniel Pinchbeck described society’s slide toward fascism in stark terms, linking it to the erosion of public consciousness and the suppression of dissent. This resonated deeply with me. When leadership fails to uphold integrity, truth, and human connection, it creates a vacuum where fear, coercion, and control thrive. This is not the first time in history such a vacuum has emerged.

At the same time, perhaps in an attempt to soothe my mind’s fears and create a sense of potential direction, I have been drawn to the principles of regenerative economic systems—which prioritise resilience, adaptability, and right relationship. Unlike extractive systems that centralise power and wealth, regenerative systems distribute agency and cultivate long-term sustainability. These principles, I believe, are deeply relevant to leadership—not just in business, but in how we build communities and relationships.

I am launching this Substack because I believe that leadership must be reclaimed as a relational, ethical, and regenerative practice at all levels of the collective; The individual, the team, the organisation, and our civilising systems (governments and states.)

The Moment I Pulled the Handbrake

My journey to understanding leadership—what it truly means and how it shapes both our collective perceptions and individual behaviors—started early. When I was five, my family moved from Sweden to the U.S., and even as a child, I sensed something profound: the unspoken rules that shaped how people behaved and interacted were completely different. Of course, I didn’t have the words for it then, but I could feel it.

I start here not because a five-year-old’s cultural observations are particularly groundbreaking, but because this was my first clue that the systems we belong to—our cultural frameworks—deeply influence how we believe we’re allowed to show up in the world. Its the silence between our words that create the cultures we subscribe to.

Fast-forward many years later. I was living in Copenhagen, working for a large consultancy, hitting every metric they threw at me. On the surface, I was thriving. Underneath? I had poured all my energy into building relationships at work while my personal life sat on the back burner. My sense of self-worth had become entangled with performance metrics—numbers, rankings, reviews. Those of you who have worked in high end consultancies likely recognise the hiring tactic they use; assess for insecure overachievers, and be sparing with praise to keep their nose to the grindstone. I was a good hire.

Then came the annual performance review. I walked in prepared. I had translated the company’s goals into personal objectives, built measurable lead and lag metrics, and tracked my progress over four years. I was proud of my work. When I presented this to the senior leader overseeing the European market—one of the highest-ranking people I had direct contact with—his response? A laugh.

“You’re approaching this like a CEO,” he said, almost amused. “That’s quite unnecessary.”

In the moment, I took his words as truth. Looking back, I see them for what they were: a reflection of power dynamics at play. The culture encouraged “kicking down and kissing up,” and I had unknowingly built my identity within a system that had no intention of recognising my efforts in the way I had hoped. So I put my nose back to the grindstone.

Then COVID hit. And with it, something inside me cracked.

I had spent years striving, but for what? I realised I had been externalising my self-worth, measuring my value through the organisation’s lens. Worse, when I stepped back, I saw that the behaviours the company rewarded—what they actively encouraged—were competition between colleagues, empire-building, and siloed thinking. It was a game where the only way to “win” was to outshine others, not collaborate with them.

It felt like a betrayal. This was a company that talked about “modern leadership,” about transformation and innovation. And yet, it was one of the organisations contributing to the ever-widening gap between CEO salaries and employee pay. In recruitment you are incentivised to drive up the salary because your pay is contingent on that number. They were fuelling the very structures they claimed to be evolving beyond.

That’s when the penny finally dropped.

I had to pull the handbrake.

I no longer wanted to be part of a system where leadership meant hoarding power and resources rather than fostering collaboration and collective intelligence. The more I studied leadership, the more I saw how outdated models—ones that glorified internal competition—were still being upheld as the gold standard. But research has shown time and again that true innovation, real progress, and sustainable success come from collaboration.

We work better when we work together. Evolution is an adaptation process. If we can expand our view, we can adapt to a larger system.

That realisation changed everything for me. It set me on a path to reconsider what leadership actually means—not as a title, but as a way of being. Not as power over, but power with.

And that’s the journey I’m on now.

What Kind of Community Are We Building?

This will be a space for:

🌿 Deep inquiry – Expect explorations of leadership beyond the buzzwords, drawing from psychology, history, and personal transformation.

🔥 Courageous conversations – This is not just about strategy and performance; it’s about how we lead without losing our humanity.

🔄 Regenerative thinking – We will discuss how decentralized, participatory leadership models can make our societies more resilient against coercion and control.

🤝 Connection – A space for those who care about leading with integrity, resisting authoritarian trends, and building something more sustainable—together.

What to Expect

• Posts on leadership, resilience, and transformation (sometimes personal, sometimes analytical).

• Historical and contemporary case studies on leadership in times of upheaval.

• Reflections on power, autonomy, and the psychological dimensions of leadership.

• Occasional interviews with thought leaders, practitioners, and those challenging dominant narratives.

Join the Conversation

I hope this space will be more than just a newsletter—it will be a conversation. If these ideas resonate with you, subscribe and share your thoughts. If you are questioning traditional leadership models, wondering how to navigate an era of systemic revolution, or simply seeking a space that values nuance over certainty, you belong here.

Thank you for being here. Let’s build something resilient, together.

📩 Share your thoughts in the comments—What does regenerative leadership mean to you? How do we resist fear-based leadership?