You were “CEO for one month” at Adecco Group last summer, and got to try being a top leader. What insights and experiences have you gained from that period?

Oh, where should I start? The time at Adecco was very rewarding and offered many new and educational insights. Working together with the Nordic CEO Torben Sneve and seeing how he professionally managed to combine complex issues with high presence and a close relationship with the employees taught me a lot about the leadership that I am convinced is the future. It was also very exciting to take part in Adecco's broad customer portfolio and its large geographical spread, where adaptation to each customer is important in order to meet their specific needs. Although Adecco is a large international company with many established routines, both services and working methods differ depending on the specific customer, where a customer in a smaller town in northern Sweden, for example, places completely different demands on us than a larger company in one of Sweden's larger cities.

Another very rewarding element was my participation in the global CEO final in Germany. Together with nine candidates from all corners of the world, I qualified for a bootcamp where we were challenged with various tests, cases and collaboration exercises during three intense days. Getting to grips with complex issues in a short time and finding new solutions to global difficulties was at times tough, but the reward in seeing how we ten strong and driven candidates with different backgrounds and experiences, despite the competition element, merged into a powerful team was really cool! Humility, the ability to inspire and the ability to see and lift each other were qualities that I felt we all possessed, which also constitute important parts of what I believe constitutes the future leadership!

Since you are relatively young, the Corona crisis is your first experience of a global social crisis. How do you experience this challenging situation?

You can at least say that everyday life has taken a turn in recent months. Of course, the situation is very complex and we are still facing many challenges and major problems, but at the same time it is becoming increasingly clear how Covid19 has also meant new opportunities and an extremely rapid change towards the future. It is enough to look back four months and try to remember the future plans that existed then and compare them with today's reality – it is almost as if you get chills from how drastically your perception of the world has changed in such a short time!

Progress in the digital field has been numerous and more and more people are now realizing the opportunities this can bring. However, working and leading remotely is a challenge and places completely new demands on both leaders and other employees, and in my opinion it has become increasingly clear which leaders are up to the task and not now when the work takes place remotely. In addition, the importance of social interactions and the human factor has become even more apparent – with technological advances and changes we can go far, but it is only when people are involved in these processes that the great miracles can be achieved!

How will we need to lead the businesses when the world presses the “start button” again – what will characterize the “new” leadership?

As I mentioned earlier, I believe that the new leadership will be characterized by the ability to handle soft values, values that unfortunately have often suffered in the past. The image of a controlling leader who points with his whole hand is outdated and instead I both believe in and am inspired by a leadership that is based on trust and the ability to listen, include and inspire.