A book worth reading, if you want to frce yourself out of the European etnocentrism and get going in Asia, including China and India:

A note from Kishore Mahbubani:

For over two decades, I have lived the life of a nomadic intellectual, absorbing ideas at great intellectual watering holes, like Davos and Aspen, Ditchley and Pocantico. Initially, I was overwhelmed by the confidence and energy of Western intellectuals. They had sharp minds, always producing new insights as they spoke.

It has come as a huge personal shock for me to see this same group of Western intellectuals now becoming totally blind to emerging new realities. At a time of rapid change, these Western minds remain complacent and smug. I tried to puncture this smugness in my speeches and columns. Sadly, I failed. They could not see that we are moving from a monocivilizational world to a multi-civilizational world.

These failures taught me a lesson. The only way to persuade the West of the need to change mindsets was to try and develop an alternative weltanschauung. That is the ambitious goal of this book. If we do not wake the West up from its intellectual complacency, we are headed for trouble.

Learn more of Kishore Mahbubani, a leader to pay attention to.

Read more about Karen Lassen Nørgaard here

Annette is among the top accredited International Coaching Federation (ICF) coaches and one of the best qualified educators  in the coaching industry in Scandinavia.

In 1998, she founded Expand Aps and has since then trained a vast number of Denmark’s best coaches.

Read more about Annette Kledal here:

In order to further develop our competences within Energy Leadership, Dorthe Vilandt is going to Los Angeles in January where she will learn about the latest cutting-edge approaches and innovative strategies to secure permanent change leadership strategies.

To be more specific, Dorthe Vilandt will look into the new additional component called the “SHIFT” which means Strategies to Help Innovative, Focused Transformation (SHIFT). It is a movement that facilitates proactive change to recreate any, and all, aspects of our lives—our careers.

Dorthe Vilandt is a certified iPEC coach

For your inspiration please find the 8 Building Blocks of the Energetic Leader:

• Emotional Intelligence
• Dynamic Communication
• Influencing and Engaging Others
• Problem Solving
• Productivity and Decision Making
• High Energy Relationships
• Health and Wellness
• Time Management and Balance

The most successful leaders in the world truly enjoy what they do. In fact, when asked, they consistently say that they feel they rarely ever “work.”

We can´t wait to get Dorthe home from Los Angeles to learn more of the SHIFT program.

An example
When I started coaching Christian (name made up) a couple a years ago, he was a manager working in a global organization. Christian had just turned 40. He stated that his goal was to find out  whether he was a ‘true leader or not’ as he put it. If not, he would focus on specializing what he was good at like developing balanced scorecards and strategy maps. If yes, he would use his talent to climb the leadership ladder in the organization.

In the first session we talked about role models within leadership. After Christian mentioning a few I asked him to think of a leader who had meant the most to him. Christian then told about Oluf, a very wealthy farm estate owner who always paid attention to the lowest raking workers in the hierarchy: the boys, helping the grown up workers. Having been one of the boys, Christian now talked with great passion and admiration about Oluf. Oluf was a success. He was respected, he had ‘made it,’ Christian told me.  The very idea that Oluf could be so rich and powerful and at the same time show true respect to the lowest ranking workers made Christian reflect on the values Oluf was living his life by.

The values Wisdom, Truth and Trust kicked Christians leadership career in the right direction

That made Christian identify his own values and measure to what extend he had lived by these values so far in his professional life. Christians values were Wisdom, Truth and Trust. When measuring the extend of how much he had been living these values, Christian realized that there was a lot to gain both professionally and privately by focusing more on these values.

“I wish I could be like Oluf,” he said. “What would it take?,” I asked. That question sparked an avalanche of actions that Christian wanted to carry out. Suddenly he could see his rather weak communication to his boss and peers on who he was, what he wanted and how he would get it. Now he could see where to start, what to do and how to go about it. That session launched a series of action plans and action points that made the organization respond right away.

To cut the story short, Christian now holds a senior position as a regional sales director in the same company. He got what he wanted. Clarification on his leadership career , motivation to kick start it and a new job serving at a higher level with more satisfaction.

This blog post was inspired by an Christmas email from Christian thanking NDUNA for the help provided some years ago. 30. December 2009. Søren Leth-Nissen

Dorthe is a certified Energy Leadership Coach.  Call Dorthe +45 2870 8110 if you want to hear more on this exiting new approach to leadership coaching in Denmark.

“Energy LeadershipTM is the process that develops a personally effective style of leadership that positively influences and changes not only yourself, but also those with whom you work and interact, as well as your organization as a whole.

Before we explore the rest of what Energy Leadership may have to offer you, let’s define the two key underlined terms above.

Leadership: Leadership is how you interact with everyone, including yourself. Leaders are quite visible within small and large businesses. We tend to think of them as business owners, CEO’s and managers at all levels. Traditionally, leadership also extends into politics and other global affairs. However, parents, therapists and health care providers, solopreneurs, sports coaches, consultants, mentors, partners in relationship, teachers, authors, and others who interact with people on a regular basis are all leaders. EVERYONE is a leader either by choice or default.”
Source: energyleadership.com

Being a business coach and an executive adviser I often stimulate clients to take more care of themselves in order to be able to perform much better. Faster.
But as a coach, you need to take the medicine I prescribe my clients. However, that can be rather difficult.

But yesterday I took a day off.
Busy as always, I simply needed a break. I needed a full day away from the office, away from colleagues, clients and  busy phones.

Having travelled more than 90 days this year, I have been far to much away from my familiy  than I like to admit. That fact has – on several occasions – been put to my face by my teenage daughter and I just have to admit that she is right.  I have not kept my promises to my family about being a present, loving and supportive father.

So yesterday I spent buying Christmans gifts for my children, cleaning up the house, shopping groceries and listening to music.

I actually went to the office to decorate it for Christmas! (First time that has happened in 6 years as an independent consultant and coach!)

When I picked up the kids, I have a lot of surplus energy.  We enjoyed the first ”æbleskiver” (traditional battered of Christmas cakes) togehter and had a wonderful afternoon together.

This morning, I feel energized again!

The morale is that we are all human and we need to take care of ourselves before we can help others. Service above self… yes, but please make sure that you’re in a position to deliver that service to others. That takes quite a bit of leadership.