The message is clear, liberating and terrifying. There is no formula for a rich life, a good marriage or ideal leadership. If this were the case, wouldn’t the formula explain how to fall in love? Or how to die well? Everyone must experience for themselves what it means to be a human being. The goal is not to be like everyone else or march in step with what’s hip, cool and politically correct. If you glide easily and seamlessly into each and every man’s company, you will dissolve into nothingness. Don’t think that the answer is to become an exceptional smart aleck. The goal is to become subjective, to dare to be oneself. The simplest thing is thus the most difficult. The journey is not like a brisk mountain hike to the highest peak. The journey moves up and down. The journey passes through anxiety and despair.
This message becomes all important in leadership. It touches upon questions of authenticity and integrity. But it also lays the foundation for your own leadership and why you have decided to be a leader. Above all, Kierkegaard’s writings focuses on understanding oneself. As an individual, not as a remote ideal. As in motion, not as something static. As choice, not as destiny.
Truth is subjectivity.
They succeed in an exceptional manner in allowing the past to touch the present, and in this way also the future, in that they, as leaders of today, can stand on the shoulders of masters who have gone before us and build on their courage, knowledge and wisdom. The courses have been both extremely inspiring for me personally and provided my leadership with broader scope and weight.
Camilla Dunsæd, City municipal executive of Kristiansand municipality and chairman of the board for Sørlandet Hospital
