The eighties. Phones ringing all day. Interest rates, currencies, millions moving within a quarter of an hour. That is where I learned to make decisions quickly — and to live with the consequences.
We always had stop-loss thinking. You never hold a position that is going wrong. The hard part is not making the decision. It is staying with it afterwards — and correcting fast when you were wrong.
What I did not know then was that ten years later I would do something entirely different.
And that those ten years would become the foundation for everything I do today.
I worked in the financial markets for ten years — interest rates and currencies, in Stockholm and London. It was a world of high tempos, clear winners and losers, and people under serious pressure. I loved it.
Then came the children — three of them, born in 1994, 1996 and 1999. Same husband then as now, still married. We moved back to Sweden after fourteen years abroad, mostly in London with eighteen months in Luxembourg in between. Coming home was not what I had imagined. Sweden had changed. So had I.
I went back to studying. Two years at the Scandinavian Leadership Academy. UGL group leadership. Coaching. NLP — all the way to Master Trainer. LAB Profile to Master Trainer. DISC. GDQ. Conflict management and mediation. Group development. Neuroscience. It is not a CV list — it is twenty years of curiosity about what actually makes people change.
In 2003 I founded Inre Styrka, it became 2010 AB.
After twenty years in the room with managers — from new team leaders to CEOs of global companies — I know a few things for certain:
Leadership is a craft, not a personality trait. It can be learned. It can be improved. And it can break you — if you do not get the right tools at the right time.
Most conflicts are not malice. They are misunderstandings that have grown in silence. That is why I work as much with communication as with conflict management. They are the same craft, seen from different angles.
Being clever is not enough. You have to dare to be human. That is where many experienced managers get stuck — they have all the knowledge, but no one really talks to them anymore. That can change.
During the pandemic, all my assignments were cancelled. I sat at home in Sigtuna and did not know what to do with all the time. So I wrote the book I had been carrying for ten years — about middle managers. The ones who often get blamed but rarely get the tools.
Outstanding in the Middle: How Middle Managers Make the Difference became an Amazon bestseller in the summer of 2021. It is now used as reference reading on several leadership programmes.
I am still surprised by how far it has travelled. And grateful.
And twenty-two years as a working trainer. That is where most of the learning has actually happened.
I live in Sigtuna with my husband and our two Kleiner Münsterländer — hunting dogs that demand long walks and keep me on my toes. In the summer I paddle a canoe. When the weather and my body agree, I ride my mountain bike.
Many years ago I had a riding accident and broke my back. I healed fully — but it changed me. It made me more alive and more present. It is hard to put things off when you have once stood in front of perhaps not being able to do them at all.
Many of my friends are retiring. I am building on — and I plan to work for at least another ten years.
It is not by chance that I see it this way.
After leaving her job at the bank, my mother served as legal guardian (god man) for thirty people who could no longer manage their own affairs — handling their finances and tax returns while they lived in care homes. She kept doing this until she fell ill with cancer and passed away at 79. My grandmother started learning English at 80 and lived to be 99. I have good examples to follow.
As an individual manager: take my online programme in conflict management for the hybrid workplace. Four weeks, at your own pace.
As an organisation: book me for training, facilitation or coaching on site.
As a reader: start with the book. It is a good way into how I think.
You have just read about someone you have not met. That says very little about me — and even less about you.
If something here made you curious — about the programme, the book, or a conversation — get in touch. That is how we find out whether we have something to do together.