Work and Leadership - Creating Safety Where I Once Lacked It

Music as Early Leadership Training

Music trained me early in what would later become leadership. Sitting behind the drum kit is more than keeping time – it’s holding a whole band together. You can’t play for yourself. Your responsibility is to make sure everyone else can play, to make sure it all works.

It’s the same in working life. A leader is not always the one in the spotlight but the one keeping the rhythm. The one who ensures others can shine. The one who makes the whole function.

In rehearsal rooms and on stage I learned to coordinate, to listen, to act in rhythm with others. A small change in my playing could shift the whole group. It’s the same in projects: a word, a gesture, a structure can cause a team to collapse – or flourish.

The Role of Freedom

After music came the search for freedom. For me, it meant moving aboard a sailboat, living minimally, breaking away from what was expected. Freedom was not just a lifestyle choice, it was a way to take back control of my life.

And that has shaped how I view leadership. I don’t believe in chaining people down with control, rules, and micromanagement. I believe in giving freedom. I’ve seen what freedom can do: it can lift, inspire, empower. But I’ve also seen its downside – when freedom becomes irresponsibility, when no one stands firm, when children end up paying the price.

That’s why my leadership is about balance. Freedom, always combined with responsibility. Possibility, always combined with someone who stays when the storm hits.

Standing Firm When Others Disappear

Perhaps the most important lesson in my working life has been this: don’t disappear. Don’t give up halfway. Don’t betray trust.

But standing firm has also cost me. Sometimes everything.

It has cost me relationships, when others couldn’t carry as much as I did. It has cost me health, when I worked myself to the bone to hold together what threatened to fall apart. It has cost me opportunities, when I stayed in projects while others ran off toward new chances.

And yet, I have never regretted it. Because I know that the difference between giving up and staying is often the difference between a project collapsing and a project reaching the finish line. And above all: the difference between people feeling abandoned and people feeling supported.

I chose the latter path – even when the price was high.

Leadership in Today’s Working Life

Looking at working life today, I often think we still struggle with the same issues – only in new forms. Many leaders are absent, lost in meetings, reports, or their own career plans. Teams become fatherless in their own way.

At the same time, working life is more complex than ever. Projects run over time and budget. Organizations lose direction. Employees search for meaning.

Here we need a new kind of leader. Not the authoritarian boss barking orders. Not the passive one who abdicates responsibility. But someone who combines structure with empathy, freedom with accountability, vision with presence.

That leader must be able to stand firm – even when it costs.

AI and the Need for New Leadership

Now we stand in the middle of yet another revolution – AI. Many talk about the technology, the algorithms, the efficiency. But I think we speak too little about leadership. For when AI takes over many tasks, what remains is what is most human: to lead, to create safety, to stay.

AI can analyze, plan, predict. But AI cannot give the feeling that someone sees you, that someone stands by your side, that someone won’t disappear when it gets hard.

That’s why we need a new type of leader in the AI era. An AI producer, as I sometimes call it. Not primarily a technician, but a human who sees the whole. Someone who can keep the beat in chaos, coordinate the parts, create a vision people want to follow.

In short: someone who does what the drummer has always done in a band.

Becoming the Role Model I Once Lacked

Looking back at my life, I see that much of my leadership is about becoming the role model I myself lacked. I had no father to teach me how to stay, but I can be that person for others.

I can show through action that safety is possible. That responsibility doesn’t have to mean burden, but can mean purpose. That freedom doesn’t have to mean escape, but can be a path to growth.

But I can also be honest: standing firm can sometimes cost more than you think. It can hurt. It can drain you. But it is still worth it. Because there is something worse than losing – and that is betraying.

A Personal Reflection

Many of us who grew up in the 60s and 70s share the same experience: absent fathers, searching for role models, music as our salvation. When we entered working life, we often became those who knew how to create order in chaos.

But the price of staying is also real. Sometimes it meant sacrificing my own security, my own strength, my own chances. Yet I chose to stay. Because I knew someone had to. And I knew what it felt like when no one did.

That’s why I believe our generation still has something vital to offer today. In a time when everything moves faster, when AI reshapes the playing field, when working life becomes more unpredictable, we need people who don’t run. Who don’t disappear. Who stand firm – even when it costs.

Closing Words

Leadership is not about titles, methods, or management theories. It is about something much simpler – and much harder: being there. Standing firm.

Those of us who grew up without fathers know what it means when someone disappears. We know what it feels like to stand alone. And we know how vital it is when someone doesn’t.

That is why I lead the way I do. That is why I stay in the storm. And that is why I believe the future of leadership – in working life, in AI, in every project – must be built on the same foundation.

Standing firm when others disappear. Even when it costs everything.