I worked in Novo Nordisk Saudi Arabia as Head of HR from 2017 to 2019. It was an unforgettable and wonderful experience with so many learnings.

The affiliate was very successful, and all the leaders had a great appetite for learning and growing, so we developed a learning journey for the leadership team and for all the other leaders

For the Leadership Team the most important elements were:

• Strengthen trust by openly sharing our life stories to understand what made us the persons and leaders we are today
• Build a feedback culture to play each other stronger and support development areas
• Get to know each others personality profiles to make communication and decision processes more effective.

For all the other leaders we built a community of leaders with frequent meetings to discuss business matters and then we built a training academy to build leadership capabilities. The most important elements were:

• Understanding who you are as a leader and building your leadership brand
• Change management and communication training
• Feedback skills
• Stress handling

The learning journeys were a great success, the performance of the affiliate grew even further, and the most important outcomes were:

• More trustful relations
• Less silo thinking and better cooperation
• Common understanding of what it takes to be a “good leader”
• A strong community of leaders.

My reflection

The most important learning for me was that we tend to focus a lot on how different cultures are from each other and then when living in the middle of a very different culture, I discovered that actually we are very similar and leaders in Scandinavia want the same as leaders in the Middle East: to be listened to, involved, respected and developed.