Several people gave me positive feedback for my ability to ask questions. Some examples: 

• During the #initiate19 event, David Halser said to me that I ask very good questions. 

• During an online event via the Devonshire House Network in 2020, Paul Sloane gave me the feedback that I ask good questions. 

• In April 2020 Monika Stiller said to me that I ask good questions. 

• During a webinar in October 2021 via innov8rs, Samita Banerjee gave me the feedback that I ask wonderful questions. 

• During a CreativeMorning event in May 2022, Sophie Känzig Bohnen gave me the feedback via LinkedIn that I ask great questions.

• Following a reinforce.ua session in March 2023, Morris Mthombeni wrote to me that I ask incisive questions. 

• In April 2023, Charles Barthold wrote to me that I raise great questions during McKinsey Strategy & Corporate Finance webinars. 

• In April 2023 Whitney Johnson wrote to me that I ask great questions.

During a Working Out Loud process in 2019, Lucie Spittler gave me this feedback: "You have an ability to connect with people. You are very good at finding common ground. You are good at making people feel comfortable - listening actively and really paying attention to other people. Your positive attitude is really ingenious." During this Working Out Loud process in 2019, Luise Bornand communicated this feedback to me: "You are very present. You perceive people around you, greet people, look at people directly and talk to people. You are very open-minded and interested. Diversity is interesting for you. You have a caring side. You have a real interest in other people. It seems important for you to make a contribution in a group."

During a Working Out Loud process in 2019, Luise Bornand communicated this feedback to me: "You are very present. You perceive people around you, greet people, look at people directly and talk to people. You are very open-minded and interested. Diversity is interesting for you. You have a caring side. You have a real interest in other people. It seems important for you to make a contribution in a group."

In 2024 Marc Schindelholz gave me the feedback via WhatsApp that I am an excellent listener and conversation partner."

Not long after my girlfriend and I started on an urban gardening challenge, we found out that our urban gardening challenge was much more than a project related to growing vegetables, fruits, and flowers as well as renewing a house. In fact, the project proved to be even more about how we discover values, which each of us has. Also, a challenge for each one of us turned out to be to find out what the purpose of a garden is. In other words, the urban gardening initiative turned into a pilot project that helped us to better understand ourselves as well as each other. And it challenged us to know more about what to do to live well together. For example, we found out that communication - including listening - is of high importance to both of us. For example, we learned that it is important to listen to each other to find out, for example, what vegetables, fruits and flowers each of us wants to grow, where each of use wants to grow what, and how much each of us wants to grow where. 

Over a period of time, we had talk on Sundays after breakfast about what each of us a) thinks is going well, b) thinks is not going well, and c) would like to change in the coming week. To make it easier to listen to each other, we agreed that each of us would speak for 10 minutes during which the other person just listens. Then we would switch roles, so the other person talks / listens. We did more of these talking / listening rounds based on the needs we had and asked each other questions. Through this process, we discovered, for example, this:

• We found out, relatively quickly, that we had some differences regarding nursing of the garden. For example, I liked the gardening to be quite orderly and well structured. My girlfriend had a more relaxed way of nursing the garden. For example, she accepted, I learned, that some plants as well as the lawn grow a little wild.

• I found out that I did not want to spend very much time in the garden and preferred to have something smaller and closer to home. So, in fact, I found out that I preferred to simply plant a few things on the balcony at the apartment. And, today, urban gardening is, for me, primarily what I grow on the apartment balcony, i.e. tomatoes, salad, a few herbs and some flowers.

Among values I admire about the Swiss is politeness. I experience that many Swiss people show respect for others. By being polite, they recognize, I understand, the dignity and worth of every human being - no matter where that person was born, grew up, and/or what beliefs he or she has. This is, I find, very positive. When I think of ways through which I experience the politeness of the Swiss, I come to think of the word "Grüezi". When I walk past people on the street, I often hear the greeting "Grüezi" and also respond with "Grüezi". Grüezi is, I experience, among the most well known Swiss German greetings. Learning about this greeting, I found out that Grüezi means "May God greet you." I recall that when I moved to Switzerland and heard people say "Grüezi" to me on the street and look me at me in a friendly way, I was looking forward to a chat. Not all the time. But now and then. I realized that part of politeness among the Swiss also means to not get too close - including not share much information and not ask too many questions. Exchanging other words besides Grüezi and "Schönen Tag" meaning "have a nice day" was not so common, I learned. 

Not long after moving to Switzerland, I went to an event with some educators in Bern. As I knew very few people, I felt somewhat alone. What I experienced was that people talked with people they knew. What made me feel welcome was when I got into a chat with two young people doing an internship. At the online citizen science event #citscihelvetia2021 something remarkable happened. Christian, an elderly Swiss man, was among the people, I communicated with. He  later invited me for a cup of coffee with him and his wife at their home in Zürich. During the more than 10 years I had lived in Switzerland at that time, I cannot recall having received an invitation like this. Being invited for coffee to the home of a Swiss person, whom I had just met online, made me feel joy and thankfulness. The invitation of Christian Casparis made me feel welcome. Later, I participated at another event over the Internet, where I met Sonja, a Swiss woman. Like Christian, she reached out to me and invited me for a walk with her dog. Having gotten used to rarely being invited by Swiss people, the initiatives by the two Swiss citizens, Sonja and Christian, really surprised me - in a very positive way. In fact, these initiatives by Sonja and Christian were heart warming to me. The openness they show as well as the interest they both showed to get to know me a little better had a tremendously positive effect on me. Even now when I write about this, I feel as if my heart grows bigger. During a dinner with a Swiss couple, Kathrin and Kari, I told them this story and asked them what they think that people, who are new to a place, need to, for example, feel more at home and to learn the language. They had no doubt that what many people, who are new in Switzerland, need, are initiatives like the ones Sonja and Christian took.

Coming back to the start of this posting, I experience that politeness can turn into impoliteness when interactions stop at "Grüezi" more or less all the time. Let's reach out to each other and invite each other for a walk or a cup of coffee. Let us get to know each other a little better. Let us open up our hearts a little. This is the message that I take out of this story as well as the wish I have for the Swiss and for everyone else: Do what Christian and Sonja did. Invite strangers for a cup of coffee. As I understand it, this is the foundation of democracy: Coming together and listening to each other face to face.

Experiencing that it was not so easy to get into conversations with Swiss people. I got the impression that many Swiss wanted to keep a distance to other people and were not really interested in sharing their experiences, thoughts, ideas with other people and/or learning about experiences, thought and ideas that other people have. Besides loneliness, which I sometimes felt, the relatively short conversations with Swiss people made me feel emotions such as surprise, rejection and sadness. I felt surprised about the silence and relatively few words being exchanged. I remember asking myself as well as my girlfriend several questions. Some examples:

• To what extent Swiss people are interested in learning about where people, who are new at place, come from and/or who they are?

• Is something about the way I look holding Swiss people back from communicating with me?

• Is something about the way I speak holding Swiss people back from communicating with me? 

• Do Swiss people feel anger or fear towards people, who come from other countries?

• Do Swiss people not want new friends? 

• Do Swiss people, who live in Switzerland, wish that Switzerland would be populated only by people, who have lived in Switzerland for at least 10 generations?

I am born and brought up in Denmark. What I learned is that the Danish culture values extroversion to a relatively large extent. In school, for example, I recall that communicating was important. The more people raised their hands and expressed their questions, ideas and experiences, the better it was. This was also what I learned from my parents and friends: Being active in conversations was good. Being quiet was a sign that something was wrong.  Living in Switzerland since 2006, I discovered the introvert part of my personality. Reading this story, you might think that I was somehow forced to do that. That is only partly true. Actually, I felt joy discovering the introvert part of me. I experienced that I gained more energy through reading, writing, thinking and being alone. This worked like fuel for me to learn better, think more creatively and also be more present when I communicated with people. So in some ways, I feel joy that I felt somewhat alone in some situations living in Switzerland.

Some time ago, Katja Rieger inspired me to check out the book Crucial conversations. Reading the book, I learned, on pages 5 and 43, that for generations, humans have handled crucial conversations in aggressive ways. When someone says something we disagree with, our bodies prepare us to deal with an attacking tiger. The large muscles of our arms and legs get more blood, and the brain gets less blood. We decide very quickly to fight or flight. Our goal is to survive and win. On page 57 of the book, I learned that when a person communicates aggressively, it is a sign that he or she feel unsafe.

In 2021, I came across 2 examples, which demonstrate aggressive communication behavior: The first example is a contribution via YouTube by Swiss parliament member Andri Silberschmidt. In it, Mr. Silberschmidt explained that during the COVID-19 health crisis. he experienced members of the Swiss parliament verbally attacking each other. The second example is a contribution by member of the Swiss Federal Council Ignazio Cassis. In an article in the newspaper NZZ Mr. Cassis expressed this: "Instead of listening to each other, people shout out loud. Instead of approaching each other, we seek confrontation." 

I feel sadness when politicians attack each other? Why? I think that to an extent, I view members of parliament as role models. In particular, I view politicians as role models in terms of how we communicate with each other, and how we make decisions together. So I feel sadness, when I learn that representatives of the population attack each other and do not listen to each other. What makes me feel sad is, I think, when kindness is not a part of communication. 

So what can we do to rise above the extreme focus on ego that Mr. Silberschmidt and Mr. Cassis underline as being a poison that destroys communication between people? I came to think of 3 methods that I would like to share with you

1. Humor.
   Years ago, I recall that politicians brought humor into conversations. For example, I remember former President of the USA Ronald Reagan joking about a Russian person needing to wait 10 years to receive a car that he or she had ordered. I also remember an episode in the Swiss parliament from 2010 during which  member of the Swiss Government Hans-Rudolf Merz burst into laughter as he discussed meat from the Cantons Grisons in Switzerland. In fact, he laughed so hard that tears rolled down his face. When we use humour and laugh, our hearts talk to each other. 

2. The "yes, and" method.
   For some years, I have been studying innovation. And some time I came across the innovation method "yes, and." As the name indicates, people build on the ideas each other when using this method. For example, when one person says: "Hey, what about speeding up the development of a vaccine by sharing research findings openly on the Internet?", another person would, perhaps, say: "Yes, and we could develop platforms on the Internet where people can easily sign up to get the vaccine." When we say "yes, and", we build bridges between us and move closer to each other. 

3. The power of thankfulness and wishing each other well.
   During the 2020-2021 Winter, I had the great pleasure of working with personal health coach Karin Freitag. And I learned a lot from her. During a walk and talk in April 2021 to the top of Üetliberg in Zürich, Karin shared a really useful exercise with me, as we were drinking a cup of tea about half way to the top. The exercise puts focus on thankfulness and wishing other people well. Karin explained that she had personally experienced that this method worked in an almost magical way: She told me that for some time, she had had strong difficulty communicating with a secretary of an education leader she works with. And she told me that wishing that secretary well helped improve the relationship between the secretary and herself.  When we thank each other and wish each other well, we help each other feel safe and feel loved.

Reflecting on my life, I realize that I have lived through quite a significant number of changes from which I have learned much about stress and about handling changes in life. Some examples:

1. Divorces of my parents.

2. Additional divorce of my father.

3. Addititional relationship breakups of my father.

4. Additional relationship breakups of my mother.

5. Change of home more than 20 times in my life. 

6. Living for large parts of my life in countries outside Denmark, the country where I was born. 

7. Working on a large number of innovation challenges, pioneering initiatives and other kinds of projected designed to create change.

8. Working with people, who think differently, for example because of a) places where they grew up, b) their age, and c) experiences they had in their lives.

Over the years, I have learned to cope with stress in a variety of ways. Some examples:

1. Turn motivation from extrinsic motivation to intrinsic motivation, for example by learning to understand my values and purpose.

2. Reflect about changes I go through in my life.

3. Write about changes I go through in my life.

4. Work on naming emotions I feel and understanding why they come.

5. Express emotions I feel.

6. Speak with people I trust about what stresses me and why it stresses me. 

7. Read about how to manage stress.

8. Write about how to manage stress.

9. Read and write about how to communicate well. In this regard, I learned that stress has a significant influence on how people communicate with each other.

10. Do research about how to stay physically fit.

11. Do various kinds of physical training to help keep my body fit.