There is a Norwegian word that has no clean English translation: handlekraft.
Literally, it means “the power to act.” It is a compound of handle (to act) and kraft (force, strength). You might translate it as drive, decisiveness, or simply: the kind of person who gets things done.
But in leadership, the word contains a paradox that took me years to fully understand. The truest handlekraft is the power you give to others and the one you take on from others. It’s the metaphorical fisherman “teaching a man to fish”.
I realize that sounds like something you would embroider on a pillow. Bear with me.
A Saturday Morning in Grimstad
I did not learn this in a boardroom. I learned it on a rainy Saturday morning in my neighborhood in Grimstad, a small coastal town on the southern tip of Norway, at something called a dugnad.
Dugnad was always my least favorite word in Norwegian. It means voluntary collective work, and it has organized Norwegian communities for over eight hundred years, and it’s not really “voluntary” as my wife would explain. In practice it means your Saturday now belongs to everyone. My neighbors would show up with rakes and rollers and thermoses of coffee, cheerful in a way I found deeply suspicious.
The coordinator was often a man named Stig. Charming, compact, sporty, a high school teacher by trade. He was, in the best possible way, the most annoyingly Norwegian man I have ever known. His disposition was so purely, completely Norwegian that I thought of him as my cultural nemesis. I was the loud American who had opinions about things. Stig was the guy who had already fixed them.
I say nemesis with affection. Stig once delivered one of the sharpest lessons of my ten years in Norway without even trying.
I had neglected to clear the snow from my car. A snowplow came through and smashed it. Stig appeared shortly after, assessed the scene, and gave his verdict without drama: “That’s what happens if you don’t keep it clear.”
No sympathy. No softening. Just plain Norwegian common sense, delivered with the calm of a man who had cleared his car, obviously, because that is what you do. He was teaching me to fish.
Stig was not being funny. He was being accurate. But I was not sure at the time because this is actually the key to Norwegian humor, when it surfaces at all. It is dry and self-deprecating, built on the same resistance to self-aggrandizement that shapes everything else in the culture. Nobody performs. Nobody inflates. The joke, if there is one, is usually on the person telling it. So, I suspect he was serious as lutefisk.
Ten years in Norway taught me to do the same. I started leading meetings by admitting what I did not know. I stopped opening emails with my title. I learned to let the work speak and keep myself quiet. This was not just politeness. It was me trying, consciously, not to break Janteloven. More on that in a moment.
Back to Stig: what looked like coldness was actually respect. He held you to the same standard he held himself. And if he had walked past while I was digging my car out, he would have quietly picked up a shovel and helped without a word.
Honest accountability and unconditional practical solidarity. That is closer to the Norwegian ideal of leadership than anything I have read in a business book.
At the dugnad, Stig was its perfect expression. He never issued a command, never performed being in charge. He pointed at things that needed doing, asked who might enjoy which tasks, and disappeared into the work himself. By noon, what would have taken a maintenance crew three days was finished.
The power Stig held was not over the group. It was distributed into the group.
That is the Handlekraft Principle.
I eventually left Grimstad. Stig, like most Norwegians, is still there. We spend our summers back in Norway now, and if I am lucky the calendar lines up and I get to attend a dugnad. I show up genuinely glad to be there. Growth is possible in even the most reluctant American.
What Janteloven Actually Teaches Leaders
Most people who know one thing about Norwegian culture know Janteloven, the Law of Jante. The Danish-Norwegian author Aksel Sandemose wrote it as ten rules for a fictional small town. The first: Du skal ikke tro at du er noe — “You shall not believe that you are anything special.”
Outsiders read this as conformism. And at its worst, it can be.
But in its more useful form, Janteloven is a structural skepticism toward power concentration. When the culture says “you are not better than us,” it is also saying “your title does not make you more than us.” The pressure is not toward mediocrity. It is toward accountability. Because regardless of rank and title, winter will come and so will the snow plow!
I spent my first few years in Norway bristling at this. I was building something. I had ideas. The cultural pressure not to be “too much” felt like a constraint on what good leadership required.
Then I started paying attention to what happened when I caught myself performing authority, emphasizing my credentials, taking visible credit. Nothing got better. The team did not move faster. People did not trust me more. I was spending energy on status that could have gone to work.
That was Janteloven doing its job. So I started practicing it deliberately. I stopped announcing what I had accomplished and started asking what other people needed. I became, if not exactly modest, at least quieter about myself. A small improvement, my colleagues might say, delivered in a flat tone, meaning it as a compliment.
The Andels Preschool
Norway’s approach to distributed power starts well before the workplace.
When my son started preschool in Grimstad, the school seemed to expect a great deal from parents. Meetings, work parties, committees. One afternoon at work, our team gathered for lunch in the cantina. This was nearly a daily ritual, deeply koselig in a way I was only beginning to understand. Warm, unhurried, everyone present.
I mentioned I was thinking about having a word with this “Andel” about all these demands. I was after all a busy, paying customer!
The table broke out laughing.
A colleague explained: andel means cooperative in Norwegian. The school was not run by a person named Andel. It was run by the parents. I was not a customer with a complaint. I was a co-owner with a responsibility.
In hindsight, calling the school by the wrong name while complaining about its demands was a fairly complete summary of my first year in Norway. The school was not asking things from me. It was inviting me into something. Norwegian children learn from age three that their voice has weight in collective decisions. By the time they enter the workforce, they carry deep muscle memory for participation. And a corresponding impatience for leaders who do not invite it.
Five Things Practice Has Taught Me
Power given away returns multiplied. Every time I gave a team member genuine ownership of a decision, the quality of that decision exceeded what I would have made alone.
The hardest part is staying out of the way. Giving away power is simple. Not reclaiming it when things get difficult is the actual discipline.
Trust is the currency, not the reward. In Scandinavian culture, trust is extended first and then confirmed or withdrawn. When you trust someone before they have proven themselves, you communicate that you believe they are capable. That belief is the most powerful developmental force available to a leader.
Janteloven is a gift in disguise. Once I stopped fighting it and started practicing it, I became better at leading and, I suspect, slightly less annoying to work with.
The goal is to become unnecessary. The measure of good leadership is not how much the organization depends on you. It is how well it functions when you are absent.
What I Am Doing About It Now
I think about Stig these days, because I am in the middle of doing what he modeled.
After returning from Norway, I spent twelve years building a company called Agie Six. Now I am turning real authority over to my successor as CEO. Not supervised autonomy. Actual power, transferred. It is the hardest professional thing I have done, and also the clearest sign that I may have actually learned something from a decade in Norway. Stig would probably just nod and say it was the obvious next step.
And together with my son, the same boy who attended that andels preschool in Grimstad, I am launching a non-profit called HandleKraft.ai. We will train under-credentialed and underserved people to build digital products for non-profits that deserve more than they can currently afford. Giving people the tools, the trust, and real work that matters.
It is our attempt to bring what Stig showed me on a rainy Saturday in a small Norwegian town into American life. To hand someone a shovel and trust them to use it.
Handlekraft, in its deepest form, is the power to make yourself irrelevant. Not by abandoning the work, but by sharing it so thoroughly that it lives on in the hands of everyone you have led.
I am still working on this. My car, for what it is worth, I keep very clear.
How are you thinking about power and succession in your own work? And if you know someone who belongs in a program like HandleKraft.ai, please reach out.
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Key concepts: Handlekraft (the power to act), Dugnad (voluntary collective work), Janteloven (cultural humility and collective over individual), Medvirkning (the right to co-participate in decisions), Tillit (trust, extended first).
