I met a new friend from the Netherlands a few weeks ago. We shared a panel together at SXSW, and she was clearly more experienced at this kind of thing than I was. I have done my share of speaking over the years, but I still get nervous, still wonder if I am saying the right things in the right way. She seemed calm, even though she mentioned feeling a little under the weather that day.
That evening, the three of us had dinner together: my wife Åse Lill, my new Dutch friend, and I. The conversation wandered, as good conversations do, and at some point, I mentioned that her participation on the panel had felt measured and polished to me. Understated in a way that seemed intentional. She laughed a little and said she had been holding back, not feeling her best, not wanting to say something she might regret.
And then we started talking about something that has long been on my mind. We started talking about the cost of being polished in America.
The Performance of Certainty
I have lived in two countries. I spent a decade in Norway with my wife’s family, and I have spent the rest of my adult life here in the States. These two places have shaped me in ways I am still trying to understand. One of the differences I keep returning to is how people in each place handle being wrong, or uncertain, or simply unfinished in their thinking.
In Norway, I noticed something that surprised me at first. My Norwegian friends would state their honest, unpolished opinions openly, sometimes quite bluntly. They would say what they thought without much hedging or performance. And then, if someone made a good counterpoint, they would change their position. Just like that. No drama, no defensiveness, no apology tour. They would simply say, “You know, I think you are right about that,” and move on.
This took some getting used to. In my experience growing up in America, changing your mind in public felt dangerous. It meant you were weak, or uninformed, or that you had somehow lost the argument. We treat conversations like competitions here, I think. Someone has to win. Someone has to be right.
Jante’s Law and Collective Pride
Jante’s Law came up a few times that week, and I wonder if it helps explain the difference. For those unfamiliar, Jante’s Law is a Scandinavian cultural code that discourages individual boasting and emphazises collective identity. The rough summary is: you are not better than anyone else. This sounds harsh to American ears, maybe even oppressive. But I think it does something unexpected. It creates safety. If no one is trying to prove they are the smartest person in the room, then no one has to protect their ego when they are wrong.
In America, we seem to have the opposite instinct. Being unpolished feels like the worst offence. I could be wrong about this, but I think it is connected to our obsession with individual image, with performance, with winning. We have also devolved, in many ways, into a two-party team sport where changing your mind looks like betrayal. The woke/anti-woke divide has only made this worse. Every conversation feels like a loyalty test.
What We Lose
Here is what I keep asking myself: What opportunities do we lose when we cannot be unpolished, or even wrong, in a safe space? How much truth do we sacrifice for our competitive and polished positions?
My new Dutch friend mentioned something adorable. She said the day of the panel (as she often does), she left her hair just a little imperfect. She felt it made her more approachable, less polished, and more sincere. I like that! In fact, I have often taken the same approach, or at least it’s a great excuse for the times I showed up in spaces unpolished. But seriously, I have often been the least polished person in my executive team. I do feel it reduces the unessasary standards. Perhaps we can all learn from my friend to let loose a bit and be ok with imperfection, if only for the sake of authenticity.
I know that some of the best conversations I have ever had were ones where I walked in with one opinion and walked out with another. That kind of movement requires humility. It requires a willingness to be unfinished. And it requires communities where changing your mind is a sign of growth, not weakness. Same for messy hair!
Maybe that is what we need more of. Not more certainty. Just more room to be wrong and messy together.
I have been thinking and writing about these tensions between American and Scandinavian culture for years, and some of those reflections have made their way into my books. If this resonates with you, I would be honored if you checked them out.
