Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Resources:

Learn more about Helle’s company at https://www.boardintelligence.com/. Read her insights on her blogs at https://www.boardintelligence.com/blog/author/helle-bank-jorgensen. Her book, The Future Boardroom: How to Transform in Turbulent Times, is available in hardback at https://amzn.to/4tb73rx or Kindle at https://amzn.to/3M0MKMM.

Our host Maureen Metcalf posts a newsletter every week on LinkedIn. You can subscribe here.

Maureen’s latest book is Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI. You’ll find details about it at https://bit.ly/LeaderInAI, or check out the Kindle version at https://amzn.to/44buVz8. The audiobook version is now available at  https://amzn.to/4dTCleZ.

Her other 10 books are available on Amazon here.

Listen to Helle’s wisdom with these other episodes:

– How to Keep the Boardroom Stable in Turbulent Times

– The Future-Ready Board Member

– Stewarding the Future of the Planet: Views from the Boardroom

Guest(s):

Guest(s) Bio:

Helle Bank Jørgensen is an internationally recognised voice on governance, board effectiveness, and sustainability. She leads Board Intelligence’s Board Development practice globally, empowering boards and leadership teams around the world to enhance their impact through the science of board effectiveness.

Helle is the founder and previous CEO of Competent Boards, the world-renowned education platform, which was acquired by Board Intelligence in 2025.

Beyond her work with Competent Boards and Board Intelligence, Helle is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Nature and Climate Governance, and has initiated several pioneering projects. These include the world’s first green account, the first integrated report, the first holistic supply chain program, and many other innovative business solutions, including the Amazon bestseller, The Future Boardroom: How to Transform in Turbulent Times.

Helle is a regular contributor to governance and board-focused publications such as Financial Times’ Agenda, Board Agenda, and Thomson Reuters, and in 2025 contributed to guidance published by the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD)

She is an in-demand keynote speaker and has won numerous awards, including the Corporate Governance Lifetime Achievement Award 2024, the Peter Dey Governance Achievement Award from the Governance Professionals of Canada 2024, and the Globe and Mail’s 50 Changemakers for 2023. In 2024, she was inducted into the Corporate Governance Hall of Fame by IR (Investor Relations) Magazine and named Board Stewardship’s Steward of Sustainability.

Transcript
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Maureen: [00:00:00] Welcome to Innovating Leadership Co-Creating Our Future. I’m your host, Maureen Metcalf, founder and CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute, where we help leaders be future ready. Today I’m joined by Helle Bank Jorgensen, a global board effectiveness, pioneer and global managing director of Board Intelligence, a leading voice helping executives and directors elevate their governance. Hella’s just returned from the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, where global leaders gathered to discuss the most pressing issues in our world.

So hella welcome back.

Helle: Thank you so much. It’s good to be back with you and relax a little bit after Davos.

Maureen: So this I understand was a bit of a different Davos than

Helle: mm-hmm.

Maureen: In the past. So let’s start with what was different and then we’ll go into global risks.

Helle: Well, I think what was different [00:01:00] was that how can I put it? There was fear in the air, right in the first couple of days. It’s usually you get to the most and, collaboration. There was still the same, but there was also this fear of what is going to happen on a geopolitical basis. What is going to happen with trade, what is going to happen with perhaps not so much nature and climate, but still underlying what are all of these issues that is being discussed and what does that mean for the individual companies, but also the individual countries? Think about this as a place where you have all countries represented as well as many of the biggest companies in the world.

Companies that are not only in one country, but are global and are also in that sense trying to figure out how should they deal with all the uncertainty, how should they deal in, in a world that is more [00:02:00] turbulent that I think we have seen in many, many years.

Maureen: With that as the backdrop, you were involved with the global risk discussion.

Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Helle: Sure. And I should say the global risk report from the World Economic Forum came out a few days ahead of Davos starting. That’s normal. What happens in terms of the risk report is that it is not of course, produced the week before we are getting asked, I was asked, a few months in, advance. How did I look at the risk? And, you’re getting all of these risk into different categories: environmental, climate, geopolitical, economic, et cetera. And. One of the things that I perhaps should share was that I’m part of the World Economic Forum future council for climate and and nature governance, and we [00:03:00] met all the different future councils last year, late last year.

And discussed. It looked kind of like as a simulation of what would happen if this and this. So we asked all, everyone there to say, okay, how would you rate these different risk up against each other? And then said, okay, now this has happened. Now this has happened. Now we in 2035. And people were then saying, “well, whooo! it looks like we are now fighting over clean water, over food. Not a pretty world.” Let’s just be honest. It was kind of like a, a few laughs in the room that kind of laugh like, “I don’t really know what to say about this.” And there was this young man in the room and I, I walked over to him and I said, ” how old will you be in 2035?”

He looked at me and he said, “I’ll be 35. This is my world that you are [00:04:00] discussing.” And well, I can also feel it now. Kind of like, you know, you get the goosebumps. And I think especially when you start looking at these, risk reports, we have the same every year. What are the short-term risks?

What are the long-term risk? The long-term risk seems to be the same: climate, nature issues. But the thing is that we have been saying that for a long, long time. So that 10 year long term, is getting closer and closer. We have so much that is hitting us at the moment. And I don’t blame any board members for saying, you know, we have ai, we have geopolitical issues, we have, in that trade, I don’t know where, where to put that, but everything, supply chain issues.

Then we have, you know, something that we can see is really going to also hit us, but is harder to deal with climate nature issues right now. So therefore, it perhaps not get the same [00:05:00] as the other risks. So on the top, you have geo-economic confrontation. You have misinformation, disinformation, societal polarization.

Then actually as a short-term risk, you do have extreme weather events, and then all the way down to number nine, your pollution. While if you look at the

long-term risk, we start with extreme weather events. Number two, biodiversity laws and economic ecosystem co collapse, and then three critical change to earth systems.

It’s pretty big things that are clearly not only going to impact the customer or the company and the customers for that set, but society as such, and therefore also countries and I guess all of us. So, yes. So that was part of the fear, I think, but perhaps the [00:06:00] geo-economic confrontation to miss disinformation.

How AI is going to impact quantum technology, how that is going to impact, you name it. There is no lack of, there’s no lack of risk was part of that fear picture that I think we also saw a little bit of, and not so much love in, in the air as, um, as perhaps previous years.

Maureen: Was your sense that fear will spark action where people may not have taken the difficult steps before.

Helle: I think unfortunately, you’re, you’re seeing at the moment that there are a lot that wait a bit to see what is going on, what’s not going on. I wrote an article about, unfortunately, we are also seeing from a board member point of view that we are waiting to get the best possible information, but by waiting, we perhaps wait so long, what we were [00:07:00] waiting for to discuss has already happened. So I think that that is a risk that we are seeing at the moment.

And I’m of course working with boards to prepare for how do we see what is coming, but also how do we prepare in order to have both a company that are as resilient as possible, but also society that’s resilient because as I say, if, if we don’t have the society being resilient, well, what will our company then do?

So yeah. I think the other thing Maureen was Edelman and the Edelman Trust barometer that revealed that 70% of people now distrust those with a different view. Think about it, 70%. If you and I don’t have the same view, 70% will say, “well, then I distrust everything you say.” And that trust, where does that [00:08:00] sit?

When we discuss in a boardroom, we don’t have it in, in a committee. We don’t really have it as, as part of anything, but it’s now such an important part because if you have a workforce that don’t trust each other, if you have an, and I think it was Richard Edelman that that said it himself, if you have employees that don’t really trust you, they perhaps show it by, as he said, walking slower to work. And what does that mean for productivity? What does that mean for innovation? What does that mean for actually being a company of choice? So I think we are

really seeing something; this insulation that unfortunately is happening at the moment, that is not going to, uh, be easy for companies, especially global companies to tackle.

Maureen: We interviewed, uh, some academic researchers about five years [00:09:00] ago, but at that point, I think the trust number was something like 50%.

That trust number is declining and potentially rapidly. If I look around at people around me, even people I love, they have different religious views, different political views, different focuses, even if their values may be the same. And once I’m looking for differences, I don’t see anyone that’s the same, truly the same as me. That could also promote the isolation. It could promote some of the radicalization because I feel alone. I’m looking for people like me.

I’m now susceptible to behaviors and messaging that wouldn’t have been indexing on, I don’t belong or I don’t trust you. When we bring in the societal [00:10:00] piece, it seems like we’re even at greater risk of the decline that you talked about in 2035.

Helle: You have people that are listening to the same news, that are going to the same events that are hea ring… even when you look at the algorithm in terms of what kind of news do you get on your feed, that will probably give you the news that you would like. If you go and ask your AI bot, many of us do not say, “come on and give me like, the opposite view,” so it tells us what it expect us to wanna hear. So we get into this difficulty to unpack at the moment.

Don’t wanna bring up the political but I can tell you from, from where I’m sitting now in Denmark, there is a, a big, sadness over all of the soldiers that have died. So there’s a lot of hurt. There’s a lot of fear and I think we all [00:11:00] need to bring a little bit more of our heart into the conversation and the care.

And that’s not easy when you are in a world where it’s more a win-lose situation than a win-win situation. again, if you go back to then your boardroom, yes, we need to have all of these voices around. We need to have diversity of thought.

We need to really understand, what can hurt, but also what is the innovation for this company? And you don’t bring that if you have people that are only nodding to what everyone else says. You need to have that dialogue. You need to have the discussion around things, and you need to have the psychological safety to have that discussion.

And I think that is what we start seeing being in short supply.

Maureen: One of the things that really strikes me as poignant is our work on developmental maturity. Leaders at these later [00:12:00] stages have a bigger capacity for cognitive complexity, which we certainly need, but also the emotional capacity to hold more.

I can hold a different point of view. How do we select for board members and executives who have that capacity. And to your point, some of these corporations are larger than some of our countries.

Helle: Oh, yes. Oh yes.

Maureen: Our political leaders are the center of the news cycle, but our corporate leaders may in fact have more power to influence and they’re thinking longer time horizon because our political leaders are subject to delivering during their elected term where our corporations are looking at longer term.

Helle: Well, that, that is, you know, your fiduciary duty. So it used also to be the CEO, uh, on, it seems [00:13:00] like, the time span of A CEO is also being shortened a lot.

So, so yes, it is when we start looking at the board members and having that, future duty, duty of care, all of those things. Back to your point on if we not on the same page, all of us, we actually is kind of like, you know, the pinball machine in, in a world where we have the matrix, right?

So every time that little ball hits something, it’s kind of like you’re in a new world. And I think one thing that does not seem to listen to anything we are saying or get any of our news is Mother Nature, and it seems like Mother Nature is continuing to decide that there are a few invoices that we have to pay.

And unfortunately looks like those invoices are getting more and more expensive. We are seeing, working with companies and seeing from an insurance point of view. What does that mean? If you suddenly can’t get insurance [00:14:00] anymore or the the premium goes up a lot, what impact is that going to have on the companies?

So that’s why when I work with board directors, when I work with also CEOs and, and the management team, you can see that there is a full understanding of how do we start embedding all of these things into our cadence of board work?

How do we ensure that we are not only looking, you know, backwards, but we are actually looking forwards?

How do we ensure that we are as effective as possible as a board to make the right decisions without having all the information we would like to have. And that’s not easy. So I think we, we are seeing that. I see it when do board assessments and board evaluations. I see it when we upskill and train boards.

Really having that eagerness to get the insight, get the foresight [00:15:00] in order to make informed decisions and, As you probably have heard me say before, it’s hard to make informed decisions if you’re not informed. And it’s harder to and harder to get informed, right? And especially have that view from all the different angles.

Maureen: Can you share a little bit with us about the board intelligence survey that was also recently released?

Helle: Happy to do so and, so board intelligence that Competent Boards is now, now part of kind by working with a hundred thousand of board directors and both in terms of board technology and board advisory.

We also do these surveys where we ask board members also those we don’t work with, uh, in terms of, of the value that they believe that they are giving to the companies where they serve. That’s another thing you have heard me say before: You do not sit on a board; you serve. Uh, and I think that is getting more and more important and just [00:16:00] to, again, we, we ask board members and, and giving you a little bit of the stats from the survey for North America and UK. We also have from middle East, but the key finding in terms of our boards adding value, where we say that boards are leaving considerable value on the table. Only 33% of directors see their board as an essential tool for value creation. 17% say it adds little or no value, and 50% say their board could do better.

Our work is to help boards do better, but it’s not only the boards, it’s actually the company and therefore, the directors and the society that they are part of, that they are both getting their resources from, but also hopefully providing value to.

Maureen: What would need to be different to make a greater impact? Is it the board structure? Is it how they use [00:17:00] information? Is it board advisor behavior? How do we move the needle so that young man who will be 35 is not living in the world of Mad Max?

Helle: If it was easy, I would say, “oh, we just need to do that,” then I think everyone would do it. Right? So of course there’s different things here.

And one would for, of course the board members, the directors, to be able to have candid discussion. You can only have that if you also have information. So that’s why when I say we, we are out there and helping boards get to the same level of, insight and foresight. That’s part of it.

That’s kind of like, to ensure that, that we all are upskilled. The other thing is of course, that management knows much more than the board. And the board and the [00:18:00] directors get information from management now time to time, director says, we are getting so much information and why are we getting this information?

What is it? That’s exactly the issue? So that’s where we go in and work with some of those boards in terms of their board papers. And report writer: help actually management get better at writing the reports so that the directors get a report where they know exactly what it is that they should look at… know exactly not only the information, but actually the insight they’re looking for. And also have the tools in terms of what is missing? Is this paper looking more backwards? Is this paper looking forward?

What’s really missing? So that’s part of it and clearly with the time that board members use of reading board papers, if you can reduce that and also have a better conversation around the boardroom [00:19:00] table because you actually understand what’s in the papers, you understand what you’re looking for, and everyone has a level of understanding of the subject.

I always would say there is no stupid questions, but lately I, I will say that there are questions that perhaps should not have been asked in the boardroom, but should have been understood ahead of time. So that’s part of it. The other thing I think we need to start looking at is also what should be on the agenda.

Compliance is a thing, of course, that we need to tick mark and, and make sure that compliance is in place. But I think that we are seeing way too many organizations that are starting with that instead of starting on looking into strategy, but also what are the impact of everything and are we prepared?

I said many times, luck favors the prepared and if you are not understanding what is coming at you, [00:20:00] there’s a chance that luck will not favor you. I see a lot of helping boards basically say, “okay, what should be on the agenda and how should we also structure the agenda in a way that ensure we are as

effective as possible. Then of course you can say that dynamic that we have in the boardroom as a starter. You know, you need psychological safety. You need to have the right people around the board. You need to have the right questions being asked. And it was Chad Holliday that said as part of my book, the Future Boardroom, ” you can only ask two or three questions as a director in every meeting. It better be good questions, right?” And I think you ought to have that level of sophistication in the boardroom to ask the good questions, but you also need the chair. You need the chair to be what I call a wise chair so we really have everyone in the boardroom [00:21:00] contributing, but also making sure that we actually get to a solution. So I, again, I mean there’s the, there are many more issues and I would wish that I could say, oh, here is the silver bullet and let’s get all board members and boards, uh, out there just to be as effective as possible.

There’s all of these different areas that we need to keep up to pace. A newer area is AI and just the fact of how do we ensure that we have the guardrails, but also ensure that we have the innovation.

Board Intelligence just had the board chair Summit where it was all on the Chatham House rules, but I can say that there was, one of them was saying, ” all organizations have constant decay. The question is, ‘ how much innovation do you have?'”

If it is constant decay and you don’t have any innovation you are in a bad spot. And so innovation [00:22:00] does not always go hand in hand with ai. But clearly if you don’t as an organization right now, have figure out how do you put the guardrails, but also how do you leverage you might either be a big risk or out of the game. So that’s where we now see you have AI bots as directors and, um, where I keep saying, well, you need to be the master and not the servant. But that also make, that we have that critical thinking and that we ask the question. That Most important role I would say that anyone can play being a board member, being the chair, that takes so much more now than it did. Things are coming at directors 24 7. They can’t just say, “oh, you know, let’s discuss this at the next board meeting.” You need to have it on your fingertips right now, and you can’t have that unless you [00:23:00] have prepared.

And then, then I’ll stop promise. The other thing is that I see a lot of boards at the moment that are looking at risks as, almost like in silos, while in reality risk are stacked. So if there is, um weather related event catastrophe. That’s perhaps the time where those that would like to do a cyber attack figure out, oh, this is a good time to do it.

That is probably also the time that something else will happen. So you can’t just say, how do I manage? On one part, you need to look at how do you manage on all the different risks you have and clearly, the principles for the climate and nature governance that we released in Davos as well is some that can help on some of it.

But I really think we need to look at all of those different risks and see how do we relate to it? And [00:24:00] frankly, also in a world where many leaders are looking at somewhere in between peace and war, how do you act in, how do you prepare for that? Is another thing that I’m discussing at the moment with different leaders.

Maureen: I looked at the value chain report and that one seemed very prominent. The idea that in our prior more stable world, we could optimize for efficiency globally. And now we’re optimizing for regional agility. So it’s a completely different mental construct and I can change my mental construct, but there’s also a significant physical construct.

It’s hard. Balance sheet depreciation, and I may have to accelerate the depreciation so that I can begin building and deploying assets [00:25:00] according to a different model, and that shapes the underpinning of our entire economic structure. And I think we aren’t accounting for the volatility created by global leaders.

Helle: That is why, that role is so much more important now, looking to see what world will we be in?

Where do we build our factories? Where do we employ people? And look out not only, two, three years, but 20, 40, 50 plus. And ensure that we are, not just building on something that will be a stranded assets but actually on something that will be valuable.

Maureen: We’ve covered a lot. The fear at Davos, the reasons for fear, what’s coming out of board intelligence. The thing I take away that’s hopeful is one that we are acknowledging the global landscape. We’re [00:26:00] not sticking our heads in the sand. What’s working, what’s not working, and how do our governing bodies leading the largest corporate entities respond appropriately to ensure the greatest stability, the greatest value, the greatest impact for the population, for not just ourselves, but for the 35 year olds, the 25 year olds, the next generation.

Helle: This is about leadership, and now is the time for leaders to lead, and lead with their heart and, of course their head, but definitely with their heart and care for the world out there as well as their company.

Maureen: Thank you Helle for your life’s work in contributing to the World Economic Forum, for creating Competent Boards, for joining Board [00:27:00] Intelligence, and for helping all of us have more insight and foresight as we do our work.

Helle: It’s my pleasure. And as you know, the Global Compass and Boards, the forum, is out there and more and more people are actually going through the programs and getting that insight and getting the foresight and be part of the network so we can all, be leaders and have a positive impact.

Maureen: And so to our listeners. Thank you for joining. Thank you for your role as leaders in whatever capacity you do in our world. Your wisdom, your intelligence, your heart, are required now as we navigate the complexity in our lives. So thank you for listening and thank you for being leaders who are making a positive impact.