Helen Eriksen
- about human, sustainable well-being, and giving while growing
I was born and raised on Als, in the countryside, in the borderlands, and it leaves its mark. It sharpens the sense of building bridges, of understanding the significance of history both in understanding the individual but also a culture, whether it be a regional culture or a corporate culture.
I had the opportunity to experience and hear the personal stories about the cooperative movement with the establishment of vital dairies and cooperatives, witnessed the very last days in the countryside before specialization. That is, a time when there was wholeness and balance in agriculture. The time before the efficient agriculture with pesticides and nitrogen in the fields that could increase yields. I experienced the community in the countryside, where machines were shared, and where the retired generation lived nearby, and several generations lived in close proximity, and grandparents could take care of grandchildren.
I am also a product of the scouting movement. I have been a scout leader for a long time. It is an education in being human. Here, it is observed firsthand, very closely, how we as humans affect and are affected by each other. I realized that it was gymnastics and scouting life, the scout orchestra, my strong life in nature, that got me through long periods of school bullying. Here, I was seen as a human being. So, I broke out and not down.
I experienced the aftermath of the happy sixties and the women's movement, went to folk high school, worked as a folk high school teacher at Gerlev Sports Academy, have a lot of Grundtvig and Kold, and also the significance of physical culture for education, in my luggage. I am shaped by the importance of community life in small communities, where we went to folk high school, then came home and worked in the associations, shared and contributed with what we had learned about the work of hand and mind and the importance of community and meeting on equal terms with great respect for each other's differences.
I became an entrepreneur early on. Founded my first institute in my early twenties: Institute for Humaniology - the study of humans as cosmic beings. At the same time, I had two wonderful children. With each child came a book about spiritual science, inspired by the scientist, physicist David Bohm, Rudolf Steiner, and our Danish spiritual philosopher Martinus. "The Tree of Life - and the roots of man 1 and 2". In short, they are about how humans unfold their consciousness in seven-year periods.
To be able to guide, advise, understand, comprehend, communicate, be of service, and available in the most beneficial way, I pursued economic studies at Aarhus School of Business, language studies at Aarhus University, education as an academy economist in international business with a specialization in organic marketing, and training at Urtekram. A fruitful time as a journalistic employee and instructor at the school for organic marketing, employment as a leader at the organic national center, which I left to be an international project manager at Kaospiloterne in Aarhus responsible for the German-speaking countries, years as an education and development leader at an organic production high school near Randers, Brusgård.
Det blev til uddannelser i Spiraldynamics hos Dr. Don Beck – værdibaseret, evolutionspsykologisk kulturdannelses overblik hos videnskabsteoretiker Ken Wilber, som certificeret yogalærer, som psykolog, cand.psych og i MBSR, MIndfulness Baseret Stressreduktion fra Aarhus Universitet og University of Massachussets., i functional medicine, på IFM i USA (Institute for Functional Medicine) sammen med min datter Freja, PhD studerende og speciallæge i klinisk biokemi. Functional medicine er en helhedsorienteret tilgang til krop, sundhed, livsstil og helbredelse, som vi nu formidler sammen i konceptet ”Leader’s health – lægen og psykologen.
I have written several books, including "The Fruit Tree Strategy - about giving while growing, a future vision that couldn't keep its mouth shut." (Jyllandsposten's business publishing, 2002), which is a cosmology for individuals, companies, and society about a coherent universe, about how we could look at and develop our organizations and societies, including more liberating leadership, so it creates sustainable well-being and coherence instead of silos, powerlessness, stress, and meaninglessness. In 2008, the book "Changes don't ask for permission, they just come" was published, and in 2013 "GIVE while you grow".
And as one of the newest additions, I have, for 3 years, from the start of the pandemic until now, spoken with and interviewed courageous and visionary trailblazers, beacons, and business leaders who have purposefully and dedicatedly been working to create Future workplaces in Denmark with the wildest well-being metrics, significantly reduced sick leave, and zero recruitment challenges in the wake. It has become an exciting podcast and a passionate lecture, with humor, uplifting stories, lots of good and motivating experiences, and practical examples that you and your company can grasp and start implementing as pilot actions in your own context, tomorrow, if you wish. The essence of the podcast content combined with the latest scientific and philosophical advancements can also be experienced in book form later this year.
And now, in many ways, on many layers, I have brought it all together under one roof at the ERIKSEN INSTITUTE, located at Skovgården on Als, right next to Nørreskoven, close to the sea, in my old scout neighborhood, and neighborhood in general. Here, I would like, in various ways, through a series of, in my opinion, exciting and visionary activities, courses, education, seminars, and salons, to bridge the gap between natural science and consciousness - to create the foundation for us as individuals, leaders, society, and the globe to give sustainably, while growing from it. Together and in peaceful, democratic community.
You can read more about all of this under About the institute..
And you are most warmly welcome here.
Inquire without obligation about Helen Eriksen's lectures, courses, and consulting.
You are always welcome to contact me directly through the form regarding my courses and theme days.
Lectures with Helen Eriksen
Hey, the workplace of the future is right here, and WE are the culture.
Over the course of three years, one of Denmark's most sought-after speakers, business psychologist, author, well-being, and change expert Helen Eriksen, has been talking to and interviewing courageous and visionary trailblazers, beacons, and business leaders who have been purposefully and dedicatedly working to create the workplaces of the future in Denmark. These workplaces boast the wildest well-being metrics, significantly reduced sick leaves, and zero recruitment challenges in their wake.
This has resulted in an exciting podcast and a highly inspiring lecture, filled with humor, uplifting stories, plenty of good and motivating experiences, and practical examples that you and your company can seize and start implementing as pilot actions in your own context, tomorrow, if you wish.
Starling flock leadership – Co-creation and well-being in times of change
Black Sun is the wild phenomenon where thousands of starlings move synchronously, almost dancing, creating organic formations in the air as they fly at quite high speeds.
Using this as the central metaphor, Helen Eriksen dives into the paths towards the cohesive, co-creative, and synchronous organization that moves almost intuitively as one field, without thinking too much about it. With increased well-being and (sustainable economic) success in its wake.
Or in other words: What are the practical steps and the psychology behindmore and more organizations taking off in a positive way, shifting from organization to organism, from traditional leadership to a more facilitating and serving leadership, and towards a more leadership-free, self-organizing, and self-determining organization?
From employee to co-creator, from fringe to purpose, from career to calling, from powerlessness to meaning, and from stress to flow?
To find answers to the above questions, Helen Eriksen takes her participants on an energizing, humorous, and uplifting 'tour-de-future,' where you gain insight into both your own and your organization's enormous potential. At times, you also encounter other wise minds such as Plato, Kant, Kierkegaard, Løgstrup, Bohr, and Einstein.
The lecture creates a common framework of reference and provides insights that employees and leaders can subsequently use together to create even more well-being, joy at work, and pave the way for the future's 'black sun' organization.
One wingbeat at a time. Motivating and meaningfully simple.
Changes don't ask for permission, they just turn up
We live in a time where we experience more changes than ever before. How do we, as individuals and collectively, react to changes and why? In what ways is it possible to navigate through changes so that we develop as individuals and together?
Throughout the lecture, Helen Eriksen demonstrates how, as change-ready employees, we can use changes as a springboard and gateway to increased quality of life, well-being, resource development, and sustainable growth.
And perhaps we also manage to touch upon how it might be with changes and living systems in the future – what could it look like, what awaits us, which ways of organizing are effective and sustainable, can sustain themselves and give while they grow.
Job satisfaction – What is the meaning, really?
For many years, Helen Eriksen has focused on creating the most meaning for employees and leaders – both as employees and as individuals.
Helen's main thesis is that as human beings, we should give while we grow. It is not enough to go to work simply to contribute to the workplace and receive a salary in return. The workplace must never become a place where we come daily to be drained. The workplace should contribute to our personal growth.
In the lecture, Helen focuses on what employees and the workplace can specifically do to create a healthier psychological work environment, and how employees can increasingly leave work with the same level of energy they arrived with – or even with a higher energy level. Many employees come home to children and spouses feeling like used dishcloths, tired and uninspired, which does not promote a good and rewarding evening for the family.
Inspired by the latest research and years of dedicated practical experience in the field, Helen Eriksen humorously talks about the "down-to-earth" meaningful factors in the individual, between people, in leadership, and in the organization as a whole that naturally reduce absenteeism through the development of unwavering resilience and a sustainable well-being level.
Sustainable leadership – On the way to a paradigm shift?
When everything is interconnected, why not let it be.
A lecture on the 'Fruit Tree Strategy,' the philosophy of future leadership, and about giving while you grow.
Could soft values like emotional intelligence and intuitive intelligence prove to be the hard values of the future? Will the application of intuitive intelligence prove to be the future way of leadership and a fundamental parameter for successful AND sustainable leadership?
In this thought-provoking lecture, Helen Eriksen focuses on the changes in the leadership universe. How do changes create a paradigm shift, what does it involve? What challenges does it pose as a leader and as an employee and a human being? What are we moving away from, and what awaits us?
Helen clarifies the demands that changes place on us as individuals, employees, and in the leadership of ourselves and others. She also illustrates which competencies, intelligences, and resources might be a really good idea to develop before the increasing number of changes and the complexity of daily navigation and decision-making become too overwhelming.
Get Helen's unique recipe for a strategy that provides us with a new way of viewing and understanding ourselves in the larger interconnected worldview, which can lead us towards success and sustainability simultaneously – both as individuals, companies, nations, and the planet.
See Helen Eriksen's profile at Athenas speakers' bureau here.
Fellowship, Coherence, and More Meaning
Imagine if you could go somewhere and practically gain inspiring and uplifting insights into what you can do in your daily work life to ensure that employees in the organization not only function but actually experience an increased quality of life, a well-functioning work environment, where continuous, collectively and with enthusiasm, social, environmental, and economic added value is created. Where leaders and employees provide each other with excellent constructive companionship and create meaningful coherence.
Does that sound like something you'd like a bit more of in your organization? Then business psychologist and author Helen Eriksen's newest lecture is the answer.
For a couple of decades, Helen Eriksen has chosen to delve into the science of what actually makes the planet's two coolest living systems – the body and nature – able to survive for millennia, and how this knowledge can be transferred to great well-being value for organizations. This has resulted in a book, of which she provides a taste in this new lecture.
Helen takes us into the fascinating, rich, and uplifting universe of the body and nature, characterized by high intelligence, responsibility, coherence, integrity, strong resilience, and an almost unyielding ability and willingness to collaborate, create meaning, and well-being.
Participants will gain renewed energy and plenty of inspiration from the lecture, showing the possibilities of practically transferring nature's and the body's immense strengths in collaboration, communication, companionship, motivation, and innovation to themselves and their organization.
Helen's lecture also provides lively and humorous insight into the dimensions of human beings, and thus also into the types of organizations and under what working conditions we can actually thrive and give while growing from it. Helen Eriksen paves the way for a more meaningful organization that sustainably adds both human and economic value.
Give while growing
Why do we persist when it doesn't work? Whether as employees, leaders, or parents at home, we often try to solve the challenges of the new paradigm with the basic assumptions of the old paradigm. It's as if we sometimes think, 'things will normalize. Someone will come and fix it.'
Well-being expert and business psychologist Helen Eriksen focuses on this challenge in this change lecture, drawing on her popular book, 'Give While You Grow – From Busyness to Well-being.'
With tremendous humor, warmth, enthusiasm, and insight, Helen paints a clear picture of what we, together and individually, can do to have more energy and the importance of directly seeing meaning in it. More meaning is the direct path to greater understanding, joy, and well-being. Helen challenges significant assumptions – for example, the idea that it is good work ethic and entirely normal to come home drained of energy after a workday and think, 'I just have to tighten my buttocks and pull myself together.' Of course, as leaders and employees, we should give our all, but it is essential to ensure our own growth both during the individual workday and throughout an entire career.
With her great authority, knowledge, and charisma, Helen Eriksen sends a powerful message to our heart, mind, and gut.
From stress to well-being and job satisfaction
In this lecture, Helen Eriksen vividly illustrates the underlying psychological factors of stress and why we often discover stress too late.
Despite the seriousness of this lecture, Helen Eriksen manages to deliver a humorous and uplifting message that motivates participants to take action afterward.
Helen starts with the conditions and working conditions that the lecture participants actually encounter in their reality. Her starting point is that we cannot solve the challenges of the new paradigm with the assumptions of the old paradigm. Often, it is these assumptions that create stress.
Stress, in itself, is an expression of a healthy system that reacts and signals the need for adjustments through increasingly prominent warning signs. Our ability to handle stress depends on how we interpret the warning signs in practice and how conscious we are of what they are actually trying to tell us. Often, we just do more of the same, and that's when things go wrong.
Stress prevention is about raising awareness of behavior. Each of us must be aware of our behavior so that we can act more consciously when we see the warning signs being lit - both in ourselves and in others.
"If I can't handle this, then I'm not as good as the others. I'm about to fall off. I can't endure it, unlike the others." Such assumptions can cause the employee's professional identity and self-identity to crack. Here, awareness could make a big difference. An awareness of what the cause and effect really are, what needs to be adjusted inside and outside oneself. It is unconscious for many, and that's why they end up in negative spirals, where they do even more of the same.
The lecture provides action-oriented answers to questions such as:
- Why is it so difficult to admit to oneself that one is stressed?
- How do we create greater well-being and increased quality of life?
- What is the connection between the body and the mind in relation to stress?
- How do we support each other in creating a healthier psychological work environment?
Tilbage i 1994 har Helen Eriksen selv prøvet at brænde ud på baggrund af arbejdsrelateret stress som følge af et enormt arbejdspres. Erfaringerne fra denne stresshåndteringsproces afspejles i foredragets praktiske karakter.
See Helen Eriksen's profile at Athenas speakers' bureau here.
Do we sing enough in the hallways?
Do the echoes out there in the hallways resonate with well-being, camaraderie, and a team spirit that wants something?
Do we sing enough in the hallways? Do the echoes out there in the hallways resonate with well-being, camaraderie, and a team spirit that wants something? Do they hum with shared values, and is there a reverberation with an inspiring openness? Or is self-motivation and top performance a bit lacking – the unfolding of suites, operas, musicals, rock shows, rap sessions, and all the other fun stuff?
How do we get better at being self-responsible, at inspiring and motivating ourselves and each other? How do we work together, communicate, create space and creativity, development, and a desire to sing each on our own and together? In a choir, for example. What psychological mechanisms hold back the song in the hallways – and how do we get the song and echoes to unfold not just in the hallways but to spread all the way down, out, over, in the cafeteria, and further out to the parking lot? Internally as well as externally?
See Helen Eriksen's profile at Athenas speakers' bureau here.
Happy clients (a selection)
- HK
- Sundhedsstyrelsen
- FOA
- LEDERNE
- SIEMENS
- Coloplast
- Novo Nordisk
- Københavns Kommune
- DI (Dansk Industri)
- Falck
- Aarhus Kommune
- Cheminovo
- Københavns Lufthavne
- Scleroseforeningen
- Finansforbundet
- UCL
- Eniig
- Rigshospitalet
- Sygehus Lillebælt
- Jobcenter Aabenraa
- Svendborg Kommune
- Danmarks Lærerforening
- Røde Kors
- Miljø- og Fødevareministeriet
- Stavanger kommune
- LEO Pharma A/S
- Sparekassen Kronjylland
- OK
- Væksthus Nordjylland
- Nordsjællands Politi
- Byens Mad
- Danske Risikorådgivere
- Scandic
- Hörmann Danmark A/S
- HandelsFinans A/S
- Holbæk Kommune
- J&B Entreprise A/S
- SKAT Køge
- Plejecenter Skovhuset
- Arbejdsmiljøinstituttet
- HSHansen A/S
- Gældsstyrelsen
- Odense Kommune
- Dansk Jounalistforbund
- Geoforum
- Azets
- Fredensborg Kommune
- Sparekassen Kronjylland
- Nomeco A/S
"I HK Southern Jutland, we asked Helen to lead our Well-being Day 2021, a day where we gather all nearly 100 employees. With a foundation in knowledge, gentle nudges, and, most importantly, a lot of meaningful reflections, we left with valuable insights, crucial conversations with each other, and perhaps most importantly, a shared language about what we want for our collective well-being. Helen tied the day together with high spirits, great energy, and a deep understanding of us as an organization."
Camilla Madsen
Head of Department, HK Southern Jutland
"It was just what we could wish for, and there have subsequently been many positive responses. It is rare for us to experience that messages are absorbed and subsequently create reflection among all staff groups. That was our experience with your lecture – from janitor to cleaning staff, kitchen personnel, and nursing staff."
Jonna Kjeldsen
OK Fonden
"Without a doubt the best lecture I've heard in years. Wow, Helen Eriksen is awesome. Totally spot on – and food for thought for the 'core group', who should consider whether it always helps to just continue on autopilot and as we usually do."
Sune Schack
Fredensborg Municipality/Children's Homes Fredensborg
Tina Sternest
