In July, I travelled to Inari in Finnish Lapland, which is properly referred to as Sápmi, with Carlyn, to sit with Sámi women and listen to how they think about leadership. I want to share what I took from that trip, not as research findings, but as my personal reflection.
A landscape I knew, a culture I didn’t
Lapland is not a foreign place to me. Being from Finnish heritage, it’s a landscape I grew up knowing about but probably not fully understanding culturally, in hindsight. Long dark winters, rolling fells abundant with berries in summer, and reindeer rule. An economy built on what the forest and the lake give you, if you’re patient enough to read nature’s signals. Reindeer are so critical to culture and life that many people go to a special university to study husbandry.
Custodianship, not ownership
In Sámi tradition, no one owns the herd or the land. The knowledge of how to read them is held collectively, built over generations, and the person whose judgement carries the most weight is simply the person who has demonstrated they understand the terrain. There’s no annual performance review cycle with paper KPIs. There’s the question of whether the herd survives winter, whether the community is thriving and how well their modern living culture is preserved.
Where does your leadership come from?
Standing in Inari, listening to a leadership model built on custodianship rather than ownership, I found myself asking how much of what I call leadership instinct did I actually inherit from my country? And how much of that inheritance would even register inside the organisations I work with every day, where authority still runs on title, and time runs on the financial year?
I don’t think the answer is that one model is right and the other outdated. I think the answer is that most of us are leading with leadership architecture that we’ve never examined, shaped by a place, a family, a culture, long before we ever sat in a leadership development program. The Sámi women I met in Inari know exactly where their leadership comes from. I’m not sure most leaders I work with could answer that question about themselves. Hierarchy, titles and monetary reward tied to personal achievement are a core part of our organisational architecture, and it is deaf to the quiet strengths of many people from different cultures.
Why this matters for Cultivate
These are the types of conversations we want to catalyse in Cultivate, to create the same moments of reflection for all our participants, because we truly believe that there is so much unseen and unheard potential in all organisations and it just needs a space to be shared.
I’m grateful to the Sámi women who gave their time and their thinking so generously, and grateful to have learnt more about the Indigenous people of Sápmi, Finland, side by side with my business partner Carlyn. We’ve documented some of our adventures and reflections in a video series that you can watch soon. And yes, it features reindeer.
Kat x