1.1 Foreword

Leaders in Danish business and the public sector are under constant and increasing management pressure. The often chaotic changes in the external environment—whether it be financial crises, a heated labor market with extreme demand for highly educated experts, legislative interventions, or various forms of reforms—challenge leaders to seek the ultimate leadership style.

Modeling is one powerful tool for discovering and transferring precisely the tools required by modern leaders today to excel as leaders.

Modeling involves finding examples that are undoubtedly excellent leadership. We interview a range of leaders, extracting fragments of excellent leadership, which we ultimately assemble into a model for excellent leadership. We call the model for The Excellent Middle Manager “HAWKEYE.”

Therefore, we have chosen to focus on excellent leadership in Danske Bank’s capital management department and at the Psychiatric Center Ballerup, with a focus on excellent leadership of highly educated experts.

We seek to understand WHAT excellent leadership is and what a leader does when practicing excellent leadership. We pinpoint the pattern and model that other good leaders can use to become excellent. At the same time, we set the stage for a course in excellent leadership where we teach the model for excellent leadership, HAWKEYE.

HAWKEYE is a leadership model for excellent leadership that, on the surface, is simple and pedagogical but has incredibly many layers.

We would like to extend a warm thank you to all contributors to our project, especially our interviewees, who willingly made themselves available during a busy time. We also hope they have gained something from the experience.

We wish everyone happy reading.

Stig Brammer Jensen & Erik Schwensen