Uncomfortable

What if the feeling most of us try to avoid is actually where growth begins?

We are wired to seek comfort. Yet the moments that shape us most often demand the opposite: taking a risk before the outcome is certain, having the conversation we would rather avoid, questioning what everyone else accepts, making a difficult decision, or stepping forward when it would be easier to stay where we are.

In Uncomfortable: Where Leadership Begins, Ole Rosgaard draws on more than three decades of experience to explore a simple idea: discomfort is not something great leaders learn to eliminate. It is something they learn to use.

His journey begins far from the executive suite, delivering newspapers by bicycle in rural Denmark before serving in the Danish military. It takes him through entrepreneurial ventures, corporate turnarounds, private equity, the global financial crisis, and COVID-19. Ultimately, as CEO of Greif, a Fortune 500 global industrial company, he helps lead a remarkable transformation, building a stronger organizational culture and raising employee engagement from the 28th percentile to the 91st percentile.

Through candid stories of successes and mistakes, Rosgaard explores what leadership requires when the answer is not obvious: taking calculated risks, confronting uncomfortable truths, transforming culture, and continuing to challenge yourself even after success makes comfort tempting.

Rosgaard argues that some of the greatest obstacles to growth are the ones we create ourselves: the risks we avoid, the assumptions we cling to, and the limits we place on our own potential and those around us.

Combining personal storytelling with practical leadership insights, Uncomfortable is for anyone who wants to become a better leader, whether they are just beginning or have been leading for decades.

Because leadership does not begin when you have all the answers. It begins when you are willing to step beyond what is comfortable, take responsibility for what happens next, and keep learning.