Jesper Elbaek Kristensen: courage to say yes, leading through people

A career built on saying yes

Jesper Elbaek Kristensen’s journey with Maersk Training started in 2010, in a way he did not plan. After being let go from a role at EY following a merger, he landed a temp position in the finance department in Svendborg, Denmark. Fifteen years later, he leads the business in the United States – a turnaround he stepped into to stabilise and reposition through a period of real change.

The path between those two points was not linear. From managing global ERP projects to moving his life abroad, Jesper has consistently chosen the harder route. The best thing he has done for his career has also been the hardest.

“I say ‘Yes’ to things, and then I get busy with figuring out how to get it done.”

That courage, as he calls it, is the common thread. In small companies and early roles, you cannot say “It’s not my job” when the printer stops working and “Head of IT” is not on the five-person org chart. In small settings, your input is directly correlated to the output and success of the company. It is a mindset that has travelled with him ever since.

Scandinavian roots, American addition

Before the US Managing Director role, Jesper served as Finance Director for a Danish company in Austin, Texas. It was his first time leading an American team, and the differences from a Scandinavian approach were subtle but real.

Denmark taught him a flat hierarchy and a collegial way of working. The US introduced him to a more traditional top-down style. His leadership has evolved, but he sees it as an addition to his toolkit rather than a replacement for the Scandinavian foundation.

“Thirteen years in Maersk and it’s hard not to drink the values like Kool-Aid. Humbleness resonates with me. I instill a flat hierarchy.”

That belief runs through how he builds teams. Everyone contributes. Everyone matters. The best idea might come from the person with the lowest title and the smallest paycheck, and he wants that idea taken seriously.

Leading from the front and the back

Jesper describes his role as both pushing and pulling. He sets the course, and he catches teammates when they fall. He is not the expert in the room. He is the person making sure the experts can do what they do best.

“Wins are ours. Fails are mine.”

A typical day is about removing roadblocks. He tries to stay available everywhere and at all times so that he does not become the roadblock himself. That openness means a steady stream of “do you have five minutes” conversations, which usually turn into fifteen. He is typically the last escalation point, so when something reaches him, he knows a solution is needed.

Between the meetings, emails and calls, he carves out time for the work he enjoys most: developing, improving processes, and bringing projects and ideas to life. He is candid that he works best with his back against the wall – a builder who runs hard at broken problems and finds his clearest thinking under pressure. He is also, by his own description, a tech nerd — embedding AI wherever it can lift transactional work, from meeting transcripts and task tracking to summarising long email threads.

People first, then the numbers

When priorities compete, Jesper’s instinct might be revenue and bottom line. But he is quick to challenge that reflex. He is not cutting the free coffee to save a few dollars, because he knows the real cost shows up in engagement scores and turnover.

He uses the Eisenhower matrix to gauge urgency against importance, and then decides how quickly a task can realistically be resolved. But at the core, he is a people-first leader. In small settings, turnover is disruptive, recruiting is time-consuming, and a bad hire can destabilise a whole operation.

“I would much rather manage an engaged team with no profit than a profitable but unengaged team – but in a turnaround, you don’t get to choose. You have to deliver both.”

On short-term versus long-term thinking, he is honest about the pull of daily fires. He has set annual goals only to start prioritising them in the final months. Sometimes, he says, those fires have to burn out on their own — so you can prevent the next ones or build a new fire station.

Brand, opportunity and the learning experience

The Maersk brand carries tremendous value and legacy. Jesper feels the responsibility of representing that, and his ambition is to uphold it — on a more tangible level, building a reputation in the US that signals high quality, trust and partnership.

He sees consolidation in the offshore and energy market, and with it, a shift in training demand. Customers want fewer suppliers and a white-glove approach — someone to manage the complexity while they focus on their core business. That, he believes, is where Maersk Training can win: as the easy-to-work-with partner with a ready workforce, ready to deliver.

The trend that most shapes his thinking is less about the industry and more about human psychology. Attention spans are evolving. We have become a convenience generation, accustomed to a service for every need. Classroom training, backed by decades of research, will remain the core of adult learning — but the add-ons that lift retention from 50% to 75% fascinate him.

“It’s something a 50-year-old organisation like ours is constantly assessing, so we can meet students at the learning experience that caters to them.”

Trust, but verify

Jesper is data-driven — a habit he credits to his finance background. He believes almost everything can be measured; it is a matter of collecting the right evidence. But he is equally clear that not all data is worth collecting, and no single number tells the whole story.

With a small team, open conversations and feedback often tell him more than any dashboard. Is profitability success if the team is unengaged? For Jesper, it is not. An engaged team without profit is worth more to him than the reverse — and he is comfortable saying so out loud.

Deep thoughts with deep house

Outside work, Jesper is refreshingly honest about not fitting the executive stereotype. He does not play golf, run marathons, or race bikes. He is, by his own description, a nerd — grinding gear in a twenty-plus-year-old video game and staying connected with friends and family over co-op FPS sessions, because it is easier to be bad at games together than to pick up the phone.

Four times a week, he is in the gym. Alone. Headphones in. Deep house music on. That is where he processes things — “deep thoughts with deep house.” The motivated days are easy. It is the unmotivated ones, he says, that make the difference.

“I don’t like problems, but I like solving them. I get excited by ‘No one has fixed this’.”

His wife and stepkids are at the centre of everything else. He and his wife live by a saying: “If a book was written about you, would you read it?” He does not expect a memoir, but he is determined to fill the pages. That means being present outside of work, and challenging himself with things that sit just outside his comfort zone.

Decisions that tolerate scrutiny

Two principles guide how Jesper shows up as a leader. His decisions should tolerate scrutiny, and they should never exist in a vacuum. He loves coaching and teaching — often with an analogy, sometimes with a little over-explanation.

“Tell me about your problem now and it’s ours. Tell me about it later and it’s yours.”

He shares personal stories and shows vulnerability, because he wants to know his colleagues on more than a surface level. We spend half of our waking hours at work, he says. That is worth investing in.

The advice that has stayed with him through the hardest stretches is simple: there is a teachable moment in every challenge. You win some and you learn some. The failures, the toughest decisions, the hardest trials — they forge an unshakeable belief that things will be okay.

Work hard, but know when to say no

For those early in their careers, Jesper is direct. He has bowed under stress more than once. He is a “yes” person, and that is how he got to where he is — but working so hard that he could not keep going did not serve anyone, least of all himself.

“There’s courage in saying ‘No.’”

Hard work is still the differentiator, he believes, because everyone else is smart too now, with an AI-powered brain in their pocket. But surround yourself with people who are both smarter than you and care about you. You need someone to be there when you take risks and fall. Jesper was lucky to have those people when he burned out.

From more than a decade as a gym rat, he knows there are shortcuts — but they come with a price. The sure-fire path is hard, dedicated work. Results will not show immediately. But the work, he says, is always a guarantee.