Leading with trust: A journey of cultural change and personal growth

Auður Ýr Sveinsdóttir is Director of Airport Security at Keflavik Airport, Isavia, Iceland’s international airport. She has been part of the cultural transformation in the Icelandic company from the beginning, and her motivation was to create a workplace of constructive culture built on trust. Employee satisfaction has gone up significantly, but just as important is what Auður learnt about her own defence mechanisms along the way, mechanisms that go back all the way to her childhood.

This is the story in Auður’s own words about what she learnt about herself, and why she feels freer than ever before. Free to be herself and free to show trust.

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For me, this journey has been ten years in the making – ten years of learning about myself and the patterns I’ve carried with me through life and how this learning has in turn impacted everything in and around me, and my leadership of course as well.

When I joined Isavia five years ago, I became responsible for a large team of 300-500 employees. With my management team, we identified opportunities for improvements early on, some of which might be considered quite drastic, but we felt strong resistance from the employees to those. Despite using well-known methods for change management, we were unable to overcome this resistance and realised that there were things beneath the surface that kept us from meeting our goals.

We had to face the fact that the culture of our workplace was quite aggressive with reluctance to address difficult issues. We were missing the key element of trust as a foundation for growth. Our employees did not perceive themselves safe to speak their minds, and there was little openness between employees, frontline leaders and the management team. As we knew it is impossible to grow a healthy culture in an unfertile soil, we began our journey to a trusting and constructive culture at Keflavík Airport Security.

First, we focused on the management team by learning about our own behaviours and the importance of leading by example. Soon after, we turned to the frontline leadership team, where we concentrated on building capability and confidence among those closest to the operation.

For more than a year and a half, we worked on understanding behaviours, role-modelling, shifting old habits and building the courage to step into conflict constructively while holding ourselves and each other accountable for success.

As we navigated this new path together, we began to see changes in our workplace culture. Leaders stepped firmly into their roles, finding their voices, leading with clarity and giving constructive feedback while showing empathy, accountability, honesty and empowerment.

Soon, we felt a positive shift: people were genuinely happier to come to work, and our results reflected improvements in both employee satisfaction and passenger experience.

Despite these promising results, we know our transformational journey is far from complete. Changing the culture of a large organisation is a long-term commitment that demands patience and resilience. We remain focused on our ultimate goal: to become an excellent workplace where trust, openness and collaboration are the foundation for everything we do.

As it happens sometimes during transformational changes, some of our employees discovered that our new journey was not for them. That was a risk I as a leader decided to take on and remain true to our cause. In the end, I am proud of my decision and the success that we have achieved.   

Along the way, I’ve learned a lot about my own patterns, especially my tendency to be impatient, my perfectionism, my need to be accepted and always prepared for the worst.

Over time, in working with my leadership coach, I began to see what was beneath that armour. I realised that a part of my perfectionism came from something much deeper. When I lost my brother as a teenager and later my mother, I carried a hidden belief that I had to live twice as much, almost as if to live for those who didn’t. That belief gave me speed and drive, but it also created enormous pressure. It kept me in a constant state of doing, of proving, of never feeling enough.

My urge to control the outcomes so that the navigation would be safe was also taking its toll and draining my energy. Letting go of this has turned out to be one of the biggest gifts I have given myself.

Learning to live in a flow as opposed to living in a predetermined route has filled my life with much more happiness than I could have imagined.

Seeing that clearly was one of the hardest and most healing things I’ve done. Now that I’ve faced it, I feel free – free from the weight of having to be perfect and accepted by others free to simply be myself.

That acceptance has given me peace of heart. I’m more comfortable in my own skin. Now, I recognise my own patterns and that enables me to see those same patterns in others. Instead of judgement, I now strive to show others the same understanding and support I show myself.

How this work has touched my personal life

These learnings haven’t stayed within the walls of work. They’ve changed how I move through my life. I’ve learned to set boundaries – to recognise when to serve others and when to care for myself. That has made me more present with my family and friends and less driven by the old urge to control or perfect everything around me.

For many years, fear shaped how I loved – fear that something bad would happen, that I might lose someone close. It took time to understand how that fear still lived in me. But when I finally faced it, the weight began to lift.

Today, I feel freer than ever before. Free to be myself. Free to trust. And free to live my life not out of fear, but out of love for myself and for the people around me.

I see my life and my leadership as a continuous journey. I’ve promised myself to stay curious – to look at what I discover about myself without judgement, be patient and give change the time it needs. I no longer rush to the next solution. I’m learning to trust the process, to keep growing, and to let my light shine.

Because in the end, when trust becomes the foundation, everything else – leadership, culture and growth – can truly flourish.

Auður Ýr Sveinsdóttir
Director of Airport Security at Isavia