About Oskar

How I got here

I grew up on Resarö, an island outside Stockholm. Nature was always close: summers sailing in the archipelago, winters in the Swedish mountains. A few days after finishing school I flew to Greece and stayed for the summer. It set off an interest in the world that never wore off.

The following winter I worked at a Swedish ski resort. After military service I studied German in Germany and ended up at a hotel school in Switzerland, where the student body came from more than 55 nationalities. My second year was at their sister school in Australia, my third back in Switzerland. After graduating I spent six months in Bali, then came home to Sweden as a sales manager for various hotel chains. In 2007 I moved to Dubai to work for Sheraton Jumeirah.

Altogether I have lived in seven countries, thirteen of those years in Dubai, travelled in more than fifty, and interacted with people from an estimated 150-plus nationalities. It shaped how I see leadership: what feels self-evident is usually just what happens to be common where you are standing.

Ten years on the buying side

Between 2010 and 2020 I was a Regional Vice President at HelmsBriscoe, one of the largest meetings and events procurement companies in the world. The remit was broad: building and leading a team, growing the business, selling, marketing and recruiting.

The team sat in Sweden, Germany, England, Switzerland, India, Bulgaria and the United States. Leading across time zones and cultural differences was not something I read up on before a talk. It was the job, for ten years.

And because the work sat on the buying side, I have seen what makes a conference land and what makes one quietly fall flat. It is an unusual background for a speaker, and it shows: I know what an organiser needs to know before booking, and how a speaker is fitted into a programme rather than parked beside it.

The goals that became TUGS

One of my school teachers suggested we write down our goals. I wrote down ten goals for the coming five years. Five years later I found the list and discovered that nine of them had happened. That began a lifelong interest in our capacity to shape our own future.

In 2012 I started taking groups out into the desert outside Dubai to work out their goals. TUGS – The Ultimate Goal Seminar – became a success, but it cannot be run in the summer heat. So in 2017 I moved the concept to Sweden and swapped the desert for a catamaran cruising between the islands I grew up on. Five minutes before the first workshop it started to snow. Not common in May, but it happens.

What I inherited from my mother

My mother, Gunilla Andermo, worked with joy at work in Swedish organisations through the 1980s and 90s. For five years she taught it on behalf of TBV, a Swedish adult education association, and by the time the press wrote about her some fifty workplaces had been left happier for her visit. As a small child I tagged along to her events.

I am honoured to carry that work forward. What has changed is the technology, and that organisations are now global.

And from my father

My father has worked with technology most of his life, and is an entrepreneur besides. In the 1980s he bought a Macintosh, and that was that. On his side of the family everyone is an engineer. That is where the curiosity about new technology comes from, the one I bring into my talks.

It is also why I have never treated AI and human development as two separate subjects. I grew up between them.

Mental training changed everything

My interest in personal development started in my early twenties. In 2005 I bought my first iPod and filled it with learning material instead of music: Brian Tracy, Jack Canfield, Tony Robbins. Once you have worked on yourself for a while, you want to work with others.

I went looking for a coaching qualification and found mental training, the method developed by professor of psychology Lars-Eric Uneståhl. I was certified in 2012 and have kept studying since. I believe in lifelong learning, and intend to keep at it.

Background in brief

• Regional Vice President, HelmsBriscoe, 2010–2020
• Certified mental trainer since 2012, in Lars-Eric Uneståhl’s method
• NLP Trainer, certified through INLPTA
• Board member of the Swedish NLP association
• Certifications in mental training, mindfulness, coaching, NLP, positive psychology and happiness research
• Author of Future-Proof Yourself (2023) and The Smartphone Coaching System (2012)
• International – lived in seven countries, thirteen years in Dubai, travelled in more than fifty

The work sits in three parts

Here, as a speaker and author. Through Chikara Consulting, where the change is implemented. And through Strategic Tech Coaching, where the method is made repeatable.