If you’re leading internationals in Denmark, you’ve likely noticed something: internationals often don’t rise through the ranks. They arrive with impressive experience and diverse perspectives and are hired with great enthusiasm, but once they’ve settled inside the organisation, something changes. 

Many internationals struggle to move up, and others quietly leave. Some never quite find their footing, even if they’re highly qualified, to the loss of both themselves and their company.

A “vocabulary” that internationals don’t know

It’s not about lack of talent. It’s about structures, norms, and expectations (‘systems’) that end up hindering internationals and harming the company even when no one means for this to happen.

In Denmark, careers are built not only on competence, but on cultural understanding, informal networks, and social markings. Danes know this instinctively. It’s second nature, they’ve grown up with it. Internationals haven’t.

That doesn’t make internationals less capable. It just means they’re playing a game and nobody told them what the rules are. As a leader, especially if you’re an international yourself, this is where your role matters because even if you’ve created an inclusive team culture, you are still operating inside a broader Danish system, and that system tends to reward familiarity. People promote what they recognize, they trust what feels like “one of us.”

Teamwork

So, if you want to support your international team members, you can’t do it alone. You need to engage your colleagues, HR, and yes, the Danes around your internationals. It takes a collective awareness to ensure that talent is “retained”, which in reality means seen and supported – and not accidentally sidelined.

Here’s where to start:

• Talk to HR. Ask how talent is spotted, developed, and promoted. Who gets informal mentoring? Who gets stretch assignments?
• Have an open discussion with your leadership colleagues and bring your curiosity. How does your group promote talent? Are your Danish colleagues including internationals in informal lunches, the quick chats, the small decisions? Do they (as is often done) use their own network to help top talent land their next job in other companies? And would they do that for internationals too?
• Talk about these patterns. Don’t wait for internationals to be sidelined or leave. Look at who moves upwards, who doesn’t, and ask why. The company needs you to do that. So just ask.

This isn’t about “special treatment.” It’s about recognising that the same behaviours don’t produce the same outcomes across groups. This isn’t about favouritism, it’s about leadership. Because if internationals aren’t advancing, then the system is functioning exactly as it was designed years ago back when nearly all employees were Danish. And that’s no longer tenable.

Outcomes and intentions

And yes, I know this topic can make Danes uncomfortable. Some may feel they’re being accused of something they didn’t intend. But that’s not the point. We don’t need to question intentions. What matters is the outcome, and if the result is exclusion, then we have a responsibility to look at the structures, habits, and blind spots that led to this.

A quick sidebar: Yes, this is diversity and inclusion. And no, this isn’t about being “nice.” It’s about seeing what is ‘real’ and making deliberate choices and facing issues that affect people’s lives and the future of our companies. We are not talking about “free rounds.” We are talking about a needed shift in leadership practice. DEI demands something of us, and if it feels harder now than it did a few months ago, that’s not a sign that the agenda has failed. It’s a sign that we’re finally getting serious.