Leadership & Resilience – Leading From the Front
Pekka Metsaranta is a career consultant and founder of Sisua Limited that focuses on leading organisational transformations and mergers and acquisitions. His leadership experience spans from being an officer in the Finnish Arm reserves, to leading global programmes and building his business. Here he shares his insights from over 25 years of experience in leading from the front under complex, high stress situations working with diverse teams across the globe.
Growing up in Finland, resilience was never a concept I studied it was simply part of the cultural fabric. Finland has mandatory conscription, and like countless young Finns before me, I joined the army at eighteen. What struck me most was how different leadership looked there compared to the outside world. Leadership in the Finnish Defence Forces is not about rank or authority although that does play its own role; it is about merit, humility, competence, and your ability to inspire people from every background imaginable. It’s a melting pot of all facets of society for one critical mission – to safeguard the sovereign integrity of the worlds happiest country. My early exposure to leadership came not from theory, but from watching real leaders bring unity and focus to diverse teams in moments of uncertainty and in the heat of what the army does best.
This came to life even more vividly in the training that we were provided as emerging leaders – the quiet strength required to lead — the kind that doesn’t draw attention to itself, but anchors people when everything around them feels unsteady. Leadership is fundamentally about example. You cannot ask people to do something you are not willing to do yourself. You must show them the path forward, especially when the terrain is unclear.
In the army, I learned what “leading from the front” really meant. It wasn’t about shouting instructions or appearing tough —-it was about setting the tone through action. If I wanted the team to push through exhaustion, I had to push first. If I needed them to stay calm under pressure, I had to remain composed. Through this came an essential realisation: humility and continuous learning are not soft skills – they are survival skills. They are what keep teams aligned, motivated, and willing to follow you into challenging situations.
Stepping into the world of consulting, I quickly discovered that ambiguity and complexity are not occasional visitors but permanent residents. Fast-moving environments, shifting client expectations, and ever-evolving problems became the norm. Leadership here required far more than domain knowledge. It demanded empathy, compassion, and the ability to create clarity when there was none. I found myself drawing heavily on those early military principles. Inspire through calmness, lead with humanity, and guide people through uncertainty with a steady hand.
At the same time, consulting forced me to hold up a mirror to my leadership style. Success required not only solving problems but helping others succeed: clients, colleagues, stakeholders. This alignment of people, processes, and outcomes demanded an ability to influence without controlling, to support without smothering, to steer without dictating. The army taught me to bring people with me; consulting taught me how to do that in conditions where everyone had different motivations, constraints, and pressures all the while focusing on the ultimate outcome – our clients success.
And then came the biggest test of all; building Sisua. Moving from leading teams to leading a business is a seismic shift. Suddenly, the ambiguity and complexity that I had grown used to in consulting multiplied. Everything became my responsibility: the wellbeing of my people, the expectations of clients, the financial health of the business, the culture we were shaping, and the long-term direction of an organisation that existed because I created it. In many ways, it was a return to those military lessons: keep moving forward, even when the path isn’t fully visible.
Starting Sisua forced me to accept a truth my father once told me: “It is lonely at the top.” When you’re responsible for people’s livelihoods, their mortgages, their careers, their sense of safety, it creates a weight that is difficult to describe. But that weight shapes you. It forces you to balance multiple identities: the leader the business needs, the partner your clients rely on, the support your teams look to, and the human being who must continue to grow and evolve and somehow balance everything else that life brings.
To cope with that loneliness, I had to lean even harder on continuous learning. I sought out networks, read voraciously, listened to podcasts, and absorbed perspectives far outside my comfort zone. Most critically, I listened to my team. They taught me where I needed to improve, what they needed from me, and what blind spots I carried. Leadership became less about being the expert and more about being the person who could create direction, remove obstacles, and empower others to thrive.
Through this journey, one thing has become crystal clear: leadership is not a position it is a practice. It is the daily act of choosing courage over comfort, responsibility over ego, clarity over certainty. It is about showing resilience in moments when you want to collapse, staying calm when the stakes are high, and making decisions that serve not your own interests but the long-term good of your people and your organisation.
The principles I learned in the army – merit-based leadership, humility, perseverance, and leading from the front – remain the foundation of how I lead today. Consulting taught me how to apply them in complex civilian environments. Building Sisua forced me to live them fully, without safety nets. Leadership and resilience are inseparable; resilience is not just the ability to endure, but the ability to inspire others while doing so.
And ultimately, leadership is not measured in how loudly you give orders, but in how deeply people trust you to guide them when the world feels uncertain.
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