Maritime Leadership Begins With People: Margareta Jensen Dickson on Inclusion, Courage and Change
- Yachting International Radio
- 6 days ago
- 8 min read
Maritime leadership is often measured in scale. Ships, ports, routes, passengers, freight, operational resilience and commercial reach all matter in an industry that operates every hour of every day. Yet the real test of leadership is not only found in the size of an organisation. It is found in how people are treated, how decisions are made, who is given room to speak, and whether the culture behind the operation is strong enough to carry the next generation forward.
For Margareta Jensen Dickson, Chief People and Communications Officer at Stena Line, leadership sits firmly in that human space. It is about people, values, responsibility, self-trust, difficult choices, motherhood, patience, and the courage required to change a traditional industry from within.
Her career did not begin in maritime. It moved through finance, HR, hospitality, retail, aviation and organisational transformation before she entered the ferry sector. That wider experience matters. It gave her a view of culture and people systems beyond shipping, and it helped shape the way she now approaches one of maritime’s most persistent challenges: how to build workplaces where different people can contribute fully.
Maritime Leadership Built From a Different Route
Margareta graduated in finance and economics in the early 1990s, but quickly realised that a career focused only on numbers was not the right fit. She describes herself as outgoing and drawn to people, which naturally led her toward HR and organisational roles.
Her professional path took her across industries where people, structure and change were central to the work. Hospitality, retail and aviation all offered different lessons in how teams function and how organisations evolve under pressure. During a major transformation within Swedish airports, she encountered several people with maritime backgrounds, including individuals who had worked at Stena Line.
“They said, ‘You’ve got the personality that would fit perfectly within Stena because we all have this entrepreneurial spirit.’”
That introduction became the start of a maritime career now more than a decade long. Margareta began with responsibility for HR operations in the Scandinavian countries. Over time, the role expanded. She later joined the board, first leading people and HR delivery before brand, crewing and communication were added to her remit.
It is a wide brief, but also a revealing one. People, brand, communication and crewing may sound like separate functions. In practice, they are deeply connected. A company’s reputation is shaped by the way it treats its employees, the way it communicates its values, and whether its culture can withstand the demands of daily operations.
The Scale Behind the Human Story
Stena Line is a major European ferry operator with Swedish roots and headquarters in Gothenburg. The company operates around 40 vessels, owns several ports across regions including the UK, Sweden and the Baltics, and has a workforce of roughly 7,700 people, including temporary staff.
The business runs continuously. Freight, passengers, vehicles, ports, routes and vessels all form part of an operation that does not pause. That level of scale makes culture more than an internal talking point. It becomes a business necessity.
In a 24/7 maritime environment, leadership has to travel across sea and shore, across nationalities, across departments, and across people with very different responsibilities. Inclusion cannot sit in a policy document and wait to be noticed. It has to show up in how people are trained, promoted, listened to and supported.
Entering a Male-Dominated Industry
Margareta did not enter maritime with a romanticised view of the sector. She had already worked in industries with different gender dynamics. Aviation, hospitality and retail had offered stronger female representation. Maritime was different.
At first, she did not dwell on the male-dominated nature of the industry. Part of that came from her upbringing. She grew up around a family business led by her grandfather and his four sons, and among the cousins, she was the only girl. Male-oriented environments were not unfamiliar.
Over time, however, she began to see the deeper issue. It was not only about gender. It was about sameness.
Many people had similar backgrounds. Many had been to sea before coming ashore. Many knew each other through long-standing industry relationships. The sector had deep experience, but it could also become self-reinforcing.
“The longer I worked, the more you realised it was more about the diversity, that everyone was quite alike.”
That observation is important because it moves the discussion beyond simple representation. Diversity is not only about who is present in a room. It is also about whether the room contains enough different perspectives to challenge assumptions, solve problems and adapt to a changing world.
Why Inclusion Has to Be More Than Policy
Margareta is clear that inclusion is good business. For her, it better reflects the world around the company and strengthens the way teams operate. But her view is not built on corporate language alone. It is tied to culture, values and history.
Stena Line’s values are deeply connected to the company’s Swedish heritage and to the maritime communities around the Gothenburg archipelago. In places where people went to sea and risk was part of life, care for one another was not sentimental. It was necessary.
That history still informs how Margareta sees leadership today.
“You can be strict, and you can be forceful in many ways, but you can do it with kindness as well.”
That is a sharper leadership statement than it may first appear. Kindness does not mean lowering standards. It means holding standards without stripping people of dignity. In a demanding maritime environment, that distinction matters.
Policies have a place, but Margareta does not see them as the source of real change. They must be backed by behaviour, accountability and leadership.
“You can have tons of policies. I’ve seen this elsewhere. You have policies, but it doesn’t happen anywhere. Actions speak louder than words.”
Maritime Leadership and Psychological Safety
One of the strongest themes in Margareta’s leadership approach is psychological safety. Inclusion, in her view, is not only about the number of women in management roles. It is about whether people can be themselves, express different opinions and speak up when something needs to be said.
That applies across sea and shore. It applies to women and men. It applies to younger employees, senior leaders, port teams, vessel teams and office-based roles.
Stena Line has set targets around gender balance, including an ambition to reach 30 percent women in managerial positions by 2030. Margareta acknowledges that some areas, such as deck and engine roles onboard vessels, may take longer to shift. But she also points to areas where progress can be made more actively, including freight, port management, safety management and broader leadership roles.
Targets matter. KPIs matter. Accountability matters. But culture determines whether those targets become lived reality.
Sea and Shore Must Not Be Separate Worlds
A notable part of Stena Line’s approach is the refusal to treat sea and shore as entirely separate people systems. Margareta explains that leadership development applies across the company, including through Stena Line’s own compulsory leadership programme, License to Lead.
The programme is designed for managers, supervisors and leaders across the organisation, including those in ports and those in management positions at sea.
This matters because maritime can easily become divided by function. Sea and shore often operate under different pressures, schedules and assumptions. But if leadership expectations are inconsistent, culture fragments.
Margareta’s view is that employees should be treated as part of one company. Whether someone works in finance, onboard sales and service, deck and engine, or port operations, the leadership standard should be shared.
Motherhood, Travel and Letting Go of Perfection
The human side of leadership becomes especially clear in Margareta’s reflections on motherhood. She is a mother of three and has built a senior career while travelling extensively, often spending significant time between Sweden and the UK.
She does not pretend that balance has been easy. Sweden’s social support systems, including parental leave and childcare structures, helped make career progression possible. So did family support, including an understanding husband. But even with support, choices had to be made.
Some mothers were more present at the school gates. Margareta was not always that mother. She has had to stand by the choices she made.
“You have to stand up for the choices you make.”
That sentence carries the reality of many women’s careers. Ambition still requires explanation in ways it often does not for men. Margareta does not apologise for enjoying her work, but she also does not pretend there was no cost.
She also recognises the need to let go of perfection. After returning home late from travel, she once noticed that her husband had changed the bedsheets, but they did not match. Her answer was simple: leave it.
That small domestic detail says something larger about leadership and life. Not everything can be controlled. Not everything has to be perfect. Sometimes progress requires accepting help, releasing unnecessary standards and focusing on what truly matters.
Patience, Delivery and the Courage to Stay
When reflecting on advice she would give her younger self, Margareta chooses patience. She also speaks of being kinder to herself.
For women in maritime, frustration can build quickly. Change can be slow. Rooms can be difficult. Progress can feel uneven. It is easy to reach the point of wanting to leave.
Margareta understands that feeling, but she also sees the value in staying long enough to create impact.
“Change doesn’t happen overnight.”
Her advice is not passive. It is practical. Patience must be matched by delivery. Results matter. Credibility is built by doing what you said you would do.
“You have to deliver what you’ve promised.”
That is the harder part of leadership. It is not enough to care about change. It is not enough to want a better industry. Influence grows when values are matched by competence, consistency and results.
Learning to Trust Instinct
One of Margareta’s most revealing lessons comes from a moment of failure. In a previous professional situation, she was advised to handle a difficult matter in a way that did not feel right to her. Her instinct told her there was a better approach, but she did not speak up.
She was not yet senior enough, or confident enough, to challenge the room. The people around her were all men, and she assumed they must know more than she did.
They did not.
The decision created problems, and she was left with the lesson that her instinct had been right.
“My instinct was there. So I think that’s something that I’ve learned, to listen to your instinct, trust it, and dare to speak up.”
For many women in senior spaces, that lesson is familiar. Confidence often arrives after the moment when it was needed. But once learned, it becomes part of leadership maturity.
Mentoring the Next Generation
Margareta now takes pleasure in supporting younger people entering the workforce, including younger women and men. Her focus is no longer only on her own progression, but on helping others navigate the system with more confidence than she may have had earlier in her career.
Her hope is grounded, not naive. She admits disappointment that equality has not moved further in the last 30 or 40 years. The maritime industry still has major work to do. Representation remains uneven. Cultural change remains slow.
But she also sees value in looking outside maritime for lessons. Technology, finance and other sectors have faced similar challenges and, in some areas, moved more quickly. Maritime does not need to solve every problem from scratch. It can learn, adapt and apply what has worked elsewhere.
People, Brand and Reputation Are the Same Conversation
Margareta’s responsibility for people, communication, brand and crewing gives her a clear view of how reputation is built. A company’s people are its ambassadors. So are its customers. How people speak about a company reflects how they experience it.
That means brand is not just visual identity. It is behaviour. It is culture. It is whether employees feel respected, whether customers feel valued and whether the organisation’s stated values are visible in everyday decisions.
In maritime, where recruitment, retention and public trust are increasingly important, that connection is critical. The companies that understand the relationship between people and reputation will be better positioned for the future.
The Human Side of Maritime Leadership
Margareta Jensen Dickson’s story is not simply about reaching a senior title. It is about what leadership requires once someone gets there.
It requires patience without complacency. Kindness without weakness. Accountability without box-ticking. Ambition without apology. Inclusion without performance. And, perhaps most importantly, the courage to speak when instinct says something is wrong.
The maritime industry is changing because it has to. Decarbonisation, technology, workforce expectations, recruitment challenges and generational shifts are already reshaping the sector. But none of those changes can be managed properly without people.
Ships may carry the industry forward, but people decide where it goes next. That is where maritime leadership begins.
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