Clever leadership can transform a state’s smallness into an asset when promoting national and international interests at home and abroad. Good leadership skills are required to correctly prioritize and bargain in international surroundings. Small states need to defend their interest in their key sectors and within these sectors they need to be able to demonstrate leadership, offer clever solutions to problems, and wield positive influence. This can be achieved through consensus-forming, policy innovation and figure-heading external initiatives. It is thus vital for a small state to develop administrative competence in key areas and provide leaders with knowledge that will help them in taking initiative when needed and drive forward coalitions in issues the small state wants to move forward. Leadership skills are imperative to make this happen and secure successful diplomacy for a small state.

The Copenhagen Summer School was supposed to hosted form 10 August - 15 August 2020, under the heading "Small State Foreign Policy: Taking Leadership in International Diplomacy". The planning of the school and admittance of students was well on its way when the school had to be cancelled because of Covid-19. The was to offer a comprehensive introduction to small state leadership in international diplomacy and introduce students to the literatures on foreign policy analysis and small state foreign policy and build on these general insights when zooming in on small state leadership in foreign policy and diplomacy.