The importance of storytelling among leaders
Storytelling, or telling a story, is not a pitch, writes the managing director of Mashup Communications. Company leaders who want to win the trust of employees often need professional help to motivate their "people".
Storytelling, or telling a story, is not a competitive struggle, writes the managing director of Mashup Communications in Berlin. Together with Miriam Rupp, Nora Feist advises company managers who want to gain the trust of their employees, who want to motivate their "people" to do more for the company.
Nora Feist is convinced that the audience is not only won over by success stories. But when managers also tell of their own fears, defeats and challenges, the audience really empathizes and sides with the protagonist. And the hero's journeys of individual employees also promote internal appreciation and weld the workforce together into a real team.
The employee magazine
What dreams are driving them? What crises and conflicts have they already overcome? The classic employee magazine relaunched digitally is particularly well suited for complex stories and is also compatible with location-independent and flexible working. In this way, external employees, freelancers and employees in home offices or other dependencies also become part of the corporate culture.
Five years ago, Microsoft created one of the best brand storytelling websites: Microsoft Story Labs. The interactive and visually rich articles, podcasts, cartoons and even books are less about Microsoft products and more about the vision and motivation of the people behind them. The magazine began with a single story called "88 Acres" about Darrel Smith, R&D manager at Microsoft.
Instead of relying on multi-million dollar add-ons to measure the energy consumption of all the company's buildings, he developed software in his spare time that could do all that. And what started as a single story changed the entire corporate communications for the technology company. Today, employees and job candidates, as well as journalists, other companies, designers and influencers, follow the stories.
As work becomes increasingly flexible and independent, internal communication must also change. Digital storytelling ensures that employees are equally involved and emotionally bound to the brand, even across distances. Internal apps and social networks, video wrap-ups and online magazines provide space for content that is not only about the job, but also about the people behind it.
Example: Elon Musk
On August 2, 2008, SpaceX had just completed its third failed rocket launch. CEO Elon Musk, until then not known as a great speaker, stepped in front of his 350-strong team. He had always known it wouldn't be easy, yet they had accomplished something few other countries have, let alone companies. The first start had been successful, now it was time to get up again and continue there.
"I, for one, will never give up - ever," Musk said. According to legend, most employees would have followed the founder to hell with just a bit of sunscreen after this speech, writes Chris Anderson in his book "TED Talks - The Art of Public Speaking".
Musk's example shows that managers always play a key role in internal communications and are therefore crucial for a company's employer branding. According to McKinsey, especially for young talents, personal development opportunities, meaningful tasks and lived corporate values are far more enticing in an employer brand than status symbols such as a company car or corner office.
CEOs like Elon Musk, for example, rely on transformational leadership, i.e., on long-term visions with the goal of collective corporate success. If the team is to be addressed at the value level and emotionally tied to the brand, the power of collective stories can work wonders. Especially in large companies with many employees and different projects, where flexible working is becoming increasingly important, digital storytelling formats can help spread the right messages within the team.
Living corporate culture
Because the transformational leadership approach is based on values, building, nurturing, and living these attributes on a daily basis is critical. So it's not enough to set up fancy values and just put them on the website. Every employee, every action, every communication measure must reflect these values if a corporate culture is to be established. Today, internal communication no longer means preparing slick "press releases" from the communications department, but celebrating real liveliness.
Interactive employee apps or internal social networks, for example, help: On the one hand, employees can contribute their own ideas and management receives regular feedback from the team. On the other hand, the digital tools continue the corporate culture like a common thread and also offer room for gamification approaches. However, when companies and their internal structures change, it is often a challenge for managers to remind the whole team of this red thread. Weekly or monthly wrap-ups in video format can help in change management to keep one's own employees always up to date.
In this way, even small steps on the way to the big vision become visible to everyone. A digital brand book, on the other hand, makes it easier for new employees in particular to get to grips with the corporate culture.
Knowledge management instead of recruiting
Almost 50 percent of German companies have difficulty finding qualified and talented specialists for their vacancies. Retaining one's own team thus becomes a decisive competitive advantage. Instead of always hiring new experts, in many areas the company's own talents can be promoted through further training and thus completely new areas of responsibility can be opened up.
Internal e-learning platforms are ideal for sharing existing knowledge, exchanging ideas, and making training courses available to all employees. A corporate academy is also an excellent supplement to the existing brand book when training new employees.
