You have the potential to change you organizations for better. Are you willing to share your story with the world?
Recent developments in marketing strategies have introduced a new angle to corporate leadership. The key to connecting with the target audience and helping them see beyond the product/service’s material value is impactful storytelling.
Providing a psychological perspective on leadership, Jennifer A. Chatman and Jessica A. Kennedy have stated the three roles of a leader managing an organization.
- Develop an intentional model of organizing, especially when starting an organization.
- Cultivate a strong, strategically relevant, and adaptable culture that helps to ensure that people execute their strategy.
- Send a clear and consistent signal to followers across the organization.
The above basics have something striking in common, communication. And when talking about leadership communication, the first name that strikes the mind is Steve Jobs. The man, as per his famous quote, transformed the corporate world singlehandedly. Job’s dramatic narration gave him the edge needed to not only be a successful innovator, but also a revolutionary business storyteller. His impact was such that Forbes declared him the World’s Greatest Business Storyteller, and it is this very compelling attribute that gravitated customers towards Apple, its products were to be used and appreciated later. As the face of his brand, Steve Jobs won people’s favor to try out his products simply with the help of a PowerPoint presentation and a convincing story.
Company leaders need to give their voice that riveting edge to build a brand image; for this purpose, they could either refer to their personal life, the company’s values, or both. Mat Zucker, in collaboration with Julia Dowling, wrote an article on Forbes laying out the personalities of CEOs that use their “Heart” and/or “Head” to narrate their business stories.
Alongside representing the company’s functional and statistical features, promoting the brand value and culture through storytelling has also become the talk among leaders in the world of commerce. Leaders carry are responsible for the logistics and values of the business to both their employees and the target audience.
Inferring from the chart shown above, leadership archetypes were derived by combining different traits to refer to leaders currently leading the business world.
- The Humanizer (Heart + Heart): Delta’s Ed Bastian combines both his personal and professional life to communicate the company’s principles to the world. The homogenous combination of both has allowed the business to be perceived beyond the rigid walls of statistics.
- The Storyteller (Personal Heart + Company Head): With an emphasis on expanding Microsoft’s business to develop automation and AI, Satya Nadella refers to his personal life to evolve the face of business storytelling.
- The Advocate (Personal Head + Company Heart): Margaret Keane of Synchrony vocalizes her industry experience by balancing it with giving Synchrony and its employees a moral purpose for the communities they serve.
- The Thought Leader (Head + Head): Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase has become a name in accelerating the business forward by making use of global economic forums and national political platforms that allow him to maintain a professional hold on his foundation.
- Company Heart: The Lifer: Being at Costco for 25 years has trained Craig Jelinek to temper the values and purpose of the brand to derive Costco’s growth story without diving much into his personal life.
- Company Head: The Operator: Fidelity’s Abby Johnson keeps her personal life private by shifting the entire focus on the company. She makes rare public appearances, and when she does, they are reported to talk about Fidelity’s statistical whereabouts.
Building a narrative for your company must arise from the needs of your business and audience dynamics. Depending on the current trend of storytelling surrounding business, a leader needs to understand what the target audience wants to hear. Today, people look beyond business as a transaction; instead, the brand is equated to a human with principles and vision that reflects a purpose beyond making profits.
Giovanni Gavetti, in a Harvard Business Review article, suggests that “strategic leaders must also be practitioner psychologists who expertly analyze and manage their own and others’ thought processes”. In competing with other organizations, as he believes, leaders often zero their focus on competition and overlook rewarding opportunities. He establishes that all strategic leaders have a similar mindset and tend to overlook the same opportunities.
Gavetti then talks about a “radical shift” in the business economy that shifts attention “from markets to minds, from strategic leaders who need to understand and cope with market forces to ones who also need to understand and cope with mental processes”. The ability to understand mental processes is exactly what today’s leaders need to possess in order to compete smartly and efficiently — both with other organizations and their target audience.
You have the potential to change you organizations for better. Are you willing to share your story with the world?
