Brand Story Coaching

In this conversation about truth and spectacle, Alex and Ivan look back at how they apply coaching to brands, and get really excited about the power of a good core story.

We discuss what brand story coaching is and why do we think it matters.

Our simple definition of a brand is that it’s a collective story that helps a group of people achieve a common goal. 

Organisations should be consistent with that story when they communicate with the world and themselves, and express it beautifully wherever they do their work.

As brand coaches we help organisations understand the stories that already exist within, make them visible to everybody, and get alignment and agreement on what their core story is. We then enable people to tell that story themselves in the best possible way with the help of creative tools.

In coaching one of the core objectives is to build accountability, and if you coach teams it’s all about building shared accountability. 

If you translate that into brand coaching it’s about building shared accountability around one story, one brand. Not relying on one department and asking them to tell that story to a client or audience, but being able, comfortable and confident to tell that story right here and now yourself.

The biggest change moving from brand experts and consultants to a methodology of coaching and co-ownership of the brand is that everyone understands the core story, and owns how they share that story. It could be how they represent the brand in a service, or how they introduce themselves to clients, or how they react in social media.

• We’ve discovered that brand coaching enables our clients to get down to the core, to cut down all the noise that is around things. 

• It’s vital to first unearth the stories that already exist across the organisation, let everyone hear them, and then craft them into a brand story.

• Brand coaching helps create accountability, and gives people permission to do things themselves and own them. In an organisation or a product team, you do that collectively. We all have shared permission, accountability, and responsibility for the brand. 

Which is really exciting because suddenly its your brand and the story belongs to you.

That’s pretty cool.

Alex Mecklenburg is a creative business and leadership coach at Consequential CIC, a fellow of the RSA,  and storyteller in residence at SIX, the Global Social Innovation Exchange. Ivan Pols is the creative director of what3words. Together they are the co-founders of Truth & Spectacle, creative consultancy coaches.   

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A Gentle and Awesome Creativity

When we started Truth & Spectacle, it was done with the belief that people are more creative than they imagine. 

We assumed that being ‘creative’ was something that teams and organisations wanted to be - but we learned quickly that it wasn’t that straightforward. To many people creativity is a ‘gift you’re born with’, for others creativity evokes stories of ego, genius, loudness or elitism.

We'd like people to experience creativity as an inclusive, more gentle force.

In this podcast Alex and Ivan talk about the definitions of creativity, the associations of the “creative” label and some simple, useful principles to work with.

We discuss how we design creative processes that balance idea ownership and craft, the delight of making new connections in teams, and being surprised by your colleagues.

Creativity is a journey that has lots of paths, many are correct. We’ve even transformed our own way of being creative.

It’s a skill you can learn. Teams can get better at questioning, connecting, imagining and making. 

If you’re interested in this topic for your organisation we’ve designed a new, more inclusive workshop. [create space] is a workshop game that’s designed to help every member of your team develop their ability to think creatively about big questions and turn their ideas into actions. It’s surprising and fun and you can see more here.

Look after yourselves wherever you are and keep creating. We hope you enjoy the episode.

Alex Mecklenburg is a creative business and leadership coach at Consequential CIC, a fellow of the RSA,  and storyteller in residence at SIX, the Global Social Innovation Exchange. Ivan Pols is the creative director of what3words. Together they are the co-founders of Truth & Spectacle, a creative consultancy.   

Subscribe to this podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher.

Find us on LinkedIn: Alex or Ivan / Twitter: Alex or Ivan

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Stuff we mentioned in the show:

• [create space] - a workshop game

• Slack - business messaging

• Figma - UX design tool

• Truth & Spectacle - creative business consultants

• Monday - project management

• Frame.io - video management platform