A New Spin on CEO Interviews

So, the time has come to create a unique and dynamic video for your company. It has to be something that captivates the internal teams as well as current and potential clients. Most of us have sat through company seminars where you’re forced to listen to how innovative and incredible your company and bosses are—and you’ve probably fallen asleep.

Comedian and CEO of Nerdist Industries, Chris Hardwick said it best when he said, “No human ever became interesting by not failing. The more you fail and recover and improve, the better you are as a person. Ever meet someone who’s always had everything work out for them with zero struggle? They usually have the depth of a puddle. Or they don’t exist.”

Let’s be honest—people don’t work for companies, they work for people. The majority of employees want to work for people that they like or at least can relate to. We all love to be shown in our best light, but maybe showing your employees how you struggled early in your career will encourage them to persevere.

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There’s a reason why people love to hear the stories of J.K. Rowling’s dozen or so rejection letters for the first Harry Potter manuscript or that of Thomas Edison being told by a teacher that he wasn’t smart enough to be taught—everyone knows what it feels like to fail. We have all had a project that just missed the mark or a dream that gets shattered in an instant, and we want to know that someone else has been there too.It’s not that people can’t be inspired by tales of success, but you always admire the person who can admit when they’ve been wrong and have still dusted themselves off to succeed later on.

As author Eloise Ristad brilliantly proclaimed, “When we give ourselves permission to fail, we, at the same time, give ourselves permission to excel.”

By showcasing a failure, you give your employees the space to experiment and be bold. This is the philosophy of inventor Astro Teller who is the head of X, formerly known as Google X. In Teller’s 2016 TedTalk, he makes the point that when you immediately try to figure out what is wrong with a product or idea, it can lead you down a more successful path.

So, maybe your company video is a compilation of top leadership talking about their biggest career struggles or how that once-promising project that never got off of the ground made you stronger as a team.

Whatever you decide, make it something different—make it something that people will remember. There’s never been a better time than right now to break the mold. Lead the way for your employees to feel empowered and more productive. There are countless emails and memos that are sent out by companies all the time, but there are only a handful of opportunities to really connect with the people who work for you. Let us help make your next video, your best one yet.