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Wolfgang K. Eckelt works as a headhunter and executive coach in the automotive industry.
He completed a master’s degree at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, and later did his doctorate at the University of Bremen.
In his latest book, "Unicorn Branding", he gives tips on how high performers can become personal brands and how to make them visible.
Photo: Bloomberg / Getty Images
manager magazin
: Mr. Eckelt, in your new book you recommend company bosses to become unicorns.
What does that mean exactly?
Wolfgang Eckelt
: The special thing about the unicorn is that it has special, unmistakable characteristics and is therefore immediately recognizable to everyone.
Many companies, especially medium-sized companies, are secret world market or technology leaders who only wanted to score points with their products or their innovations.
That was enough for many decades, but in the age of social media it is becoming increasingly important that the companies are known to the public and tell their story authentically.
Hence my plastic advice: Every manager should become a unicorn.
So that means company bosses should market their own personality? What's in that for the company?
When a company has a boss who stands for certain values and content and who also communicate these in a very credible way both internally and externally, on the one hand it increases the sense of unity in the company and increases motivation.
But it also increases the so-called retention.
This means that employees like to stay in the company and other talents want to work for it.
In the best case scenario, this increases the company's market value.
Do you have an example?
Former US head of Telekom, John J. Legere, preferred to wear magenta t-shirts and long hair.
His appearance and appearance made him so well-known and popular that he has demonstrably increased Telekom's stock market price - and with it his personal income.
Do you think John J. Legere is the prototype of a unicorn?
Certainly, at that time he wanted to initiate a cultural change in the company with his very relaxed dress code and present it as the top brand ambassador.
Dieter Zetsche did a similar thing at Daimler ...
By wearing designer jeans instead of a suit ...
Yes, often paired with a jacket and sneakers.
And with this new look, he initiated the cultural change at Daimler and documented it externally.
And I think he was the role model for the fact that today hardly any CEO worldwide still wears a tie at a balance sheet press conference.
For Daimler, he was the perfect unicorn.
There are certainly many more examples.
But the question is always: to what extent is it artificial or authentic.
How exactly do I become a unicorn? Is a striking appearance enough?
No, not. That was actually the impetus for my book that the personal branding debate is completely wrong. "Personal branding" is currently one of the buzzwords par excellence. The digital natives in particular announce success strategies for as many followers as possible on LinkedIn or other social networks by writing scripts with messages for the CEO. The candidate's personality, industry and leadership experience are often not addressed at all by these ambassadors. And that bothered me enormously. It's not just a criterion like the jeans that makes me a unicorn, but the overall package of performance, attitude and charisma on the relevant stages. It's also about more than image and followers, but about measurable performance and of course also about maintaining real relationships.Just take Elon Musk, he doesn't attract attention with special clothing and is still a unicorn.
What distinguishes him?
Elon Musk always manages to reinvent himself and he communicates this through his own channels such as Twitter.
Elon Musk got rid of his marketing and corporate communications because he says: I am the brand.
He even says it himself!
What happens if a unicorn like that leaves the company? What's next?
Then, first of all, there is a great culture shock and a great change in culture.
Because this unicorn has shaped a culture and with every successor there is rarely a continuation.
Nobody likes to follow in the footsteps of their predecessors.
And so that you don't make yourself comparable, it is advisable to find your own way, your own style and to set different accents.
What risks do I bear as a unicorn that is very public?
Of course, it is important that I keep my brand and service promises and actually stand up for the values that I convey to the outside world.
If a unicorn has adorned his professional and private life with fake or someone else's feathers, it ruins credibility and can trigger a landslide.
You are referring to the Green Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock ...
The example shows that it is never risk-free to be public.
In your opinion, what predominates: the opportunities or the risks as a unicorn?
Over the decades I have got to know managers all over the world and have been able to study their personalities: There is hardly a person in the front row who does not have the will to shape things and a certain amount of self-confidence. Only the boundary between a healthy willingness to communicate, which you definitely need as a manager to allow employees and the public to participate in the visions, and an approach of "I love myself so much" are fluid. The latter representatives overshot their narcissism and their desire to be a unicorn. And that describes exactly the dilemma: Opportunity and risk are very close to one another in "personal branding".