Thecla SchreudersHead of Strategy

You honed your storytelling skills working on various TV series; tell us about that…

My favourite was Brain Story, presented by Prof Susan Greenfield, which was all about how our brains make us who we are. It was rooted in hard core neuroscience but all the information was delivered through stories about real people, many with weird and wonderful (and tragic) conditions, which illustrated how our brains actually work.

I also made films for the BBC science series Horizon – and had no prior background in science at all. If some complicated technique in genetics or biochemistry didn't make sense to me it wouldn't make sense to viewers either, so I really learned how to get to the nub of a technical story and make it human and meaningful.

What is your take on employee engagement and employee communications?

All kinds of things feed into an employee's experience of work – the type of job, the working environment and conditions, reward schemes, relationships with managers, perception of bosses, the organisation's reputation and culture, and so on. I think that communication runs through each one of these factors.

If we feel good about what we do, we work with more attention, more energy and more dedication. We can work for the most responsible and proactive employer in existence, but if communication is poor, engagement will suffer. Equally, if communication is strong but the organisation isn't, no amount of clever campaigns will change that.

I also believe very strongly that an organisation performs exceptionally if its people do. Communication is an essential ingredient in high performance. And that doesn't mean ‘talking all the time’. It means openness, authenticity and trust. I know that I do my best work in environments where I'm listened to, I'm allowed to make mistakes and where actions mirror words. It's the good old virtuous circle, but it's true!

What techniques do you use to wake up a stale audience during facilitation?

I shout at them of course! Always works. It's the joy of being South African – I can be earthy and direct and somehow get away with it. No, if I can see someone switching off, I'll normally challenge them (very nicely, I promise), because I need to know what's not working. It may be they disagree with something, or they don't understand, in which case I want them to have the chance to challenge me back. Or it may be that the lunch was just too tasty and it's time for a snooze, in which case I'll get everyone up on their feet, beating their chests.

What have you enjoyed most since joining Redhouse Lane and why?

At the risk of sounding like the class swot, I love everything I do. Every project, no matter how tricky or how small, is a chance for me to learn something. When I was making the Brain Story series, I discovered that our brains work according to the ‘use it or lose it’ principle, and that's become a sort of guiding motif for me.

I'm very keen to do more storytelling, because it's very creative and it works. So many corporate visions and strategies become a blur of abstract words after a while, and staff lose interest – or they never ‘get it’ in the first place. When information is transformed into stories, message retention is so much higher and a call to action becomes something personal.

Tell us about the last book you read…

Only one? I've just finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson – fantastic Swedish detective fiction. Before that I read Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and Star of the Sea, both top reading. I have to admit I'm also reading The User is Always Right, about audience profiling and web usability, because I think web user research techniques ought to be applied to internal comms audiences – they would transform the quality of most internal communications.

Tell us something about yourself that your colleagues don't know…

Most people think I'm a bit of a head case so it surprises them to discover that my favourite film is The Sound of Music, which I've seen about 50 times and I still cry all the way through. I don't care what anyone says about Julie Andrews, I think she's fab.