Narrative portraiture: Leadership must be seen to be done.
Engagement rises not from slogans or perks but from visibility: leaders who are credibly in touch with their workforce, and workplaces where psychological safety is lived, not claimed. Ilya van Marle – Director of Photography (DoP) and portrait photographer is helping organisations capture these practices in ways that make them tangible—and harder to ignore.
Employee engagement is often treated as an attitude problem to be solved with perks or campaigns. But the European Workforce Study 2025 makes the driver plain: where leaders act with credibility, fairness, and respect, satisfaction soars to 89%. Where they don’t, it drops to 4%.
The gap is not theoretical. Leaders across Europe consistently overestimate their own performance, while employees report thin recognition and shaky fairness. In that gap, trust frays and engagement drains away.
Engagement is what you can see
People don’t engage because a slide deck says culture is strong. They engage when they witness leaders listening, involving, and appreciating in real time. They commit when decision-making is transparent, when mistakes become learning, and when recognition is given in the open.
These are observable acts. And increasingly, organisations are documenting them—through professional, narrative photography—not for glossy branding, but to embed behaviours that drive engagement.
Turning practices into proof
A leader listening in a skip-level Q&A. A junior’s idea landing in a design sprint. A team dissecting a near-miss without blame. These moments, when photographed authentically and with eye to detail, create a record: this is how we work when we are at our best.
Circulated in newsletters, onboarding packs, and manager playbooks, such images become more than decoration. They act as prompts for imitation. Other leaders copy what they can see. Engagement spreads not through posters but through visible practice.
Psychological safety isn’t a vibe. It’s a ritual
The phrase is common, but employees experience safety as specific events: an idea voiced without penalty, an error admitted without humiliation, a leader saying “I don’t know.” Photography cannot fabricate those rituals. But it can bear witness, turning fleeting signals of safety into lasting evidence that “this is normal here.”
Guarding against theatre
There’s a risk, of course, that visuals become performance. Engagement suffers when documentation is staged. The guardrails are simple:
Pair every image with context—what changed because of this moment.
Include hard meetings as well as wins. Honesty beats gloss.
Balance the frame: leaders should appear, but not dominate. The work must come first.
Ilya van Marle’s quiet strength
The cinematic dimension is key. It reveals the subject not in isolation but as part of a larger narrative. Carefully designed lighting shapes mood, drama and intimacy. Every detail becomes part of the story, suggesting histories untold yet instinctively felt.
In this approach, Ilya van Marle is more than a technician; he is a storyteller with a camera, a craftsman of meaning. The most distinctive portraits arise not from technical perfection alone but from a sensitivity to the human spirit. A cinematic photograph does not demand interpretation—it invites it, leaving space for the viewer’s imagination to roam.
The lesson is sharp. Engagement is not a feeling to be managed. It is a pattern of practices, visible and repeatable. And the adage holds: leadership must be seen to be done.