It's OK to be a bit not very good.

Replace 'not very good' with a shorter one-syllable word beginning with S, ending in T and with an HI in the middle.

It was advice given by the incomparable Neb and Fergus of TalkMagic at yesterday's 'Speak to the Human' event organised by Acteon Communication and Learning and themed around 'Belonging and connection: How do organisations create meaningful engagement for their people?'

These fabulous magicians not only did mind-blowing magic tricks, but also gave gave valuable leadership and communications advice as it turned out, during a day that was full of insights, entertainment and surprises.

We were talking in their segment about creativity and how it's easy to think 'I'm not creative,' 'I don't have any good ideas.' Once you go down that rabbit hole it's hard to pull yourself back out. I am 100% guilty of this all the time. But if you take Neb and Fergus' advice and think about creativity as a muscle that needs exercising - the more you do it, the better you get - you begin to realise that if creativity was exercise it'd be something like a couch to 5K, because let's face it, we're not all going to turn into the Usain Bolts of idea generation overnight.

This was just one nugget of brilliance in a multi-layered event which combined magic with music, data with diversity. The range of speakers and their expertise was eye-watering.

Triple Olympian, World Champion and Olympic silver medalist in rowing, Cath Bishop gave the keynote and challenged us to think differently about what success means and how we measure it. How can we help people thrive, engage and connect to make their best contribution and how do we make sure we separate out performance from results? Cath asked us to rethink our traditional assumptions that winning was about medals or cups or certificates and instead look at the journey and the process to get there. She challenged us to ditch the 'Rocky mindset' and instead inspire our teams through continuous learning and improvement, rather than through the much narrower lens of end results.

Eleanor Gooding, People and Culture Director at Boost Drinks shared her insights into how Boost has developed its unique culture. It's easy to underestimate the sheer amount of thought and hard work that goes into building cultures. They don't just 'happen.' I loved Eleanor's analogy of a business being a house, and its culture a rather overgrown garden which needs a bit of cultivating!

We talked about what it's like to be diverse in today's working world, where everything's so full of letters and words and details that for someone who is primarily visual, it can feel overwhelmingly complicated. It was an emotional and thought-provoking topic.

Hybrid work feels hackneyed now, but how does it affect employee engagement and who has really got it right? More than we realise and no one respectively, if you ask me. But best not to, because hybrid work is hugely subjective and I'll get up on my soapbox and spend the rest of this blog pontificating about it otherwise. The discussion around the many different manifestations and interpretations of what hybrid work means to people, was meticulously researched and helped in shaping a data-driven debate on this still-critical topic.

Yep, a packed agenda, but in between the speakers and the magic we had music! Very much food for tired minds and a welcome segue between topics. I loved the texture of the whole day, the way the team had carefully planned out the different elements to create a smooth flow. Above all, it was great to catch up with old friends and make new ones. The energy in the room never dimmed (in my case partially due to over-consumption of chocolate chip cookies and coffee).

I headed home from Cambridge full to the brim with new ideas to take back with me to Virgin Media O2 Business ! It felt great to get out and spend a day doing something different, networking and building on my learning. I loved every minute and hope very much to make 'Speak to the Human' a permanent fixture in my calendar.

#storytelling #culture #communication #employeeengagement #speaktothehuman #continuouslearning #belonging

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Louisa Houghton is a storyteller and employee engagement specialist. She's also many other things, including bee keeper, guitar player and German Shepherd despairer (if that wasn't a thing, it is now). Louisa is all about keeping it real, dispensing with the fluff and having some fun. She is a firm believer in the extraordinary everywhere. Magic can always be found if you look for it.

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