Episode 94 – The stories that shape us

Welcome to the Internal Comes Podcast with me, Katie McCauley. This is a show for people with a passion for improving the way we communicate at work. Every fortnight I invite someone to sit in my podcast hot seat and together we explore ways to make employees feel more involved, better connected to each other and their organisations. Now the conversation you are about to hear took me completely by surprise. My guest is Agatha Jumo and I invited her on the show to talk about storytelling. Well Agatha did more than talk about the power of storytelling. She demonstrated it. I found Agatha's grace, her wisdom, her warmth, absolutely captivating and I hope that you do too. Agatha is the co-founder of Engage Kenya. I found Engage on YouTube and was blown away by these amazingly funny heartwarming poignant stories that people were sharing with the world. And get ready, Agatha shares a couple of these stories with us. Anyway back to the bio. Most recently Agatha was head of the private dialogue unit at the Kenya private sector alliance. Before that she was a senior consultant with the International Finance Corporation and CEO of the Kenya Tourism Federation. Agatha says she has a deep passion for developing leadership capabilities. As an accredited coach she helps people at all levels voice their brilliant ideas and share their passions. In this conversation we talk about why we all need power over our own story. Why simple connects and the three fundamental needs we all have as human beings. How to tell stories and service of a message and Agatha's mission to change the world one story at a time. Without further ado it is my absolute pleasure to bring you Agatha Jumon. Thank you for welcoming to the internal comms podcast. It's a pleasure to have you here. Thank you Katie and thank you for having me. This is going to be a conversation. Largely I am guessing about storytelling. So I wonder whether a good place to start would be to ask you if you don't mind to share a story with us Agatha. Is there a story that gives us a sense of who you are both professionally and personally? What is many stories? The one that comes to mind is so I was about 30 years old that got a job as a CEO of a tourism association like it was many steps and ladders from where I was and even when I was headhunted I wasn't sure they had the right person. So I joined and once later we have a board meeting and then the second board meeting. I am thinking okay I have got the hang of this. This board meeting was the youngest person by far. I give an opinion on something that was being discussed in this coca-catured gentleman who happens to be British. Tons to me and very slowly says, girl I have been doing this longer than you have been alive. Or mix you think you can give me an opinion on how to run my business. Oh my goodness. I should revolt for those agree then I should revolt into a date like a really dehydrated date. And I've been done affecting how I felt about myself and everything else. I was six months into the job over under six months. I'm invited to a conference in London. I have my PowerPoint presentation. I am really feeling anxious. And when I get to the venue the person speaking before me is from the Caribbean. Introduction was amazing and then their presentation had butterflies and there was buds flying across the screen. I'm thinking whoa I have my cream and brown presentation. As when it's my turn I'm introduced beautifully and I'm given the clicker thingy. So I get on stage I've been introduced but I introduced myself because I had the script in my head. So I go ahead and introduce myself and then I click I go to the intro slide I speak to it and then I click again and the clicker thingy doesn't work. And now I'm just I am. Yes. I'm trying to remember the next thing in my head I'm thinking yeah people have been doing this longer than you've been alive. - No, no. - You think you can come to the UK to represent just your company, but the country. And you'll call, you're blowing it. And I had a full blown Hanik attacks. Before that, I used to think Hanik attacks are white people things. (laughing) So somebody jumps from the audience, they're slapping my bags, so I'm only trying to force me water. I am tearing, it was, "Kitty to the Musa and Barra thing thing that has happened to me, and I've had many embarrassing things happening to me." So the moderator comes on stage and says, "Where really sorry, Agatha, "must be the cold London weather. "We'll give you a few minutes to compose yourself "and come back like, oh my goodness." So I went out into the cold London weather, composed myself and came back. I finished the presentation, it wasn't my best work, but I swore this will never happen to me again. I will get so good at this. If it will never happen to me again and where it is within my power, it will not happen to anyone within my circle. And that has defined my life for the last 16 years. Yeah. Hey. An amazing way to take two really horrible experiences, turn them into a positive in the sense that they propel you forward. Your first story reminds me of one of my favourite cartoons, which I cut out and kept. I've had it for years, and it's men mainly sitting around a bordering table. There's one woman sat at the table and the chair of the room is saying to this woman, "So great idea, Miss Smith, "I think it's one of the men here would like to make it." (laughing) Which they usually do. Which they usually do for you before you've even got to the edge of the sentence. I'm gonna pick your brains on that first story. What would happen now if you got shut down in such a dismissive way? Well, how would you behave, do you think differently now? I wouldn't behave differently, I don't think, but I would feel very different. Ah, so gentleman, and he really is a gentleman, I got to know him and we became friends. And I realised there was no malice in what he was saying. He genuinely cut like the British do's because they're minds. He meant it as you're an upstart. He came the other day. Why would you imagine that I would listen to you? And with time I convinced him why he should listen. But it is how I felt about what he said that would change. I would take it at a face of value. I have learned to depersonalise feedback. Yes. I've heard more than one guess that to me, when you depersonalise feedback, one, all of a sudden you don't completely melt and freefall when you get negative feedback. But also there are times when we do need constructive criticism and you want to be open to that and you want the other party to be able to give you that without feeling they're going to crush you. So I guess it plays on two levels really. We've been taught as women that you need to stand up for yourself and you need to push back. Sometimes it's useful, sometimes it's not. Before we start supporting others with their storytelling, I've heard you say first that we need to get comfortable with our own stories. I'm just wondering why is that? Why start internally with our own story? Now give me a quote to which plays a big part in my life because it captures this so well and it says those who do not have power over the story, the dominates their life, power to retain it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it and change it as time changes are truly powerless because they cannot think new thoughts. This is by Fulman Rushdie, but author. Oh, I love it. Yes. Because there's certain stories that dominate our lives and it's not one story, it's many stories, it's your mother's saying you look for it in that, and for it is a comment, it's a teacher saying you will amount to nothing. But if you do not tell yourself the story and then take over the power to retell it, to deconstruct it, you are truly powerless. So you cannot go about telling other people's stories if you do not have power over your own stories. Those are my thoughts. I don't know what you think, Keaton. It makes perfect sense. Because do we have stories about ourselves that are unhelpful? That quote suggests that we need to revisit those stories and update them with new evidence and new information. So we don't get stuck in the mindset of the eight-year-old who's a tall something that stays with them until they're 88, for example. Yeah. It's that revisiting. It's revisiting, but first, because how we interpret the world determines everything. So the example of, let's call it Mr. Smith, who told me I've been doing this longer than you've been alive, that could have defined my life. And it did for a while. But then I took over the power to, over this story that dominated my life, to rethink it and to retell it, to rethink it by depersonalizing it. As opposed to, you upstart how dare you. Of you upstart how dare you. Yes, you dare. And you should continue darey. It's just a re-examining what we believe. You look fat and not. And why is how I look important to you? Just unpacking and then asking, why is this important? Is it because it was said by my mother, which she didn't tell us a very skinny kid? Always it because fat people and the youth are satin-wid. Can you still use fat in 2024? I don't know. I don't know. Okay. We just have to apologize to anyone who's offended. As an example. But the beginning to question this thing, how much of my value is tied to what happened to me and why? It's a hard, messy internal work that we must do. You fear to be useful members of society. I love that film. As someone I think who is probably far more comfortable asking other people questions than I am asking questions with myself. That's the deep lesson to learn. So early into an interview. Thank you very much. We're going to come on to talk about engage Kenya, which I can't wait to share with listeners because you've created this amazing platform for so many amazing people to tell their stories. Thank you. But before we start there, I'm just wondering when did your professional interest in storytelling begin or how did it begin? So I've always had a curiosity about people wanting to know what's beneath the surface. And I've had a lot of stories. So whenever people would visit home and my mother is talking to our friends, I'd want to hear what they're talking about. And we morph and they're not called it gossip. But it's there's a layer underneath of this curiosity about people. And when we started engaged, it was to tell the social stories because we truly believe that the things that change the world is not what is captured by the media, what the president or the prime minister or clergy said. It is what you hear when you're sitting with your girlfriends or when you're sitting with family. And we wanted to broaden that space and our ideas were very small, just really narrowly get five people who can share a story and we see where it goes. Five, six episodes in because we realize you then need to help people tell their stories. We had people come in to say, I don't want to speak about that public thing, but I want to speak like XYZ. Or could you come and do that for our team? And just unpacking it, I realized that most organizations, they have other people tell their stories. So to get the question answered of how do we better tell our stories instead of how do we get a better person to tell our story? Because bad agencies exist because they tell organizations stories better. They do it themselves. And then internally, consultants come to tell you entirely your story and how you should tell it. And they've been with the organization, what? All of 32 days at most. And just the power of realizing now as we started working with people, how and need they will learn how to tell the story of the organization and their team, how they change the world around them. I want to dig into some of the advice that you give people when they come to asking how to tell their story better. Before we do, let's start with a definition. And it might seem a simple or rather sort of pedestrian question, but what is a story? Because you click on a corporate website and it will say our story. And what that is, the collection of very boring facts, it's definitely not a story. They're not probably even interesting facts. So yes, how do you define a story? So how I define a story is it's an relation of how we interpret the world around us. And that includes experiences, facts, figures, interactions, cause and effect. This is how I see the world. And this is what it means. For an organization, this is our why at events at best, we to say, or we exist to an end is a lot of English words, which nobody really cares for, but we were founded for this reason. And this is why we exist. It is how we see the world and why we exist in this world. Yes, for me, that's key because most organizations were founded because someone somewhere saw a problem or saw an opportunity. There was a problem. Ships needed to be underwritten or insured in order to have safe passage around the world and move goods. 200 years on, what's told as a story? It doesn't bring that to life because that's dramatic. That's imaginative. That's bold, but it gets lost in our 350 year history. Yeah. What do we do wrong, do you think? Is it just forgetting for a moment, we're humans and we need to connect on human level? Is that part of the problem? I've been being on podcast by Morgan House, although author of the psychology money. And it talks about how, because we imagine we're intelligent beings, the more complicated something is the cleverer we think it is. So you want to sound like a Harvard MBA. And even if you are that doesn't impress people as much as how does that connect to who I am? Yeah. So we of course will go to one of the big four to write for us a mission, mission, statement that even the people internally when they look at it. So how does it stand to what I do? We have been socialized to imagine that shimp on this stupid. Yeah. Where the opposite is true. It's very true. When you're reading a story to a child and let's take the Billy Goods and Graph story, when you're talking about the small, be it Billy Good, Graph went over the bridge, trip, trip, trip, trip. Your voice automatically changes and that story remains with you for years as the storyteller and as a child because simple connects. If you need to dance. Yeah. I'm going to guess a lot of our listeners are going to completely understand the power of storytelling, but may need to convince others senior stakeholders in particular of the benefits of bringing a storytelling approach into an organization. You've touched on some of those, but let's hammer them home for people that need to make the case. What are those harder, more tangible business benefits of taking a storytelling approach? Because again recently, human beings are hard wired to understand and respond to stories that has not changed over millions of years because we invented stories to keep us alive. If you go out at night, you will be eaten by worlds, even in places where there are no worlds. The children learnt not to go outside. If you are a bad person in the afterlife, you will turn into, I don't know, a cockroach or you will go to hell, whatever you believe. And it inspired people to work harder to be human. So we are hard wired for story. In fact, we work harder to ignore our well told story, then we do to accept and understand data and abstract information. Our brains walk really hard to understand them, but we have to work even harder to ignore goods too. So it is a mix and string stories. Information is retained because we can see ourselves in the information, we can see our role in this information, we can see how it affects me and the people like Harabat or the people I aspire to be. This is why cigarette, adverts and beer adverts are brilliant. So while we see them as devices, the stories told of success only are women and young men who are doing awesome things is the story that you retain and not the WHO general side of the world's warning that we totally ignore that. Yes, yes. So storytelling is we are hardwired to respond to it. And as a leader, don't you want people to connect with what you're doing? Just very simply, which is why I'm an organisation, it's this. You want to make your work easier as a leader to inspire people and to influence them to decision making. So why not take the easier route of being human and not AI generated data? Yeah, it's so interesting. The way you're describing it is let the story do the heavy lifting. Yeah, which totally makes sense. A quick word from Asponsa. A.B. is the world's most experienced internal comms agency. For 60 years, our brilliant consultants and fearless creatives have been helping organisations around the world inform, inspire and enthuse their employees, building great organisations from the inside out. There is a lot of pressure on internal comms folks just now to help you plan, prioritize and deliver astonishingly effective communications, arrange a friendly, informal chat with us today. Simply email [email protected] and if you do, I look forward to meeting you. So let's come back to those men and women in the room that have come to you because they want to tell their stories more effectively, connect more with the audience. How do you help them? What kind of steps do you take them through? What kind of advice and guidance or exercises do you give them? So trained as an executive coach, I have a coaching diploma and I was very clear. The reason I wanted to do this is to become better at helping people tell their stories, just be your executive coaching. And the thing that is true is you can't become a better storyteller if you don't know yourself. Back to the stories that are in your life. So knowing yourself better than anyone else. Who are you? So we go through I as listening to the podcast with Mike Rowe, who is talking about how he's coaching training changed his life. The same for me. What are your drivers? What are your triggers? Who are the stories that dominate your life? And what then are you decision making patterns? And these and biases. Would you believe about storytelling and even just being vulnerable? Tens of leaders believe that a good leader in moves themselves from the leadership equation. I am the CEO, but you guys need to know nothing about me. Please be inspired by my leadership. That's my goodness to me. What I can't believe that such a light bulb moment is so obvious. Yeah, really believe in my leadership abilities. I'm going to tell you the 59 reasons why I can lead this organization. I'm going to tell you two things about myself. I'm married and I'm between. I'm not going to tell you anything else. But really believe in me. And we all human. We want the same things in nine years of doing storytelling, curation, and training and coaching. I have come to realize we are all the same person in different skill, kind of different clothes in different gender. We want to be respected and we want to feel understood. You don't have to agree with me, but I want to feel that you understood me and where I am coming from. And most of all leaders, I want you to understand my motivations. And the only way to do that is to then tell our stories. Telling our stories of Fent candy gives others permission to believe in us. And also to tell their stories. So when we're coaching leaders, the hardest step is to convince them that your stories matter. Right. As much as where you're taking people. Yes. Because human beings learn more from failure than they do from success. Yes. If you'd invited me Katie and I told you all around this amazing platform called engage and we've had over 500 people. And really we didn't have any struggles. We're pushing sponsors aside and life is awesome. I can't believe I get to do this for leaving my life is awesome. That's not as believable and learning teaching moment as this is where I started. And I am now fairly successful. But I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Or even if I was born with a silver spoon in the mouth, it had to my guns. As I was growing teeth. So yes. That is why story telling and that's why leaders need to build the muscle. I think it's probably Brunei Brown who's done a lot for vulnerability over the years and told us that vulnerability is a good thing. But I'm guessing there are leaders that are incredibly nervous about showing that side of themselves. And reminded me that I had to make a difficult virtual presentation to the AB team in the middle of COVID and got quite emotional about it. And almost burst into tears. And even now I'm embarrassed when I think about that moment. Although I know also that a lot of people reached out to me afterwards and appreciated my openness and honesty. But I still feel uncomfortable when I think about that moment. So I guess I'm just wondering how you get people to get comfortable with being uncomfortable in that respect, if that makes sense. It does make perfect sense, Katie. And the first question I have as you were speaking and I've asked this before, why do we find tears and embarrassing? Yes, we do. We do because we think it's weakness. I'm not sure why we do. Because I wouldn't think it's somebody else and it's interesting. You're making me reflect that we hold ourselves to different standards that we hold other people. Oh, maybe that's me. I don't know. But where is somebody else? I would think my goodness, they really care. And I'm caught up in that emotion too. Exactly. I probably think more of you, not less of you for myself, for some reason, I shouldn't show it. So this wasn't going to be all about me this show. I'm so sorry. It's actually about all of us. And I'm sure you listen as well. I'm in a same position because I cry. So easily if I could sell tears for a living, I'd be a wealthy woman. But it still embarrasses me to date. And I constantly ask myself, why do I feel a certain way about breaking into tears? And brain A because you mentioned has said vulnerability is the first thing when you look for in people, but it is the thing we want to show least of. But when someone is vulnerable, you're like, wow, they trusted me enough with this story. Or they care enough about this cost just as you've said to for it to emotionally connect with them. And you do more for an audience being vulnerable than being stoic. But to be your question of how do we get people to be comfortable with the uncomfortable? The beauty about storytelling is nobody decides for you which story you're going to tell. Only you do that. So we say and we repeat that we don't tell stories in and of themselves. We tell stories in service of a message because we want this message to land. And then you as a storyteller as a speaker decide, all the bank of stories I have or we have as a team or an institution, I think this story will best lend itself to be the vessel for us. As an example, the message is guys had times are coming. We need to have cuts. You could say that and then send a memo and a 63 page document. Or you could talk about we started this organization 10 years ago and we have grown. But growth has not always been in numbers. Five years ago we had to shrink to continue growing. And the impact of this is that people we cared about were impacted. We didn't let anyone go, but we all committed to do one, two, three, four things. And we got over this hard time. It's yet another time that we will be tested. See, nobody told you the story you're going to use, you decide. And because we are all different in how we view the world and our levels of comfort with vulnerability, nobody is sending you to talk about how it had you and X or Z happened. We tell stories in service of a message, what story best lens itself to be the best solve for that message, you know, we let other human beings connect with it. That makes total sense. I'm reminded of a quote just coming back to what you said about emotion. And it gets attributed to Roosevelt, the American president, but I'm not sure it's him, but it's something along the lines of people don't care how much you know, be until they know how much you care. And that's exactly what you're talking about in terms of bringing the emotion in. When you're talking about a story around cuts or costs cutting, does that mean it's appropriate to be telling a story for any kind of strategic inverted commas message? Is that your experience? Yes, if you're communicating with people, you need to connect to them and stories how you connect with people. Anything the problem is our definition of story. We've always imagined story is a bedtime story, a narrative which could be sick. It's atty theory. Storytelling is connecting to a hearts and souls of people. Simple. So story doesn't have to be a long time ago. It could be this morning on my way to work as I was sitting in traffic. I turned to the car next to me and I saw this man beeping thoughts. Or he was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and that's the same thing I was doing. And I hadn't noticed that's what I was doing until I looked at him and I realized that never one of anxiety I have is because of that story. So whenever you're communicating with another human being, there always is opportunity for story, especially in tunnel cons because most organizations don't take the time to remember that a teen is different people with different stories. So Professor Marshall guns who was a other professor came up with the public narrative which is what we use for our coaching and training. So the story of self, who am I, what drives me? And then story of us as a teen. What binds us together as a teen with 20 different individuals? But what are the stories that bind us as a teen? How is HR different from finance? Because each team should have its own stories that bind the people together. And then what's the story of now? What's the agency now? Is it cost cutting? Is it a story of celebration? And the story of now defines everything else that you're doing because you're driving towards the agency of now. That's so beautifully put. And the result of that is you are telling true or authentic transparent open stories that people can immediately understand, they can recognise, they can feel part of, they want to contribute to. And that's when communication does beautiful things because it creates a sense of belonging. And all of those things we really want it to do, I'm sold, I'd be so totally on this approach. If there's someone listening and thinking, oh dear, we're really not doing this at much at the moment, but I'd love to. What are some of the baby steps that they can start to take? Oh there's some first initial steps that are going to take them along this path. Well one and then I think for me the most important one which then demystifies the story telling thing is have a bank of stories, create a bank of stories, create a bank of stories for yourself. What are the important life and defining moments when my son was born? This is how I felt. This is the responsibility I felt and I have felt that responsibility carry me through life and it's pervading my career or it changed my career trajectory when I lost a parent and it's usually around feelings and emotions because we are emotional beings who make decisions based on emotions and then use logic to justify our decisions. So have a balcony of personal stories that you can use to encourage, to motivate, to rebuke, to whatever. But also as a team as an organization begin to look for stories. When did we celebrate as a team? When was there sense of pride? Who are we as a team? We're a team that celebrates when one of our team members graduates from school. And we bring cake. That's a story and when Susan graduated he took him half four years to do her masters or six years or whatever because she's a mother or four the celebration was even bigger. That's who we are as a team we celebrate each other. This is where we are as a team we are resilient and it's not the big thing. It's the human thing. That you hear people saying when I came to this organization I found it it is different from the other one because you guys do things in a certain way and that comes into your bank of stories. So it's not that hard to find stories when you're looking for them because it's an everyday thing. It's what happens every day. It's 10 years stories but also ask questions that encourage others to share their stories. Katie you were dealing with client ex-everyone knows it's a very difficult client but you say when you were dealing with Mr Smith Mrs Smith how do you get him to do one to three? Katie says it's very simple when you tell Mr Smith your colleague when Wednesday at eight the phone had better be ringing at two minutes to eight. And then don't ask him personal questions or asking how his dog is doing. Those are stories. So ask questions that lend themselves to people talking about people and their impact when other people. Yeah I love that. I love that a lot. It's also making me reflect on obviously a lot of the work we do is trying to bring company values to life. And there's lots of strategic frameworks and campaigns and lovely things around it but actually you're making me think about the smaller interventions around sharing stories that bring values to life. A story of us as the co-founder of Engage Hennia you have established this amazing platform. And as a circle I can't wait to share it with people because there are some incredible stories there. I did that all start. What was the spark that created that? So my friend Don and I with Meta Two Smusters would both be in Two Smusters for a while. And we enjoyed listening to the little mini stories as people are working on their communication journey and learning to be better communicators. And we thought how about bringing this story's many other stories outside of a club setting. So having coffee one day and Don says how about we do a fee for stories and meeting men have a name bring people together for five people they tell their stories. And we see how it goes. And I say okay good idea this was in December and then as we're discussing when he says on Valentine's Day and I look at him like Valentine's Day who will come. People are busy doing Valentiney things and he asked me would you and your husband do on Valentine's Day and I respond I've been married to the man all my adult life. Of course we do nothing. And he and his wife also didn't do anything particularly fancy for him it was an anti-valent times thing of what's love good to do with expectations on men. What's the last thing and so we coined it what's love good to do with it which remains our theme for every anniversary engaging February. Oh nice. And so we got four people that we knew and called beg to pleaded cajola black mailed prominent friends to come and attend in the biggest smallest theater we could find a hundred people and we had a hundred and twenty. people coming. And then after that it was really nice and people started asking so when's the next one? Like next word. And for that first one nobody talked about romantic love. It was just novel family, now of people, just different kinds of love. And it has been amazing. I have listened to over 600 stories as we're helping people prepare for the stage. And more private ones then don't get to make it for the platform. It's incredible. Yeah, it absolutely is incredible. The stories we have had. And you realise you see people walking around and we all look, organised and put together. Again we're the same person. We want to be respected and want to feel understood. Yeah. Can you give us a sense of one or two stories that have really stayed with you out of that 600 that have really left them all? Dr Mary Emma Nelson remains my absolute favourite. So she passed in three or four years ago. And when she was standing her story she said, "Hine, her sister were the first black children in the school that they were in." And they were walking and they were escorted to school by security. She grew up in grounded family and she wanted to have a proper United family. So she grows up and gets married. And or something her husband was wrong was off. But she didn't want to separate because she wanted her children to grow up in a proper, proper meaning for their mother family in her mind. Until once when her five-year-old daughter turned her, a scared us another daddy, this one is broken for your child to see that there's a problem. Then she was in the US and so separated as they were working when they divorced and they were co-parenting. And one weekend the husband is with the kids and he was a good father. He was not a great man but a really good father. And she's cold and told to go to his house. Do you know XYZ? Yes. You know where he knew Zia? How many she's wondering why? And she gets there and finds firemen and police. And this guy had committed Ason's suicide mother. He'd banned himself and his two daughters in the house. And she knows it was an accident because he used to volunteer as a fireman. It was deliberate. And how old came and done? Completely and done. And as part of healing she moved to Kenya. USI United States International University was setting up in Kenya and they needed lecturers. She came. And when she came to Kenya as a lecturer a few months in she was Kaija Akten and she got cervical cancer. So they couldn't quite remember. She got cancer and she kept asking why? Because she was strong Christian woman, serves in the chat and whatever. And she said something that to date sticks with me. He said, you guys know I'm dying, thinking dying because I have cancer. But we all dying. You guys just don't know when or by what. And she said, we pray for long life. And it's like walking God. Because it's the equivalent of having a plate of food in front of you. And you're ignoring that plate of food. And praying for food for tomorrow. Right. Lord, here's me's food for tomorrow. Not I pray. Which is I want a long life. We aspire for a long life. We pray. We whatever for long life. But the life we have to be we don't have to. And for me that was a still is transformational. Would you enter long life or if you're not living fully the one you have today? Yeah. Such good advice. Yes. Such good advice. And I think the world unfortunately encourages us always to want to think ahead to aspire the next priority, the next thing. It's actually quite difficult to spend a moment in the moment. I think that's why meditations become more popular over the years. Has hearing all these stories changed you as a person do you think? Well, completely. Completely. I am a very different human being. So first I am I am so immensely grateful for where I am a family I have the choices I have the latitude to make. And I am a much better human being. I am so much less judgmental because you cannot tell someone story by just seeing them interact with them horrifically. It takes years to get to know someone. Unless they give you the gift of telling you their story. So everyone's struggling with something. And just the acknowledgement that you don't need to know someone's story to be kind and to be human. For me, it's changed hide the world. Now I can imagine what's next for engage if you got bigger bolder ambitions where you take it next? Yeah, or we do. So we want to create the largest library of human experiences. Whoa. I love that. Yeah. Oh, authentic human experiences because we learn from people. We learn from what people have gone through, want to go through, we'll never leave down. And that's so that's the vision for the platform. And we want to do more especially for the continent. And ignore continents and places. Africa is not just the place where it is sent. There's people with real lives and rich lives. And they're same with Southeast Asia and South America. And the more we tell the stories, the more human we become. The number two, more importantly for me as Agatha is I want to give people the freedom to tell their stories so that they can be better leaders. I don't want us to keep looking for people to better tell our stories. I want leaders to learn how to better tell their stories. I think it will make workplaces are not less toxic globally. Workplaces are becoming a lot more toxic. And if we can humanize our workplaces, it's Victoria, do you in one of your earlier podcasts who talked about human-centered workplaces? Story of telling is such a key part of not. And for me, if 10, 50 leaders can humanize themselves and give their teams permission to be human. We're changing the world one story at a time Katie. Yes. I'm thinking particularly of more marginalized groups as well. So that might be people of a different ethnic origin to the majority. It might be someone with some kind of disability. It might just be women in the workplace in a very maldominated environment, encouraging them to share their stories. Just imagining again, we know the impact of that on the organisation must be really important as well. Have you seen that with women? Yes. I had seen that and we talked about disability. So this girl I was introduced to and the person who introduced me said, need to listen to her and see her story make sense and is, "Wap for the plot." I don't even know why people see that. And this girl, she has no legs. Class sat behind and she turned her story. And if you allow me, I'll tell you a bit of that soon because it's an amazing story. Yes, please do. So two-year-old girl living with her family from across where they leave the grandmother had a small restaurant. And so a two-year-old would unball buy to the grandmother's restaurant to have lunch. And between them and the restaurant, there was a rainy crossing but they'd lived there for years. And so, girl goes for lunch and then as she's coming back, she's crossing. It was a five or seven-wheel crossing and she's walking back and there's a train in the distance. But it's happened before and when she gets to the fifth truck, the train is here and she falls. And her two year old green tells her in the miniatures being around over that you need to pull your leg out. And that's how she loses three of her fingers. Wow. But at the time the train finishes, she's lost both legs, one at the heat, one at the thigh and three fingers. Her father had just come home for lunch and he watched the entire scene and got a stroke immediately. The car that took her to hospital took her father as well but he didn't make it. So she was sticking to the hospital, went to the walk. A few years later the mother dies and she says she thinks the mother died of a broken heart. And she was raised by relatives. And while she's in school because she was small, she was little, she's given a wheelchair and she says she'd never been as happy. She could move around. So she was constantly weezing and you know moving around and she was such a joyous tell she could move and she grows and gets into wheelchair competitions. And this girl is part of Kenya's national wheelchair tennis team. I didn't even know there's a wheelchair tennis team. No. And as she's doing this, they're preparing for the Tokyo Olympics and someone comes and announces that there's a sponsorship being given for anyone who wants to do rowing, training for rowing. She'd never had a par of rowing and so she asked would you be interested in she raises her hand and she says yeah, what is this rowing? I mean for it. Remember she has donuts. So she's put on a boat and the first few seconds she capsizes. She gets out, writes it, gets in, says and then I capsize again and then I get capsizing and see the end that she's going to die so they told me to go home. And she got onto the Olympics team. She is now qualified for the Paris Olympics. You should see this girl. Oh, her visual adolera is unbelievable. In fact, we're just telling her so is she saying I don't know if adolessence affects you two naked girls. The rate affected me with no legs. I wanted to be liked by boys with legs. She's a love on me. She says, "Pace to look at girls with the legs." And they're wearing but she was a black man. I gave someone leg and the way. But I mean just yeah. And for me, demystified what disability is because I just seen people with disabilities who need help, not people who have three hands and dreams of being make by two-legged boys. But it humanizes, yeah, it's incredible. But I just want to go back to when you started that story, you were told that somebody said or maybe the girl had said, "I'm not sure my story is worth telling how she could have possibly thought that wasn't worth." I think it is odd, but that must be a thought that goes through people's minds. Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that. This episode of the Internal Com's podcast is brought to you by my very own Friday update. Would you like a short email from me, never more than five bullet points long, giving you my take on the week's news from across the world of communications? This might be the latest reports, books, podcasts, conferences, campaigns that have caught my eye during the week. I always limit myself to just five nuggets of news so you can read it in record time. But still feel a little bit more informed, hopefully a little uplifted as you end your week. Now this is subscriber-only content, which was initially intended just for AB colleagues and clients. I don't post this content anywhere else, so you do need to sign up, but that is super easy. Simply go to abcomabco.com/friday. We just need your email address. And it's equally easy to unsubscribe at any time. So give it a go that sign up page again, abcomabco.com/friday. And if you do choose to be a subscriber, I very much look forward to being in touch. I'm going to move over to those quick fire questions if I may, Agatha. What trait or characteristic do you possess that above all others do you think has most led to your career success? At sea, curiosity. Curiosity. You like asking questions? I like asking questions and I want to know how things work. Or how are you different from me? How are you similar to me? How are you doing this and I'm not able to do it? Why the hell would someone bother to do that? I could never do that. Curiosity. Yes. How would you complete this statement? World class internal communication is, world class internal communication is showing people way that cause matters to them. Oh, I love that. I absolutely love that. One piece of bad advice or unhelpful thinking has consistently dogged the communications profession. That there's a certain way of doing things. Communication is not a science. It's not an absolute science. Sput a science and an art. The art is that you bring your whole self into the, and collate with your individual colors to connect with other human beings who don't want a standard template. Bring your whole self and how you see the world. You'll take communications cause people need that. There's a question I meant to ask you which I'm going to chew on in here if you don't mind, Agatha, but it's just listening to you and also listening to the stories on engage. There's a lot of humor that comes across as a lot of laughing. I'm just wondering, oh, your reflection on the importance of finding the joy and the humor in our stories as well. I'm just curious what happens in the room when people start laughing. Does that connect people? Oh, yes it does. Have you noticed that? Yes, I have. Yes, I have. For the longest time, I admired people and in today, talk humor comes easily to them. I think comedians round the world causes such a need for laughter. Life is intense. And if you've listened, we all have, but if you've been careful to listen to when a child is laughing, everyone lights up. Cause that's, it's language. It's nonverbal language. A laughter and on the opposite spectrum sadness, it communicates like no words can. So we need to lighten ourselves and the ability to laugh at yourself is important. Yes. How true is that? Finally, we give every guest a billboard, for millions to see and you can put on this billboard with any message you like. What message are you going to put on your billboard, Agatha? My billboard says your story matters. Change the world, one story at a time. What's an busy billboard, right? Yeah, okay. I have loved everything about this conversation, Agatha. Thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing with us. It's been wonderful. Thank you. Thank you very much, Katie, for having me. That is a wrap for this episode of the Internal Combs podcast. For the show notes, including those two past episodes of this show, the Weed, Victoria, Jew and Mike Row, plus a full transcript of this episode head over to AB's website. That's AB Com, ABCODoubleM.co.uk/podcast. If you did find this episode helpful, I have a small favor to ask. Please could you like, rate or maybe subscribe to our show on your favourite podcast platform? This just gives the algorithms a little nudge and makes it easier for your fellow Internal Combs colleagues to find our show. My thanks to Agatha. My producer John Phillips, sound engineer Stuart Rose, content manager Maddie and senior designer Rob. All of you keep this show on the road and I am immensely grateful to you for that. And of course, my heartfelt thanks to you for choosing the Internal Combs podcast. This show would be nothing without you. Please feel free to get in touch with me anytime via LinkedIn or Twitter. Tell me what you want more of, what you want less of. I genuinely want this show to be as helpful as possible to you. So until we meet again lovely listeners, stay safe and well. And remember, it's what's inside that counts.