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One question to ask their team on Monday morning, and one for the kitchen table tonight
A keynote for teams who can't see the ending
For audiences who can't see the ending.
Uncertainty makes people freeze, just as fear makes a patient stop moving. In 45 minutes your audience hears how Kate helped people move again, in the treatment room and at the kitchen table, and then practises it themselves: hear each other before you correct, choose a better ending, and take the first step together. They leave with one question for Monday morning and one for the kitchen table tonight.
This talk is for people who
are waiting for the world to settle before they dare imagine a better one
have stopped listening to each other's stories
lead people they rarely see in the same room
wonder what is left for people in an AI world (the answer is imagination)
are tired of change being done to them, and ready to build what comes next, together
You can't predict the ending. You can choose it, and listen your way there.
What happens in the room: the Verbal Handshake
Halfway through, your audience stops listening and starts doing. In pairs, one person asks a single question, gives the other space, and writes down the answer word for word, correcting nothing. Then they read it back, to check they heard it right, and swap. In a few minutes the room has felt what being heard before being corrected does. It is the moment delegates talk about at the coffee break.
How it ends: the Virtual Hug.
Every keynote starts with a handshake and ends with a hug. Kate's last line is "So imagine a better one." Then the whole room sends Gabriel a hug, and Kate passes it on when they next speak. At one conference, 400 people did it. Delegates leave with the Virtual Hug, and one question to ask someone that evening.
Press or podcast: [email protected]
For event organisers [link]
What your people leave with
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The habit of hearing a story back before correcting it
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A better ending for their team, chosen together
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The confidence to take the first step before the ending is clear
The story behind the talk: one hour a week, one question, and nothing corrected
For a time, Kate Markland and her son Gabriel had one hour a week together, on a FaceTime call. He was ten.
They could have spent that hour on everything that was wrong. They chose enchantment.
Every Friday at seven, Kate sat at the kitchen table, with Gabriel on the other side of an iPad. They had been reading an illustrated Treasure Island, and by the end they were a little tired of the hero, Jim, who happens to share a name with Gabriel's grandad.
So Kate asked him one question: "Would you like to write your own story? One where you're the hero?"
He said yes. She wrote down everything he said and corrected nothing. The following Friday they did it again.
His sidekick was Platy, his favourite cuddly platypus, who had been full of can-do spirit since Gabriel was a toddler. Eight weeks later there were six short stories on Kate's laptop. Gabriel took one look and said, "Mum, it's a book."
That world is called Coral Cove. It became The Adventures of Gabriel, three Amazon bestsellers. The way they built it has since been used with 465 children in nine UK primary schools. And between a mother and her son it built a trust that distance could not break.
The Lessons Behind the Keynote
The same pattern, at any age.
As a physiotherapist, Kate helped people in pain overcome the fears, rational and irrational, that had stopped them moving. They got better in the same order. First they described the life they wanted. Then they told their story and heard it back, uncorrected. Then, with support, they took one step, and another, through the setbacks. Gabriel did the same at the kitchen table. Your audience will start it before they leave the room.
What this means for leaders.
In the treatment room, at the kitchen table and in the classroom, people moved forward once they could imagine something better and someone heard them. When the future is uncertain, people don't need a prediction. Leadership is helping them imagine a different world, and hearing them while they build it.
Choose the ending, then listen your way there.
In every book, Kate and Gabriel decided it would end well long before they knew how. The same was true of the hour itself: "If you don't quit, we will find a way." Your people can't see the ending either. In the keynote they practise choosing it, and listening their way there: keep a steady rhythm, listen to the story, say it back to check you heard it right, fill the gaps, then test the next step together.
"Never mind that sheet, Mum. We're going by portal."
When the story needed to reach Alaska, Kate posted Gabriel a printed sheet of 30 ways to travel. He didn't need it. He already knew the way. Most leaders hand their people a sheet of options. The ones who listen find out the team already knows the way.
The finish line is always behind you.
Kate used to row. In a rowing boat you face backwards: you can't see the finish line, and eventually you cross it. That is what leading through uncertainty feels like, and why trust matters more than a forecast.
Press or podcast: [email protected]
For event organisers [link]
What one hour can do.
Gabriel's martial arts teacher had about an hour a week with him. Kate learned to swim in an hour a week. An hour used with intent is enough to build a world, and a trust that distance cannot break.
"We'll need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries, realists of a larger reality."
Ursula K. Le Guin, National Book Awards, 2014
One talk, shaped for your audience
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Business and leadership.
Imagine the world your team wants to work in, then build it together. What becomes possible when a leader stops supplying the answer and starts listening for the one already in the room.
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Education.
Let children imagine a world, and watch them write it. Engagement, reluctant writers and child-led creativity, drawing on sessions in nine UK primary schools. When 318 children wrote about being the author of their own story, the same seven changes appeared again and again, from joy to "I felt like a real author".
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Parents and families.
Build a world with your child, and they will tell you everything. Connection, listening and helping a child find their voice, including across distance.
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Families apart.
Stay close across distance. For forces, defence and international organisations whose people live and work far from the ones they love: what children who are far apart can teach us about building one world together.
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Foundations, charities and annual events.
For organisations whose work is imagining a better world and building it with the people they serve. A reminder for supporters, trustees and teams of why the work matters: people move forward once someone hears them. Imagining a different world isn't an escape from this one. It's how you change it.
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When it came to story writing, some children would just shut down. StoryQuest changed that. They were joyful, buzzing, excited to tell their stories.
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Engaging reluctant boys in writing has been a school focus. In our session, they couldn't wait to get started. The joy in the room was infectious.
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I didn't know I had so many stories inside me until I was allowed to let them out.
Keynote Formats
One package, one price: the keynote, the trilogy for every delegate with your bookplate, and a QR code so every audience member can take the Verbal Handshake home [package price to confirm].
A 45-minute keynote, in person or online
The team session: an optional [half-day] session after the keynote, where one team builds a world together [length, group size and price to confirm
The trilogy for every delegate, with a bookplate carrying your organisation's logo, signed on request [bulk prices to confirm]
One package, one price: the keynote, the trilogy for every delegate with your bookplate, and a QR code so every audience member can take the Verbal Handshake home [package price to confirm].
What you get as the organiser
A briefing call, so the talk is shaped around your audience and your theme
Bios, photos and a stage introduction, ready to use
A short video clip for your event publicity [to confirm]
Kate stays to meet delegates where the schedule allows [to confirm]
Imagining a different world isn't an escape from this one. It's how you change it.
STORYQUEST
StoryQuest gives children the freedom to imagine, speak and be heard without being corrected, guided or rushed. It begins with a story. But what families create together is something much bigger: connection.
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