Our mission

What if everyone felt like they belonged in their workplace? If, regardless of heritage, race, gender, sexuality, beliefs or perceived abilities, everyone felt appreciated, accepted and supported to be their best at work, and to do their best work?

There’s plenty of evidence that when this is so, organisations grow. They grow because such an inclusive culture leads to positive impacts on their employee recruitment, engagement and retention goals, as well as their productivity and innovation goals. When these things grow, typically, profit does too.

This is why we’re making it our mission to provide diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging training using drama-based methods that demonstrably increase people’s sense of belonging at work.

We believe that demonstrably increasing people’s sense of belonging at work will lead to The Communication Practice achieving its vision of a world where everyone feels like they belong in the workplace.

Our vision

We exist to help co-create a world where everyone feels like they belong in the workplace.

And we’re building a hub of like-minded professionals with deep expertise in DEIB, drama-based corporate training and lived experience to help make this vision a reality.

Our vision and our mission are based on a set of shared values. If they chime with yours, please get in touch.

Our values

At The Communication Practice we believe that values are only values when they’re lived. This is why we express each of ours as a call to action and treat them as a compass to guide our behaviour.

In corporate speak, our values are “belonging”, “innovation”, and “compassion”. In The Communication Practice speak they are “building belonging”, “inciting innovation”, and “cultivating compassion”.

So, how did we come to be? Well, therein lies a story…

Our story

Have you ever felt excluded – like you don’t belong? Maybe at school, at university, or at work? Maybe even at home? Both Syrus Lowe and Antony Quinn have. This is why, in October 2021, they came together to co-create The Communication Practice. The aim was to bring workplace diversity and inclusive leadership training to life. The underlying belief was that such workplace training will ripple out into attendees’ lives, and the world at large.

Here’s their story …

Once upon a time, Antony Quinn was invited to role-play a difficult person during a negotiation skills course his employer was running. The aim was to give a colleague the opportunity to put their learning from the course into practice. Antony, a linguist and marketeer turned software engineer and biologist, had already changed his career path twice. Even so, he loved this experience so much that he chose to do so again.

Taking up acting, Antony quickly found his niche: improvised theatre within the workplace. The freelance work started flowing in and so Antony, a lifelong learner and consummate professional, decided to invest in Syrus Lowe’s Corporate Role-Play Masterclass. Sharing their experiences of feeling excluded in various pockets of society for various reasons, they realised they had a common interest: creating inclusive environments in which all individuals could flourish. And a shared bug-bear: non-inclusive leadership in workplaces.

Their meeting coincided with Antony coming to terms with his ADHD diagnosis, and Syrus walking away from a series of corporate contracts having experienced biased behaviour he was not prepared to ignore. Both had seen the impact of non-inclusive workplaces. Both believed that true, intersective inclusivity could elevate more than just human behaviour. It could elevate business performance too. Both chose to do something about it, together.

So, blending Antony’s business strategy and technology acumen, and his gift of ADHD, with Syrus’s experience, expertise, and rich network of professional role-play actors who shared their values, they set up The Communication Practice. Originally, this diversity, equality, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) company offered one service: the opportunity to practise difficult conversations within the workplace with a DEIB trained role play actor. Now it offers bespoke DEIB programmes, designed and delivered by DEIB experts to build belonging within workplaces everywhere. Why? Because beyond belonging lives growth.