Seb Terry
Belonging Keynote Speaker Sebastian Terry

Subject hub

Belonging Keynote Speaker

For HR and culture leaders who don't need belonging explained — they need it turned into something a manager can do on a Tuesday.

See the keynote

The short answer

Most people looking for a belonging keynote speaker already believe in belonging. That's not the problem. The problem is the distance between a value on a wall and a behaviour in a one-to-one — and that distance is where engagement scores go to die. Seb Terry closes it by refusing to leave belonging as a concept: he hands a room the specific, unglamorous, repeatable actions that make somebody feel like they're actually part of something.

Belonging is the point where culture becomes commercial. People who feel they belong stay longer, speak up earlier, and give the version of themselves that doesn't appear on a job description. People who don't, quietly do the minimum and keep looking. The difference is rarely a policy. It's whether anyone noticed them this month.

This page is here to explain the subject and point you to the right session, not to add another item to a topic list. If belonging is what your event is about, the talk it maps to is Strong Alone. Better Together. — Seb's signature session, and the one HR and culture teams book most.

What belonging changes for the people in your room

Belonging work usually fails at the manager layer — not because managers don't care, but because nobody ever told them what belonging looks like as an action rather than an intention. Seb aims the whole session at that layer.

Managers get language they'll actually use

Not a framework to be trained on. Three or four sentences a manager can say in a one-to-one this week, and a reason to say them that survives a busy calendar.

Quiet people get visible

Interactive by design, so belonging isn't demonstrated by the six most confident voices. Seb builds moments where the person who never speaks in an all-hands ends up being heard by their table.

Employee networks get momentum

ERG and network leads leave with something to run with, rather than another awareness moment to organize. The session gives them a shared reference the whole organization now understands.

The follow-through is designed in

Everyone commits to one act of acknowledgment for one named colleague. It's specific enough to be checked and small enough to actually happen.

Some of the organizations Seb has worked with

DaVita — client of keynote speaker Sebastian Terry
Albertsons — client of keynote speaker Sebastian Terry
YPO — client of keynote speaker Sebastian Terry
Tyler Technologies — client of keynote speaker Sebastian Terry
Plexus — client of keynote speaker Sebastian Terry
Core & Main — client of keynote speaker Sebastian Terry

Built for culture summits, all-hands and HR events

This subject is written for the people responsible for how it feels to work somewhere. The rooms where it lands hardest:

  • Culture and engagement summits, especially where survey results have just landed and need a human response
  • HR and people conferences, CHRO forums and HR association annual events
  • Company-wide all-hands and town halls, including hybrid rooms with several thousand joining remotely
  • Employee resource group and network summits, and diversity or inclusion week programming
  • Manager and L&D training kickoffs, where belonging needs to become a set of behaviours before it becomes a metric
  • Onboarding and new-hire welcome events for large intakes
  • Long-service and recognition evenings
Sebastian Terry on stage at a keynote in Nashville
Sebastian taught us all how to take words of wisdom and turn them into actionable items — to tie into our business, relationships with colleagues, and every opportunity.
Cisco
The best part of it all is that off the stage and in real life, Seb is a class act, true gentleman, consummate professional and overall amazing human being. I can't recommend him enough.
Lori Allen, Director of Executive Client Accounts — CPMG

Belonging as a retention and engagement lever

Ask why someone left and you'll get a tidy answer about growth or money. Ask what would have kept them and it's almost always smaller and more human: someone noticing, someone checking, a sense that their absence would register. Belonging is the difference between an employee and a member, and members are considerably harder to poach.

It moves engagement for the same reason. Engagement surveys mostly measure whether people believe their effort is seen. When acknowledgment is systemic rather than dependent on having a naturally warm manager, that belief holds up through hard quarters — and effort holds up with it.

Why a poster hasn't worked, and what does

Values on a wall are a statement of intent addressed to nobody in particular. Belonging is felt one relationship at a time, which means it can only be built by individuals doing small specific things repeatedly. That's an unsatisfying answer for a leadership team that wants a program, and it's the only one that holds.

So Seb spends the session on the mechanics: how to acknowledge someone in a way that lands, how to ask a question that gets a real answer, how to notice the person on your team who has gone quiet. He tells his own story — twenty years since a friend's death and the list that followed, finished almost entirely with the help of strangers — because it's the cleanest proof he has that people show up for each other when they're given a reason to.

For events that want the argument made rather than described, a live Goal Gifting moment can be built into the session: one of your own people has a genuine goal granted on stage, planned in secret with you. Nothing in a slide deck makes a room feel like a group of people the way that does.

Formats are flexible around your agenda: a 45 to 75 minute main-stage session, an extended experiential version for smaller leadership groups, or a breakout that goes deeper on the manager behaviours. Seb holds around 80 speaking dates a year across the US, EMEA and APAC, and every session starts with a call about your people rather than a call about logistics.

Where to go next

Strong Alone. Better Together.

This is the session belonging maps to — Seb's signature stage experience, and the one culture and HR teams request most. It's where the story, the framework and the audience interaction all point at the same thing: people perform when they feel seen, heard and valued.

See the keynote

Where else this shows up

Elevated LeadershipUnlocking Mental Health

Frequently asked questions

Check availability

One form.
One reply, usually within a day.

Tell us the date and the room. Seb and Mark (his manager) will come back with availability, fee, and a couple of ideas for how to shape the talk to your event.

  • Same-day reply on most dates
  • Real human — not an assistant filter
  • No obligation, no pressure

Or email direct: seb@100things.com