Thoughts on Belonging 👯‍♀️ and How to Build it at Work

Love, safety and belonging. Satisfying those three core human needs are the drivers behind most of our important decisions and choices. Out of those three human needs, I find belonging a particularly interesting one in how it plays out in a professional context.

Here’s a few observations I’ve made about why belonging matters 👯‍♀️, why it’s not to equal belonging to the notion of family and three things to consider to foster a closer knit group at work.

Three Thoughts on Why Belonging Matters

1 | Exclusivity is Good

Just look at the differences of what it means to be part of a top tier consulting firm vs your typical seed stage startup. A company attracts a certain type of person who wants to belong to that certain type of culture. To me, when you have a great hiring process in place you can rely on our need for belonging to help drive the right people into the company that fits their own work values. A strong team is therefore much more excluding than it is open. It’s not about belonging for all. And that’s a good thing. 🤗We can all have the opportunity to belong to a team, but not everyone will and should be able to.

2 | Belonging Builds Efficiency

The binding force in a tight-knit tribe comes from it’s members taking a stance for a set of values, rallying around common interests and having a clear belief in the group’s mission. Belonging fosters a sense of trust between us when our world becomes more predictable from explicit principles. This in turn makes our decision making process more efficient too. 🏃‍♂️

3 | You’re The Average of Five…

For a lot of us work is a huge part of our personal development, and belonging takes centre stage here too. Why? Because I strongly believe in the notion that you are the average of the five people you spend most time with. Colleagues are a big part of who you spend your waking time with. Belonging to the right group of people will influence your overall job happiness, learning ability and sense of fulfullment in the longer run. You can listen to Scott Dinsmore’s TED talk where he talks about exactly that. Yet another reason for why belonging matters at work. We should all take very conscious steps following our desire to belong to make sure we’re belonging to the right group for us.

Three Thoughts on Why Family is Not the Same as Belonging at Work

I’m not saying that you can’t be close to colleagues and that they can’t become some of your closest friends or even life partners. It’s important to think of your team as an infinite game, a spirit of working together towards the same mission, similarly to a family. I see how it’s an attractive emotive language in branding and hiring. It’s an easy way to capture a sense of closeness and feel-good for the team. Here’s three reasons why I think that using the notion of family to create belonging at work gets in the way more than it helps and .

1 | Unconditionality is Not True at Work 🙅‍♂️

First, “family” implies a certain unconditionality to your position. This just simply isn’t true in most private sector jobs. I’ve seen when we’re “playing family”, it becomes much harder for leaders to have honest exchanges with their team.

2 | Muddies the Waters on Decision Making

Secondly, the notion of family creates confusion around roles and authority. Each of us grow up with a slightly different nuance of how we think roles in a family are set. It’s an emotionally driven discussion. The notion of family doesn’t help clarify hierarchy of decisions or authority of your roles or levels of leadership for the better.

3 | Increases the Pain of Alienation

Thirdly, the fall you suffer if and when you are being cast out of your work place, eg by being fired, by restructuring changes or by you deciding to quit is psychologically much harder to bear too. You are suddenly alienated from a group that was supposed to be there for you no matter what.

Three Thoughts to Try in Building Belonging Instead

If we agree that creating a common sense of

1 | An Infinite Mindset — Advance the Greater Plot 🏃‍♀️

For any tribe to really function, you have to see your team as being on your side. You are pulling the rope in the same direction for a goal bigger than whatever is going on with that bonus target.

I think it’s helpful to think about it like kids at play — there is no sense of winning in a state of flow, there’s just incremental twists that move the plot forward. You are there to solve problems together. It’s what Simon Sinek talks about in his book the Infinate Mindset.

I know the sports team analogy is popular and helpful in many ways, but it has it’s limitations too. I feel like thinking of yourself and your team at work as being busy with playing, you’re more likely to build a deeper sense of belonging.

2 | Communicate and Codify — How You Work and For What

First things first, I think we do need to invest in being honest with ourselves of how we work. Then you can move forward with sharing that and learning how others do too, eg by using a user manual (of what you learn more about that in my article here). You’re best to spend some time codifying those into clear working principles (another article I break down what I mean here). Collectively, communicating and codifying how you work will creates a sense of clarity, responsibility and trust that will bind you together as a group.

I talked with Chloe Paramatti about how she sees having OKRs or goals supporting a clear vision from leadership as an essential part of creating a sense of belonging. It’s a practical “these are the goals we commit to solving together” type move.

3 | Care Personally — Multiple Avenues for All Voices 📣

I’m making it the last point because it’s so important and perhaps more easily forgotten, because it sounds so obvious. For me the strongest sense of belonging at work comes from you feeling personally cared for by your team and your leader. Doesn’t mean like a family, or best friends — just that you feel respected for who you are and treated considering your best interests at heart.

Marie Richter works as an HR consultant and advises that a sense of tribe grows when organisations manages to create forums and avenues for voices to be heard as easily as possible. It helps leaders to keep a finger on the pulse and act preemptively. Those forums can be anything from surveys, all hands meetings and anonymous questionnaires. And crucially, making no exceptions, keeping regular 1:1s that also cover personal topics. 💡

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That’s all for now how I think about belonging at work. I wonder what resonated with you?

Thanks for reading!