Belonging: It's where the tough get going
I think most of us have moved past the idea by now that building an environment of belonging isn’t some cop out from hard edged results. That it’s not the ‘soft skills’. Fairly regularly though, I keep hearing variations on “that’s not real work” when people talk about belonging. If that makes you bristle a bit because you’re a leader who knows that it takes some serious, ongoing mahi to build strong belonging in your team, I’m right there with you. Belonging is challenging – here’s what it takes and why it’s tough:
Belonging takes Connection
As in, your people have a deep sense of connection with you as their leader and with the others in the team. Not a shared knowledge that we all like sausage rolls for birthday morning teas (that’s the soft stuff). This is about learning what each person in this team values. It’s about what matters and is important to them when it comes to the way people work together. And it’s about knowing each other well enough to have found what connects us at a deeper level. Once we discover that stuff, we find similarities we didn’t know about and we grow our sense of togetherness.
Why it’s a challenge
Sharing the deeper stuff about yourself – about what you believe strongly and hold dearly – makes you vulnerable. Asking those questions of others forces us to be vulnerable ourselves. It means we have to go further in the conversation, and it sometimes means our own assumptions that shape whether we find that other person easy or difficult to get on with are confronted and challenged when we hear their deeper story. We tend to stick to the shallow conversations because they’re quicker and we assume they are less likely to generate feelings of intrusion or conflict. But researchers have found that people who have deeper conversations have higher levels of wellbeing. Who doesn’t want that in their team?
Belonging takes Care
You’re growing belonging when there’s a high level of care in your team. It’s care about the journey each person (including you) is on, and care that everyone is making progress and finding success in their journey. That means learning about what each person brings from their past experiences that shapes the person they are now. It means being wide awake to what matters most to your people in the present, and shaping the experience of being in your team around that. And it means knowing where each person is headed – what they dream of for their future – and setting them up with experiences that help them make some kind of progress on that quest.
Why it’s a challenge
Demonstrating care requires you to have different conversations with your people. To truly learn about them and what makes work meaningful. We shy away sometimes because we worry we’re being a bit intrusive. Everyone’s got their picket fence they want to keep stuff behind, right? Sure, but you can do a lot to show you care when you know what matters to the other person.
Working with your people in ways that respect what you’ve learnt about their past, present and desired future is easy when things are going smoothly. When things are rocky, we tend to go back to task focus. We forget the journey people are on and development gets parked because “we’ve just gotta get…stuff…done right now”. That sends the message that you care when life is easy, but when the heat is on we don’t have time for care. That’s especially the time to demonstrate that you care as much about the success of the people you lead as you do about the success of the work. One US study found that leaders and teams who demonstrate care for one another attract other employees, have higher levels of creativity, and have increased levels of resilience when the going gets tough. That’s probably not new news, but it helps to know that demonstrating care has real impact.
Belonging takes Clarity
When everyone in the team has clarity about what it means to be here, they know what is expected of them, and what they can expect of you. And when a person goes off track (everyone will, including you – we’re nomadic explorers, programmed to wonder), a team that has deep connection with each other and cares about the success of each member will bring that person back on track. Not with rules, charters or job descriptions, but by reminding each other what the success of this group requires of each of us. Clarity makes being part of this team worth it because it signals that I can’t just be a lukewarm passenger. If I’m saying I’m part of your team, I’ve got to contribute and I’ve got to play the game we’ve all agreed to play.
Why it’s a challenge
Life’s easy when your team’s on track. All the conversations are forward-looking and energetic. When someone has wandered off, it requires us to pause, go to where they are, and help them back onto the path we’re forging. It requires you to point out that what the other person might have thought was the right way to be going is actually away from where we’re headed. Let’s be real though – the most anxiety-inducing reason this is challenging is the fear that the other person won’t like what you’ve got to say, and therefore won’t like you. But I reckon this is the bit that makes the difference to belonging. It’s the part that shows me that being in this team really does mean something, that my leader cares about my actions, and that my actions matter to others. Because if there’s no clarity of what we expect of each other in this team, how do I know what I’ve signed up for and whether I really belong to it?
So if you’re a leader working on growing a stronger sense of belonging with your team, step forward and own it. You’re making a difference for your organisation, your team, and for the people who spend a great portion of their lives sweating over making real what your team is here to do. This isn’t the stuff for the faint-hearted. It’s tough, gritty work that asks you to stick at it when others opt out in favour of vanilla conversations and status quo. You’re doing awesome.