Measuring What We Mean by Belonging

Organizations have become increasingly interested in belonging. Employee engagement surveys ask about it. Leaders talk about it, noting the way belonging benefits both people and profits. Schools include it in climate assessments, often highlighting the benefits for students. Organizations develop initiatives designed to increase it. Belonging has become part of the language we use to describe healthy workplaces, effective teams, and inclusive institutions. Measurements have been created, with the hope of improving feelings of belonging.

However, before we measure belonging, we have to be clear about what we are asking. I often wonder at the measurement. What are we measuring? What are we hoping to see? When an organization says it wants to “measure belonging,” it may actually be asking several distinctly different questions at once, conflating various elements. In my own work, I have come to the conclusion that I am asking three distinctly different questions. First, do people experience a sense of belonging here? Secondly, do people understand how belonging is connected to the work we do? Finally, the third question that often receives even less attention is do people know how to create the conditions for belonging through their everyday work?

These questions are related, but they are not interchangeable. An employee can experience a strong sense of belonging without understanding why belonging matters organizationally. A manager can understand the research on belonging while leading a team where people routinely feel excluded. An educator without the proper tools can believe deeply in the importance of student belonging while using practices that inadvertently communicate who is valued, who is trusted, and who is expected to succeed.

If we ask only whether people feel that they belong, we may learn something important about their experience. But we have not necessarily learned whether the organization understands belonging, whether people know how their behavior influences it, or whether belonging has become embedded in organizational practice.

Therefore, one singular measure of belonging is insufficient. We must intentionally and consciously define what we mean when we announce that we are focused and centered on belonging.

The Problem With “Measuring Belonging”

Imagine an organization distributes an annual employee survey containing statements such as:

·      I feel like I belong at this organization.

·      I feel accepted by my colleagues.

·      I can be myself at work.

·      I feel valued as a member of my team.

These are useful questions. They tell us something about people's experiences.

Now, suppose 82 percent of employees respond positively. What does that number tell us? It may suggest that many employees currently experience feelings of belonging and that they feel that they can show up and be themselves. However, it does not tell us whether employees understand what produced those conditions. It does not tell us whether managers know how to intentionally create them. It does not tell us whether employees recognize how their own behavior affects their colleagues. And it certainly does not tell us whether the same conditions are experienced equally across roles, identities, departments, or levels of power.

While the number tells us something, it does not tell us everything. This is one of the challenges of organizational measurement. We sometimes ask one question and then make claims that are much larger than the question can support. A belonging score can tell us something about the experience of belonging, but it cannot, by itself, tell us whether belonging has become an organizational competency. Nor can it tell us how those conditions are created. Having a more complete understanding of organizational belonging requires a different set of questions.

Question One: Do I Experience Belonging?

The first dimension is experienced belonging. Experienced belonging concerns people's perception of their relationship to the environment and to the people within it. It asks whether people experience themselves as accepted, valued, respected, connected, and able to participate meaningfully. At its core is the very human question of is there room for me here?

By teasing apart that single question, we ask:

·      Does my presence matter?

·      Are my contributions valued?

·      Can I speak without constantly calculating the interpersonal cost?

·      Can I make a mistake without that mistake becoming evidence that I do not belong?

·      Can I disagree or challenge?

·      Can I ask questions?

·      Can I contribute ideas?

·      Do people notice when I am absent?

·      Do I have meaningful relationships here?

·      Do I have to continually edit myself in order to remain acceptable?

Belonging is therefore not simply proximity. People can occupy the same building, attend the same meetings, work on the same team, and never experience meaningful belonging.

Nor is belonging synonymous with comfort. A person can belong in a community that challenges them. In fact, meaningful belonging often provides enough relational security for disagreement, accountability, learning, and growth. Additionally, I sometimes suggest to leaders that we know belonging has increased when there is an increase in challenge, pushback, and a willingness to tolerate discomfort.

Experienced belonging tells us something about the relational condition of the organization. It is the difference between being present and experiencing oneself as part of the “we.” In this regard, belonging is closely tied to what we commonly call inclusion.  

Belonging Is Not Equally Distributed

Organizational averages can obscure important differences. Imagine an organization or institution receives an overall belonging score of 78 percent. That number sounds promising and worth celebrating, right? But what if senior leaders report belonging at 94 percent while frontline employees report 63 percent? What if employees who have worked there for ten years report strong belonging while employees hired within the past year report considerably less? What if, were this higher education, faculty reports exceptionally high belonging while staff consistently reports low trust, low psychological safety, and high turnover? The organizational average is now inaccurate, insufficient, and must be weighted.

Belonging is experienced within relationships, roles, cultures, structures, and systems of power. Consequently, organizations should be cautious about treating belonging as a single organizational temperature. The question of “do people belong?” has to be expanded to “Who experiences belonging, where do they experience it, under what conditions, and who does not?” This moves measurement away from producing a reassuring number and toward understanding the organizational conditions producing that number. However, if we do not shift the measurement, we run the risk of recreating the inequitable power dynamics that stall efforts toward belonging.

Question Two: Do I Understand Belonging?

This second dimension is different than felt belonging. It concerns what we might call belonging literacy. Belonging literacy is the ability to understand what belonging is, recognize the conditions that strengthen or threaten it, and understand its relationship to the work of the organization. The central question do I understand why belonging matters here?

Consider a school. Teachers may be asked whether they feel connected to colleagues or supported by administrators. Those questions measure aspects of their own belonging. They may respond affirmatively but see it as an initiative or as the latest mandate from the district. Here is another set of questions is equally important.

·      Do teachers understand the relationship between student belonging and classroom participation?

·      Do they recognize how belonging may influence whether students take intellectual risks?

·      Do they understand how classroom routines communicate who is competent, trusted, and valued?

·      Do teachers understand how their own feeling of belonging is connected to their own courage and risk taking in teaching?

·      Do they recognize that discipline practices, grading practices, curriculum choices, language, teacher expectations, and interpersonal interactions can communicate messages about belonging?

Those questions are not asking teachers whether they belong. They are asking whether teachers understand belonging as part of teaching, growth, agency, learning, and achievement. The same distinction applies in other organizations. A healthcare organization might ask whether nurses experience belonging on their teams. But it might also ask whether supervisors understand how belonging influences communication, willingness to report mistakes, collaboration, and patient care. It might also ask the same nurses if they understand how their own feelings of belonging may impact their relationships with patients.  Finally, a corporation might ask whether employees feel included. But it might also ask whether managers understand how belonging affects creativity, retention, information sharing, disagreement, innovation, and team performance. Belonging literacy therefore moves belonging from an interpersonal preference to an organizational competency.

“Belonging Is Important” Is Not Belonging Literacy

It is not enough to simply state that belonging is important. Afterall. People can believe that it is important without understanding how it works. If asked, most leaders are unlikely to say, “No, I do not think people should feel like they belong here.” Belonging is easy to endorse abstractly. We may ask “how do we know when belonging has been achieved?” If the answer is “we will know when we get there,” it may signal a lack of belonging literacy. The more revealing questions concern whether people can recognize the mechanisms through which belonging is created and threatened.

·      Can a manager recognize that repeatedly interrupting one employee while listening attentively to another communicates information about whose ideas matter?

·      Can a faculty member recognize how consistently mispronouncing a student's name after being corrected communicates something about attention and value?

·      Can a leader recognize how information-sharing practices determine who has access, influence, and the ability to participate effectively?

·      Can a team recognize when humor creates connection for some members by positioning another person as the outsider?

·      Can an organization recognize when a policy appears neutral but produces significantly different experiences across groups?

·      In all of these spaces, can employees recognize when their own feelings of belonging impacts their own performance?

Belonging literacy requires the ability to see these connections. It means understanding that belonging is not produced primarily by declaring that everyone belongs. Belonging is communicated through repeated experiences, making connections and seeing patterns.

Question Three: Can I Create Belonging?

Understanding introduces another problem. And maybe problem isn’t the right word. It could be that layer is more accurate. The added layer is this: Knowing is not doing. Someone can understand the importance of belonging and still lack the skills, habits, authority, or organizational support necessary to create it.

This is then a third dimension: belonging practice.

Belonging practice asks, “Can people translate an understanding of belonging into everyday behavior, decisions, relationships, policies, and procedures?” Belonging practice makes belonging observable. A leader who understands psychological safety may still respond defensively when challenged. A professor who understands stereotype threat may still structure participation in ways that consistently privilege the fastest speakers. A manager who values inclusion may still distribute developmental opportunities through informal relationships. An organization may publicly celebrate belonging while maintaining procedures that make participation unnecessarily difficult for particular groups. The gap between understanding and practice is important to notice because organizational culture is not created by what people know. It is created by what people repeatedly do and requires practice, risk taking and vulnerability.

Here is an example. I have been a professor for almost two decades. At the start of every semester, I do an ice breaker activity, requiring that everyone speaks. As an advocate for belonging, in the classroom and as a mental health practitioner, I often think about the role of anxiety on performance and speaking. Yet, for years, I was engaging in a practice that may not have felt entirely safe. Granted, this first day ice breaker is not entirely necessary. Afterall, I have an online icebreaker activity that does a similar thing. As such, this semester, I made the in-person response optional and voluntary. I asked myself, “do all students feel safe speaking in this way? They might later, as we develop trust and safety in the classroom, but maybe not yet.” This change, I think, reflects an increased awareness in creating the conditions for belonging. Defining and acknowledging is simply not sufficient. Belonging comes from consistent doing.   

Belonging practice therefore examines behaviors such as listening, feedback, conflict, accountability, recognition, decision-making, communication, access to information, allocation of opportunities, and responses to mistakes.

The question moves from do you believe belonging matters? to what happens differently because you believe belonging matters? And how does my own behavior change? That is a much more demanding question, but more useful in creating the conditions and defining the behaviors that lead to the felt sense of belonging.

Experience, Understanding, and Practice

Taken together, these dimensions create a more complete model for thinking about belonging.

·      Experience: Do I belong?

·      Understanding: Do I understand how belonging affects our work? Do I understand how belonging impacts how I work?

·      Practice: Do I know how to help create the conditions for belonging?

While these dimensions interact, they should be measured separately. Consider these possible organizational experiences.  A person might experience high belonging and possess high belonging literacy. They understand why they feel connected and can recognize the practices that help produce those conditions. Another person might experience high belonging but possess low belonging literacy. They benefit from the culture without necessarily recognizing the conditions that created their experience or noticing that other people experience the organization differently. A third person might possess high belonging literacy but experience low personal belonging. They understand exactly why belonging matters and may even know what healthier organizational conditions would look like, while simultaneously recognizing that those conditions are not available to them. A fourth person might experience low belonging and possess little understanding of belonging as an organizational condition.

These are dramatically different organizational realities, different experiences and difficult to capture in a single survey.

The Belonging Paradox

One of the most interesting paradoxes occurs when the people who feel the strongest sense of belonging have the least reason to notice how belonging works. When environments consistently work for us, the reasons why can are often invisible. People respond when we speak. Our communication style is understood. Our relationships provide informal access. We know the unwritten rules. We see people like ourselves represented in positions of authority. Mistakes are interpreted without judgement. Our intentions are often assumed to be positive. Under these conditions, belonging can feel natural, a normal state of being. But what feels natural may actually be the result of an environment that aligns particularly well with for a few, but not for all.

Someone navigating the organization from a different position may see the structure much more clearly, noticing which meetings happen before the meeting, who receives explanations and who is expected to already know. They notice whose mistakes are individualized and whose mistakes become representative, whose communication is described as confident and whose is described as aggressive. They also notice which relationships create access, and which differences are welcomed and which differences create friction. As such, organizations should be careful about assuming that those who report the greatest belonging necessarily possess the greatest insight into belonging. Sometimes the person standing comfortably in the room has less reason to notice what is happening in the room.

From Individual Feeling to Organizational Condition

If belonging is treated only as a feeling, organizations can easily individualize the problem. Why don't you feel like you belong? The question places the phenomenon and the responsibility of belonging inside the person. We may suggest a need for more confidence, increased organizational participation or a need to build relationships. Perhaps they need to find a mentor or attend another employee resource group event. And while those strategies may sometimes be useful, they can also distract from a larger looming question, what is happening in this environment that makes belonging easier for some people and more difficult for others?

This is an important organizational question. Belonging emerges through interaction between individuals and environments. In other words, organizations create conditions, people experience those conditions, those experiences influence behavior, and behavior then reinforces or changes the conditions. Belonging is therefore relational, cultural, and structural.

Measuring the Conditions

So, if belonging is relational, cultural, and structural, does this make belonging easier to measure? Possibly. If we imagine belonging as more than feeling, then measuring becomes less nebulous. One way to measure is through the sue of the 4 Peas: Policy, Procedure, Practice, and Performance. If an organization wants to understand belonging, it can examine each level.

·      Policy asks: What do we say?

What commitments has the organization formally made? What expectations exist around participation, fairness, accessibility, conduct, leadership, development, and accountability?

·      Procedure asks: How are we supposed to do it?

How are decisions made? How are employees hired, onboarded, promoted, evaluated, supported, disciplined, and developed? Who receives information? Who has access to decision-making?

·      Practice asks: What actually happens?

Regardless of policy, what do people experience in everyday organizational life? Who gets interrupted? Who receives mentorship? Who is trusted? Who gets stretch assignments? Whose mistakes are forgiven? Who receives feedback? Who gets invited into informal networks?

·      Performance asks: What are the results?

What patterns appear in engagement, retention, promotion, absenteeism, complaints, innovation, participation, psychological safety, student outcomes, patient outcomes, customer experiences, or other measures important to the organization?

Together, these questions prevent belonging from becoming an abstract aspiration, allowing us to examine the organizational mechanics beneath the experience.

Measuring Belonging Differently

A stronger belonging assessment would therefore contain multiple types of measures rather than relying on a single scale. This assessment would capture the varied layers of belonging.

One set of questions would measure experience:

·      I feel valued as a member of this organization.

·      My contributions matter.

·      I have meaningful relationships here.

·      I can participate without feeling that I must hide important parts of myself.

Another set would measure understanding:

·      I understand how belonging affects the quality of our work.

·      I can identify organizational practices that strengthen or threaten belonging.

·      I understand how my role influences other people's experiences of belonging.

·      I understand how my own feelings of belonging will impact my own motivation.

A third set would examine practice:

·      I know how to respond when someone communicates that they feel excluded.

·      I regularly consider who may be affected by decisions I make.

·      I create opportunities for people with different perspectives to meaningfully participate.

·      I understand how my own feelings of belonging will impact my own performance.

But self-report should not carry the entire measurement burden. If belonging is an organizational condition, organizations should also examine behavioral and structural indicators and patterns.

·      Who speaks in meetings?

·      Who receives high-visibility assignments?

·      Who is promoted?

·      Who leaves?

·      Who receives mentoring?

·      Who has access to decision-makers?

·      Whose ideas are adopted?

·      Who receives developmental feedback?

·      Who receives the benefit of the doubt?

The organization can then compare what people say, what people experience, what people do, and what the system produces. Identifying and understanding the gaps and patterns may be more informative than any single score.

Organizations often treat discrepancies as measurement problems, but it could be helpful to see them as diagnostic opportunities. Imagine leaders overwhelmingly agree with the statement, “I understand how my behavior affects employee belonging.” However, when asked, employees report low levels of voice, trust, and psychological safety. What does this gap mean? What layer of belonging is missing?  Or, what if employees report high belonging while promotion and retention data reveal substantial differences between groups. What is missing from the data? Or staff demonstrate strong knowledge of belonging concepts but report little authority to change organizational practices. The goal of measurement should not be to make all of the numbers agree, but rather to help us understand what the differences are telling us. A gap between experience and understanding suggests one problem. A gap between understanding and practice suggests another. A gap between practice and performance suggests still another. Instead of treating contradictions as inconvenient, or even unresolvable, organizations can treat them as information.

Belonging as Organizational Capacity

Ultimately, the goal should be larger than creating an organization in which many people just happen to feel that they belong. The goal is to develop an organization capable of producing, protecting, repairing, and sustaining the conditions for belonging.

This means that measurement of belonging must extend beyond feeling. People must experience belonging. People must understand belonging. People must know how to practice belonging. Leaders must know how to recognize threats to belonging. Teams must know how to repair belonging after conflict or rupture. Policies and procedures must support rather than undermine those efforts. And organizations must be willing to examine whether their outcomes match their intentions. This transforms belonging from an organizational value into an organizational capability.

Asking Better Questions

Organizations frequently begin with this question: Do our people feel like they belong? We should continue asking that question. But we should not stop there. We also need to ask:

·      Do our people understand why belonging matters to the work?

·      Do they recognize the conditions that strengthen and threaten belonging?

·      Do they understand how their own behavior affects another person's belonging?

·      Do they possess the skills necessary to create those conditions?

·      Do our policies and procedures support those behaviors?

·      Can we see evidence of those commitments in organizational performance?

With these questions, belonging is no longer merely something an organization hopes people feel. It becomes something an organization must learn how to do. We are not simply trying to create workplaces where people can answer yes to the question, Do I belong here? We are trying to create organizations in which people understand how belonging is built, recognize when it is being threatened, possess the capacity to repair it, and understand its relationship to the work they have gathered together to do.

The Privilege of Belonging

Belonging is often discussed as though everyone enters an organization facing the same question: Will I belong here? However, people do not enter organizations from the same position. Some enter environments in which many of the conditions necessary for their belonging have already been established.

The language and norms feel familiar. The ways of communicating are understood and appearance does not require explanation. Their experiences are reflected in the organization's assumptions about what is normal. The ways of demonstrating competence are exactly what is expected by those evaluating competence. They see people who share aspects of their identity occupying positions of authority. They understand the unwritten rules because those rules are consistent with cultural expectations they already know. For these individuals, belonging requires little to no negotiation.

This is what I call the privilege of belonging. The privilege is not simply that a person experiences belonging, but rather that the environment requires relatively little adaptation from them in exchange for membership.

Unfortunately, others may enter the same organization and encounter an entirely different set of conditions, needing to learn unfamiliar cultural codes, modify their communication, monitor how they are perceived, explain aspects of themselves, determine which differences are acceptable, or continually assess whether disagreement will threaten their standing. For them, they are being asked to do more of the work required to produce it.

This raises an important organizational question: Who is the organization already prepared to receive? Every organization develops assumptions about what a competent employee looks like, what leadership sounds like, what professionalism requires, what appropriate communication looks like, how disagreement should occur, how relationships are formed, and what behaviors signal commitment. Those assumptions become part of what shapes organizational belonging. When people closely align with that design, the design itself can become difficult to see. What is structurally facilitated may be experienced as natural.

·      I just fit here.

·      This is a great culture.

·      Everyone has the same opportunities.

·      If people participate, they will be included.

But fitting easily into an environment does not necessarily mean that the environment is equally accessible to everyone. Sometimes it means the room was already arranged, created, and developed with you in mind. This is why people who experience the greatest belonging may not always have the clearest view of the conditions producing it. When the system consistently recognizes your language, behavior, relationships, and ways of knowing, there is little reason to examine the system.

Those encountering friction and difficulty often see the structures more clearly, discovering where flexibility ends, learning which differences require explanation, and discovering which forms of disagreement are welcomed and which are interpreted as threatening. They learn whose mistakes are treated as ordinary mistakes and whose mistakes raise questions about competence and learn how much adaptation membership requires.

And so there is yet another dimension of belonging that organizations should examine: the cost of belonging. Two employees may both report that they belong while paying dramatically different prices for that belonging. One may belong just as they are. Another may belong because they have become exceptionally skilled at reading the environment, modifying themselves, suppressing disagreement, navigating stereotypes, managing other people's perceptions, or separating parts of themselves from their professional identity. I often call this the pretzel effect – we pretzel and contort ourselves in the interest of belonging. Therefore, a belonging measure that asks only Do you feel like you belong? may miss this distinction entirely.

We must also need to ask, “What does belonging require of you?” This question moves us beyond whether belonging exists and toward understanding how belonging is produced, for whom it is readily available, and what people must pay or exchange to obtain it. The goal of an organization committed to belonging, then, cannot simply be to increase the number of people who successfully adapt to existing conditions. The goal must center and examine the conditions themselves.

Questions we may ask include:

·      Who were these conditions created with in mind?

·      Who moves through them with relatively little friction?

·      Who must translate themselves?

·      Who must adapt?

·      Who must prove themselves repeatedly?

·      Who can question and challenge the organization while remaining securely inside the “we”?

·      Whose difference becomes evidence that they do not fit?

Belonging must not be measured only by asking whether people have successfully found their place within the organization. We must also examine whether the organization has developed the capacity to make room for them.

From Creating Belonging to Creating the Conditions for Belonging

Importantly, I urge us to move beyond asking, “Do I belong?” and even beyond asking, “What do we need to do to make sure people belong?” Instead, we should ask two different questions, “How do we create the conditions for belonging to occur?” And, from the perspective of the individual, “What conditions do I need in order to experience the felt sense of belonging?” This distinction is much more than a semantic difference. Organizations cannot make people belong. Nor can leaders guarantee that another person will experience belonging. Belonging is a felt experience that emerges through the interaction between people and the environments they inhabit.

What organizations can do is create conditions. It requires that they can create conditions of trust, conditions in which people have voice and influence. Organizations can create clarity and opportunity for meaningful connection. They can create conditions in which disagreement does not automatically threaten membership and systems in which mistakes are treated as opportunities for learning rather than evidence that someone never belonged. Additionally, organizations can create equitable access to information, relationships, resources, recognition, and opportunity and structures through which people can influence the organization rather than merely participate within structures designed without them in mind. Finally and importantly, they can create mechanisms for repair when belonging is disrupted.

Belonging is not something we do to people. Belonging occurs only when organizations and systems create the conditions in which belonging become possible.

This requires organizations to distinguish between a condition and an outcome.

Belonging is an outcome of a dynamic relationship between the individual, other people, and the larger environment. Organizations influence that outcome through the conditions they create.

I consider myself to be a bit of a plant girlie. As such, I offer this - consider a garden. When we plant a seed, we do not, nor can we command a seed to grow. We cannot simply conduct a workshop explaining that growth is important, announce growth as an organizational value, or establish a goal requiring every seed to report a stronger sense of growth by the end of the quarter.

We must instead attend to the conditions, and curiosity is a useful tool in analyzing the conditions. Is there sufficient water? Is there light? Does the soil contain what this particular plant needs? Is there enough room for its roots? Are there environmental threats preventing growth? Taking it even further, different plants may require different conditions. A lesson in gardening is this - creating a healthy environment does not mean treating every plant identically. It means understanding what conditions allow different forms of life to thrive.

Organizations face a similar challenge. Again, the question is not simply whether people belong. The question is whether the environment contains the conditions from which belonging can emerge.

What Conditions Do I Need?

The role of the individual also changes. Rather than asking people only to rate their belonging, organizations can invite them to identify the conditions associated with it. Instead of, “Do you feel like you belong here?”

We might ask:

·      What happens here that contributes to your sense of belonging?

·      What conditions allow you to participate fully?

·      When do you feel most connected to this community?

·      What allows you to disagree and remain connected?

·      What conditions make it possible for you to contribute your ideas?

·      What conditions allow you to ask for help?

·      What makes you feel that your presence matters?

·      What conditions make belonging more difficult?

·      What requires you to expend additional effort simply to remain part of the group?

A belonging score tells us whether someone reports belonging, while a conditions-based approach begins to tell us why they do. And when we can understand the why they feel as though they belong, organizational change becomes possible.

This approach also helps address one of the central difficulties in measuring belonging: people may require different conditions to experience it. One person may need frequent interpersonal connection, while another may need autonomy. One person may experience belonging through opportunities to speak and another may experience it through knowing they will not be forced to speak before they are ready. One person may need public recognition, yet another may experience public attention as uncomfortable. Role, culture, identity, temperament, power, organizational history, and previous experiences can all influence the conditions through which belonging is experienced.

This does not mean, however, that belonging is too subjective to measure. It means that we should be cautious about assuming that a standardized experience of belonging requires standardized conditions. The organizational task is then, is to develop systems capable of recognizing and responding to human variation while maintaining the fundamental conditions necessary for membership in the collective.

From Belonging Scores to Belonging Conditions

The reframing of belongingness then is rather simple. We still need to ask, “Do people experience belonging?” But we should pair that question with “What conditions are associated with that experience?” Then, “are those conditions consistently available?” And perhaps most importantly, “To whom are they available?”

These questions help us to locate privilege within systems. As previously mentioned, some people enter organizations where many of the conditions they need already exist. They may experience their belonging as effortless because the environment already speaks a language they understand, rewards behaviors familiar to them, recognizes their ways of contributing, and reflects assumptions consistent with their experiences. Unfortunately, many others must negotiate for those same conditions and still others must create them for themselves. Therefore, measuring belonging without measuring the distribution of belonging conditions risks ignoring one of the most important questions, “Who has ready access to the conditions necessary for belonging, and who must work to obtain them?”

This reframing also changes organizational accountability. If belonging is understood primarily as an individual feeling, an organization can easily respond to low belonging by attempting to change the individual. Organizations may encourage individual shifts in confidence, encourage employees to find a mentor, or join an affinity group. People may also be encouraged to speak up more or attend the social event. But if belonging emerges from conditions, low belonging becomes information about the relationship between the individual and the environment.

The organizational response changes from, “What is wrong with this person's sense of belonging?” to “What conditions are present, absent, or unevenly distributed that may be producing this experience?”

A focus on systems questions lead us toward different interventions. We begin examining leadership, relationships, power, communication, policies, procedures, practices, access, accountability, decision-making, conflict, recognition, psychological safety, and organizational norms. We stop trying to manufacture belonging and begin creating the conditions from which belonging can grow.

A Different Organizational Goal

The goal, therefore, should not be an organization in which leaders can declare, “Everyone belongs here.” That statement tells us very little. A more meaningful aspiration is, “We are continually examining and creating the conditions through which people can experience belonging here.”

Therein lies the responsibility, requiring curiosity when people do not experience belonging and attention to differences in experience. Paying attention to conditions requires examining who benefits from existing organizational conditions and who continually encounters friction. It also requires understanding that belonging can be disrupted and therefore requires mechanisms for repair after an inevitable rupture.  And it requires accepting that organizations cannot control the felt experience of another human being.

Organizations can, however, take responsibility for the environment they create. This may be one of the most important shifts in how organizations approach belonging:

We cannot guarantee belonging. We can be accountable for the conditions we create.

The question is therefore no longer simply, “Do people belong here?” but:

·      What conditions have we created?

·      For whom do those conditions facilitate belonging?

·      What conditions do people tell us they need?

·      Where are those conditions absent or unevenly distributed?

·      And what must we change so that belonging has the opportunity to emerge?

If belonging is the felt experience, then understanding and creating the conditions are the work.

Consistency as a Condition of Belonging

Belonging becomes possible through repeated opportunities to build trust. In their work with couples, John and Julie Gottman emphasize that trust is built in small, repeated moments—not through a single grand gesture. This principle extends far beyond intimate relationships. All forms of belonging depend on consistent experiences of connection, care, and reliability.

My students, biological children, and therapy clients all rely on repeated opportunities for connection. Without those experiences, uncertainty and anxiety can emerge. Organizations operate in much the same way. When expectations, communication, leadership, or workplace practices are inconsistent, people may begin to question whether the environment—and the people within it—can be trusted.

Interestingly, many of my former therapy clients began therapy because of what they described as work-related social anxiety. Yet beneath that anxiety, there was often organizational inconsistency: expectations changed without explanation, feedback was unpredictable, policies were applied unevenly, or relationships that felt unstable.

Therefore, consistency must be understood as one of the essential conditions of belonging. People need repeated evidence that what an organization says aligns with what it does. Consistency does not require perfection. It requires enough reliability for people to anticipate how they will be treated, understand what is expected, and trust that connection will remain available over time

Belonging as an Outcome—and a Beginning

So what is the aim? I often discuss belonging as an outcome, and it is. Belonging emerges from work that embodies trust, connection, inclusion, and equity. However, we should also consider what becomes possible after belonging occurs.

One of my favorite questions to ask when teaching is, “And then what happens?” If we create the conditions for people to experience belonging, what outcomes can we reasonably expect to follow? In other words, what is the outcome of the outcome?

Although more research is needed, I predict that experiencing a felt sense of belonging has both psychological and physiological benefits. When people no longer have to remain vigilant about whether they are safe, accepted, or valued, their stress may decrease. That shift can release energy previously devoted to self-protection and redirect it toward participation, learning, creativity, and connection.

Belonging, then, is not merely the end goal. It may also be the condition that makes other meaningful outcomes possible—including greater creativity, innovation, engagement, collaboration, and healthy risk-taking. The question is not only whether people belong, but what they become able to do once they genuinely experience belonging.

JMO/September 13, 2026