Belonging - the new catalyst for remote teams.

When it comes to creating high-performing teams in a remote context, the topic of belonging is emerging as one of the most important. And that’s largely because it’s so central to our psychology as human beings. Our need to feel safe, supported and respected is fundamental to our ability to thrive and achieve.

If you’re trying to shape a high-performance environment, whether in sport or business or your community, understanding how to foster belonging will give you a significant advantage. And even more compellingly, it will go a long way to preventing the disastrous side effects of our modern working culture: loneliness, isolation, and anxiety.

As many organisations wrestle with their working model of fully office based, fully remote or hybrid, the mechanics and policies are taking centre stage. Without exploring the social and emotional chemistry though - we are missing the point. How they feel about their role in the team and their work is just as important as where they work but doesn't feature in many HR considerations.

This article has been created from my recent interview with Owen Eastwood, a leading performance coach and specialist in team culture, who has worked with England Football, the BOA and NATO and I also worked with Owen during my time as Performance Coach with the South African Cricket Team – a team culture project that we both found hugely engaging.

If you’d rather listen in podcast format, you can click the image and link below.

To start, we’ll understand why this idea of ‘belonging’ is so important to how we work and perform.?

The importance of belonging

Lets look at why this idea of belonging is so crucial to every one of us, and to the performance of our teams. In our interview, Owen looked back at our humble beginnings as a species to explain our need to belong:

“Belonging is hard wired into being human. Going back 3 million years or so, we were one of the primate species that left the jungle and came into the open grasslands, probably for climatic reasons. And there we were at a physiological disadvantage to a lot of other competitors and predators in that environment. We quickly realised that our survival and our security and our ability to compete in that environment was going to be determined by how strong we were as a group, how we would work together and take care of each other.

So our need to belong was always an expression of that brutal reality. And for all of human history, and I would say even now, if you are not part of a group, if you feel isolated or rejected or alone, then your health and ultimately your mortality will suffer as a result of that. So it's still very much part of who we are today.”

Of course, we no longer live in this extreme environment. But as Owen alludes to, these human tendencies towards teamwork and care for one another are still entirely relevant. In fact, he went on to explain exactly what happens when these requirements aren’t met:

Acceptance or anxiety

“The need to belong is expressed through anxiety, actually. When we come into a new group, we feel these high levels of anxiety and that has a profound impact on our behaviour. We can't really be our self. We're certainly not thriving. We're looking for acceptance, we're looking for signals around us to say that this is okay, you’re accepted, you belong and you can trust. But sometimes those signals don't come and we stay in this high anxiety state.

So for me, when I'm working with high performing teams, what we must try and do is insulate as much as possible from self generated anxiety. So if we create a sense of belonging and a sense of trust and a shared vision and a shared identity, it actually motivates people. It reduces anxiety. It makes you experience more dopamine, more oxytocin, some of these hormones which are going to be more favourable to unlock their performance.”

I've been in some sports teams as a player and a coach where I felt like an outsider, like I had to prove myself at every turn before I was accepted. And that period can go on for quite a long time. While I don't expect to be friends with everyone straight away, we've also got to take some responsibility for the way we induct and welcome new people into our environment. So that they don't feel like they're in the wilderness forever. Imagine if our new recruits or this year's graduate intake at our company got into their stride quicker than those of our rival who waited for the new entrants to prove their worth before joining the huddle.

Connecting in a remote world

How does this all apply to the modern landscape of teams? Particularly when, in a lot of businesses, we’ve seen an increasing shift away from face-to-face interactions, and towards to remote or hybrid working?

While technology experts might tell you that we've never been so connected, psychologists and culture experts would report the opposite, that despite having access to devices with endless connections, people have never felt so alone. Our sense of belonging, and those important social interactions, are suffering. And that impacts both our productivity and our health.

As Owen observes, it’s crucial that leaders do their utmost to ensure that real, personal connections are maintained:

“I've seen an incredible spectrum over the last twelve months or so. I've seen some leaders who have been so proactive and intentional around maintaining this personal connection. Albeit it's not in person. I've even seen examples where they've proactively reached out to their partners - and not in a roundabout way to check on people - but actually they genuinely care.

“I've seen other leadership where nothing's happened. Because there hasn't been a work need to get together for a meeting, a virtual meeting, there's been no contact. I've seen some coaching teams who have had three, four months of no contact with each other. And the leaders haven't been proactive in maintaining those relationships. And I think the way these have been navigated over this period is going to have a real consequence when everyone does get back to some form of normality.”

So for some leaders, profit is their first focus, while for others they know this is the positive end result if they focus on getting the best out of their people. There is no shame in the former, it's the way we've been conditioned. To be competitive, to be financially driven. But in reality valuing people by their commercial impact is at odds with our ability to create a supportive and interdependent community.

So with this in mind, lets look at what leaders can do to reframe the situation - to focus on the people, and create an environment where they can perform at their best.

Owen is one of 100 world class thinkers in Sporting Edge's digital coaching experience.

People and high-performance

According to Owen, high-performance is founded upon on two things: 1) the individual’s relationship with their goal, and 2) the relationship between individuals in a team. As he elaborates:

“I think creating a champion team is a spiritual exercise. And some people might go, what are you talking about? But if you look at the definition of spirituality, it involves individuals being connected to something bigger than themselves. And the second limb of that definition is the idea of deep emotional connection between people. And I can't see how you create a brilliant, high performing environment without both of those being present. This idea of individuals connected to something bigger than their ego, bigger than themselves, and this really deep connection and trust between them.

So I don't use the word spirituality a lot, but I do fundamentally believe that is the nature of the exercise and creating a great team. And it's not just about managing people. It's about creating something much more special than that.”

Those two axes of interpersonal connection and connection to a higher purpose are so important. I can feel passionate about my work and the impact it has on others. And I can also feel this bond with my teammates who have been through the highs and the lows with me. But it’s when they’re both in effect that the magic starts to happen - as we’ll see in a powerful real-world example.

An unbreakable legacy

The best way to illustrate these ideas in action comes from Owen’s research into his own heritage, and the Maori philosophy of whakapapa, which strongly influences the team culture of the famous New Zealand All Blacks. As Owen explained:

“One of the ideas I talk about when it comes to this deep connection between people and the deep sense of belonging is the Maori idea of whakapapa. But one thing I've learned is that this idea is actually quite universal, a lot of different cultures have something similar that they speak about. But the idea is quite simple, really, that each of us are part of an unbreakable chain of people going back in time to our very first ancestor in our origin story. And not only going back in time, but our arms are interlinked also into the future. So we're part of the unbreakable chain of people that goes to the end of time. And if you think about it from a family point of view, we go all the way back to our first ancestors, whatever way you would understand that.

For me, my arms are interlocked my father, even though he passed away when I was five. That's an unbreakable bond that we have. I have two children and they’re with me now and our arms are interlinked. But they're also interlinked with their children and my great grandchildren.

The All Blacks use exactly the same frame for how they think about the team. 1893 was their origin story. And the shirt has, not just metaphorically, I think they feel quite literally, has been passed down each of those teams all the way to now. And the metaphor is that the sun slowly moves down this chain of people, revealing each in turn. And when the sun is shining on you, that's the moment where you're alive and you're performing. And it's incumbent upon you to inherit this culture and live it, and then leave the best legacy you can to strengthen this tribe, this group of people. And then in time, pass it on to those who come after us.

And through this idea, this expression, you have the sense of immortality in many ways. And I think a lot of people find that very, very reassuring in a world which is in many ways very impermanent.”

These ideas may be ancient, but they’re just as relevant today. I've used them in a number of corporate webinars and presentations, and they absolutely connect every individual to their team and their business. This is where purpose really becomes practical in its execution.

We all have our history full of scrapes and successes. We have our future where we hope to inspire those who come after us. But we also have that time in the sunlight for ourselves, when it's our time to make a difference. And when we feel like we belong to a tribe of people who accept and respect us, and we're striving for a purpose that's bigger than ourselves. That's when we can do amazing things.

Interviewing Owen Eastwood on his great new book Belonging

Belonging and recruitment

Despite the power of that philosophy, I can still hear the cynics saying, this is a bit soft. We need to win. And if people perform badly or they can't sell our goods, then we just can't keep them for an eternity. I understand that, and I posed the same question to Owen: are selection and belonging the same thing? And his response challenged this binary notion that you either in or you're out:

“Belonging doesn't mean that everybody is permanently part of this team. In our families I think that's the case, but in most teams it's not the case. And you know the idea is the sun moves on this chain of people and it's on some people for a really long time, and it's on others, not for such a long time. But you can still be someone.

You can play one game for the New Zealand All Blacks and still have this incredibly deep sense of belonging. Because when you come in there's these rich inductions, people look you in the eye and tell you: you belong here, you earned the right to be here, you're part of what we want to do. And then if it doesn't work out, then that's okay, because it's a high performance space. But people thank you. And people say that you are still one of us. And they include you and they give you this incredible legacy of feeling, that this was an incredible honour, great experience, and I benefited from it.

I really don't like the idea that people are brought into an environment, and people hold back and judge them, and then they tell them at a future point, either you can belong, or you never belonged and you need to go. And I think that's a recipe for people under-performing and under-achieving.”

What we've covered today comes under the heading of ‘soft skills’, but they're far from it. These are the hardest things to tackle. But when leaders are able to unlock this latent human potential, they take their team's performance to a completely new level. I've seen it first hand in sport and in business.

If you’re looking for a resource to help do just that, our Members Club is full of rich insights from world-renowned experts like Owen Eastwood. Each expert offers a brand new, elite perspective on the challenges you’re facing, whether it be team culture, personal wellbeing or leadership.

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I hope you’ve enjoyed this deep-dive into the benefits of creating a strong sense of belonging - and it's provoked some fresh thinking. I’m sure there are all things we can do in our organisations to improve the connection between individuals, and strive towards a greater, inspirational goal. I'd love to hear your reflections and ideas that this may have sparked.

Here are some questions for you to ponder in relation to your organisation:

1. Out of 100 - how strong is the feeling of belonging for the individuals in your team?
2. What does your team/organisation practically do to nurture a sense of belonging?
3. How can we accelerate this so that people feel valued and vital to the team sooner?
4. How can we foster a stronger emotional connection to our purpose and to each other?

In a time when many of us are working in a hybrid or virtual environment - we can all take inspiration from that sense of being in an unbreakable and interdependent team. Good luck.

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