What Belonging Is – And Is Not

Welcome to Inclusion Is Leadership, a biweekly infusion of insights, research, and guidance to create inclusive workplaces. Created by Ruchika T. Malhotra, inclusive leadership advisor, founder of Candour, author of Inclusion On Purpose, and creator of the LinkedIn Learning course: Moving DEI from Intention to Impact.

Author’s note: Before I dive into this week’s newsletter, I want to make space to acknowledge that many of us are not okay right now. We are a global society, and the violence and devastation in Gaza, Sudan, Congo, Ukraine, and around the world affects us all. We are right to experience grief. It is important to stay informed and to take action, and it is also important to refill our cups when we need to. Please, during this difficult and heartbreaking time, remember to keep caring for yourself. Rest when you need to so you can keep on in our advocacy for peace.

In the past few years, seeing sustained attacks against Affirmative Action, reproductive rights and willful challenges to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) has broken my heart more times than I can count. But I've publicly put on a brave face, and I did believe these attacks were temporary...and people committed to doing the work are still doing the work.

But here's the honest truth after trying my hardest not to lose hope. I'm scared. I'm not sure how I can keep on talking to women, people of color, people from various intersecting marginalized backgrounds and convince them to keep on in the face of resistance.

I'm having a harder time, knowing what a painful time it is all over the world.

In moments like these, when I've navigated deep personal hardship, I look to my community to heal.

And in doing that, I'm reminded that the deepest part of this work is to find and create belonging for ourselves and others.

Creating belonging is the core and the heart, the very foundation upon which any company, organization, society or nation must be built on.

Belonging feels important and necessary in theory. In practice, when I say belonging, I'm specifically looking to investigate: do people who have historically been excluded, marginalized, stereotyped and/or been prejudiced against, belong? Do people like me–with my unfamiliar name and no-box-quite-fits accent and nowhere-and-everywhere-is-home background, have a sense of belonging here?

This is the piece of the puzzle traditional leadership experts don't talk about, because they've not needed to. It's understood that if you fit all the boxes, you–and others like you–will naturally belong, no further action necessary. But true leadership requires to to look around the room, recognize precisely who isn't being included, welcomed, made to feel a sense of belonging and focus on bringing them in to be as they authentically are.

Let me clarify what belonging is not:

Belonging is not about the loss of boundaries between work and home or oversharing intimate details of your personal life or expecting managers to becoming mental health counselors.

Belonging is about the sense of value and safety we create to ensure someone doesn't have to hide a core part of their identity to be accepted. For example, belonging is the safety I feel now to use my full name at work (I've shortened my name in the past when I didn't feel safe). It's when people who've had to remove hijabs or other religious identifiers before coming to work to now be able to show up as themselves unafraid. I've witnessed it when people from LGBTQ communities tell me that the first time in their lives that they can openly share this part of their identity is in the workplace. It is creating true safety and enthusiastic welcome for anyone who has felt like they had to conform to fit in.

As Brené Brown says: The Opposite of Belonging is Fitting in.

My hope is that even in times where there's renewed resistance against DEI, we never stop doing our parts as leaders to create belonging for all, not just those already in power.

We are in a really tough time in the world's history. I hope we can look around, reflect on how to call people in rather than out, and no matter how much the rhetoric around us to forces us to categorize fellow humans into "others," we have the moral courage to stand up and say: You are safe and belong here. Exactly as you are.