It’s Time to Pay Attention to the Road in Practice
This month we have been exploring building a culture of belonging and I shared my thoughts about the pitfalls organizations fall into when they aren’t prioritizing engagement of their staff in It’s Time to Pay Attention to the Road. I had a chance to dig deeper with people who have made a career ensuring that staff members are deeply seen and heard at work during this month’s co-mmunity webinar and am excited to share just a few of the insights and perspectives we heard during that conversation.
During this insightful and invigorating conversation, we discussed what it looks like to invest in belonging, the individual and structural ways to do this work and the skills leaders need to lean into to build the culture they want to build.
Stacey Mitchell
Principal Consultant, SAGEli Consulting
“Your employment handbook, how discipline is handled, how people are getting promoted, all those things foster a culture of belonging, but the devil is in the details… It is more of an ethos that has to be cultivated, relationship by relationship, person by person to make all the policies that you have written, and they should be written, come to life in the experience of a person in the day to day.”
Stacey Mitchell started us thinking about the individual. Treating people as humans worthy of dignity sits at the center. While the policies matter, and to what extent goals, accountability, systems and structures align to prioritizing belonging work are necessary, it is often the individual connections people think about when they are assessing their sense of belonging. Gallup has a 12 question survey that is research based and sometimes ridiculed for the question asked, “I have a best friend at work.” I probably raised my eyebrows when I saw that question for the first time too. But I’ve come to realize, as Stacey said, that transformative talent work often comes down to relationship to relationship, person to person. And of course, these individual feelings and perspectives often deeply influence the structures created. So, the question every talent leader must ask themselves is: Person by person, are all staff members treated as humans worthy of dignity?
Erica Merritt
Founder, Equius Group
“I think about places that I have been where it is less about what someone has said to me, but there are signals in the atmosphere that I don’t belong here. So much about what makes you feel like you belong in a space has to do with how you are represented in that space and how you are represented throughout the organizational structure?” And beyond representation, she added, “How often is it that we welcome different people into spaces as long as they emulate the behavior of everyone else that is already there?”
Having a wealth of experience is also so helpful for a head of talent who may not have a manager that understands the work, or can be a deep thought partner. At some point, in each of our careers, we might find ourselves owning work that the CEO or our board never did themselves. That is natural. But having someone who has been there and can be an advisor gives you that extra bit of confidence to lead.
Ursa Scherer
Vice President, People & Culture, VentureWell
“It [the culture of belonging] is going to show up in your budgeting process, in your employee handbook and policies, in your pay equity analysis and the decision you make if you see something is going wrong. Taking it into the guts of your budgeting decisions - it will live or die there. If headcount and manager development opportunities are not showing up in what you can afford to do as an organization, it is not going to work. It is not going to stick.”
Ursa helped us get more tactical. She went on to say that initiatives that aren’t codified disappear as soon as the person that was passionate about them leaves the organization. As a consultant, I often thought about what would stick after I left. And it’s a good question to think about as a leader in an organization, too. The only way to ensure the work lives on is to embed the work into the structures, policies & artifacts that define the organization.
Maryanne Kiley
Executive Coach and Therapist
“If managers can be held accountable for their results, there is no reason they can’t be held accountable to creating a culture of belonging.”
Maryanne then helped us to connect these various parts of the whole. She called for manager accountability. And went on to say that we have to support our managers to be able to do this work with some skills.
“I have so much empathy for workplaces. Many are racially diverse, age diverse and most are held to some capitalist standards. Trying to run an inclusive, equitable org with so many participants is hard. The people I see do this the best are curious about the experiences of their people. And also have the steadiness and strength to make sometimes unpopular decisions. Be able to accept criticism with openness and lovingness.”
As all of our panelists shared, there is no way to get this right every time. It takes an intentional approach of cultivating curiosity, understanding the experiences of your staff, transparently sharing what you are trying to change and apologizing when things don’t go as planned. To do this work well focusing on both individuals and structures. Every organization needs someone to lead the way - to keep the focus on prioritizing and resourcing efforts to build a thriving culture of belonging. This work is big, hard, often messy, and can feel overwhelming. If you are feeling that angst right now, and there are places where you know you can do better, it may be time to reach out for support.
