Fostering Belonging In Your Team

Emerging trends in leadership have applied social identity theory to explain how effective leaders understand the importance of creating community, belonging and shared identity in their teams. When work teams have that belonging, higher levels of trust, well being, happiness, motivation and commitment should follow.

 

Neuroscience has provided plenty of evidence towards how human connection and belonging is vital for our health and well-being. Judith E. Glaser a leading thinker on Conversational Intelligence has pointed at evidence that the brain gradually atrophies when we forget to have healthy “Level III conversations” (that is deeper and explorative, non-judgmental style conversations).

 

For example, a sense of social belonging can affect motivation and continued persistence, even on impossible tasks. If you don’t feel like you belong, you are both less motivated and less likely to persist in the face of obstacles. Victor Frankl, the father of Hope Therapy, survived the concentration camps during the second world war and observed that the people who believed that there were another significant person, or even God, out there that cared how they behaved in the camps and whether they survived, were the people who were more likely to survive the terrible circumstances and even showing empathy and care towards their fellow prisoners.

 

Technology offers incredible efficient tools that can be used to aid relationships and work teams, but it is only a one avenue and we need to be careful when choosing our communication channels – you can’t tweet love! (or maybe you can these days). As leaders we also have to involve ourselves in the relationships; get our hands dirty, put ourselves out there, smile and establish eye contact, trust – showing a vulnerable side of ourselves that has not been airbrushed.

 

As Chris Elston, HR professional at HSEMining, on the Griffith breakfast panel said about leadership in the future, technology will probably take care of ‘supervision’ or staff, what we need is people to step up as real people leaders. So whether we are leaders of work-teams, organisations or communities or parents at home – let’s not underestimate the power of building a sense of belonging. Human beings crave belonging, and need communities where we connect over a meal, a game of cricket, or a camp fire etc. As a leader – let’s make it happen!

 

 

This article was originally published on the Trevor-Roberts website by Ruth Gagliardi.  To view the original, please click here.