Belonging and Making a Difference

This weekend I picked up a leadership book that I have read countless times and read it again. It’s pretty straight forward and I wouldn’t say it has anything earth-shattering in it, but I keep going back to it because of its practicality and the importance of the messages. One of the key messages is about belonging and understanding how what we do makes a difference to someone. I wanted to share just a few thoughts on this topic especially where I believe this is even more critical in our remote/work-from-home world.

Belonging

All of us have a need to feel like we belong, that we are part of a group or a team with a unified purpose or goal. Even the most adamant introverts still have a need to belong to something that is bigger than just themselves. They may not want to be in the middle of large groups of people all the time but feeling like they belong or at least have objectives or goals in common with others is a fundamental drive that all human beings have. By our very nature, we are not meant to be alone and will find it hard to really thrive when we believe we are.

Making a Difference

One key part of belonging (to a team, family, group, etc.) is to feel like you are needed and/or make a difference. Who we make a difference for or how much of a difference we make seems to be less important than knowing who and how.

When we are part of a team and understand our role, then we can see how our role makes an impact on the rest of the team. This is easily seen in sports where it becomes obvious if on member of the team is holding the group back.

There is also an increase in motivation and commitment when we know that others are counting on us. It’s much easier to blow it off if you are on the only individual impacted if you don’t do your best. Think about setting a goal to go walking early in the morning. If you are walking on your own, it’s easy to push it off. But if you know that your walking partner will be waiting for you to pass their house, then there is additional motivation to get up and get going.

Leadership Application

As leaders, we need to be aware of the needs of our associates to feel like they are part of the team and make a difference. Each of our associates may have a unique need in these areas and one of our primary responsibilities should be to help fill that need. Let me give an example.

When I first read this book our call center site had an administrative assistant and she reported to me. Much of her time was spent scheduling meetings, handling supplies, building needs and other tasks that might have be seen as less important. I wanted to make sure that she understood why her taking care of those things was so important. So my conversation with her focused on how because she took care of those things myself and the other members of the management team were able to focus on other tasks. This helped her to have a better understand of her role, which ultimately was about handling things that members of the leadership team would otherwise have to handle.

Not only did this help her understand how much she made a difference, but going through this exercise also helped the leadership understand how much of their success was based on this assistant doing her job and doing it well. It boosted the overall sense of belonging and team for the entire site. It also helped the leadership team apply these principles to the rest of the site.

This may seem like something small but it is significant but it’s not that hard to do. First you have to get to know your associates. This applies not only to those you lead but also any others you come in contact with regularly or depend on. You don’t have to know everything about them or even consider them to be friends outside of work. But you do need to know enough about their life, goals and what motivates them to form a connection. This could be something as simple as knowing they like soccer and making a point to ask about a weekend soccer game.

Once you have a connection with them, then you need to help them understand their connection to the teams success. In the case of our assistant, we had to help her understand the connection between her success, the leadership teams success and then the success of the entire site. Other times, there may only be a single person that you need to connect them to. Many times that is you as their direct leader. In fact, if you have to start anywhere, start with that. Help each person on your team understand how they make a difference to you. After that you can move on to how they make a difference to others.