Belonging requires agency

Too many organisations treat belonging like a marketing exercise. They launch initiatives, print posters, and hope people feel included. Then they wonder why nothing changes. Engagement stalls and feedback is negative.

The truth is - having worked with dozens of teams on this - belonging happens when employees have agency over how they work together.

When people contribute to the definition of their team culture - the behaviours, the communication norms, the ways of collaborating - their sense of pride, engagement and commitment noticeably shifts. 

They're no longer passengers on someone else’s journey; they're co-pilots of their own. They feel able to bring their best selves to work because they helped create the conditions that make that possible.

The opposite is equally true. When culture is imposed rather than co-created, people disengage. They leak energy. They obsess on what's wrong rather than what could be right.

This is why belonging requires more than leadership commitment, though that's essential. It requires managers with the skills to facilitate genuine conversations about how the team wants to work. And it requires leaders brave enough to delegate ownership rather than control every outcome.

Every organisation can create this. But it requires treating employees as the architects of culture, not just the inhabitants of it.

Stop hoping for belonging. Start building the conditions where it becomes inevitable.