The Importance of Feeling Like You Belong in Your Workplace

What does belonging have to do with work performance? Everything.

Previously published on Forbes

Have you ever felt left out or excluded from important conversations or meetings at work? Have you ever hid or covered parts of who you are or what you believe — your political or religious affiliation, or details about your personal life, history and background, for example — in order to fit in and be accepted at work?

Most of us have experienced this at some point during our careers, and it never feels good. What’s more, it can impact performance in unseen ways.

Let’s explore what people are giving their attention and energy to when they feel like they don’t belong.

First a definition of belonging — the experience of being seen and heard and welcome with all of who we are. Every human being has a need to belong. And belonging is a potent force at work.

Yet one of the biggest impediments to belonging is fitting in. “Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming what you need to be in order to be accepted,” Brene Brown observes. “Belonging, on the other hand, doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.”

The need to fit in can lead to something called “covering.” As Rhodes Perry, author of Belonging at Work explains, covering happens when we intentionally hide or choose not to reveal certain aspects of ourselves that might cause us to be seen as outsiders. In order to fit in with everyone else, we downplay or conceal “a known stigmatized identity.” Covering sacrifices our authenticity — our belonging.

To understand belonging, it’s important to look at the dominant culture people may feel pressured to “belong” to. Every organization has its own dominant culture. Based on that culture and the broader culture the organization exists in, certain attributes will be prized and rewarded, while others are not.

We all have to risk something to belong. However, if you have attributes that aren’t valued by the dominant…