What Leadership Work We Need to Do to Prioritize Belonging w/ Dr. Beth Kaplan
Home > Podcast
In this week’s episodes of Relationships at Work, Russel chats with author and researcher Dr. Beth Kaplan on the leadership work needed to prioritizing belonging.
A few reasons why she is awesome — she is a keynote speaker, researcher, executive coach and author. Her work focuses predominantly on belonging and leadership development, which she was recognized for by the University of Pennsylvania as one of the world leading experts on belonging. And her book Braving the Workplace: Belonging at the Breaking Point, now available, combines groundbreaking research with an actionable framework to help individuals and organizations cultivate a sense of belonging while promoting mental health.
Connect with Beth and learn more about her work…
LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE
“Belonging is the innate desire to be part of something larger than yourself without sacrificing who you are.”
Dr. Beth Kaplan
Russel Lolacher: On the show today, we have Dr. Beth Kaplan, and here is why she is awesome. She’s a keynote speaker, researcher, executive coach, and author.
Her work focuses predominantly on belonging and leadership development, which she was recognized for by the University of Pennsylvania as one of the world leading experts on belonging. And her book Braving the Workplace, Belonging at the Breaking Point. It’s now available. Combines groundbreaking ground, groundbreaking research.
It’s so groundbreaking I can’t even wrap my lips around the word. Research with actionable framework to help individuals and organizations cultivate a sense of belonging while promoting mental health. Hello, Beth.
Dr. Beth Kaplan: Hi. So great to be here with today.
Russel Lolacher: I’m stoked. Belonging. I, I think there was a, a, a drinking game in that bio about the word belonging, so I think that’s gonna be a big focus for today.
Dr. Beth Kaplan: Maybe I feel it.
Russel Lolacher: Before we get into any of that though, Beth, I do have to ask the most important question. Ah, is it the most important? I don’t know, but it is the one we like to kick off with, which is, what is your best or worst employee experience?
Dr. Beth Kaplan: Oh, that’s a good one. So much I could say. All right, I’m gonna start out with performance review season, right? I mean, who gets excited for that? This girl right here. I mean, why? Why do you ask? Well, not 10 minutes before one of my performance reviews, my boss gave me an award in front of the entire room, and I was beyond proud.
So I sat into his room, I was excited, I was like, let it happen. And he said, Beth, you are the best employee I have on that leadership team of mine, but you don’t belong here. And I was stunned. I felt sucker punched, like, I don’t know. I was 15 years old and my first boyfriend was breaking up with me. He went on to tell me why I didn’t fit, but I, I just heard nothing.
My mind was in a different place and I was devastated. I was the person, Russel, who welcomed all of our new hires and created the first sense of belonging they had at the company, but I didn’t fit, and so I was filled with rage and sadness, but of course I didn’t let it show. So you thought I would’ve quit right?
Wrong. For the next 12 months, I doubled down, spending every moment I could trying to win gold stars. I worked until 3:00 AM. I traveled more. I took on more assignments, and about a year later in my next review, I decided I was gonna be open and honest with my boss. I was gonna tell him I was exhausted. I was spent, I was not just figurally killing myself, I was truly thinking of killing myself.
To which he told, he responded with crickets. He said, I’m so sorry. I have to go. I’ve got another meeting to get to. And I just didn’t know what to do with that. I mean, you can imagine I was, I told my boss something. I had not told a doctor, my husband or anyone else for that matter. I was legitimately thinking of killing myself.
Russel Lolacher: How do you, how do you get through something like that?
Dr. Beth Kaplan: So. Interestingly enough, that was my breaking point. I’m sure you can imagine when my boss, when I told him I was exhausted and broken, and thinking of ending of my life, his response or his lack of response. Was the moment I needed in life. It’s when I finally understood. You can’t belong to something until you belong to yourself.
Right? Belonging isn’t about how hard you work, how loyal you are, or how much sacrifice you put in. It isn’t something you can earn by pushing past your limits or proving your work to someone else who will truly never, never see you, right? Belonging is something you need to be for yourself, and it’s only something you can decide.
That’s, that’s what happened to me.
Russel Lolacher: I’m, this is gonna sound horrible. I’m glad that happened to you. You know, in the sense that you had that light bulb moment. You had that, well, it’s on me, but how many people don’t? How many people in your situation would go to that horrible leader and double down going? I don’t have a sense of belonging, and my boss, even more so with crickets, doesn’t think I belong and devalues me even more.
I know somebody would double down and go spiral after that, even more so.
Dr. Beth Kaplan: Absolutely. Here’s the thing, we’re all hardwired for deep human connection, right? We, without it, we suffer. However, there’s something that makes us feel deeply unworthy of it at the same time. So when my boss didn’t say anything to me, it spoke volumes. It did. And I will tell you that’s the point where I did quit. After that experience.
And I spent the next several years really trying to understand my own experience and went to grad school. My doctoral dissertation became my personal rewrite, I think. I knew I had a story to tell. I just didn’t know what it was or how to tell it, and that’s what happened. I really never sought out to research belonging, by the way.
It’s kind of one of those things where I just kept wondering why me and the people around me felt like they were unworthy of the spaces they were trying to be fit into. That’s really what happened.
Russel Lolacher: And unfortunately a lot of us at those, at that earlier part in our careers, do not have the tools to pivot like that. A lot of us are, you know, just happy to have a job or, you know, like, or, or we’re looking at leaders and in your case we’re assuming people in positions of power over us are leaders when as you’re demonstrating they’re not.
And yet we’re expecting this behavior of a Brene Brown or a Simon Sinek when that person’s probably barely managing day-to-day, and yet we’re looking at them as a model of behavior. And so it’s, it’s heartbreaking that those people in those positions don’t get the impact they have on us, especially those that are young, early in their careers and could impact them for better or worse for the rest of their careers.
Dr. Beth Kaplan: Yeah. This is the thing. Workplace PTs, PTSD is a real thing. And I quit. But let me tell anyone out there listening while I quit, the PTSD did not. So that has followed me for several years afterwards. So those of you thinking, you know what, I wanna quit. What you need to think about first is how do I deal with this before I quit?
And I know that may sound really hard because let’s be honest, I probably wouldn’t have spoken truth to power to the, to my boss, that was really hard. Getting the words out were vulnerable enough. And so here’s the real, if you don’t settle some of the PTSD and the the trauma that you’re experienced, it’s gonna follow you.
We take with us up to five managers to every job we go to. I mean, trust me, I don’t wanna take him anywhere, but he follows me. He comes with me where I go. And the thing is, I know so many people out there feel this way too. And the problem is we don’t talk about it enough. Because it feels like it’s an unworthy trauma to some, right?
You see other people experiencing what you feel is worse trauma, and that’s just not, that’s not, it. Trauma’s trauma and so you need to deal with it, or it becomes the master of you, so you need to master it.
Russel Lolacher: So many times I miss, I mean, obviously I, I kick off every episode with that question, and as I’ve mentioned on the show, almost every single time people reach back. Not last week, not three months ago. It’s decades ago. It’s, it’s something that happened to ’em at prom in grade 12. Like it is that visceral that they carry this trauma with them and people like, oh, it’s just a bad day.
No, you’d be amazed at what can break cracks in the foundation of people’s identity, their sense of belonging, and that they carry with them for every relationship moving forward at the workplace.
Dr. Beth Kaplan: That’s right. And you know, you bring up such an amazing point. I remember going through the process of having traumatic work experience and people saying, you know, just get a good night’s sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning. This is one of those things you won’t feel better about in the morning.
Belonging uncertainty is a secret killer in the workplace. It’s probably one of the most biggest traumas we experience. And it’s not one of those that just goes away the next morning.
Russel Lolacher: So let’s set the table. Beth. Let’s define some things, ’cause that’s a big part of the show, is we talk about things and never define them. So belonging. What is belonging for people in the workplace?
Dr. Beth Kaplan: Belonging is the innate desire to be part of something larger than yourself without sacrificing who you are. And that’s the, the first half is something we know very well. This, it’s the sacrificing who you are part, right? So you think about the arch nemesis of belonging, it’s fitting in and why? Because fitting in means giving up parts of yourself to be part of that greater good.
Where belonging doesn’t mean giving up who you are. It means being who you are.
Russel Lolacher: So how do you know an organization is getting this, their leadership, their executive? Like what gets the Dr. Beth Kaplan seal of approval that an organization has figured out this belonging thing culturally?
Dr. Beth Kaplan: Okay, so my gut reaction to that is when an organization says they’re gonna do something and they do it.
Russel Lolacher: Hmm.
Dr. Beth Kaplan: So their values are more than just aspirational. Okay. When they don’t have things like we’re a family, that really just gets me. That’s traumatic. Because listen, all of us come in with different baggage, right?
For me, I grew up in unfortunately, very dysfunctional household. So for me, when a company said they were a family, I ran to it. I was so excited. But you can’t be loyal to something that can’t be loyal back and you can’t fire a family. I’ve tried. It doesn’t work. And you can fire your employees or you can fire your employer.
So that being said to me, when companies live the values that they write on paper, that’s when I know that they’re going in the right direction.
Russel Lolacher: And trust is so embedded in that as well, because how many organizations will say a thing, here’s your values, it’s on a website, it’s on a poster, but the actions are not matching up with the things we use for recruiting. Like people aren’t living the environment in which we are promoting the environment is, and people aren’t dumb.
They lose trust in organizations and leadership between the actions done and the words said, and that if that gap gets bigger, people don’t trust, and that I think would be pretty foundational to belonging.
Dr. Beth Kaplan: A hundred percent. But do you know, do you know what the number one value that people want from their companies are?
Russel Lolacher: Now I’m super curious. No.
Dr. Beth Kaplan: It’s, it shocks some people. Care. Care is the number one thing that people want. So if we take it back a step, we know that the managers, your, usually your frontline manager or your direct manager, is the number one influence on our sense of belonging in the workplace and the number one thing that employees want, not just from their teams or their companies is care and care is a huge spectrum. Sometimes people dump care into the thoughtfulness bucket and they leave it there, but it’s a big spectrum. It’s care can be that thoughtfulness, but it also could be advocacy. You know, care to say my name in a room of opportunity that I’m not in.
Care can be candor. A lot of the times I hear, Beth, I’m so nervous to tell so-and-so the truth about their performance, and I always say clear is kind. You wanna be clear with them, you wanna give them feedback because most of us got into leadership roles to coach and grow our people. And the way you coach and grow is through honesty, care, trust, and respect.
So when you think about that, if anyone out there is listening and you need to give that that hard feedback, you wanna do it in a way that’s caring, that people understand that you’re doing it for their best interests. ’cause you want the best for them.
Russel Lolacher: I wanna dive into the elephant in the room just considering the world we are currently living in, because DEI is a constant one that comes up and it’s almost always now associated with belonging. You you’ll even see DEIB. I’ve even seen mathematical equations that say diversity plus equity plus inclusivity equals belonging.
Dr. Beth Kaplan: Yes.
Russel Lolacher: What is your feeling? I mean, there’s this huge attack on DEI programs. On the validity of them. How is that sitting in your world?
Dr. Beth Kaplan: It is an interesting time we’re living in. I have to say DEI has gotten a really bad rap, especially recently, and I like to separate it from belonging, not because of the bad rap it’s getting, please, anyone out there. The reason why I separate it is because D, the E and the I are super important each in their own construct, and I feel that by lumping them together, we’ve done them a disservice.
And that the thing is, it becomes something that can be attacked readily because it’s one program name and it’s something that’s become a scapegoat. So I never really link it to belonging. In fact, my research disconnects it from the DEI structure. I’ve had a lot of folks come for me, come to me and come for me, but let’s be honest around this topic.
And so I typically give them the research that supports that they’re different constructs and they need to be respected separately. You know, there’s all those sayings and I think, you know me at this point, I’m not that cheesy. I try not to be at least where, you know, it’s diversity is the seat at the table or whatever the, the jargon is I don’t really see belonging within that construct. With the exception of the fact that it does, when you are allowed in a place which is inclusion, or when you have diversity of representation or diversity of thought, it does, it does factor into your sense of belonging. But there’s so many differences, especially with inclusion, right. That’s the question I get asked most often. Aren’t they the same thing? No, they’re not. They’re not at all the same thing, however. They can feel good, and that’s I think why people confuse them so much. But make no mistake, inclusion is something others determined for you, whereas belonging is something you decide for yourself.
Russel Lolacher: I like that. Especially from a definition standpoint, because if we can’t, if we can’t differentiate, we’re just gonna blend them together to your point. And then your employees get confused and they don’t understand what success for themselves look like.
Dr. Beth Kaplan: Right.
Russel Lolacher: And I love that you highlighted that there is a diversity here within like, I know DEI get it, but at the same time, we have to understand what these terms might mean different things to different people, which is also a part of the diversity lens that we need to better understand.
Dr. Beth Kaplan: Oh, it’s heartbreaking. To be honest with you. A lot of the times I’ve been talking to people that are DEI professionals and they’re just heartbroken of what’s going on. And you know it’s unfortunately, a lesson that we’re learning is that maybe it wasn’t set up correctly to begin with, although the intentions were so beautiful.
I wanna celebrate it all, truthfully. But where we’re at now just feels really hard for people and most of the people in the DEI work got into it for the heart work, and now it’s just become hard work. Yeah.
Russel Lolacher: Previously, before we got into having this conversation, we’d sort of talked about where we wanted to shift our belonging conversation to, and I, I really liked that we were gonna… and this is where I kind of wanna dig into this, is the perspective of a experienced leader and the perspective of a new leader in how they approach, might they approach belonging.
So that’s where I wanna start now, is that from an experienced leader’s perspective, what do they need to understand about themselves to help others in their belonging?
Dr. Beth Kaplan: Oh my goodness. I love this question so much because experienced leaders and new leaders are so, so different. I often love when experiences, experienced leaders tell me they get a second wind, right? Where they feel new to something. So as I said before, we all get into leadership, not for the glamor of all the administrative work, but for to coach and grow other people.
I think newer leaders have a fresher perspective. They’re ready to take on the world, right? I’m gonna make you a superstar, Russel, and I’m gonna promote you and all your dreams are coming true. Right? Whereas experienced leaders have the baggage of the weight of the role of what has not worked for them in the past, and it’s dramatically impacted their own sense of belonging.
I always like to say leaders are employees too. They need to feel it also. And you, you can’t do for others until you understand your own sense of belonging. So the book I wrote, belonging, you know, Braving the Workplace, Belonging at the Breaking Point, does address this for leaders also. And understanding what your own sense of belonging is.
I think that’s really key for experienced leaders to understand where you’ve been, where you set out to do, and to understand if the job is serving you. I’ve had many conversations with people that dream to stop being a leader because it’s just so hard these days. So I always like to say if you’re an experienced leader, take a step back, start the newness again. And you can, this is the thing, you can always have a beginner’s mindset when it comes to leadership.
So if you’re out there right now and you’ve been a leader for 10, 20 years, even if you’ve had the same team for 10, 20 years, you wanna do things that are going to refresh. Okay? So that might be you and I having a conversation and me learning a little bit more about you. Okay? Aside from the fact of me understanding how I work.
Understand and meet your employees where you’re at. That could be as simple as you know. Russel, we’ve never talked about what you majored in college. Oh, journalism. Wow. It’s so, it’s crazy. Did you like print? Did you like I, I don’t know, interview style. Oh, you writing, wow. You know, you don’t do much writing.
Is that something you’d be interested in doing here? What I’m doing is I’m learning about you, I’m taking your interests, and then you need to go the extra mile. You need to go extra and start putting that into their job responsibilities, and you’re going to see two things happen. One, you’re gonna see them light up, which is really important, and you’re gonna light up because you’re gonna start becoming the leader that you want it to be.
Russel Lolacher: I like that we need to start with self-awareness. ’cause I mean that is so key, but in understanding our self-awareness, and I’ll be honest, most experienced leaders have a harder time with this. I think because they’re so entrenched, because they’re in the, this is the way we’ve always done it mentality, not, I’m not throwing them under the bus on this.
This is just being conditioned, habitual. This just naturally happens.
Dr. Beth Kaplan: Yeah.
Russel Lolacher: I mean, it’s, it’s nice, it’s easy to say, you know, stop, take a breath. But it feels like there’s more to it because they obviously haven’t been doing that to this point because for, for their, you know, things like, I’ve been too busy. When am I gonna have time, Beth, to stop and reflect?
Dr. Beth Kaplan: I have to meet numbers. Yes.
Russel Lolacher: That’s exactly it.
Dr. Beth Kaplan: So I love to be challenged on this one because a lot of the times more senior leaders will come to me and they’re like, I know this belonging thing’s important. It’s a little hokey. And I always say to them, then don’t look at the emotional side of it, although that’s gonna happen no matter what you do.
Look at it from a numbers perspective, I mean, disengagement costs a lot of money. In the United States alone, we spend between $450 and $550 billion on disengagement. It’s like killing a fly with a hammer. And so you as a leader can look at the time you spend as an investment, not only in the people with you, but yourself.
This is the thing. If you’re an experienced leader, to your point, you’ve seen it not work plenty of times, so you need to change it up. You need to kick your own butt a little bit and really understand what will make you happy and what will make your employees feel more valued and seen. Right? Everyone has a sense of mattering in this issue.
Everyone wants to feel like they are doing their best and that there’s someone out there that cares about them. Okay? So there’s been many times, and just for anyone out there to understand. Many times I personally have not felt a connection to a company, but a connection to a boss or connection to the team and not the boss.
Belonging is not a one size fits all. It can be partial. I mean, think about it this way. I belong to three gyms. One has to go, by the way, it’s not working that well, but I feel a deep membership to two of the three. And they’re different. So that means that we can take that into any situation in our lives and feel partial belonging to some, not to others.
But if you’re out there and you’re thinking, I just need to be a better boss, a better human, a better anything, always we lead with the people. Always want to feel a sense of camaraderie with the people you’re with. And that doesn’t mean you’re best friends at work. It doesn’t mean you, you know everything about them.
It means you need to meet people where they’re at. And this is really important. You need to do for yourself. You need to tell them about you. And again, I’m not saying blood type and your children’s middle names. I’m saying you need to understand and tell them what works for you. These are the boundaries I set.
I don’t receive calls between five and seven ’cause I’m with my kids. Or this is the communication style I love. I do terrible with Slack. Please don’t Slack me important things. Send me an email, send me these things. And at the same time, if you’re sending me problems, fantastic, let me know I need to remove the interference for you.
And once you do that, it’s so simple. You’re teaching people how you want to work and how they can work best with you. So if you’re an experienced leader, beginner’s mindset, you can do all of that.
Russel Lolacher: In your research, you, you’ve looked at a lot of leaders and and people in the workplace. What are some qualities and motivations you think sets them better up for success because we’ve already talked a bit about care, but, and how integral that is. But I mean this, yeah. I’m just kinda curious as to where they should be focusing their efforts or maybe lean into if those are strengths they have already.
Dr. Beth Kaplan: I always like to say and by the way, it’s not me who first said it. I wish it was, but I always like to say the best leaders set the vision and the strategy and make it feel consensus driven. So this is what we need to do. Are we all on board with it? And then they let people get at it. They don’t micromanage.
You know, in the sales world, it’s very easy to make parallels between the manager and being a super rep, someone that just takes over things. And so as a leader, that’s where trust and care come in. You need to build time in for people to fail, and that’s really painful for all leaders in the workplace.
It’s very painful to have a deadline that you’re in you might potentially not meet. That being said, you’ll keep missing those deadlines if you don’t fix the problem initially. You know, I have an employee situation that recently came up where we realized this employee was beloved. Truly, everyone in the organization really liked her, but no one necessarily respected the work she did. So as a leadership team, we thought, wow, we are failing her. Such a smart, capable person who with a stellar reputation, but what would happen if she was seen as a subject matter expert in addition to the support she gives other people? And it’s been hard. It’s been really hard because we realize she does not know as much as we thought, and that’s on us to help get her there.
That means a process of learning, unlearning, and being okay with vulnerable situations. And I have to tell you, it’s working and now it’s slow and painful, but it’s working and I have no doubt that the next time we get evaluations on this employee, it’s going to be, she knows her stuff. We feel comfortable. We trust that she’s been in our shoes. Things like that.
Russel Lolacher: So I’m a new leader. I don’t have the relationships, I do not have the reputation. I do not have the network. I do not, I’m still trying to figure out my job. So in the organization, how do I approach others to provide that sense of belonging for my own team when they’re just going, I don’t even know if I can trust this guy. Like, how, how do you start that process?
Dr. Beth Kaplan: Oh, my go-to move is always playing the new card hands down. I mean, I could be somewhere for three years. I’m like, I’m new. Nice to meet you, I’m Beth. Because in all honesty, it buys you a lot of leniency around people thinking, okay, she doesn’t know and she’s not coming in with preconceived notions.
So what I would do is I may say, you know, Russel, I’m new to this organization as the leader. Obviously you’ve worked with me for years. What’s the reputation of my organization? Do people like working with us? What could we do better? How would you like to see the partnership? And is it okay with you if I also share some feedback around how the team sees this going as well?
So guess what? Beginner mindset not only works for experienced leaders, but it’s wonderful for actual new leaders. And here’s the thing, new leaders really get excited about this. In fact, sometimes they can come in like a bull in a China shop. That is probably the hardest part for new leaders, is not coming in and trying to change the world.
So as a new leader, if you’re wanting to secure this, the positive vibes that you got going, you want to observe a little more. You want to ask certain questions to the employees that you’ve inherited, right? You may wanna say, what did you like about our last leader? What didn’t you like? What can I what, what makes you excited about your job and maybe what’s not going as well?
And then you really want to do something that’s incredibly important. You want to reinforce that you’ve listened, you’ve learned, and that you’re taking the changes that they need to see. That’s the key difference, right? It’s not always about your mission as a new leader. In fact, it’s rarely about your mission.
You need to meet people where they’re at and make sure that you’re getting the best from them by doing what’s what they need. Then little by little, that’s when the team comes together. And it feels like you’re all working together on the same page.
Russel Lolacher: We’re talking a lot about connection. We’re talking a lot about, you know, with our teams, which always brings me back to the, one of the foundational things any great leader should have, which is communication skills. How does communication show up? Tone, frequency, when we are trying to get this sense of belonging, communication has to be so important, but we also have to be intentional about it.
What do you, how, how do we approach communication?
Dr. Beth Kaplan: Well there, there’s a few different ways, so I’ll, I’ll stick with the leader track for a second. One of the easiest ways that you can maintain communication is by having regular one-on-ones. And I know you’re all thinking out there, of course I do that. But are your one-on-ones led by you? Are they led by the employee?
Russel Lolacher: Yeah.
Dr. Beth Kaplan: So for me, one of the things I do when I take on anyone is I like to tell them that the agenda is theirs. But just to save me like 10 minutes at the end, maybe for anything I may wanna blurt out because it is within our nature as leaders to do the complete opposite. It’s within our nature to be like, okay, Russel, I’ve got 15 things I need to review with you within this five minutes that we got. Ready? Go. And this is the thing, people want your time and they want your attention. And sometimes they’re nervous to approach you because they think they’re bothering you. So what you wanna do is you wanna make that time your own. And then if you need more time, schedule it with them separately. At the same time, within those one-on-ones, there needs to be a safe space.
There needs to be time for professional growth and development and safety. Okay? So that may look different for every single person, but it’s making sure that you’re giving the time. There are certain things that you’ll notice with your employees if they’re literally keeping it to a strict agenda and it’s a punch list.
That’s a red flag. It’s a red flag because you wanna make sure that it’s not singularly focused on the work, and that’s really hard to do. So for me, I’ll, I’ll get real with you. I’ve done this many, many times where I use plenty of avoidance tactics, and by the way, they’ve gotten me promoted. I hate to say it, but it’s one of those things where my boss… super busy.
So what I’ll do is I’ll get out of one-on-ones. You’re so busy, I don’t need you this week. I’m gonna give you back the time. And then what happens? She’s like, Ugh, you really get me. I have to tell you, there was a conversation that I had where I, I was honest. I said, listen, I am asking you to keep me accountable because I’m just gonna keep canceling because I’m either nervous to talk to you because of my communication or yours, and I’m gonna quit on the, on the one-on-ones because I know it makes you happy.
And I will tell you, ever since I said that out loud, it’s been amazing because I was terrified to say it.
And that leader keeps me accountable now, does not let me get out of it, and always starts the conversation with how are you doing? What’s new in your life? And it’s made all the difference in the world because that conversation was a punch list before.
Russel Lolacher: I love that story, but it also breaks my heart quite a bit. And you’ve literally just taught your leader how to lead.
Dr. Beth Kaplan: A little bit. But you know what? I will tell you it’s the best thing I did in my relationship with the leader because they’ve told me time and time again how uncoachable they felt. So maybe I could have led with that one in the story. But at the same time, leaders are not born, they’re made. So while it may feel funny that I actually was teaching the leader on how to lead.
That’s okay. I’m willing to bet most of my leaders, as most of your leaders were promoted because they were good at their job, doesn’t mean they were good leaders. And I never had leadership development until I was a leader for more than 15 years. I’m willing to bet that generations before me never received leadership training.
So anyone out there learning and leadership is bi-directional, do not feel bad. If you’re giving your leaders that type of feedback, because they are not telepaths, most of them, and they’re not gonna get inside your head and assuming that they know how to lead you, could be a fail.
Russel Lolacher: Yeah, and it’s, it’s one of the things I have a challenge with sometimes in conversations about this because, Hmm, what is our expectation of leadership? Well, most of them aren’t leaders, to be completely blunt by the definition of leadership. They’re not leaders because they’re too busy to be leaders. And that’s another problem because their boss, to your point, all leaders are employees. Their leader is not being a leader. We’re just perpetuating this leadership brokenness across organizations. So I, I totally get that from we need to help our leaders be better leaders. But so do leaders need to help leaders be leaders?
And it’s sort of, we’re in this middle of push and pull, just is more frustrating. Even though there are bright lights and there’s certainly opportunities. It just, it, it, it gets frustrating that we have to junior staff who have no leadership development have to teach their own leaders how to develop.
Dr. Beth Kaplan: You know? Yes. And another way to look at it though is that we help each other grow through this process. I have in the past, where I’ve gone wrong, is I always think all of my leaders have to be so much better than me. It’s so important that they know more than me, that they understand more than me.
Here’s the thing, that’s not always the truth, and it’s very rarely the truth. You need each other to be successful. By definition, to your point, leaders need followers and there are followers, and then they’re just employees. Would you, the, the question I ask most people is, would you follow your leader to the next job? And if you’re a leader out there, that’s maybe one that you wanna take to heart.
Russel Lolacher: Yeah. Is it, so we’re, we’re as a leader, as an emerging leader, as an established leader. We can only control what we can control. We can control the ecosystem of belonging for our teams. Do we have any responsibility to this, to the point we’re talking about now, of creating a sense of belonging for those leaders above us for the larger organization, for executive, or should we only be focusing on the team we’re responsible and accountable to?
Dr. Beth Kaplan: So, I could argue that we can’t control any of that truthfully, because belonging is something you determine for yourself. What I can say is that you want to create a culture of inclusion because you want people to be rowing in that boat with you. And there are many ways to do that. And yes, I do believe it’s up and down motion, so it could be for the people below you, and it’s making sure that they have the right opportunities, the right candor and feedback, right? The right spectrum of care. And that goes both ways. And you may be thinking, how am I gonna influence how the leaders above me feel a sense of belonging? It’s all about either being candid in the right areas, so curious, but self-aware. That’s, that’s key. You don’t wanna be like, oh, hey Russel, great Town Hall, but I, here’s some notes for you that you could have done better.
That’s not gonna ever work, ever, I promise. But at the same time. Russel, I loved the way you interacted with the rest of the leadership team. It was so fun to see the way you work together, and I feel like there’s so much more synchronicity than it was before, and that’s impacted the way I approach, the way I lead my teams.
No one ever died of too many compliments. That’s a perfect example of how that leader will internalize the fact that they’ve worked differently and they’re showing up differently. So, it needs to be genuine. That’s the thing I would say here. And at the same time, just like I said, it’s important to start giving that bi-directional learning and leadership back and forth.
If you’re a leader, you don’t even have to be, you can be an individual employee contributor. Right. But I would say it’s bi-directional for sure. You can’t control it, but you can provide more inclusion.
Russel Lolacher: Where’s HR in all this?
Dr. Beth Kaplan: Ooh, good one.
Russel Lolacher: If, because we tend to outsource belonging and communication and anything to this small group of individuals over here in this other group called HR. So what’s our belonging strategy, HR?
Dr. Beth Kaplan: You all belong here. That’s the strategy, right? I mean, it’s not even creative at this point. It’s just you belong here. Which is bad because that makes it performative. And then people start to say, oh wait, but I don’t feel like that. Is there something wrong with me? And I feel bad for HR in that sense because a lot of times they are responsible for the program of the organization.
But if you’re in HR, your best way to make it real is by doing it through the leadership. People look to their leaders for in times of change, and they look to HR when it comes to more of the liabilities or the rule following. Most of people in HR got into it for the heart work, as we’ve said before, but it’s become such hard work.
I, I feel for HR, I feel like there’s so much compassion fatigue that happens for them. So I think that they are important contributors. They’re the ones that really safeguard the mission and the safety of our cultures. At the same time, it’s best when they leave it to the leaders to really bring home that feeling of inclusion and to get the, the gut check of belonging on their teams.
And why that’s especially important is because most of the time we don’t give that gut check to our leaders until we’re leaving. If someone is coming to you and saying, i’m not sure I feel like I belong here. I can guarantee that that’s most likely the intro to your exit interview with them instead of what it should be, which is your stay interviews.
You know, why do you wanna be here? What do you like? What could we do better? So if you’re in HR, you can do those stay interviews. If you’re a leader, you can do them, but do not wait for the language to come to you. Most people do not have the language around their emotions at work, and especially not their sense of belonging.
Russel Lolacher: I love that you brought up the stay interviews. The thing, the thing is that is if you want to, you want belonging in the DNA of your organization, we can’t treat onboarding as a one-off and then maybe do an exit interview and nothing in between. So I mean, I’ve even put together a holistic interview process. And I like calling them Thrive Interviews, not stay interviews. ’cause we don’t want people just to stay. We need them to actually grow and, and, and, but we never, so we do stay interviews are more performance reviews. They’re not. Do you feel a sense of belonging? How am I communicating it?
Like it’s not a humanity thing, it’s a did you create the widget when I wanted the widget. Right? But when we do stay interviews or thrive interviews, they’re not connected to onboarding and exit interviews are not connected to those journey interviews. And it’s a holistic conversation. But to your point, we don’t do that because then we have the canary, we don’t have the canary in a coal mine.
By the time people, somebody leaves, we’re like, oh, well now we need to do something. Why don’t you do them while they’re still here and they may stay?
Dr. Beth Kaplan: Right, and here’s the thing. Most of our exit interviews and our stay interviews focus around the company, okay? So spoiler alert, workers these days are not necessarily only charging to your mission. They have their own missions. So what you need to do in your stay interviews, your, any of your interviews, you need to understand how to meet your employees, where they are at.
That should be the purpose of those interviews right then and there.
Russel Lolacher: What is the benefit to belonging when it comes to organizational change? Because change is, I love, we talk about change management and I’m like, but if change is always happening, how are you managing it? Because it’s not like it’s, it ends. It is, we are in such a world of constant change. I feel like belonging has a place here.
Dr. Beth Kaplan: So, people look to their leaders in times of change, and I think most of the focus has been around what happens when people feel a strong sense of belonging. Unfortunately, employees who feel excluded are 50 more times likely to leave than those that feel a strong sense of belonging. That’s an important thing to note there.
So true people with true belonging, while we don’t wanna like ignore the people that look like they’re doing fine in the workplace. They typically are the ones that are gonna tell you when you’re gonna feel it. They’re the ones that are not gonna be sacrificing who they are to do it as well. What we wanna do is really start looking at the people that are a little too quiet, the people that are yessing you to death in meetings.
That’s another one, you know. I recently had someone say to me, Hey Beth, I ran this meeting. I was talking to belong, and I was so excited and everyone was like, oh my God, yes. I’m like, great. What happened afterwards? They’re like, nothing. They all agreed. I was like, oh. Did they give a lot of yeses and head nods?
Yeah. I’m like, that’s where you wanna stop right there, because you do need to really think about what needs to change. Okay. And course correction is welcome to most people. No one wants to stay stagnant. No one wants to be in that place. Yeah.
Russel Lolacher: So to wrap up our conversation, if anybody’s any emerging leader, any or established leader is listening to this and they’re like, okay, great. I need to focus more on belonging. Or even if I do focus on it, I need to double down a bit. Is there sort of a thing you would recommend somebody starting tomorrow?
If they were just gonna dip their toe into getting a better sense of belonging and taking the right steps forward, what is that first step?
Dr. Beth Kaplan: Well, I wanna tell you and plug my book that it’s to read Braving the Workplace.
Russel Lolacher: Obviously, obviously, obviously.
Dr. Beth Kaplan: Although I will tell you it is a good handy guide to understanding your own values and the things you don’t wanna give up. So that’s, that’s really the advice I would give, is to understand yourself and go with your gut.
People know whether they belong in a place within the first seven seconds, and by the way, some people say it’s three seconds. So go with your gut. There’s always that time where you join an organization and you’re excited to be there. And then this first second, that something’s not aligning, you need to see whether or not that is something that’s going to impact your belonging journey.
Is it something I can live with or is it something that compromises who I am? So focus not just on the physical safety of the work environment, but the mental safety and protecting your peace. That’s the recommendation I would give early on.
Russel Lolacher: I think that’s a fantastic place to leave it. Thank you so much for your time today, Beth.
Dr. Beth Kaplan: Thank you so much for having me.
Russel Lolacher: That is Dr. Beth Kaplan. She’s a keynote speaker, researcher, executive coach, and author, and pick up her book. It’s a good one, especially if you wanna get into this belonging thing that everybody’s craving for. Braving the Workplace -Belonging at the Breaking Point.
Have a great day, Beth. Thank you so much for spending your time with us.
Dr. Beth Kaplan: Thank you.
Russel Lolacher: That’s it.
Dr. Beth Kaplan: Oh, you’re the best. Thank you.