FAQ

I have often been asked whether Belongingness is my version of a new religion, a sect or the like, and the answer is that it is neither of those things. 

Very briefly, Belongingness is a person's feeling of being able to belong exactly as they are. 

When you experience Belongingness, you feel included, involved, encouraged and supported about speaking up, and you feel that you are being heard. You feel that you take part in creating value with your strengths in the contexts in which you are involved. 

Therefore, Belongingness breeds psychologically safe cultures. 

The opposite of Belongingness is fitting-in, which is about having to adapt in a way that means that you cannot belong as you are. This means that you do not feel included, involved, encouraged and supported about speaking up. If you speak up, you are not being heard, unless you express what is expected culturally and managerially; and if you express anything other than what is expected, there may be consequences that result in you preferring to stay silent.

Therefore, fitting-in breeds psychologically unsafe cultures. Thus, as you hear on trains: ‘Please keep an eye on your belongings’. You should continually check in on how you are feeling, whether you are able to be you, in order to ensure as much as possible that you have an everyday life where you are thriving and happy.

The authors Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy explain this in the following way: “Diversity is having a seat at the table, inclusion is having a voice, and belonging is having that voice be heard.”(https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/what-is-diversity-inclusion-and-belonging-2019-10-21). 

You could say that diversity and equality constitute having a seat at the table, and inclusion gives a seat at the table where you have a voice. Belongingness means that people also listen actively to what you are saying, as they listen to understand. 

I have met a lot of people, women as well as men, who have told me that they experienced not being heard when speaking out or trying to, and in those cases, diversity, equality and inclusion were simply good branding, possibly with target figures, but not something that created value in practice, as they did not have the feeling of belonging. 

I also see many who are so unconscious that they are not able to listen to understand. They listen instead of speaking. I see a few who are conscious and are able to listen to understand. Often, the people who are not conscious are people under a lot of pressure, who would like to have the peace of mind to be present, but if the peace of mind is not available, the presence and ability to listen actively is absent.

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Therefore, Belongingness is a chicken and egg situation regarding having success with diversity, equality & inclusion, and it is a precondition for diversity, equality and inclusion having the desired effect. As a female chief executive said to me: “Yes, I am a good case for the target figures, but if I speak up, I am not being heard, and then it doesn't really matter if I have a seat at the table”.

Yes, everyone can experience Belongingness, and everyone experiences Belongingness. Because, Belongingness is the very first sense of belonging that we experience as a foetus in the belly of our mother. We come into being in symbiosis with her, and we belong in symbiosis with her.

We search for the experience of being able to belong as we are, and the safety resulting from being able to belong as we are, throughout our entire lives in various relations and spheres. Therefore, the experience of being able to belong as we are is completely fundamental for our forging of identity, course of life, well-being and life expectancy. 

We are social beings, and we are willing to go to great lengths for a sense of community. Sometimes to such an extent that we lose ourselves. 

Therefore, Belongingness can also be misused and take the shape of an invitation to a community where people are lead to believe that this is a place where you can feel welcome as you are. In reality, this community invites people into a camouflaged fitting-in culture, often of a suppressive nature, where freedom is taken away, including freedom of speech.

You become aware of what your fundamental values are, and what lifts your energy. From that point, it is about establishing a daily discipline regarding your own energy as an energy leader, keeping it vibrating as highly as possible and enabling you to act in deliberate accordance with your values. When you become a deliberate energy leader, you can lead a life, privately and professionally, where you feel that you belong as you are. 

You ensure that the functions you need are represented across the value chain, and in connection with recruitment, onboarding and promotions, you ensure that you hire people who have an inner compass that corresponds to the company's cultural set of values. 

This means that before you hire and promote people, you need to assess whether they exhibit actions that support those values, even when under pressure. 

Therefore, you need to be clear about what the right actions look like, and when you are onboarding and promoting, you have to make sure that the results that make people successful correspond directly to the actions that characterise the culture and energy you wish to promote. 

There has to be coherence between speech and action, and there has to be coherence between the ones you describe as cultural role models and the ones you highlight and promote. Otherwise, people will quickly lose trust, and loss of trust can become a breeding ground for low commitment, anarchy and silos where everyone only stick up for themselves. 

Feeling secure is promoted through predictability and continuity. As soon as people can be exactly as they are and express themselves openly and honestly, while they are being listened to with interest, only strengths are promoted. These strengths solve most problems that would otherwise become weaknesses and psychological insecurity in fitting-in cultures, as they breed timidity or complete reticence.

First and foremost, you should make sure to protect your daily discipline as an energy leader in order to mainly be nourished by a high vibrational energy. This comes from your sleep, healthy food, vitamins, plenty of water, exercise, loving relationships, personal development and training of your intuition in order to keep that muscle consistently strong. Your intuition is your inner GPS, and it is directly connected to your heart, your inner compass and your values. 

If you strengthen this inner navigator, and ensure daily time management, so you are able to perceive and listen to it, you will be able to make many deliberate choices, which will again lead to actions that give you a feeling of leading your own life and belonging with all your strengths and talents.

You do this by being focused on opting for everything that gives you a feeling of belonging in and with yourself. Because, in this way, you remain connected to your own unique power, and from that place, you will be able to be involved in contexts where youconnect with other people and their power. Together, we complete each other through a high joint vibrational force, because everyone contributes and nourishes each other. The opposite is a lack of energy, which divides and results in everyone only fending for themselves. 

When you can no longer feel yourself. When you have started doubting yourself and delude yourself into thinking that you arenot strong enough compared to others. There may be a sign that you have surrendered your power to others, which is thus a sign that you should quickly re-nourish yourself with exactly what provides you with renewed energy, resulting in your strength and energy coming back.

You can establish this by either directly experiencing being gagged or excluded or feeling that you have to change yourself in order to be accepted. Manipulation tools such as silent treatment and gaslighting can be tactical methods to make people fall into line, because they reduce people's power or remove it entirely

This can also be more subtle. For example, you can gradually become less committed, the atmosphere you are a part of can become a war zone and feel oppressive, and you can feel insecure when you go to bed, and heavy instead of light when youwake up.

It is best to talk to people about what you are experiencing and keep the energy high or as high as possible. 

It is a strength to write down your observations and thus relate to your sensory experiences based on what you see, feel and notice, which keeps you from becoming deceived or gaslighted. 

Often, we as people can be deceived, because we take the blame or part of the blame when it is projected or manipulated onto us, after which we analyse it in our heads, where all the racing thoughts accelerate, instead of staying in our hearts and trusting our inner compass and intuition and what they are telling us.

If you do not have a manager that you trust, you can use the whistleblower option. You can also adopt a wait-and-see attitude to see whether management will handle the cultural challenges. Basically, you always have to choose how far you are willing to go. 

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Often, you just end up going too far, and the possible resulting burnout reduces your power so much that you do not have the strength to act any more. 

The consequence of this is that you can no longer feel yourself, and this keeps you in a helpless state. 

Therefore, it is recommended that if you can no longer keep your energy high with the daily discipline—and feel free to ask people close to you, as they can often see better than you how you are feeling—you have to decide on a deadline and move on, making sure that you move on while you still have the energy to act.