The Culture of ‘Belonging’

DDS Dobson-Smith is the CEO and founder of a SoulTrained, a consultancy with the mission to help leaders and individuals to become more of who they really are. SoulTrained was formed three years ago and before that DDS had a twenty 20-year career in HR and L&D gained in a variety of organisations including M&S and Sony Music Entertainment as well as advertising agencies and civil engineering consultancies. Because of DDS’S background and qualifications in psychology and psychotherapy the idea of bringing that into the workplace really appealed. The SoulTrained ethos of ‘training’ at a soul level believes that when we shift things at the soul level we systemically address changes in behaviour attitude and approach. The idea behind SoulTrained is that they are there to help leaders and individuals to become more of who they really are.

DDS feels that our soul is our light, the very essence of who we are as an individual. When we are born our soul is very present. People talk about how you can see the soul of a child in their early years because it’s very close to the surface. Then when we grow up and experience life we learn to cover up our soul because its either too bright for other people to handle or because we want to protect it from people who are mean or cruel to us. Over time we build up armour that we put on and wear to protect ourselves but which also stops us from connecting from other people. This is particularly true at work where many people, particularly those who come from groups that have identities that come from marginalised or historically excluded groups, cover up aspects of who they are. When we accept ourselves as we are for who we are and accept others for who they are as they are, so much gets moved out of the way. DDS feels this is congruence, of being in touch with your inner self rather than authenticity.

All living things have a soul. The collection of souls that come together become the organisations soul because an organisation is more than a piece of paper, a website or bank account. As an individual we can experience inner conflict, the world of discrepancy theory. The ‘who we think we’ are versus the ‘who we want to be’ versus the ‘who we really are’. This inner conflict we experience as individuals can be experienced at a group or organisational level as well. It comes back to congruency or being in rapport with self, with others and with life itself.

DDS uses Attachment Theory as one of the lenses through which to talk about how to create more belonging at work. From Attachment Theory we learn how to create a template for all of our future relationships through the relationship we have with out primary caregivers from the moment we are born. Connection and nurture is actually a biological imperative and that when we don't experience attachment, nurture and care in our adult life, it can have the same impact as when we don't experience it in our childhood.

There are parallels between parenting styles and styles in which we are parented and how those play out in the workplace.  Someone who is being managed might have a tendency to unconsciously act out the way they might have behaved as a child. When we are managing someone we might a tendency to act out the way in which we were parented.  So many parallels exist between our childhood and adulthood that if we are not aware of the patterns we have learned we may go and replay them in our adult life.

If you are congruent you have the capacity to belong. Belonging is something that is an experience that is part of building an appropriate culture in the workplace. The concept of belonging is particularly topical at the moment. The Great Resignation or as DDS refers to it The Great Realisation has seen a large number of people start to ask themselves some big questions about their life and whether what they do workwise fires them up or brings them light.  If the answer is no, people have decided to make a career change. Some have said yes it is what I want to do but question whether they are doing it where they want to do it or whether it is bringing meaning, purpose and a sense of belonging. The experience of belonging is what many people are seeking, somewhere they can go and be themselves so they aren’t using up energy to cover up, dumb down or suppress aspects of their personality or themselves in order to fit in.  When they aren’t using that energy to create a persona to fit in, that energy is released and available for work.

In order to have that experience of belonging you have to have the behaviour of inclusion in an organisation. That doesn’t just mean how people interact with each other it means policies, decision-making processes and frameworks. In order to have inclusion you have to have diversity. Diversity is binary. An organisation is either diverse or not. The question is ‘do I see people who are like me or not like me’. If the answer to both is yes then its probable that you have diversity. To get belonging you need inclusion. To get inclusion you need diversity but diversity might not always lead to inclusion and inclusion might not always lead to belonging.

The two most important people metrics to consider are employee attrition and employee engagement. DDS sees a correlation between the two in that when one goes up the other goes down. You want attrition to go down, not necessarily to zero because some healthy turnover is good but organisations need to look at the industry average and do better than that. You want engagement to increasingly go up. Engagement is different to happiness. It’s not about making people happy, it’s about the things that help people to feel aligned and motivated to show up.

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.

You can find out more at www.soultrained.com or DDS’s new book is You Can Be Yourself Here: Your Pocket Guide to Creating Inclusive Workplaces by Using the Psychology of Belonging (Lioncrest Publishing, Feb. 2, 2022).