What Belonging Really Means at Work (And Why Most Get It Wrong)

This is part 1 of a 4-part conversation on the work leaders need to do to incorporate belonging in the workplace with author and research Dr. Beth Kaplan. Each episode explores a different theme—clarity, self-awareness, team dynamics, and workplace culture.

Belonging isn’t the same as fitting in—and the difference matters. In this episode, we define what belonging truly is and how most organizations misunderstand or misuse the term. We explore why clarity around belonging matters and how vague values and misaligned language can erode trust and workplace culture.

🎙️ Featuring expert insight from Dr. Beth Kaplan, author of Braving the Workplace: Belonging at the Breaking Point.

Topics covered:

• What belonging actually means
• The difference between inclusion and belonging
• Why performative values harm culture
• How to tell if your organization is doing it right

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Transcript

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.