You Can’t Create Belonging for Others If You Don’t Have It Yourself

This is part 2 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.

Before we can lead others into belonging, we need to start with ourselves. This episode explores how self-worth, trauma, and emotional safety play a foundational role in how we show up as leaders. We look at the internal work required to foster belonging—not as a reward for performance, but as a decision to value who we are.

🎙️ With personal and research-backed insight from author and researcher Dr. Beth Kaplan.

What you’ll hear:

• A powerful story of burnout and survival
• Why belonging can’t be earned through overwork
• How workplace PTSD travels with us
• The self-awareness required for true leadership

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Transcript

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.