The Speed of Belonging (Part 1 of 4)

Cultivating Belonging in our Communities

If this time of pandemic and fight for racial justice is teaching us anything, it’s how interconnected we all are in this ever-changing world. We can’t go it alone or ignore others’ needs as an expense of our own; and we must embrace the reality that anything can change from day to day.

We all have a deep interdependency on each other; we all have the ability and power to inflict lasting pain or inspire guiding hope onto those we interact with; and we all have the responsibility, and just need the agency and encouragement, to lean in, engage, and lead around what is calling to our hearts in each and every moment.

Alongside those relational insights, is the realization that our society, it’s culture, structures, and processes, is a dynamic, constantly changing system. There is no past to go back to, only continued change ahead of us, and we can shape that change. We can model, embody, and guide that change to make the world a more equitable, sustainable, and thriving home for all.

It’s a wake up call we need, a necessary reckoning with a sense of urgency, coming right as we are entering what is shaping up to be the most transformative time for humanity yet.

Simply put, we are reaching a tipping point as our exploitative and tribalistic systems and cultures have disregarded equity, sustainability, and community at deep cost. In the coming weeks, months, years, and decades, we will see local and global change happen more rapidly than ever before.

From our changing climate and ecological habitats to our shifting social, economic, and political systems to our technological innovations and breakthroughs, the world as we know it is evolving. For humanity to evolve with it, it will be up to our communities to become more resilient and adaptive — to both flow with and shape change, as it comes. That ability will be dependent on how well we cultivate a foundation of belonging.

It is through belonging that our communities can lead, support, and emerge through challenging times of struggle, ambiguity, and fear.

So at the same time that most individuals are feeling a deep void of connection and community, we, as a collective society, are being called to repurpose our tools of technology, culture, and language, and to redesign our communities into emergent systems that embody principles of belonging like co-creation, self-organization, and decentralized empowerment.

Today, we’re living alongside neighbors with more diverse perspectives, identities, and worldviews than ever before. Some are finding this rise in diversity threatening to their identities and their own sense of belonging. Others are literally fighting for their lives (oftentimes the same fight their ancestors fought) to be accepted, valued, and offered the inalienable, equitable rights and opportunities every human intrinsically deserves.

Thankfully, a path forward is emerging; a way for our diverse society to function justly, fairly, and to a benefit for all. That path is through relationships, trust, and communities that cultivate true belonging: the celebration and amplification of both our differences — our unique stories, gifts, and intersectional identities, AND our similarities — our shared human needs, dreams, and values.

Only then, can we rediscover not just what is possible between humans, but what is true between humans.

In business school, I was introduced to a book by Stephen Covey titled, The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything. His perspective is that “nothing is as fast as the speed of trust and that the ability to establish, grow, extend, and restore trust with all stakeholders is the critical leadership competency of the new global economy”.

While it’s definitely steeped in its purpose for, and origins from, business minds helping other business minds produce, move, and sell things faster, it has its takeaways for community builders and leaders too. Trust is part of what we are striving for, but not to expedite processes, rather as a foundational prerequisite for all the other community magic to happen.

In Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, Adrienne Maree Brown references Mervyn Marcano by inverting the concept to: “Move at the speed of trust. Focus on critical connections more than critical mass — build resilience by building the relationships”. Here, trust shifts to become both the means and the ends.

This led to a deeper question in relationship to my community work: what comes first, trust or belonging?

Can you feel belonging with someone or to a group without trust? Can you build trust with someone if they don’t make you feel like you belong? If we are working together today to build a future for tomorrow, and I don’t feel like I belong in today’s work or tomorrow’s vision, then how can we have trust between us?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that belonging is a path to trust. To build trust, you make someone feel like they belong — like they belong on the team or in the neighborhood; like they belong in the decision-making process; like they belong in the park watching birds or jogging down the street or simply walking through the world as black man.

When I think about our leaders, especially our political leaders (for better or worse), they build trust by engaging with people so they feel seen and heard. That’s an act of cultivating belonging.

This led to an important insight: belonging is both a means and an ends too. A perspective and intent of belonging guides the organizing of the people and the process; the process, gathering, and action becomes an act of belonging; and the outcome is a deeper sense of belonging, which all then cycles back to individuals feeling deeper engagement through belonging.

It is with a belonging mindset that leaders can fertilize the soil and seed growth that naturally sprouts up full of creativity, collaboration, and all the possibilities of what communities can cultivate together. When someone feels like they belong, they can become, and collaborate towards, anything they can dream. I wonder:

• What if moving at the speed of belonging became how our leaders worked with and led our organizations, cities, and countries?
• What if a perspective of belonging was what guided leaders’ behaviors, actions, and the values they stood for?
• What if thinking with a belonging mindset became how we designed our systems and institutions, or how we built our decision-making processes, or how we measured success or failure, or how we created justice when harm has been done?

It would change the world.

If our country and cities approached the protests we are seeing this past week through a belonging mindset, the path becomes clearer with the guiding question: “How do we create a country or city where everyone feels they belong?

With that guiding approach to make sure everyone feels accepted, supported, and valued, we can start to form new questions to guide potential solutions.

• How can we better embody our democratic ideals and empower every citizen to be more deeply involved in how we make decisions, build systems, and allocate resources?
• How can we invite the protesters and the police to help co-design a city leadership community full of diverse representation across the private, public, and social sectors focused on combating racism in our city?
• How can we cultivate the formation of diverse small groups of engaged citizens that are empowered to lead community projects around what calls to their hearts?

Then explore the question, how can we guide these groups to cultivate their own sense of belonging, connection, and trust with each other?

And then lastly, how do we nurture these groups to co-design structures, cultural values, and commitments to co-creation, self-organization, and empowered agency (with resources) to accomplish their collective and individual goals?

And that’s it. Take a step back and watch community magic happen.

“We must imagine new worlds that transition ideologies and norms, so that no one sees Black people as murderers, or Brown people as terrorists and aliens, but all of us as potential cultural and economic innovators.” — Adrienne Maree Brown

Which brings us to this larger concept, The Speed of Belonging — a transformational framework that can guide and recenter our community work back towards relationships, trust, and empowerment.

The Speed of Belonging is about the intentional and adaptive steps necessary to guide our communities, organizations, and cities to cultivate the deep engagement, ownership, and empowered agency that comes when all members of a community feel a sense of belonging to it.

The following 12 Principles to move at The Speed of Belonging are a foundation to help guide how each of us approach leading and being a part of our communities. While these principles are deliberately in the order they’re listed, and may appear as distinct, they are all interrelated, interdependent, and should be embodied continuously and reiteratively in our community work.

Principle 1: Change the Questions We Are Asking.
Principle 2: Invite Intentionally to Co-Design.
Principle 3: Build Systems for “Shared Power” Decision Making.
Principle 4: Lay The Foundation with Our Commitments.
Principle 5: Slow Down and Check In. Reflect and Learn. Adapt and Emerge.
Principle 6: Name It. Acknowledge It. Nurture It.
Principle 7: Cultivate Dyads and Self-Organizing Crews.
Principle 8: Foster Transformative, Vulnerable, Real Conversations.
Principle 9: Empower Different Levels of Engagement and Leadership.
Principle 10: Co-Create our Communities’ Narratives and Stories.
Principle 11: Ritualize Our Values into Actions and Rites.
Principle 12: Create Aliveness and Wholeness in All That We Do.

Over the coming weeks, I will be posting Parts 2–4. Each part will dive deeper into exploring 4 of the above principles. (Find Part 2 here. And Part 3 here. And Part 4 here.)

The point of this writing isn’t for theory, its for action. It’s a starting point — an adapting framework to experiment with. So I invite and encourage you today, to join me on this journey; to join me in creating a world where everyone feels they belong.

The need has never felt more urgent.

Thank you.