This is the second post in the Season of Connectedness, focusing in October on the distributed and hybrid team power mindset of “Belonging.” You can read the first post about this mindset here > Do you struggle to belong?
When I was doing research for my book, “Your Resource Is Human: How empathetic leadership can help remote teams rise above,” I encountered the work of the South African psychologist, Susan David, who writes about “emotional agility” — being able to confront how we feel and learn from what the world is telling us, and what we are telling ourselves. No matter how shameful, embarrasing, or exposing this information is, it contains lessons that we are right to confront openly and willingly.
Part of what David teaches is the need to feel seen and accepted as exactly who we are—what psychologists call “secure attachment.” It’s when I spent time with David’s work that I realized how important “seeing me” is to making me feel like I belong, to making me feel that sense of secure attachment and acceptance to the organization I am a part of.
But, I’m not in the same office as you, my colleague, my manager, my leader. I might be in a different office, or even at home. And as I researched this for my book, and considered the dynamic of distributed and hybrid working, it began to dawn on me that if you can’t see me, not fully, not in 3D, not working at a desk, not my full body language in a meeting—how much can I feel like I belong?
My secure attachment is threatened. I question my belonging. And for a long time as a fully remote worker, I never was conscious this was happening. Something felt a little scary, I felt a little out of place all the time… but I couldn’t name it or understand why.
Belonging Tip #2: Working out loud
Another woman whose work influenced my book was Lisette Sutherland, author of the book “Work Together Anywhere” and director of the consultancy Collaboration Superpowers, and I’m proud to say also the author of the Foreword to my own book “Your Resource Is Human.” In her wonderful TED Talk, Sutherland explains how important it is to “work out loud” when you aren’t together — be able to be seen and heard by the other people you work with who are in another place. For example, turning on Google Meets during times of synchronous overlap, with the video on and audio off, or vice versa, so you can gesture or call to the other person as if you were sitting next to them in an office, or simply just hear or see them working alongside you. Try this next time you overlap with a colleague and see how it feels to be seen!
Virtual Workspaces
Sutherland’s TED Talk was in 2018 and her mention of Google Meets was the leading collaborative “hangout” of the moment then, but times have massively changed. Collaboration technology and in particular virtual workspaces have exploded on the scene. One that I think is especially intriguing is called “Roam,” which is still in beta but raised $40m of funding in 2022 to take on Zoom. Roam’s founder was inspired to create it when he accidentally left a person off of a large Zoom meeting and realized that without a virtual workspace, there was no way for an outsider to tell that people were meeting. Roam was created as a platform that gives employees more visibility of what other employees are doing. Sutherland’s consultancy Collaboration Superpowers has a great list of burgeoning virtual office tech.
“I bring you into being”
I’ll end with some South African inspiration. In her TED Talk about emotional agility, Susan David begins by greeting her audience with the word “Sawubona.” This is the Zulu word for “Hello.” But what it literally means is “I see you” and even “By seeing you, I bring you into being.” What a beautiful way to be greeted, can you imagine? This is what we need to do for each other when we are distributed in different locations. See each other, bring each other into being. Belong.
I’d love to know if you tried turning on a virtual hangout tool while you overlapped with a distant colleague and how it felt. Let me know in the comments or hit reply to this email!