Closing the Belonging Gap

Perry Holley:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast, where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. Hi, I’m Perry Holley, a Maxwell Leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:
And I’m Chris Goede. Executive Vice President with Maxwell Leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining us today. We’re going to talk about closing the belonging gap.

Perry Holley:
How do you like that?

Chris Goede:
And I love that. I think everybody wants to belong to something, to a team.

Perry Holley:
Yeah.

Chris Goede:
And we’re going to dive into that. Before we get started though, I want to encourage you, use this as a development tool. We have so many organizations and leaders that Listen to our podcast, they send it to their team, they get back together. The first 5 to 10 minutes of their team meeting is just unpacking what’d you hear and how can you apply it. We would love for you to be able to do that. Also, if you’re looking for some training or coaching for your team, I would encourage you to go to MaxwellLeadership.com/ExecutivePodcast. You can fill out a form right there and our team will follow back up with you. Well, recently Perry and I had the opportunity, and this is This is a highlight for you and I.

Chris Goede:
About 3 times a year we get to be with John and we’re on the road and John brings some friends of his into the room to introduce them to other executives.

Perry Holley:
Smaller group than normal.

Chris Goede:
Smaller group. And, uh, and we really, man, we’ve been blessed to be able to do it. And just a couple weeks ago we got to spend some time with Horst Schulze. And a lot of you have heard that name that are in the hospitality industry. Obviously he’s legendary in the hotel and the hospitality area in the business and one of the founding fathers of kind of high-level modern luxury, luxury hotel, luxury hospitality, which I haven’t had a chance to stay in too many of them, but I do enjoy it when we’re, when we do do that. And one of the things that he was talking about was his famous saying, and we’re gonna dive into this.

Perry Holley:
And this is from the Ritz-Carlton.

Chris Goede:
Sorry. Sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. Um, he, when he was president, founder, president, CEO of Ritz-Carlton, through that process, um, he really revolutionized everything that they were doing for, for service. And his philosophy was, we are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen. And so we’re gonna dive in today, ’cause it was fascinating as he told stories and applied principles of really how it was about every team member.

Perry Holley:
Yeah.

Chris Goede:
at every level had that belonging to what they were doing.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, fascinating too. He was 86 years old, had just flown in from Asia where he got an award, did an hour presentation and then an hour of Q&A with John, and then had to go catch a plane for Europe. I thought, my goodness, he’s still on fire for what he’s doing. And it was really a great session. And we’ve all known and heard about, even if we don’t get to stay there, we’ve heard about how great Ritz-Carlton is. But why I like this and why I grabbed this as a message was he gave some statistics. He said in the average of the industry, hotels and hospitality turnover is 122%, but at Ritz-Carlton it was 18%. And so that makes you go, wow, they’re really retaining the people that they have.

Perry Holley:
And you’ll hear more about why he does that. He also talked about a massive research study that surveyed over 3 million workers in different industries. And when it was all sorted out, what do they really want from work? And what do they really, when you go to work, what do you want? And what the survey came out was that they want to feel that they belong. They want a sense of belonging. If you know anything about human nature and the hierarchy of needs and things, that every human—

Chris Goede:
Yes.

Perry Holley:
Has a natural inbred desire to belong, to be an insider, not an outsider, that I belong here. And what Schulze said and what he really got into the lesson was, I’m gonna read it ’cause he said, I have a relentless focus On helping people feel they belong to something. And that relentless focus on belonging is where this lesson’s coming from about what are the organizational things you need to do and what are the personal things as a leader you need to do?

Chris Goede:
Yeah. And this is just one way, it’s an important way to drive increased buy-in, increased engagement, lower your turnover, those things that Perry and I spend a lot of time, matter of fact, This whole belonging thing is a big part of a course you created for us around the inclusive leadership that we deliver to organizations to help them with their team dynamics. And so what I love about how he unpacked this for us was he really prioritized and operationalized belonging, which helps people like me, right? Where I sometimes would just fly right by it and not have—

Perry Holley:
That’s really a good point.

Chris Goede:
A system for it. And so he kept repeating this statement. He says, leaders hire people for a function like a chair, but they wonder why they don’t act like an engaged partner in the business.

Perry Holley:
You’re right. He kept saying it because the chair has a function. It holds you up. We’re sitting in chairs right now.

Speaker C:
That’s right.

Perry Holley:
It holds you up. He said, but you hire people for a function like a chair.

Chris Goede:
That’s right. He kept saying it over and over. Back and forth. And so you cannot expect people to be a part of something that they were really never truly invited into in the first place. So it’s important belonging is communicated with them and it was reinforced daily and it was never assumed in their culture and in their team environment of what he created. Yeah.

Perry Holley:
Well, I wanna spend the rest of time talking about what did he, how did he do it? And so he identifies 4 levers that I think we can apply to how the organization operates and then a handful of skills I think you and I, all leaders need to, and I really appreciate your I kind of fly by this too.

Chris Goede:
I do.

Perry Holley:
Oh, come on, you belong here. I wouldn’t have hired you if you didn’t belong here. No, there’s something inside that we do as leaders that make people either feel like they’re insiders or outsiders. And if you’re listening to us now, ’cause I’m gonna ask Chris, is there a time in your life you ever felt like, I was not included, I didn’t belong, I felt like an outsider, they did something? I want you to remember how that felt. We’re gonna come back to that. So we’ll just talk through these, but I liked the way he told the story. The first lever was daily communication. Do you remember him talking about that? I do, I do.

Perry Holley:
Not a quarterly all hands or, you know, but every single day he met with either small groups, individuals, or even larger groups in the hotels. And he built this into their culture. And I wonder how you see that around, that’s a tough one, but—

Chris Goede:
It’s tough, but what I loved about it was, and we have another client of ours, partner of ours that does the same thing, They have daily standups.

Perry Holley:
Right.

Chris Goede:
And it’s interesting that more organizations don’t do that. Just for those that are either on virtual, you do it, or in person in order to make sure that everyone is on the same page. They’re hearing that communication. They feel like they belong. And the other thing I loved about what he talked about was they told stories and they told a story about someone Even if it was international, it doesn’t matter. Across the board, this is a story that they were going to read or tell about someone who joined the team that may have started as a bellman, but then moved to the front desk. And he wanted everybody to know that those things were possible. That happened in that daily communication.

Perry Holley:
And part of the daily communication was reviewing some of their core values. It was reviewing what does excellence mean, what does it look like, and just really letting people know and go back to, we’re ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen. So how do you like a lady and gentleman, how do you treat people like ladies and gentlemen? So just reviewing constantly, letting people know. And that’s what you think about the value of communication when it comes to inclusion or exclusion is, I feel like I don’t know any— you never tell me anything. I don’t know where we’re going. I don’t know what we’re doing. I feel like an outsider versus my boss is always talking to me. We’re always having team talks.

Perry Holley:
We’re having individual talks. I feel like they’re transparent. I know what’s going on here. I feel included on that. So those types of things can be easily overlooked to let people know that they belong here. Number 2, this was interesting about part of the communication though, but about having a clear vision that people know where the organization’s going, they know what the organization’s doing. What are your thoughts on how often— I think I’ll just tell, when I was leading as a senior exec, I would tell the vision at January kickoff, think you got it.

Chris Goede:
They don’t got it. They don’t. I’m laughing but not laughing with all of you leaders right here, okay? We recently did a culture survey.

Perry Holley:
That’s right.

Chris Goede:
Of which we have an incredible diagnostic tool that we use with organizations. We’d love to help you with it. We did it internally at Maxwell Leadership, culture diagnostic. And so the very last question was, We left it open-ended, was, what’s the vision here at Maxolution? Man, I thought for sure, I was like, our team’s gonna kill it. Like, they’re, I mean, and we repeat it often, don’t we?

Perry Holley:
We do.

Chris Goede:
Once a week. I mean, in the meetings, at our team meetings.

Perry Holley:
Did our team get it?

Chris Goede:
Perry, if you could just see some of that. But I love what he said, right? He was like, man, you can’t say it enough. And the other thing that I think you gotta think about around this is the role that they play in where the organization is going, right? Like the importance of— and Horst was awesome about really underlining every single role is important in what we do. And that just was fascinating to take that industry and his thought process to be able to do that and set a clear vision for that.

Perry Holley:
He told a story about, he personally asked 3,000 different people over a time period and over different properties and everything to, what is the vision? What are we trying to accomplish? He said not one of the 3,000 people could state, to your point about the culture quiz, not one person could state the vision. So he took it upon himself to make that part of the daily communication. And you added a really important part. It’s not just where we’re going, what is your role in where we’re going and what is your purpose in how we get there? And he involved, I think it was very important, is in our world we tend to talk to our own group. He was talking to the busboys that was cleaning the tables. He was the valet out front. Obviously, the front desk was always interfacing with customers, housekeeping. Everybody was in these communications.

Perry Holley:
Nobody was left out.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
And I just thought that’s really a— that’s why I call it a lever. It’s a big one to do that. It’s really kind of a personal challenge. You should think about asking 5 people on your team like we did. We asked a lot of people.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, yeah. And keep asking and keep asking and keep repeating. Yeah.

Perry Holley:
A 3rd lever that you mentioned was having a career path, not just a job. And you just mentioned that about the example of the— was a busboy, made his or her way through the organization. But I don’t find a lot of people, they tend to think they just have a job. But think about how it makes you feel whether you belong or not is that Do I have a future here? And I don’t think— how would you encourage leaders?

Chris Goede:
Yeah, something he said when he was talking about this, so in these daily communication and standups, they do use stories. And he does, to this third point, want them to know that there is an opportunity here. They do belong here. If you were hired and you’re brought onto this team, there is a future for you here. The other thing that I wrote down that I remember, is he never missed an opportunity to develop the entire team. So he’d be walking through and he would see something with a team member that didn’t go the right way. And in order to become better at what every single person did in that role, he brought the whole team together.

Speaker C:
Yeah.

Chris Goede:
And he said, hey, when you do this, Let’s do it this way. And he was developing them. And that’s so big. What we hear about all the time right now in the culture and organizations is people want to be developed and they want to learn and they want to grow in addition to the career path. And he just combined both of them, telling stories, you belong here, this could be you. Oh, and by the way, if we see something, I’m going to develop you and we’re just going to pick one thing every day to get a little bit better. He didn’t miss a beat. Like he was on every little detail of it.

Perry Holley:
And he tied back to the vision. His vision was that of excellence. Excellence in everything. But he said he walked through the lobby or something and there’d be a spot on the carpet. And instead of what most of us would do, would yell and scream or get this cleaned up, he would go bring everybody over to your point. He goes, look at this. Is this what he would— and he pointed to the carpet about, tell me about how this speaks toward excellence and our vision. He would reiterate the vision.

Perry Holley:
He would reiterate whose job is our job.

Chris Goede:
That’s right. Clean this up.

Perry Holley:
Then he would help clean the spot.

Speaker C:
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Perry Holley:
The 4th lever that he used was, he called it cross-certification. But again, it kind of feeds to, do I have a future here? Is, can I learn another role while I’m doing my role? I’m not sure how many organizations have opportunities to do this today, but I know you’ve done it here where we have someone that might have been working on outside or inside sales call. They’d want to be on the sales team. You might let them start training or mirroring or doing something. Can’t do it. You got to watch the hours and things, but can they learn another role while they’re here? What do you think about it?

Chris Goede:
What I love about it is I think around this belonging thing, I think if you expand their Footprint of what is possible. Or even think about this, when you place people into an environment where they’re cross-certifying and doing a different role, it’s interesting because even if they’re just cross-certified, they’re not a part of that team, maybe officially, they still feel like they belong to that team because that team developed them and certified them.

Speaker C:
Right.

Chris Goede:
And so, it just is kind of this web that kept crossing different functions of the business, but also made people feel like they belonged there at the property as a whole. Not just, I’m coming in, I’m going to do my job, punch in, I’m going to punch out and go home. Right? Like they belong to the entire property.

Perry Holley:
All right. I want to shift gears to what do you need as leaders? What do we need to do to help people feel like belonging, be more inclusive in our leadership? But I told you I was going to ask you the question. So has there been a time in your life where you felt like you didn’t belong? Today.

Chris Goede:
You know, like, it’s so funny. I mean, it could be personally, it could be professionally. When you asked that question, my mind went so many different places. I’m not asking for another meeting, but sometimes there are meetings and I go, should I have been there? Did I miss the email? Or maybe we’re at church and the group goes out to lunch and you’re just like, Babe, what did you do to— and deflecting. But man, I think that’s human nature and it happens all the time. And so I absolutely feel that way.

Perry Holley:
Yeah. I’ve been asking this on some coaching calls lately, just to give people— because the very first skill, by the way, is empathy. And the reason I want you to think about this is that, do you know what it feels like so that you— and I was doing this on a coaching call yesterday. I said, if you’re not a leader, And it doesn’t have a pain, a hurt in your heart to think that someone on my team might possibly feel like they don’t belong here? That’s awful. But I want you to think, what does it feel like to not belong? And when I did this, church situations came up. Somebody seeing their team out, they saw a picture on LinkedIn about the team being out for lunch and they weren’t in the picture because they got—

Chris Goede:
Don’t you think social media probably has increased that feeling in all of us?

Perry Holley:
Yeah.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
So I don’t want that to happen. But so let me, the question I get would be empathy. I’ve been floating this content on a couple coaching calls and one guy said, I’m just not naturally empathetic. I don’t really care. I go, okay, you need to care.

Chris Goede:
You do need to care.

Perry Holley:
How do you, how would you encourage someone if you’re not naturally empathetic? Some people are more than others. I get that. How would you help someone be more empathetic? Can you grow empathy?

Chris Goede:
Did my wife set you up for this question? Yeah, this is, uh, well, I think it’s true. Yeah, let’s see. Yeah, Perry Holly, here’s his address, right? Check. Uh, 100%. This is the— we do a lot of studies around this, right, around emotional intelligence, and this is part of the emotional intelligence side of things. And for me, I’m very logical, and it is hard for me at times to be empathetic, because it’s pretty cut and dry for me and logical. What I’ve learned is, I’ve learned through some coaching is to say, how do you put yourself in that environment? And can you imagine how that would feel? The other way for me is really about asking questions in a way that gets, that opens through curiosity, that opens my eyes to how you feel about that, even though I may not feel like that, right?

Perry Holley:
That’s good.

Chris Goede:
And so being curious and trying to understand and not make an assumption, what’s like, why would you feel that way? It’s like, there’s the problem, right? Marriage has helped me a ton in that. And I still don’t get it right because we see things completely, completely different, but it has helped me in developing that empathy.

Perry Holley:
Yeah. And I think you’re on exactly the right point is that you have to, Increase your others orientation, because most of the lack of empathy, because I’m more me oriented. And if I can become others oriented, and then being curious stops me from telling and starts me asking, and it stops me from judging, and it augurs me to have more open on that. So I think you should really have a hurt if anybody in your team does not feel like they belong. That would hurt me a lot.

Chris Goede:
Yes.

Perry Holley:
So number 2 was communication. We hit this a little bit on the front end there, but he talks a bit about it being the, happening in the micro moments. But when you think about your communication, we talk a lot about being more intentional in your communication. But what comes to mind when you think about, if I specifically wanna make sure that people on my team know they belong, what has to change in my communication?

Chris Goede:
As a leader, sometimes I wanna wait until everybody’s together. I wanna wait for the right environment to communicate everything out. Now, there are certain Situations where you have to do that for timing of certain things. But for me, what I’ve learned is in the moment to communicate those micro moments on an individual level has helped me allow the team members that I’ve had the privilege of leading at times feel like they belong to this team greater than if I would’ve held any communication to a bigger meeting. So I love the micro moments. And so it is back in, I remember back during the COVID days, Andy Stanley made a statement where he said that the team doesn’t necessarily care what you have to say. They just want to hear your voice and they want to hear it often.

Perry Holley:
Right.

Chris Goede:
And I think that’s what this is saying right here is like, people will feel belonging in the team if you’re communicating to them in microdoses, but doing it more often. than, oh, we’re gonna hear from Chris this month, you know? And, uh, and so that’s how I’ve tried to approach it, was that it, it is happening in real time, uh, versus waiting to communicate it.

Perry Holley:
I love it. Yeah. I, you also talk about the term we, we talk about a lot here, psychological safety. Probably don’t need to say a ton here, but if it, yeah, if people don’t feel, they feel like they have to salute and stay mute, uh, they can’t say what they think, they can’t tell you hard things, they can’t, disagree with you, it’s not safe to say because you’re going to blow up. I’m not going to feel like I really belong.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, you have to have this to have the belonging. And here’s the thing, it’s different for different— we say all the time, you have to lead people the way they need to be led. It’s the same thing here. Your team members are going to need different types of safe environments to be able to feel like they belong. And some of them will be in smaller meetings. Some of them are okay with it being in bigger meetings, but you gotta understand and learn that level 2 skillset and 5 levels of what drives that for your people in order for them to feel belonging.

Perry Holley:
Another key thing he mentioned was giving honest feedback. And I thought it was something we’ve been on a lot lately. Why would honest feedback make me feel like I belong here?

Chris Goede:
Well, think about this. If you really If you’ve earned the right to give the feedback, we’ll start there.

Perry Holley:
Yep.

Chris Goede:
Okay? That’s where it’s gotta start. If you, if you understand that principle, what’s really happening is if Perry’s giving me feedback, he wants the best for me.

Perry Holley:
Mm-hmm.

Chris Goede:
Right? And so just knowing that to make me better may be hard to hear. Sure. If he’s earned the right to do it and he gives it to me, like, then man, I feel like it, like he wants me to be better. Like I, I belong to that team. Like a rising tide raises all boats. And so we want to be able to do that for each other.

Perry Holley:
The last one he mentioned was one you’ve already brought up, but about coaching everybody for growth. Everybody wants to get better. They want to have mastery in it. But why would you coaching me to help me grow make me feel like I belong here?

Chris Goede:
Yeah, this is something that we’ve talked about, but it’s so interesting to me about how many people right now that are staying at organizations or are choosing to pick an organization during the interview process based off their growth plan. And I lean in there because Perry and I, when we were going through the process and taking jobs, like that’s not even in the top 10. But man, when we are coaching people, when we’re giving them growth opportunities, like they feel like, again, they just feel like they’re a part of and belong to that tribe that you’re creating.

Perry Holley:
Just one last thing. I’ll let you wrap it up, but just want to remind folks that belonging One, this really affected me, was that people feel like they fit in. If I have to act like I fit in, I have to be what I think you want me to be.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, that’s good.

Perry Holley:
Belonging says I can just be me. So a lot of times people say, I don’t feel like I fit in here. Well, if you’re trying to fit in, if you feel like you have to fit in, that’s probably the opposite of belonging. I don’t feel like I belong because I gotta try to be what you want me to be instead of just being me.

Chris Goede:
I love that.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, can be a bit of a pooch job.

Chris Goede:
We talk about authenticity and that’s what you’re talking about, right? In our team, we don’t want you to change who you are to feel like you belong to our team.

Perry Holley:
Totally agree.

Chris Goede:
We want you to be authentic. So man, I love that. This is an interesting topic, right? Because there are people, and I love how Perry titled it, we’re going to close this gap. Because leaders, I promise you, there is a gap and not everybody feels like they belong on their team. You may not know it, but I think if you go through some of these, you will absolutely, it’ll come aware To you. So as we wrap up this week, we have to close this gap as leaders. So here’s a couple of practical takeaways for you that I want you to think about in your leadership this week. Number one, let’s audit your communication, not only in the rhythm and the timing of it, but the clarity of it and the simplicity of it.

Chris Goede:
We’ve talked in the past, right? It’s like it sounded good up here before it came out. And did I create that?

Perry Holley:
Yeah.

Chris Goede:
The other thing is, what are your delegation habits? Are you, and I like to use the word empowering, are we developing and empowering the same people over and over again? Or are we really sitting back and looking at opportunities within the team and then saying, man, which team member does this align with the most? And then allow them to run with it. I think that’s another great Opportunity for people to feel like they belong. I mentioned this in my example of, have I ever felt left out? As you’re having meetings, as you’re making decisions, the question you should be asking is maybe who’s not in the room that should be here? Because there may be some people that you are missing. And maybe it’s even asking, like if Perry and I were going to a meeting, hey Perry, man, who’s not in this meeting that should be?

Perry Holley:
Yeah.

Chris Goede:
Maybe ask somebody with a different lens or a different bias. And then the last thing I’ll say is, as we think about what Horseshoe said about how do we prioritize and operationalize this belonging, say your vision out loud as many times as you possibly can and tie what that individual’s doing to the vision. I think that’s one of the biggest ways to get them to feel like they belong. And to feel like what they’re doing matters and that they’re a part of that whole entire movement. And they get— a lot of people can’t connect the dots. And when you can do that for them as a leader, I think the gap begins to shrink around whether or not they feel like they belong.

Perry Holley:
Fantastic. Well, thank you, Chris. And it’s a reminder, if you’d like the learner guide for this episode, if you’d like to learn more about our offerings, our podcast offerings, you can do all that at MaxwellLeadership..com/ExecutivePodcast. You can also leave us a question or a comment there. We love hearing from you. Very grateful you spend this time with us today. That’s all from the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.

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