If I’ve learned anything as a parent, a leader, as a business owner, as a partner and as a person navigating this world, it’s that people will flourish when they belong.

Most leaders will think about inclusion, ensuring that we are equally and fairly represented amongst cohorts, present and able to access information we need whenever we need it, and able to see ourselves in leadership positions.

However, Belonging is so much more than inclusion. Belonging is felt in our bodies, in our hearts and our minds. To feel that we belong is to feel a sense of being recognised, trusted, and able to contribute without fear of dismissal or erasure. Without diminishment or ridicule.

When belonging is absent we withdraw, our groups and our teams fragment. Our organisations feel stale and stagnate, and sadly this is the reality for many. A normal that should not be.

When we feel that we belong, we feel recognised and trusted enough to contribute; and as a byproduct of this, creativity flows, collaboration strengthens, and leadership becomes shared rather than imposed upon us.

A close friend once said to me, “You don’t have to leave parts of yourself behind to belong. The moment you do, it’s not belonging anymore — it’s performing.”

Let's be honest, it seems we’re all performing in some way each day and we should not be.

So today, the task ahead of us is not to simply to agree that Belonging is important, and place it on our websites, signal it in our social media posts and create posters for our walls. Our task is to design for it in every space, every moment and every interaction with every person we have in our lives. Every meeting agenda, organisational chart, every ritual is a choice that shapes who feels welcome and who will feel excluded.

And how do we know if everyone feels welcome or excluded? We get off our arses, out of the building, and we ask with compassion and care.

We listen, because the Good Leader is a Good Designer — and Good Design—whether of systems, spaces, or stories—creates the conditions where people feel at home in their work and connected to one another. Leadership, in this frame, is no longer about commanding, being ‘the boss’ or falling mercy to Achievement Culture. It is about taking the responsibility to cultivate Belonging at every level in every way, and remaining accountable to it at all times.

A leader is anyone who notices what is missing, invites voices that have been unheard, and hosts the creative tensions of difference in celebration, without forcing uniformity or compliance to a status quo that elevates a privileged few.

Therefore, Leadership and Belonging go together, forever resisting the myth we have all been taught, of the solitary hero/heroine on the stage, talking about their achievements, and instead celebrating the collective; our differences.

Creativity, too, is inseparable from Belonging because to belong is to feel safe enough to imagine. To feel safe enough to risk failure, to test new ways of working and being. Yet we spend so much of our time questioning our ability to climb these barriers, we should actually be asking ourselves why we feel this over-bearing sense that we don't belong in this moment at all!

I've long been fascinated with a way of leading that begins with Belonging — as a child that struggled to feel I belonged anywhere, this has been a lifelong avenue of inquiry for me; deeply personal. I've come to believe that Design (with a capital D) has a role to play in the conversation about Belonging in our workplaces, our communities and our institutions; our societies.

And when we all realise that this is the work of Design, we also come to realise that is also the work of Leadership — a symbiotic relationship that harnesses our ability to shape context, tell stories and embrace creativity as something sharedomething human.

In my search to learn more about Belonging I have encountered leaders who have reimagined how teams work, how communities organise, how movements are created and brought to life, and how culture shifts. By seeing themselves as accountable designers of spaces, places and interactions where people can contribute their best.

This week's essay is nothing more than an invitation to you Pablo, to reimagine what your own leadership looks like within this context of Belonging

Are you ready to create the conditions for others to feel, in their bodies, their hearts and their minds, a sense that the role of your leadership is for them to feel recognised, trusted and welcome?