What does it mean to have a culture of belonging?

At taproot ventures, we spend much of our time talking about culture through this lens. To us, creating a culture where there’s a safe space for everyone to have a voice is a vital place to start. Truly healthy culture is built over time and on a foundation of trust. It looks like people speaking up, trusting themselves and their leaders, and allowing for the “collective mind” to inform decision making.

After working with leaders for more than two decades, being a part of and building successful teams, we developed our eight tenets, which we refer to as “the taproot way.” These tenets include integrity, vulnerability, right action, inclusion, patience and allowing, active listening, trust, and true humility.

The start of the eight tenets grew out of a willingness to embrace humility, actively listen and step into cultivating trust. As “the taproot way” came to life, we started to place belonging in the center of our conversations and at the core of our tenet discussion. Leading by intentionally cultivating belonging results in happy teams who stay longer.

So, where do you start? Give one of these activities a try:

  1. Restructure your meetings to start with a check-in or pulse check. Rather than just jumping into the agenda allow for a bit of a breath, together. Instead of the basic, “How is your day going?” ask a fun question such as “What is your favorite color and why?” or “What is your favorite food and why?” or “What is your weather like today?” You start, and then allow other team members to pick future questions. Get a volunteer at the end of the meeting to bring a question to your next meeting. Alternate until everyone has had the chance to pose a question.
  2. End your meeting with an opportunity for a “Final Thought” — this can be just one word. This allows you to “open” and “close” the “meeting container.” People feel heard — even if they didn’t speak throughout the meeting. It’s a simple and amazing activity that can have transformational impact over time. Research from the World Health Organization shows that if folks are given a voice at the beginning of a meeting they’re much more likely to speak up when they have a question or a correction, or if something wrong is happening. Opening and closing meetings helps to create psychological safety for participants.

Whether you’re in a tech startup, a large nonprofit, or a publicly traded company, if you as a leader embrace these tenets, you can transform your personal and professional life as well as your teams. Retention goes up, recruiting gets easier (turns out people in the industry talk to one another — who knew!) and you have a more successful bottom line to boot.

Safety and trust isn’t something that happens overnight. And if you give it time (start with 30 days) you will see curiosity start to blossom with your team. New questions will be asked, better and deeper conversations will be had, and more healthy dialogue will start to become more of the norm.

This is the first installment of a three-part series on healthy culture written by taproot ventures’ CEO Stephanie Cocumelli and CVO and Founder Laura Wall Mansfield. Their next article will address why it’s vital to measure the baseline health of your organization. taproot ventures is a consultant member of Women in Retail. Learn more about consultant memberships here.