Othering & Belonging Conference 2023
We recently attended the Othering and Belonging Institute conference which focused on creating belonging in a divided world. It was a really powerful event, with speakers from all around the world, representing a whole range of identities and backgrounds, sharing their perspectives on building belonging in modern times. Poignantly, it took place in Berlin, around 10 days into the recently escalated Israel – Gaza events which sharpened everyone’s focus on how important belonging is.
We wanted to share some of our key takeaways:
Othering is the greatest challenge of the 21st century. We’re entering a time for Radical Belonging, which needs us to move away from ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ and step into a bigger ‘We’. Our work is in widening our circle of concern and shifting belonging away from being people like us who share our values, to also being able to hear the voices of those who don’t
People are feeling insecure. With bigger societal and planetary changes impacting our everyday lives - climate change, cost of living crises, COVID, and questionable democracy to name a few these have created fear of the future. This can manifest as a desire to keep things as they were or to go back in time to when things felt safer. A challenge for those going on journeys of change. It means there is much more importance on defining our vision for our future, clarity on our destination and storytelling to bring people with us
Organisational Values have a new currency. Elevating beyond ‘left’ or ‘right’ leaning, or superficial indicators of whether people are ‘with me’, or ‘think like me’ is important because these are the fracture lines which can quietly create disconnection or distance in teams. We need to be making space for genuine diversity, which means differences of opinion, perspective and belief systems. But uniting around our core values is essential if we want cohesion and harmony to also exist around this. Making space for people to connect to them and develop their own ideas of how to live them authentically will be increasingly important. The days of prescriptive values into behaviour frameworks are dead
Shared power is central to belonging. Knowing where it is at play, and how it impacts people’s sense of belonging, is an important self-awareness to foster across organisations. Belonging means that people feel they have the agency to contribute and shape their workplaces. The value of building forums and spaces for this to happen more often and more consistently feels important to create
Bridging (rather than Breaking) belonging is a new workplace skill. Cancel culture, minimising others’ experiences, assumptions about each other based on one characteristic, lasting first impressions and needing to be right/believing your view is somehow superior are all enemies of Bridging. Bridging is hard to do, especially in heart-centred or mission-led organisations where much of our identity and connection comes from feeling like we are all the same. We need more Bridgers at work to create the environments we’re all aspiring to.
