When I wrote my book Staying the Distance: The Lessons From Sport that Business Leaders Have Been Missing, I tried to ensure the lessons I featured related to long-term and sustained performance, rather than those that impacted short-term winning or high performance in the moment. That required quite a bit of filtering and triaging, but one of the lessons that required no thought at all was the one titled: ‘How to foster belonging’.

Belonging is a basic human need. As Owen Eastwood, an expert in this area, has stated: “Homo sapiens’ evolutionary story unequivocally tells us that the purpose of groups is to promote the wellbeing of their people.”

In one of the many studies looking at the so-called great resignation during the pandemic, McKinsey asked employers in 2021 why they thought employees had recently quit. The employers believed it was because of compensation, work-life balance and poor physical and emotional health. Yet, while these issues did matter to employees, they didn’t matter as much as employers thought.

Instead, for 51 per cent of people, it was because they didn’t feel a sense of belonging while they were at work. Let’s look through the lens of sport and, in particular, at London Pulse. It is one of the franchise clubs in the Netball Super League. It’s also one of the most diverse: more than 30 different languages are spoken and the players are socially and ethnically diverse.

When its chief executive and director of netball Samantha Bird spoke to me in 2022, she was crystal clear that creating a sense of identity around the franchise – to align this diverse set of athletes behind something relevant and compelling – was critical to success. Not only did this mean absolute clarity around the team’s ideology of “being humble”, which is woven into everything they do (including how they reach out to the community), it also meant they work hard to ensure a sense of belonging.

That is why for London Pulse players, game day doesn’t end after the post-match warm-down but after the post-match meal. Bird insists on this because, for her, game day doesn’t just involve the sport, it also involves vital bonding as a team. The post-match meal is just as important to becoming a long-term champion team as the rest of game day.

Those two hours spent having food and drink are where deeper relationships are formed, genuine conversations happen and players and coaches can get to understand each other as people. This is how people feel like they really belong, which is crucial to the key elements of sustained performance: recruitment, retention and on-court performance.

First, let’s look at a pitfall highlighted by US author Brené Brown after a deep dive into the research in this area. She articulates a significant distinction between fitting in and true belonging.

Fitting in is assessing a group of people and changing who you are. Where you feel like an outsider, you aim for acceptance and hide your true self, which is not sustainable. Belonging is where you feel accepted and can be yourself.

Fitting in is the opposite of belonging. As Brown says, true belonging never asks us to change who we are, it demands that we be who we are. But what does this mean in practice? There are three key takeaways for business:

1. Create a clear sense of identity

Beyond a name, organisations are often timid when it comes to creating a clear sense of identity. Purpose is fundamental to this, and it is where values come into play. Organisations need to be bolder about what makes them different, what they stand for, what matters to them and how they operate.

Take the time to consider what the identity of your business is. Make sure you have clear values, reflect on what sort of attributes and behaviour these require and don’t be afraid to reinforce this on a consistent basis.

2. Avoid the fitting-in pitfall

Not everyone is going to fit your organisation. That’s just the way of the world. Once you are clear on what works for your business, what your DNA is, try to make sure you have as diverse a set of people as possible for all the well-documented reasons.

Then let people be. Let them feel included. Let them feel like they can be themselves. Let them feel like they belong. Do all you can to celebrate difference within your people.

3. Drive human connection

What can you do to drive human connection, particularly when not everyone is together all the time? First, break things down. Do all you can to make sure that every person within your organisation feels connected to someone else in the organisation.

After this, filter it down to a team level, then, perhaps, to a unit or geographical location, and then to the wider organisation. Task the relevant managers with making this a priority.

Second, with those with whom you will be working most closely, spend time getting to know them as a person, as well as a colleague. Try to find ways to do this that work for each party.

Finally, with every interaction you have, make sure you put as much emphasis on connecting with that person as you do on the content of the conversation. It sounds so simple, but all too often we focus on what we want to say and hear, not how we are interacting.

Catherine Baker is the founder and director at Sport and Beyond, and the author of Staying the Distance: The Lessons from Sport that Business Leaders Have Been Missing