Belonging is one of those things that’s hard to describe, but you know it when you feel it. So how can you assess (and increase) the levels of belonging in your coworking space if it’s tricky to pin down what belonging is?
Eileen Kennedy-Moore, a clinical psychologist and author, offers the following questions to help.
She wrote these 12 questions to help children figure out if a group is a good fit, but they’re applicable to all of us, including your coworking members.
1. What do you have in common with them?
2. How do you feel when you’re with them?
3. To what extent do you feel like you have to hide or change what you think or do to be accepted by them?
4. Do they seem interested in what you think or feel, or do their opinions seem to matter more than yours?
5. Can you relax around them, or do you feel like you have to be careful of what you say or do?
6. Do you find yourself pretending around them?
7. Do they bring out the best or the worst in you?
8. When you make a mistake or do something that’s not perfect, how do they respond?
9. If you were upset about something, how would they react?
10. How do the people in this group usually treat each other?
11. How do they treat people who are not in this group?
12. Do you like who you are when you’re with them?
How does your community hold up to this assessment? How can you boost the positives, reduce the negatives, and introduce new ways of cultivating belonging in your space?
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