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A common obstacle that arises in organisations and teams is the illusion of “family”. It operates as a warm, cosy blanket that in reality offers no lasting warmth.  

The language of family is generally woven into organisational cultures with kind intentions from leaders who set out to create a caring and safe environment, yet down the track it can leave considerable fallout from unintended consequences.  

Why?  

A family exists in essence to hold its members permanently in a cohesive web that sustains life and survival. Many say a family has its own soul and shared consciousness that connects each member in an indelible pattern of life giving way to new life; until it does so no more.   

An organisation of course is different. It has a specific destiny carved out with goals, purpose, vision and objectives. People over time will come and go based on their capabilities and capacity to serve this necessary destiny in the world. An organisation, even if it is a non-profit will also have a currency that puts a finite cap on giving and taking, although of course, we know the boundaries of this vary greatly from employee to employee as do expectations from leader to leader.    

It is important to stop and consider the belonging rules that operate within a family as this is our first innate experience of belonging. When we are born into a family or its equivalent, we are fully dependant on our belonging for survival. It is hard-wired into our physiology. If our belonging is threatened in any way, we experience a flight/fight/fright response immediately which is entirely logical in the context of a family’s role to sustain life. Now stop and wonder, is this a dynamic that you want in your organisation? Leaving a family is akin to death at worst or being an outcast at best. 

Belonging in a family 

Families operate by entirely different belonging rules to organisations. Belonging to a family is unconditional and permanent. I still remember as a child trying to go home on the school bus to another family. After living with my mother and my sister I was yearning to be with my friend who had four siblings and two parents. As a six year old, it seemed quite logical to make a change. Well I can tell you that my mother protected her brood’s cohesion in no uncertain terms, and I was very quickly and unceremoniously plucked from my unnatural place of play and returned to my natural birthplace. It was the perfect illustration that belonging in family is irreversible. No matter what happens, our parents are our parents and our siblings are our siblings. Our ancestors are our ancestors and if that is our life path, then our children are our children.

Indigenous cultures universally demonstrate deep acknowledgment and respect for elders and ancestors as those who came first and passed on life with their wisdom, efforts, and resilience. Leaning back into these gifts given by our ancestors provides a sense of grounding that can lend us strength. We know they are behind us, and it fortifies us no matter what opinion or judgment we may have accumulated through events and our responses in our lived experience.

Family has the purpose of survival and completeness. Families are not governed by goals or a specific destiny per se but rather by continuity. Within a family life is passed on through those who survive. We are all the product of resilient survivors, who against all odds in many cases were able to pass on life.

Families have specific belonging rules, for instance accepted behaviours to do with what can and can’t be communicated, what is acceptable and not, how conflict is navigated (or side stepped) and certainly which members are included and which ones may experience exclusion for consciously or unconsciously breaking these rules. Even those rule-breakers, otherwise known as “outcasts” play a vital role in expanding the family awareness of what exists beyond the rituals, habits, and belief systems that must evolve from one generation to the next. In this way, families evolve over time.

There are deeper and more complex belonging rules in indigenous family systems that we will not unpack here such as elders sacrificing life in times of scarcity for the young yet they too are woven into our deeper structures of conscience and belonging from the world of family.

Belonging in an organisation 

In an organisation, belonging works according to an entirely different set of constructs. The good news is of course, that we can “un-belong” and remain intact.

First and foremost belonging is temporary. We are all essentially “moving through” any organisation that we are temporarily serving. This is true for all staff including leaders. In fact, leaders who operate from this perspective of impermanence often hold greater compassion and a sense of equality with those who may be experiencing the anxiety of transitioning out during a redundancy or a performance improvement planning process. When we integrate this awareness, we lose all sense of entitlement and realise we are there to give and to take and may only remain whilst we are able to fulfil the contract of our employment by providing the contribution that has been laid out in our role description.   

As organisations evolve, roles and even functions may come and go and hence belonging can lose its validity. When we realise this, we can better manage our attachment to any role or identity that is in reality only temporary. If however, we are programming our people to believe falsely that belonging is permanent then a redundancy or any departure is experienced as a form of death and as such can carry overwhelming anxiety and loss.   

Belonging in an organisation is also conditional. We recruit an individual into a role within a function to provide a certain capacity and capabilities to enable specific deliverables that the organisation needs to perform, prosper and sustain itself. If for some reason we are unable to deliver as required, then that role will inevitably require someone who can. When each role and function is “fully occupied” by its temporary inhabitants then the entire collective can move into flow. Indeed, flow is the natural state of any well-designed and fully occupied business.  

It may sound uncaring to imply those who are unable to deliver should leave, yet it is the kindest thing of all, providing that the process of identifying any blocks and obstacles to delivery is fair and unbiased. Indeed, for anyone to stay long term in a role that they cannot succeed in is the ultimate cruelty to them and their colleagues. When someone has already breached their belonging due to failure to deliver, it is sensed by all and leads to both conscious and unconscious exclusion.  Regardless of what may appear on the surface, non-performers do experience this pain of exclusion and fare far better in an environment where they can succeed once more.   

Appreciating how family intricately differs from an organisation is a powerful way to safeguard your workforce from a well-intended yet ultimately disabling narrative.   

If you are reading this and such a narrative is already embedded, then you may be wondering how to extract your company from any inculcated interference to flow. While this may require a longer conversation it can certainly start with explaining these key differences and reigniting your helpful narrative via meaningful messaging centric on your company purpose, vision, goals, and strategy. This will also enable self-selection for those who truly need to find another role, team, function, or even organisation in which to thrive.   

We can also ensure that all staff regularly observe and experience not just bright new beginnings in the form of well-thought-out recruitment, onboarding and induction, but respectful, dignified endings at the other end of our temporary belonging at work.