Let me count (some) of the ways:
You are the only woman in the team
You are the only person over 50 in the team
You are the only person of colour in the team
You are the only LGBTQI+ person in the team
You are the only disabled person in the team
You are the youngest person in the team
You are the only northerner in the team
You are the only English person in the team
You are the shortest person in the team
You are the only introvert on the team
You are the only married person in the team
You’re the only person without a “significant other” on the team
You are the only working mum in the team
You are the only person with diagnosed mental illness on the team
You are the only person with a hot flush in the team
You are the only religiously devout person on the team
You are the only non-drinker in the team
You are the only person who didn’t go to university in the team
You are the only person who doesn’t ski
You are the only public school boy on the team
You are the only person on the team that doesn’t follow cricket/football/Love Island/rugby
You are the only person on the team without Netflix
You are the only person on the team without kids at home
You don’t have a puppy
You don’t speak digital acronyms
All you know about AI is from Bladerunner
Your idea of team bonding doesn’t involve the pub
You are offended by banter
You are bereft of a way of connecting without banter
You hate it when you are challenged in public
You cannot cope with politics
You are obsessed with FOMO
If you don’t get a compliment you assume you’re out of favour
You are lonely at the top
You are crushed at the bottom and feel like you do all the work and get none of the credit
You didn’t grow up with the same kids TV shows as the rest of the team
You are disappointed to know that you have to pretend to be different than your real self in order to fit in
You come from a working class background and the team is middle class
You are hiding your real feelings in case they make people like you less
And so it goes on….
Feeling like you don’t fit in can be for a myriad of reasons. They are not equivalent by any means. As one interviewee told me for our book Belonging: “I now know that if my profile (as a straight white middle class man) changes by one increment, my (professional) journey becomes harder. If I change it by two or three or four, it becomes impossible.”
However, if you have ever felt that you don’t belong, then you can do something wonderful. You can empathise and imagine what others might be feeling. And if you do this then you can help them to feel like they belong with positive affirmations and standing up for them when you sense that they are being left out.
In our book Belonging, the key to transforming and maintaining diversity, inclusion and equality at work (and just shortlisted for the 2021 Business Book Awards UK), we explain exactly how to lead from every seat.
You can be a champion of Belonging and drive real change in your place of work so that no-one feels like an unwanted outlier.
So that everyone feels like they belong.