Making People Matter

Few of us knew that roughly 40 percent of my class entering West Point would not graduate four years later. That attrition was not an accident. It was, in some respects, by design. The culture of the institution then was built around pressure, endurance, and the belief that only those who could survive what was put in front of them would prove worthy of what came next.

Two Cultures, 20 Years Apart

By the time my son attended West Point a few decades later, the attrition rate had dropped to less than 20 percent. The mission had not softened. The standards had not been reduced. What changed was the institution’s fundamental relationship with the people inside it.

West Point had moved from a culture built around discovering who could withstand being broken down to a culture built around developing leaders from the ground up. The shift was deliberate, and it took years to come to life. But what emerged on the other side was an institution where cadets felt genuinely invested in, not simply tested to see whether they belonged there or not.

Graduation rates climbed and held steady at around 80 percent, on par with the best four-year universities in the country. And the leaders it produced were better for it. Our Nation became better for it.

That is what belonging looks like inside an institution. Not comfort. Not the elimination of challenge. Investment. The realization that the organization is working for you as much as you are working for it.

Why Belonging Cannot be Assumed Anymore

This matters more right now than at any point I can remember. According to recent research, only one in four employees reports feeling genuinely connected to their organizational culture. One in four. In the absence of the physical proximity, shared spaces, and daily interactions that once generated connectedness almost automatically, leaders can no longer assume it exists. They have to build it deliberately, or it will not be there.

Belonging and connectedness are closely related but not the same. Connectedness is relational. It is the web of real relationships inside a team, the knowledge people have of one another beyond job titles and deliverables, the mutual regard that makes a request feel different from a demand. Belonging is what accumulates when enough connectedness builds over time. It is the experience of being genuinely part of something, of mattering to the mission and the people around you.

As a leader, you build or erode both of these in every interaction you have. The tone you set in a meeting, the way you respond when someone raises a difficult question, whether you acknowledge people when things go well and protect them when they make honest mistakes: all of it either reinforces connectedness and belonging or chips away at them, steadily and cumulatively.

The Failure That Costs Leaders Their People: Not Listening

My mother used to tell me that “God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason.” I was a big violator of that counsel for a long time. But in all my years of leadership, in uniform and out, I have come back to that observation more times than I can count. The most consistent failure I have seen in leaders who lose their people is not cruelty or incompetence. It is the simple failure to listen. People stop feeling like they belong the moment they believe their voice does not matter.

If you want to know how connected your team really is, watch what happens when something goes wrong. In a low-belonging environment, people protect themselves first. They explain why the problem was not their responsibility. They stay quiet when they see issues developing because speaking up has not historically been safe. In a high-belonging environment, people step toward the problem. They surface it early because they trust that raising an issue will be treated as a contribution, not a liability.

What Building Belonging Actually Requires

The leaders who build genuine belonging share a common orientation: they are more curious about the people they lead than they are eager to be understood themselves. That sounds simple. It is not easy.

In today’s workplace, where teams are often split between remote and in-person, and where many employees interact with their colleagues less than once a week, the environmental conditions that once generated connectedness automatically are largely gone. The physical office shared space and informal interactions in hallways and breakrooms — these were providing more cultural development than most leaders recognized at the time. Now that they have been reduced or eliminated from the daily lives of many, belonging has to be built through deliberate leadership behavior.

Ditching Email for Real Conversations

That starts with how leaders communicate. In the organizations I have observed that sustain strong levels of belonging, leaders have moved away from email as the primary vehicle for important conversations. Email is efficient for sharing information. But it is a lousy substitute for the kind of exchange that builds trust and belonging relationships. The important conversations, the ones that tell people whether they matter, happen face-to-face or as close to it as the environment allows. A five-minute check-in with a genuine question is worth ten status emails.

Power Questions are a specific tool worth building into your leadership practice for belonging and connectedness, too. These are not perfunctory “how’s it going” questions. Power questions model genuine curiosity and generate useful information. Here are some examples:

“What is the biggest challenge you are facing this week?”

“What one resource, if you had it, would make you more successful?”

“What does a positive outcome look like to you on this project?”

These questions tell people two things simultaneously: that their leader is paying attention and that their perspective is considered relevant. Over time, the signal accumulates into something that feels like belonging and promotes connectedness.

Frequent check-ins matter more than most leaders realize, particularly with team members who are working remotely or who are newer to the organization. This is not micromanagement. It is the deliberate replacement of the informal contact that used to happen organically. All-In adaptive leaders check on the well-being of their team members. Inquiring about the mental and emotional health of people is the connective tissue of a team that does not share physical space.

Finally, All-In adaptive leaders who build belonging and connectedness protect people when things go wrong. This does not mean excusing poor performance or avoiding accountability. It means making it safe to surface problems early, to admit mistakes, to try things that may not work. The organizations that build the strongest teams are the ones where people understand that honest effort, even when it falls short, will be treated as a learning opportunity rather than a career liability. That understanding does not happen by accident. Leaders have to demonstrate it, consistently, in the moments that are hardest to get right.

Belonging is a Long Game

Building belonging and connectedness is not a short-term project. It is a long-term leadership commitment that accumulates through behavior over time. West Point did not transform its culture through a single policy change or program. It transformed through sustained, deliberate leadership decisions made repeatedly. The result was an institution where the people inside it felt genuinely invested in, and where they performed accordingly.

Your organization can nurture the same ecosystem. The question is whether you are willing to do the work consistently enough for long enough to earn it.

I’d love to hear where you see belonging working in your organization, and where you see it breaking down. Leave a comment below and let’s talk about it.

Enjoy the journey!