Why BCW Prioritizes Inclusion Over Belonging
Interview with BCW’s Chief Culture Officer, Kristen Lisanti, for Sharehold’s Redesigning Belonging Research
Curated by Sarah Judd Welch
This post is part of an ongoing series in which Sharehold is publicly sharing our in-progress research that seeks to explore and answer the question: What does it mean to belong at work in a time of uncertainty? Are you interested in receiving our research insights when they’re released? Sign up here.
Meet Kristen Lisanti
Kristen Lisanti is the Chief Culture Officer of BCW, which was formed from the merger of two public relation agencies with complementary capabilities and clients and yet very different cultures. As the leader of BCW’s culture design and transformation across the firm, she believes that culture is everyone’s job, and therefore, though she is a team of one, she is on a team of thousands.
As part of Sharehold’s research on redesigning belonging at work for uncertainty, we interviewed Kristen as a Culture leader. Kristen’s interview touched on a few themes:
- The burden we place on individuals to belong — when in reality, the responsibility should be shared between the individual and the group
- How we must ensure that companies and environments are worthy of belonging to
- How mindfulness and personal transformation interplay with how we show up and belong in this moment of uncertainty
Read on for a few selections from our interview with Kristen:
How do you define belonging?
“I think of [belonging] in terms of creating an environment where everyone can come to work and feel safe and challenged — safe to be themselves, to make mistakes, and to fail, and challenged in order to grow.”
“The goal of inclusion (which we talk about more than belonging)is that people feel comfortable being authentically themselves. Not having to code switch, exert the energy of wearing a mask that is not their true nature, or otherwise not bring the full value of their whole selves into the workplace.”
You’ve shared that BCW is focused more so on inclusion, and then diversity, and then belonging. Can you share more?
“It makes no sense for us to hire diverse talents of all dimensions to come into the business if we aren’t creating an environment first and foremost where everyone feels safe as well as challenged.”
“Our strategy is being guided by our Chief Inclusion Officer Carol Watson, who helped me understand belonging puts the onus on the individual of belonging to the whole.
If we think about business as ripe for disruption in terms of practices that are not only not constructive but also destructive, what are we asking people to belong to? We should be hiring for contribution, for transformation based on how they’re going to be able to come in and actually help our organization grow.
The world ‘inclusion’ puts the onus back on the organization to be inclusive, to include, to make room instead of the onus being on the individual to belong.”
How has COVID-19 and this time of uncertainty impacted BCW?
“From an operational perspective, [COVID-19 has] been an accelerator. A lot of the plans and strategies we had around decentralization, more regional connectivity, digital upskilling… it’s all accelerating. In many ways, we’ve become a more accessible organization.”
How has COVID-19 impacted your team’s sense of belonging?
“There is likely not a clean answer in a company as complex as ours. I can tell you we’re learning into practicing mindfulness together, which really is just paying attention to what’s going on within us and around us at a given moment in time, with openness and curiosity. Our people are reporting wild shifts in how they are feeling and what they need. Sometimes we feel connected, sometimes really isolated. The nature of the situation to some extent. But if we’re able to pay attention to those shifts as they are happening, we can be much more responsive to the needs of our people, our clients and our business itself.”
How would you define loneliness and how does this relate to belonging?
“I would define loneliness as the sense of being on one’s own and that not being enough. One’s self not being enough for whatever the moment calls for.
It comes back to the original concept of belonging. If the argument [against belonging] is that it puts the onus on the individual to conform, and loneliness is the sense that whoever you are is not enough… maybe they’re not as opposite as we think they are.”
Further Reading
Throughout our research, we’ll continue to share peeks into interviews and resources.
More from Kristen and BCW:
More on Sharehold’s Redesigning Belonging Research:
- A guide to our research
- Casper ter Kuile’s interview which thematically parallels Kristen’s comments about ensuring that we create healthy environments that are worthy of our belonging
- Sign up here to be the first to receive our insights on what it means to belong at work in a time of uncertainty.
