The Belonging Blind Spot: When Good Intentions Aren’t Enough
Photo Credit: Lin Deng via Unsplash
Most leaders want to create workplaces where people feel included, trusted and heard. And yet some of the ways we try to create belonging can inadvertently do the opposite.
We invite people to participate without asking how they participate best. We ask for feedback after we’ve already made up our minds. We create experiences intended to bring everyone together without noticing who might be uncomfortable or unable to take part. We avoid naming differences because we think treating everyone the same is more inclusive. We give the most opportunities to the strongest performers and forget about the people sitting on the bench. And sometimes we create a culture where people genuinely feel like they belong, only to let the practices that created it slip away when the pressure is on. Do any of these sound familiar?
The gap between intent and impact can be surprisingly difficult for a leader to see. That makes the way people experience your leadership at work worth paying attention to. Research from the American Psychological Association points in the same direction: people are more likely to feel they belong when they feel able to speak up, be themselves and participate without fear of negative consequences.
We’ve been exploring belonging as the sixth and final theme in our 2026 series on what’s shaping leadership this year. As part of that, we asked our HLG Writing Group to reflect on a time when a leader was genuinely trying to create inclusion but inadvertently left someone out. In our overview of belonging, we look at the everyday practices that help leaders build connection. Here, we look at the other side of that coin: the blind spots that can get in the way even when our intentions are good.
Henley Leadership Group’s CEO Carol Zizzo has seen this gap many times, both in her own experience as a business owner and through years of coaching executives. She has watched leaders prepare carefully to create connection, only to pull back when the moment arrives.
When Leaders Pull Back
I have watched dozens of executives over the years say the right thing in an attempt to connect, inform or bring people along during times of change, big decisions or upsetting churn within the organization. The ones who succeeded knew their people, deeply cared and had previously demonstrated that. They took time to thoughtfully prepare, connect to the intent of their message and consider how they wanted people to leave the conversation feeling.
The best had already established trust and respect, so the desire to connect came more naturally, and the hard messages were easier to hear and easier for people to get behind. The worst sent a scripted message from their communications director, failed to recognize the impact of the power differential or were simply going through the motions were simply going through the motions, not at all connected to the impact, nor did they care.
As I reflect on leaders I coached through those experiences, I would be surprised by all the time we’d spent preparing to get it right, only to see them pull back at the last moment and default to safer, familiar patterns of communicating. Fear of transparency, vulnerability, loss of credibility or authority were usually the culprits. And the connection they had worked so hard to create was often the thing that was lost.
In the last moment, their egos would win. The leader listened to that voice, not my coaching, not their own sensibilities, not their own vision for their culture or themselves as leaders.
Creating a culture where people feel included, trusted and heard is not only risky but also incredibly time-consuming. It also flies in the face of generations of structures designed to keep things just as they are: the status quo. That means assuming that we are the experts, that authority is needed and that there is choice for some but not for all. We’re still working to discover when that needs to hold true, and when and how we also engage with each other as equally capable human beings who can handle the truth.
— Carol Zizzo
Henley Leadership Group’s executive coach and facilitator Alan Cahn describes what can happen from the other side, when a culture that once created a genuine sense of belonging begins to lose the practices that made it feel that way.
When Belonging Starts to Slip
I worked at a coaching and consulting company where we spent a good deal of time creating our mission, our vision and our values. Once done, it spoke deeply to each of us, and we had regular team calls where we shared what the mission and values meant to us, how we were expressing them and where we were challenged.
It felt like we were more than coworkers. We belonged to each other and to our purpose.
I distinctly remember one team call when the visionary founder said, “We have a lot of work to cover today, so let’s get to work, and skip checking in and talking about our values.” My nervous system was jarred by this, and I took a breath and trusted it was merely a hiccup in the system.
A couple weeks later, the founder said we should have the call without her because she was busy with other important things. Over time, this pattern continued, and the mission and vision slipped into the background, replaced by discussions about revenue and getting new clients.
I formed a conclusion that creating a workplace where people belong is a journey with no end, that it is easy to lose one’s way when challenges arise.
Creating belonging cannot be a task. It’s something practiced moment by moment, and we need to pay attention to it, nurture it, and allow it to expand and deepen.
— Alan Cahn
The Blind Spots Are Often Ordinary
The things that undermine belonging are not always dramatic. Often they are incredibly ordinary leadership decisions made with perfectly good intentions.
Sometimes an invitation doesn’t actually make someone feel invited, or treating everyone the same doesn’t mean everyone has what they need. We can ask for input and still make it clear that the decision has already been made. Quiet people may have plenty to say, but need a different way into the conversation. A rowdy team dinner in a bar may be great for some people and awkward or exhausting for others. And when we keep giving opportunities to the strongest performers, we can forget that part of leadership is developing the people who are not yet there.
And perhaps most importantly, we assume that because people once felt a strong sense of belonging, they still do.
That may be the harder work of leadership: noticing the difference between what we intended to create and what other people are actually experiencing. It means being willing to ask rather than assume, to hear something we may not want to hear and sometimes to change something we genuinely believed was working.
Alan may say it most simply: creating belonging cannot be a task. It is something practiced moment by moment, and it never really ends.
An Inquiry for Leaders
Where, if anywhere, might there be a gap between your intention to include people and how they actually experience your leadership?
What assumptions do you make about what helps people on your team feel included, heard or able to contribute?
What happens, if anything, to connection and belonging on your team when pressure builds or priorities compete?
Who gets the most opportunities to grow and contribute on your team? Who gets fewer? What might you learn from looking at that?
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Belonging at work can look different for different people. Some people feel included when they are invited into a conversation, while others need context or time to prepare before they can contribute. Some enjoy team social events, while others may find them uncomfortable or difficult to attend. Belonging grows when leaders pay attention to how individual people experience the workplace rather than assuming the same approach works for everyone.
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Leaders can create belonging by building trust, listening to how people want to participate, making room for different perspectives and giving people opportunities to contribute and grow. It also requires consistency.
Practices that build connection can easily slip away when workloads increase, revenue pressures mount or other priorities take over. Belonging is less a task to complete than something leaders continually practice.
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Inclusion often describes the actions intended to bring people in, while belonging reflects how people actually experience those actions. A leader can invite someone to participate, ask for feedback or organize a team event with inclusive intentions, yet the person may still feel left out. Paying attention to the gap between intent and experience can help turn inclusion into a stronger sense of belonging.
Belonging deepens in the moments when leaders notice if there’s a gap between what they intend and what others actually experience. That kind of awareness takes skill and practice, especially when things are challenging at work.
Helping leaders build that kind of awareness and presence of mind is part of our work at Henley Leadership Group.. If you would like to explore this further, We'd love to talk.