Heart of Groups: Safety, Belonging & Intimacy

The no.1 element for successful groups: social belonging cues & feeling of safety

Safe to be authentic

High trust to be critical

Feeling safe makes us progress is in our genetics - ‘amygdala’

“Individuals aren’t really individuals. They’re more like musicians in a jazz quartet, forming a web of unconscious actions and reactions to complement the others in the group. You don’t look at the informational content of the messages; you look at patterns that show how the message is being sent. Those patterns contain many signals that tell us about the relationship and what’s really going on beneath the surface.”

“I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them.”

“What mattered most in creating a successful team had less to do with intelligence and experience and more to do with where the desks happened to be located.”

The Allen Curve — the frequency of interaction against distance. Physical safety enhances trust, group bonding

Building Safety & Belonging Cues:

• Admit mistakes and weakness
• Listen, observe more than you talk
• Embrace the messenger of bad news, not only that you don’t shoot the messenger, you hug them
• Preview future connections: ‘He was like you when he was your age’
• Express gratitude always, all the time
• Be selective of entry, eliminate bad apples
• Make sure everyone has voice
• Having leader with humility: picking up trash and doing other things to serve the group
• Improvement feedback: learning focused 2 way conversation