Words for Belonging at work
For the interviews fueling this blog, here are some key words used:
Belonging: From Alida Miranda-Wolff’s book, Cultures of Belonging:
Belonging is your sense that you are part of something greater than yourself that you value and need and that values and needs you back; it cannot be achieved without factoring in social identity and use and misuse of power.
Practicing Belonging: The specific things that law firms, practice groups, and partners actively do to build, or detract from, different lawyers’ sense of Belonging.
Identity: In these interviews I ask lawyers how they identify themselves. Their responses may allude to race, gender, age, class, ableness, other facets of diversity, or anything else that they share with me. I do not ask them to speak on behalf of their identity, but instead, whether and how they believe their identity has had an impact on their sense of Belonging at work.