Most business leaders have invested heavily in diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. They’ve hired consultants, conducted trainings, and tracked demographic data. Yet something feels off. Employee engagement remains flat, turnover persists, and the initiatives that looked good on paper deliver underwhelming results.
The problem might be simpler than you think. You’ve been chasing a method instead of an outcome.
Coming up, we’ll explore why belonging, rather than DEI compliance, should be your true north. You’ll discover the strategic framework that transforms how leaders think about inclusion, why your current approach might be creating more problems than solutions, and the specific shifts that help every person in your organization thrive.
The Wall That Stands for 3,500 Years
Cordell Carter, Executive Director of the Aspen Institute Socrates Program, shares a story that reframes everything we think we know about building strong organizations.
Standing at the Delphi Oracle in Greece, Carter examined three versions of the Temple of Apollo’s foundation wall. The Christian version featured uniform stones marked with crosses. The Roman wall relied on strong cement. Both crumbled over time. The original wall, built 3,500 years ago, still stands. The difference? No adhesives, no grout, no cement. The architects simply found a place for every stone.
Society should be like a wall where every stone has a place. Your thriving is different from my thriving, but we both belong. That’s the point.
This ancient engineering principle reveals something modern leadership often misses. Uniformity creates fragility. Diversity without integration creates chaos. The goal is finding where each unique piece fits and contributes to structural integrity.
Your organization works the same way. When you try to force everyone into the same mold or simply celebrate differences without creating genuine interdependence, the whole structure becomes unstable. Belonging means every person has a place where they strengthen the whole.
What Belonging Actually Means
Belonging represents the outcome your organization should pursue. DEI represents one possible strategy to get there.
Most companies confuse the two. They measure diversity percentages, track inclusion initiatives, and wonder why the numbers don’t translate into business results. The answer lies in understanding what you’re actually trying to achieve.
Carter explains the distinction clearly:
Belonging is a conversation that your executive leaders have with each other about your organization. DEI is just a strategy that inside the organization, they try to achieve an environment where people belong and thrive. But DEI is not the outcome. It’s a method. And we’ve made the method the thing.
When you sequence this properly, everything changes. Your executive team defines what belonging looks like in your specific context. Then you evaluate which strategies, including but not limited to DEI, will help you create that environment.
This shift matters because belonging ties directly to business outcomes. When people feel they belong, they contribute more freely, stay longer, and push your organization forward. When they feel like demographic checkboxes, they disengage.
Why Your DEI Strategy Has No Destination
The DEI industry grew from a simple compliance question during government contracting. Federal procurement officers asked companies to report who worked for them. The practice became standard. Points got awarded. An entire industry emerged around one tactic.
The problem? The strategy developed without a clear destination. As Carter notes, people can project whatever they want onto DEI because it lacks a defined endpoint. Some see compliance. Others see reverse discrimination. Still others see performative gestures.
If you were to map different DEI definitions across organizations, you’d find scattered interpretations with no consistent thread. This happens when you optimize for a method rather than an outcome.
Consider how this plays out in your business. You implement unconscious bias training. You diversify your hiring pipeline. You celebrate heritage months. These actions might be valuable, but what specifically are they meant to accomplish? If you can’t articulate the destination, you can’t measure whether you’re getting closer.
Belonging provides that destination. You can ask clear questions. Do people feel they can contribute their best work? Do they experience psychological safety? Do they see paths for advancement? Do they feel their unique perspectives strengthen the team?
These questions connect to retention, innovation, and performance. They give you something concrete to pursue.
The consequences of this confusion show up in how organizations implemented DEI roles. [Embed video here] When companies create positions without strategy, budget, or genuine commitment, they set people up to fail while performing concern they don’t actually feel.
The Interconnected Success Principle
Carter uses a simple metaphor to explain why belonging matters beyond moral imperatives. Think of your business as a balloon filled with air. When you squeeze one side, the air doesn’t escape. It moves to the other side and creates pressure.
We are all connected. My success is attributed to you, and your success is attributed to me. I don’t want to live in a world where only I thrive and you don’t. That’s not good for anyone, not good for GDP, not good for our national standing.
This interconnectedness shows up in your organization daily. When talented people leave because they don’t feel they belong, you lose institutional knowledge. When employees disengage because they feel like outsiders, your innovation suffers. When customers see your team doesn’t reflect diverse perspectives, they question whether you understand their needs.
The inverse holds true as well. When you create genuine belonging, several things happen.
- Retention improves. People stay where they feel valued and see opportunity for growth.
- Innovation accelerates. Diverse perspectives, when genuinely integrated, produce better solutions than homogeneous thinking.
- Reputation strengthens. Organizations known for belonging attract better talent and more loyal customers.
- Performance increases. When people bring their whole selves to work, they contribute at higher levels.
Zero-sum thinking assumes creating opportunity for one group diminishes opportunity for another. Belonging operates from abundance. When you create an environment where everyone has opportunities to thrive, the entire organization benefits.
How to Shift From DEI to Belonging
Making this transition requires more than updating your language. You need structural changes in how you think about and implement inclusion efforts.
1. Start With Executive Alignment
Your leadership team must define what belonging means in your specific organizational context. This conversation happens before you select strategies or tactics.
Ask yourselves these questions. What does thriving look like for different roles in our company? Where do we see people struggling to contribute fully? What barriers prevent talented people from advancing? How do we measure whether someone feels they belong?
These discussions reveal assumptions and surface misalignment. One executive might prioritize demographic diversity while another focuses on thought diversity. Someone else might emphasize equal access to opportunities. You need clarity on what you’re building before you decide how to build it.
2. Audit Your Current State
Look honestly at where belonging exists and where it doesn’t. This goes beyond demographic data.
- Conduct confidential surveys. Ask about psychological safety, perceived opportunities for advancement, and whether people feel their contributions matter.
- Examine participation and advancement patterns. Look at who speaks in meetings, who gets promoted, and who leaves your organization.
- Map informal networks. Identify whether certain groups cluster together while others remain isolated, and whether some employees have access to mentorship and sponsorship while others navigate alone.
- Compare leadership assumptions to lived experience. The goal is understanding the current experience, which often differs significantly from what leadership assumes.
The goal is understanding the current experience, which often differs significantly from what leadership assumes.
3. Design for Multiple Definitions of Thriving
Carter emphasizes that your thriving looks different from his thriving, yet both matter. Your organization needs room for multiple paths to success.
Some people thrive in leadership roles. Others excel as individual contributors. Some want rapid advancement. Others prioritize work-life balance. Some seek public recognition. Others prefer quiet impact.
Belonging means creating space for all these versions of success. When you design one narrow path and call it meritocracy, you’re actually just privileging one definition of achievement.
This doesn’t mean lowering standards. It means recognizing that excellence shows up in different forms and creating multiple ways for people to contribute at high levels.
4. Implement Strategies That Serve the Outcome
Once you’ve defined belonging for your context, evaluate which strategies will help you get there. DEI initiatives might be part of the answer. So might restructuring how you make decisions, changing promotion criteria, or redesigning how teams collaborate.
The key is tying every initiative back to the outcome. When someone proposes a new program, ask how it specifically creates belonging. If the answer is vague, the program probably won’t work.
5. Create Accountability Mechanisms
Traditional DEI metrics focus on representation percentages. Belonging metrics focus on experience and opportunity.
Track retention rates across different groups. Measure promotion velocity. Survey psychological safety. Monitor who contributes in meetings and whose ideas get implemented. Examine pay equity for comparable roles.
These metrics tell you whether you’re actually creating an environment where everyone has opportunities to thrive, which is the definition of belonging.
The Practice of Listening
Carter offers a deceptively simple leadership principle that underpins belonging:
There’s a good reason most of us have two ears, one mouth. We’re supposed to listen twice as much as we speak.
Active listening creates belonging more than any formal program. When people feel genuinely heard, they feel they matter. When their input shapes decisions, they feel invested in outcomes.
This means listening to understand rather than listening to respond. It means creating forums where diverse perspectives can emerge without penalty. It means being willing to change your mind when someone offers a better idea.
Organizations that excel at belonging have leaders who practice this consistently. They create space for dissent. They reward people who surface problems. They acknowledge when they don’t have all the answers.
The opposite creates the opposite effect. When leaders dominate conversations, dismiss alternative viewpoints, or punish messengers of bad news, people learn to stay quiet. They go through the motions but stop contributing their best thinking. Belonging evaporates.
Why This Matters in 2026
The conversation around inclusion has become politically charged. Some organizations are pulling back from DEI initiatives. Others are doubling down. Many leaders feel caught in the middle, unsure how to proceed.
Focusing on belonging cuts through this noise. Belonging is politically neutral. No one argues against creating environments where people can thrive. No one opposes finding the right place for every talented person in your organization.
When you frame your efforts around belonging, you create space for productive conversation. You can acknowledge that previous approaches had limitations without abandoning the core goal. You can adjust strategies without appearing to capitulate to any particular political pressure.
More importantly, belonging connects to business fundamentals. You need talented people. You need those people to stay, contribute, and push your organization forward. You need innovation that comes from diverse thinking. You need customers to trust that you understand their needs.
All of this requires belonging. The political debates become secondary to the practical imperative of running a successful business.
Moving Forward
The shift from DEI to belonging represents more than semantic preference. It represents a fundamental reorientation around outcomes rather than methods.
Your organization succeeds when every person has a place where they strengthen the whole. This happens through intentional design, consistent practice, and genuine commitment from leadership.
Start by defining what belonging means in your specific context. Audit where you currently create it and where you fall short. Design systems that accommodate multiple definitions of thriving. Implement strategies that serve the outcome. Measure what matters.
Most importantly, practice the discipline of listening. Belonging emerges from thousands of small interactions where people feel seen, heard, and valued. No program creates that. Only consistent human practice does.
The ancient architects who built that wall at Delphi understood something we often forget. Strength comes from finding where each unique piece fits and contributes. Your organization follows the same principle. When you create genuine belonging, everyone thrives, and the whole structure stands the test of time.
If you’re ready to develop a belonging strategy that drives meaningful business results, book a complimentary strategy session with one of our executive coaches. We’ll help you move from well-intentioned initiatives to structural change that transforms how your organization performs.
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