I designed this faciliation as part of CCSD 681: Practice in Small Groups. The topic of belonging is not at the forefront of most offices’ minds but with quiet quitting becoming increasingly prevalent and an uptick in burnout amongst higher education professionals as noted by Vidra (2022), fostering an increased sense of belonging can be worthwhile for campus office teams to invest in. This is also important to measure as campuses are now recovering from the pandemic and shifting back from an online work model to an in-person or a hybrid one (White, 2021).
During my buy-in meeting for conducting this facilitation with H. Nagle, the Interim Director of Career and Internship Services (CIS) office at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (UMN), she shared that “belonging is the number one factor that makes people feel valued and respected, especially during the onboarding process” (personal communication, October 20, 2022). UMN’s CIS team has operated as a core workforce, which is defined as a work team with a high sense of loyalty and low turnover (Cluff, 2022). This is evident from the fact that most team members of the CIS team have worked there for an average of 10-15 years, with some even working there until they reached retirement. With three new team members having joined CIS’s small team of seven total members, it is quite the shift for new and old team members to adjust and learn how to work with each other while fostering inclusivity and belonging.
Overall, the facilitation was very well-received by my team which was supported not only by the anonymous data I collected through the post-facilitation survey but also at the end of the facilitation by team members in-person and in one-on-one side conversations. I was ecstatic to see that as a result of the facilitation, the average sense of belonging was rated highly at an average of 9.29 with 6 participants rating their sense of belonging to be above a 9 out of 10 as a direct result of my facilitation. It allowed team members to be vulnerable in a psychologially safe environment which I was able to faciliate. The team found the experience of this facilitation to be very rewarding from what they shared and expressed a high return value for the short time commitment of one hour for the entirety of this activity. I was also encouraged to see that all 7 participants indicated that they found me to be extremely thoughtful and engaging throughout the facilitation which is a reflection of how far I’ve come since joining the CCSD program last year and starting to build my facilitation skills last semester through our class.
Goals/Objective
Measure each team member’s sense of belonging and create an open brave space to explore what belonging means to each participant. Examine why they think they are experiencing the level of belonging their assessment results reveal.
Initial reactions to languages of appreciation styles - Want the group to explore their existing professional working dynamics and their predictions for their own and each other’s languages of appreciation. What does belonging in the workplace mean to each participant?
Interpretation of self-assessment and influence of salient social identities and past work experiences and leadership styles - Learn about each group member’s language of appreciation and how does it affect their belonging at the Career and Internship Services office and at the U of M as a whole.
Meaning making of group dynamics informed by languages of appreciation - Knowing what participants know now, what actions can they take to foster more meaningful inclusive professional relationships that embody a higher sense of belonging for each other, especially with new team members?
Learning Outcomes
As a result of this facilitation, the participants were able to:
define a brave space and gain an understanding about how setting up community norms can help foster one.
identify their own and their teammates’ level of belonging.
determine what factors contribute to their own and their teammate’s level of belonging.
examine the disparity between their languages of receiving appreciation in the workplace and their language of showing appreciation as denoted by their inventory results in the workplace.
communicate to their teammates their preferred language of receiving appreciation.
ideate at least one action that they can take to make at least one of their teammate feel more included based on their languages of appreciation and therefore help increase their teammates’ sense of belonging.