Why belonging is critical to entrepreneurship

when i started my career

i didn’t think twice about applying for

a coveted graduate job at

a top london pr agency i responded to

that ad in a national newspaper

and was invited to attend a terrifying

assessment day

which involved presenting to the board a

written exam

and an observed roundtable debate

i got the job beating hundreds of

candidates in the process

i never felt entitled to be there i

always felt grateful

and fortunate for the opportunity but i

didn’t question my right to be there

either i knew

i was an asset to that company

for the next 10 years no matter where i

worked

i felt that way rarely daunted always

motivated to work hard to gain new

skills

to learn from seriously talented people

and then i became an entrepreneur a

business owner

and something inside me began to shift

the more successful our business became

eventually becoming the uk’s largest

independent digital agency

employing hundreds of people then all my

confidence began to wane

i started to experience imposter

syndrome strong

feelings that i didn’t belong among my

entrepreneurial peers

it’s pretty radical to experience

feelings of not belonging

inside your own company we sold that

company successfully

a few years ago and on paper you would

say that i have had a dream

career to date but i know

i have yet to reach my full potential

because those

feelings of not belonging in the

entrepreneurial world held me back

and it turns out that this is a common

experience for women

and indeed many people who feel they are

not obvious

entrepreneur material if we are to

achieve

greater diversity in business it is in

our best interest to fix this

so why does this happen and how can we

address it

so that more people can achieve what

they are capable of

we all need to belong belonging

to feel like an accepted member of a

group is an innate

primal human need it’s extremely

powerful

it’s why people stay in toxic

relationships despite threats

to their physical or mental health and

it’s universal

experienced by all people in every

culture

in every country our need to belong

means we work

hard to adapt our behavior to fit in

and not belonging can lead to feelings

of depression

anxiety loneliness even suicide

last year a little girl i know wound up

at the doctors

with an irregular heartbeat after the

trauma of being separated from her best

friends when she went up a year at

school

eventually she settled but for two

months she had

absolutely zero capacity for learning

she was hyper vigilant on high alert all

the time

and that’s because when you feel like

you don’t belong

you feel threatened and when you are

looking for potential threats all the

time

it impairs your ability to think to

judge

and to solve problems that’s precisely

what happened to me which is such a

waste when you consider

a recent better up survey which showed

that when people felt like they belonged

at work

they saw a 56 uplift in their

performance

but for well-documented reasons

belonging in the workplace

can be challenging for women and people

from underrepresented groups

compounding this problem in the

entrepreneurial world

is this mythology that’s built up around

entrepreneurship

that entrepreneurs are cut from

different cloth that you can’t

learn it you’re born with it it’s in

your dna

there’s an entrenched stereotype traits

like bold risk-taking

impatience and single-mindedness are

highly prized in the entrepreneurial

world

i don’t have those traits my risk taking

is

calculated not bold i’ve been known to

procrastinate

i favor collaborative decision making

this perceived gap between my skills

experience and behavior and the

stereotype

contributed to my feelings that i wasn’t

entrepreneur material

and this is frustrating because the

stereotype is

absolute bs for instance

most of us do expect entrepreneurs to be

risk takers

but adam grant wholly debunks this myth

in his enlightening book originals

he references a study of 5 000 americans

over 14 years which showed that those

less bullish entrepreneurs who hedged

their bets and kept their day jobs when

they started their businesses

had 33 lower odds of failure

than those more ballsy folk who quit on

day one

this gap between fantasy and reality

is contributing to a thumping great

missed opportunity

according to the allison rose review

there are 1.1

million missing female-founded

businesses in the uk alone

this is bad news economically 250

billion pounds of value could be added

to the economy

if women started and scaled businesses

to the same extent

as men this is bad news for society

women can bring compassion and diverse

thinking to the workplace

and in a world that desperately needs

more ethical businesses we

know that women care about social impact

40

of founders of social enterprises in the

uk are women

that’s twice the number of female

founders than in the private sector

and it’s bad news for women themselves

1.1 million

missing female-founded businesses means

at least

1.1 million women are not currently

making money on their own terms

and not benefiting from this sense of

agency

and empowerment that comes with that

valerie stead a researcher at lancaster

university has found that female

entrepreneurs adopt multiple strategies

often simultaneously in an effort to

belong

they mask their femininity modelling

those behavioral norms

they mask their identity as

entrepreneurs often getting men to front

their businesses

particularly in male dominated business

environments

i saw this in action recently at a

start-up pitch to angel investors where

strikingly the female ceo sat quietly

while her male chair presented her

business to the room

and they gained legitimacy and access to

networks through

a male co-founder often adopting

publicly supporting roles

which gives them a license to operate

with fewer barriers

reading this research was like looking

in

a mirror and what struck me most about

it

was just how exhausting it all is

like all people who don’t fit a

stereotype

many female entrepreneurs can’t just be

themselves and trying to be

a different version of themselves and

trying to adapt their behavior to fit in

takes huge effort cast your mind back to

the little girl

who couldn’t learn because all she was

doing was scanning for threats

now imagine all these women and all that

emotional

and cognitive energy they’re expending

trying to belong

to the entrepreneurial community what

impact is that having

on their potential how is that affecting

their performance

how exhausted are they

feeling like they don’t belong in the

entrepreneurial world is why women don’t

start businesses

it’s why they don’t scale businesses to

the same extent as men

and it’s why they have mental health

issues along the way i know

because i’ve been there now

this is undeniably complex and change

requires a

seismic shift in society’s expectations

around entrepreneurship

and the role that women play in business

and domestically

it will take decades for the stereotypes

to evolve

but we don’t have to wait for this

change to happen

there’s lots we can do to promote our

own sense of belonging

building your own sense of belonging

takes active effort and patience

but it is worth it remember that better

up study you can

enhance your performance by 56

in her study stead concludes if a

woman’s

identification as an entrepreneur is

constrained

then her ability to belong to a business

or an entrepreneurial community is

compromised

having a strong sense of identity is

essential for belonging

so we need to work on our own identity

as entrepreneurs

this starts with throwing away your

perceptions of what an entrepreneur

is if it helps don’t call yourself an

entrepreneur call yourself a founder or

a business owner if that feels more like

you

entrepreneurs like human beings come in

all shapes and sizes the role models

that mostly originate from silicon

valley

represent just a tiny sliver of the

entrepreneurial community

your traits may be different to theirs

but they do not

disqualify you from entrepreneurship

there are as many ways to

start and grow a business as there are

attitudes to risk

or degrees of personal ambition

you may feel that you’re not confident

enough to go for it

according to the rose review only 39 of

women feel

confident in their capabilities to grow

a business compared to 55

of men this is a perceived gap in

ability rather than an

actual gap in skill sets and this

insight

helps me have a word of myself when i’m

feeling daunted

so do the work on yourself get

comfortable with who you are

as an entrepreneur then

go and find some allies find other

people with whom you can connect i

cannot emphasize enough the importance

of this

if you find you are expending vast

amounts of

emotional and cognitive energy trying to

belong to

a group where you are an outsider then

stop

and seek belonging elsewhere find other

female entrepreneurs

or people of any gender or background

who share the same values

personality traits industry sectors or

professional interests as you

find people that work for you

many women say they lack professional

networks and this is a real barrier to

starting a business

i say start your own just reach out

to one person one person with whom you

share common ground

everyone can find one person and grow

your network from there

i started a women’s network during that

challenging time in my career when my

feelings of not belonging were

particularly acute

i started it for purely professional

reasons

but through it i found sisterhood which

helped me cope with the everyday

challenges i was experiencing

it’s made me more resilient i’m better

able to compete because

those women are my team remember

if you hide away in isolation doing your

own thing

you’re potentially denying someone else

the opportunity to form an alliance

that could make a massive difference to

their success

and this leads me to my final point if

you have already founded a business

please share your story own it

tell it how it is each time you do you

reaffirm who

you are and you become an example for

others to follow

you are the role models that we all need

to see

feeling like we belong is crucial to

realizing our

entrepreneurial potential we can build

our own sense of belonging by

embracing our unique style of

entrepreneurship

finding allies and sharing our authentic

stories

imagine you are a female entrepreneur at

the top of your game

challenging the entrepreneurial status

quo

now multiply you by 1.1 million

that is a powerful force for change and

that’s why

i think this is an idea worth sharing

thank you