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