HR has spent the last decade obsessed with belonging - a word that shows up in every engagement survey, every culture deck, every leadership workshop. While belonging matters, it’s becoming a shield for avoiding hard truths.
When people feel safe but aren’t held to high standards, you don’t build inclusion. You build complacency. Belonging without accountability leads to consensus-driven decisions, decision paralysis, and eventually stagnation.
Research backs this. Teams that balance psychological safety and high standards outperform those that over-index on safety alone. A recent article in Harvard Business puts it plainly: psychological safety must be paired with high expectations to fuel innovation, not soften it. I particularly love how Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, shares easy ways you can promote high quality conversations as a leader like asking “Who has a different perspective” to promote debates and new ideas.
If your culture prizes comfort over candor, you’re not creating belonging. You’re preserving the status quo. Real belonging is earned through trust, and trust is built when performance, not politics, drives opportunity.
Next time you celebrate “how safe people feel,” ask if they also feel challenged.