Your "Everyone Belongs Here" Sign is Gaslighting Your Employees
Your "Everyone Belongs Here" Sign is Gaslighting Your Employees
(And Other Hard Truths About Building Actual Community in Your Scaling Startup)
Listen, I need to tell you something that's going to hurt.
That neon "You Belong Here" sign in your lobby? The one your brand team spent $3,000 on? It's corporate BS of the highest order, and your employees know it.
I just got off a call with Dan Berger—yes, THE Dan Berger who sold Social Tables for $100M and is now writing the literal book on belonging (it's called The Quest, out now, you're welcome)—and he absolutely obliterated everything I thought I knew about building team culture.
The Problem: You're Trying to Make Everyone Feel Special (Which Makes No One Feel Special)
Here's Dan's mic drop moment that made me spit out my coffee:
"If everybody belongs, nobody belongs."
Read that again. Slower this time.
You can't Cuisinart-toaster-community your way into authentic human connection in business relationships. You can't DEI-initiative your way into people actually giving a shaet about your mission. And you definitely can't HR-policy your way into the kind of stakeholder engagement that drives relationship-driven revenue growth.
(Yes, I'm talking to YOU, the one who just added "fostering belonging" to your Q4 OKRs.)
The Framework That Actually Works (For People Who Want Real Answers)
Dan laid out a five-step belonging framework that's so stupidly obvious once you hear it, you'll wonder why every startup leadership podcast doesn't cover this:
Create actual hospitality (not a ping pong table)
Build psychological safety (not a suggestion box no one checks)
Drive real engagement (not mandatory fun)
Earn commitment (not loyalty through golden handcuffs)
Reinforce belonging (not through company swag)
But here's where it gets spicy—and where most health tech and medtech founders completely lose the plot:
Your Workplace Isn't the SOURCE of Belonging. It's the PLATFORM.
This distinction changed everything for me.
Your employees don't need to find their entire sense of purpose and community in your Slack channels. In fact, they probably shouldn't. That's not humanizing business relationships—that's creating a cult.
Instead, your job as a leader is to create the conditions where people can build authentic client connections WITH EACH OTHER. Where they can develop trusted advisor relationships. Where they can actually be humans who happen to work together, not "resources" who happen to breathe.
Dan's got this whole quiz at belongingquest.com/quiz that helps people figure out their "belonging personality"—because (plot twist!) not everyone finds connection the same way. Some people need interpersonal relationships. Others need group membership. Some fill their tank through "parasocial bonds" (yes, your team member who's obsessed with that productivity YouTuber is literally getting belonging from it, and that's valid).
The Part Where Your Middle Managers Are Dying (And Taking Your Culture With Them)
Here's the uncomfortable truth about scaling client success teams and building high-retention client relationships: It all flows through your middle managers.
Not HR. Not your Chief People Officer. Not the leadership podcast you make everyone listen to.
Your managers.
And right now? They're burnt out, underwater, and absolutely do not have the bandwidth to facilitate the proactive client relationship management you're demanding while also creating belonging for their teams.
Dan was crystal clear: belonging happens in SMALL TEAMS, not giant organizations. We can't maintain meaningful relationships with more than ~150 people (thanks, Dunbar). So if you're trying to create one company culture across 500 employees, you're already cooked.
The Action Items (Because You're Skimming for the TL;DR Anyway)
If you actually want to reduce client churn in startups AND build a team that doesn't quietly rage-apply to competitors:
Stop bullshaetting about belonging. Seriously. Delete that email draft about "our company family."
Support your middle managers with actual resources, not just "you've got this!" cheerleading. They're the ones building your culture, one team at a time.
Give your people permission to find belonging OUTSIDE work. Wild concept: let them be whole humans with lives and communities beyond your company.
Be selective about who you bring in. Not everyone is going to belong. That's not cruel—it's honest. And honesty is the foundation of every authentic client connection.
Make your workplace a platform, not a replacement for human connection. Create the conditions. Provide the opportunities. Then get out of the way.
The Real Talk Moment
I started The Human Connection Podcast because I was tired of seeing scaling companies optimize their way out of humanity. Everyone's so focused on customer advocacy programs and improving client satisfaction scores that they forget the whole thing runs on actual human relationships.
Not "human capital."
Not "team members."
Humans.
Dan's work on belonging intelligence is the missing piece in every conversation about balancing client advocacy with revenue growth. Because if your team doesn't belong—if they're just clocking in, getting their paycheck, and scrolling LinkedIn for their next move—how the hell are they supposed to build unshakeable business relationships with your clients?
They can't.
And your Q1 retention numbers are about to remind you of that.
Watch the Full Episode
I barely scratched the surface here. Dan goes DEEP on the belonging fuel tank concept, the six categories of belonging strategies, and how to apply this to stakeholder-focused communication in ways that actually move the needle.
Plus, he tells a story about his daughter's bedroom that'll make you rethink every piece of corporate messaging you've ever approved.
[Link Here. Watch it. Apply it. Thank me later.]
P.S. If you're reading this and thinking "but we DO have good culture, our Glassdoor reviews are fine"—bestie, that's not the flex you think it is. Fine is the enemy of exceptional. And in this market, with the war for talent and customers heating up, "fine" is how you become forgettable. Dan literally wrote 300+ pages on how to be unforgettable. Maybe steal some of his homework.
P.P.S. Yes, I took the belonging quiz. Yes, it was uncomfortably accurate. No, I will not be sharing my results publicly because I have SOME boundaries. (Take it yourself at belongingquest.com/quiz and tell me I'm wrong.)
Karl Pontau hosts The Human Connection Podcast, where we talk about the stuff that actually matters in business: the humans running it. Because whether you're B2B or B2C, it's really H2H—human to human. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode where we probably say something that'll make your HR department uncomfortable.
