Design to Thrive

Chapter 6. Belonging

Designing the experience of belonging

Synopsis

What does it truly mean to belong to a community? How does someone know when they really have “made it” into a community and, perhaps more importantly, how do leaders in the community help them achieve that sense of accomplishment? This chapter explains that belonging is a sense of one's “social presence” in a community; it's a feeling or awareness of the shared bonds a member has with others in the group. This chapter begins by discussing how initiation rituals and “stories of origin” provide mechanisms that allow members to bond. It shows how real world organizations such as the Navy Seals use initiation rituals in order to build a sense of camaraderie and esprit de corps ...