Here’s a conversation between Frank Nam, the project director for Civic Commons’ We Belong Here program and Julie Pham, the head of WTIA’s Ion Collaborators program. In 2019, they partnered in building a special “belonging” cohort of Ion Collaborators.

JP: You were in the first cohort of Ion. Back then, you were working for city government and now you’re at Seattle Foundation for the We Belong Here program. What did you like about your Ion experience and why did you decide to partner with Ion?

FN: I had no idea what I was getting into when I decided to join the first cohort of Ion but I am so glad I participated. Ever since my Leadership Tomorrow year in 2013, I’ve been very interested in cross-sector collaboration and I enjoyed the opportunity to do this work with my team members. However, the part I enjoyed the most was something unexpected. Instead of quick intros and jumping into the work, we spent the first month really learning about each other. We told stories and shared our backgrounds and got real very quickly. This strengthening of the bonds that connect us made me stick with the program later on when my full-time work got more and more hectic. The social connections I made kept me engaged and that was really interesting when I spent some time being introspective.

When I started working on belonging with We Belong Here I realized that the Ion cohort I participated in was a shining example of belonging. The hypothesis we have is connected to what I learned during my time at Ion. When we connect more strongly together, the work becomes so much richer.

Belonging can be such a nebulous concept that we thought it would be a good idea to experiment with it in a location-specific way and that’s where we came up with the idea to sponsor an experimental cohort with Ion!

JP: How do you define belonging? How did you come to define it that way?

What a great question. The definition I’ll give is the culmination of john a. powell’s ideas around targeted universalism, the fable of stone soup, conversations with local indigenous leaders, and what we learned from our collaboration with Ion.

Belonging is a recognition that we are connected to people we know, and also to those we don’t. When people feel they belong – to a region, to a community, or in decision-making – we establish the right conditions for changing the ways we work together to confront our greatest challenges.

FN: How did you define belonging at the beginning of this cohort and what did you learn about “belonging” in this cohort?

JP: Some people define belonging as being in a group where they don’t have to explain themselves. I think of the feeling of belonging as being in a group and feeling safe to ask each other questions. You know that feeling when someone cracks a joke and everyone else laughs and you do too, even though you didn’t understand the joke? Why is that? People tell me, “I don’t want to look dumb,” “I don’t wanna slow down the conversation.” I think of belonging as feeling safe enough to ask, “I didn’t understand that joke. Could you explain it to me?” And not worry that people are going to think you are dumb or slow. Frank, you define belonging as the willingness to share resources so that we can have a richer community. I want to add to that. I think belonging requires also the willingness to ask for help.

Asking for resources is one form of asking for help. Another form of asking for help is asking for acceptance. For example, that can look like: 

• asking for grace after you admit you can’t follow through with a commitment
• for an explanation when you’re still confused about something, after it’s been already explained to you
• for forgiveness and instruction when you mispronounce a name again
• for others to see your good intention when you speak your truth, even though it might hurt them

Because if you’re on a team that is truly collaborating, you will inevitably let others down, be confused, and say hurtful things. You know you belong when you are still welcomed back, when people accept you not on your best days, but on your worst days. 

That is what belonging looks like at the group level. While the teams were looking at belonging in their neighborhoods, they were also building belonging with one another. You can’t offer help if you are not willing to ask for help. Team members had to ask each other for forgiveness, for grace, for understanding, for clarification, for education. Sometimes people wouldn’t ask each other for this kind of help. So there were periods of silent resentment and misunderstanding. Each team made it through, with bumps. Understanding each other was not easy because this was such a diverse cohort. 

FN: What do you think about having the cohort focus on the theme of “belonging”?

JP: I was worried at first that having a theme would restrict people’s creativity around the kinds of projects they ended up brainstorming. I found that this is not the case. They were just as creative as they had been in the past. One of the team projects didn’t really even touch on belonging. 

Perhaps this is also because the theme “belonging” is also very broad and flexible. If we have a theme again, I think we would have to have the same kind of flexibility. 

Looking at belonging was interesting because it invited in so many different perspectives of how people define the word. What is clear is that there is no one consistent definition of belonging. I think it’s actually more interesting that it invites so many different interpretations, because that reflects different lived experiences and perspectives. But because there are so many inconsistencies, I’m not sure if it played the function that a theme normally plays, which is to provide a consistent framework. If anything, it reflected we need to be open to different perspectives, which is a driving principle of Ion itself.

I think the will word “belonging” conjures up talking about things. This is a challenge for those who express themselves through action. “Belonging” can be about action too, but I think when people first hear it they think of what it feels like and not what actions can express it. In Ion, we talk a lot about people from different backgrounds having different languages to express themselves. Adding a core difference is the language of talking and reflecting versus the language of doing. Some people, especially those in the private sector, learn from doing and then reflecting on what they’ve done. In the government sector, they want to plan and reflect and then do. They are literally doing things in the opposite order and this is what causes friction. I think even trying to understand the concept of belonging surfaced this tension.

FN: Looking at belonging through a neighborhood lens was something new for Ion. What do you think about the neighborhood focus that we used in this cohort?

JP: We often talk about change in Seattle as if it were one generic feeling. But in reality, “change” looks different in different places. I love this neighborhood focus and I think it resonated with others. It pushed people to build a real connection and learn about the neighborhood and the people who live in that neighborhood.I think this is an important evolution for Ion and it’s a really interesting way to focus a team. We told the teams, you are not saving these neighborhoods. You are not their savior. They are functioning fine without you. But we believe there’s an opportunity for a greater sense of belonging and connection, and a sharing of resources, across the region.

We charged this cohort with a big task: Go learn about what “belonging” looks like in these three neighborhoods. Go talk to locals there, observe, and see what’s already working. See what opportunities are there for you to make some new connections that might add value within organizations in the neighborhood that might not be speaking to each other and between the neighborhood and other parts of the region. Helping individuals understand that they have power just by making connections is a core principle of Ion. This neighborhood focus was a really good way to drive that home. I think a good example of that was with the Crossroads team. While they were doing their community interviews, a few of them interviewed two Native American card game makers, who were PhD researchers who admitted that they didn’t know that much about marketing. This team saw that the Crossroads Mall, games, and playing games was abundant. They asked a game shop located in the mall to see if they would host a showcase of Native American card game makers. That was a great connection that would not have been made otherwise.

FN: Do you think that Ion would do the neighborhood lessons again? What would you change?

JP: Yes, I think that this is a really good experiment. I was surprised at how much the people on the team connected with the neighborhood they were focused on, even though most of them had never even been to that neighborhood. It also pushed us to look at the diversity of our region differently too. I’d like to do an entire cohort of Ion in a city like Kent or Renton or Tacoma, outside of Seattle. I think our conversations are very Seattle-centric and there’s so much going on outside of Seattle.

We had neighborhood representatives on each team and while that was helpful, I don’t know if it was necessary. I think that they could’ve also relied on external experts who are not team members to learn about the neighborhood. It may have put an undue burden on the neighborhood representative. I would like to experiment without having neighborhood representatives next time.

JP: One of the reasons why you wanted to partner with Ion was because we’re really good at facilitating experimentation and collaboration among a group of strangers coming from different sectors. Why do you think it’s so hard for people to experiment and collaborate? How do you think this cohort did?

FN: I think one of the reasons we’re so bad at experimentation in particular is because our organizations and companies don’t create a culture that allows for failing. For various reasons, some being profits, productivity, and expediency, organizations don’t allow for failure and we’re reprimanded or fired when we do.

If we overlay this fear of getting things wrong on top of collaboration, we shouldn’t be surprised that strangers don’t normally collaborate well. Being solely responsible for something gives you control but relying on the skills and hard-work of others, especially strangers, sounds like a loss of control over outcomes.

With that being said, I think this cohort did a great job at overcoming these twin fears of failure and collaboration and that’s because Ion does such a great job of creating a space for people to lean in experimentation and to create real relationships with each other. 

FN: What surprised you the most? What have you learned over the different cohorts?

JP: This was our fourth cohort and what surprised me the most was how some things never change, like the desire to connect everything, to have one all encompassing event or website that connects all resources. This seems to come up over and over again. When it comes to the project stage, there’s always this desire to connect as many dots as possible with one project, and that typically looks like a resource fair or website or some platform. I’m surprised that after four cohorts, we still see this urge to connect everything. But I suppose after people have been exposed to so many different resources, they want to honor them in their final project. We’ve been trying to think of how to get people to accelerate serendipity across a few organizations rather than trying to think of it as being across many. I thought with a hyper local lens, people would zoom in on matchmaking to unlikely partners and their needs. I’m realizing that when you get people from such different backgrounds, and they are speaking different languages, it’s natural for them to try to find consensus around ideas that reject none of their own individual desires, which could feel like a conflict.

JP: What was your hope for this cohort and did you achieve it? What did you learn about belonging from this cohort?

FN: I’m not sure I had a specific hope from this cohort so it’s hard to say that we achieved it. But what we know is that organizations and people don’t normally concentrate on belonging as an output and we didn’t know what we didn’t know. More than the projects and their particular outcomes, we were interested in what happens when you build an environment for people to connect, listen, learn, and then build something in a particular neighborhood that increases belonging.

What I learned was that people define and build belonging in different ways, as evidenced by the very different projects. What Skyway needs for a better sense of belonging is different than what Crossroads wants. Also, I’m interested in following up with the three teams in the future to see if their relationships created a greater sense of connection and collaboration in ways connected and unconnected to the projects!

I think that’s the true achievement of belonging: a deeper connected sense to each other that manifests in mutual aid and collaboration.