CHAPTER 
The Three Things All Humans Crave
Resilient teams have three key ingredients: safety, belonging, and mattering.
We all want things to continuously get better, especially in times of change and uncertainty. That’s what it means to be human. Now that you’ve learned how you create experiences, let’s focus on how you make your current experience better.
YOU ARE HERE, BUT YOU WANT TO BE THERE
Let’s map this out (Figure 2.1). We’ll call where you currently are, your current experience of the world, the Present State (PS). And there are situations or experiences in your PS that you either don’t like or want to improve. Maybe you’ve had a big layoff, or you need to fill a crucial role and recruiting is taking too long, or a new competitor is eroding what used to be a reliable revenue base. Maybe your business and organization are doing well with bottom-line growth and market penetration, but you want to explore ways to enter new markets to expand your impact and generate greater profits and you can’t seem to find the time.
Figure 2.1 Mapping Your Desired Destination
Your envisioned Desired State (DS) is that “better” place, the place where you will have achieved and/or received what you wanted back in your PS, the place where you can navigate change easily and powerfully.
For example, you may want to shift the way you’re thinking about a big layoff, moving from the PS of seeing it as a painful experience to the DS of seeing it as an opportunity to reduce expenses and streamline staff to peak performers. You may want to move from the PS of a slow recruiting process to the DS of an optimal process that gets you more great candidates and allows you to onboard and cultivate new hires more quickly. Or you may want to move from the PS of an eroding revenue base to the DS of developing new product lines and key sales channels.
Now, think of the terrain on the map between our PS and DS as something that can change at any moment. And as the terrain changes, the path from the PS to the DS must change too. New trajectories and pathways must be formed. Emotional agility is what enables you to do that with certainty, precision, and swiftness.
No matter where you start, where you’re going, or how you get there, you’re going to need three things for your journey. They’re the three key ingredients of emotional agility: safety, belonging, and mattering.
WHERE IT ALL BEGINS: THE THREE THINGS HUMANS CRAVE
Maslow was right.1 Before we can seek self-actualization, we must feel safety, belonging, and mattering (Figure 2.2). Without them, people cannot get in their Smart State (self-actualization)—they cannot perform, innovate, feel emotionally engaged, agree, or move forward.
Figure 2.2 Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needswith a Few Modern Edits
Source: Figure adapted and modified from the original work of Abraham Maslow.
After food, water, shelter, warmth, and good Wi-Fi service, safety, belonging, and mattering are the three things human beings crave. All three are great Ks (feelings), and they drive and dominate human behavior.
These three key emotional experiences govern how emotionally agile—or fragile—human beings are. When they aren’t working properly, human beings will feel like spun glass, ready to break at any moment. When they are working properly, human beings gain greater emotional agility—they become like water, having the capacity to flow around many forms of resistance.
First, the greater the feeling of safety, both emotional and physical, the more we feel able to take risks because safety reduces the experience of risk.
Safety means creating an environment where there is freedom from fear, where we can take risks and stretch and grow. Is it safe to take risks at your organization?
What’s true for you and your team is true for your clients. If they’re stuck in fear, they won’t reach for your business offering. So the first step in any sales or marketing scenario is to generate safety. Generating safety for customers can take the form of guarantees of any type, service agreements, and/or social proof about how you came through for other clients in similar situations. More about this later in the book.
Second, the greater the feeling of belonging with others, or the feeling that we’re in this together, the more alignment we have as a team, a family, and a tribe.
Belonging means creating an environment where we all feel like a tight-knit tribe, we’re all equal, and we’re all rowing in the same direction to reach our goals. Think about gangs—where people will literally kill to stay in the tribe. That’s how powerful the need to belong is.
In your business, creating a sense of belonging means creating a compelling mission, vision, and values so that your team knows how to belong: they belong by honoring the values as they live the mission and aspire to the vision. For your clients, you can build an online community; host physical events, conferences, or annual meetings; and share testimonials or news about how well a recent gathering went. These efforts also help your clients view you as partners rather than vendors. Belonging builds brand loyalty, improves customer retention, and increases penetration per client account.
And third, the greater the feeling that we personally matter, make a difference, and are contributing to the greater good, the greater the success of the organization, the relationship, the family, the team, the individual.
Mattering means each of us contributes individually in a unique way. We all make a difference. We’re appreciated and publicly acknowledged. Does your organization’s culture work this way?
Of course, mattering is just as important to your customers. To increase their experience of mattering, you can use customer satisfaction surveys, celebrate their successes, and provide loyalty and/or retention programs. These all help communicate that the customers matter, that they deserve attention, and that they affect the world. Mattering helps build brand awareness and brand loyalty.
None of us actually buy products or services. We buy emotional experiences of safety, belonging, and mattering. What emotional experience are you providing to your team? To your clients? To the marketplace? More on this in Chapter 7.
HOW SAFETY, BELONGING, AND MATTERING GET YOU TO YOUR DESIRED STATE
Let me give you a real-life example of how safety, belonging, and mattering help us get from our Present State to our Desired State.
Dave and Robert had built a thriving business. Revenues and profits had grown consistently as their digital marketing firm gained fame, won numerous awards, and grew a clientele that included the A list of consumer brands.
Together Dave and Robert had the “secret sauce.” Dave was the flamboyant creative with remarkable vision—heck, he could make floor wax seem sexy. Clients loved Dave and felt invigorated in his presence. He made them want to do great things, expand projects, make the world a better place. Dave was a natural salesperson too.
Robert was the operations, finance, and process guy. He kept all the pieces in their complex projects moving forward, he tempered Dave’s ideas when they would’ve eroded a project’s profitability, and he kept the staff happy and the business running. Dave and Robert needed each other. And their clients needed them. Going solo wasn’t really an option—and Robert knew it.
Then things changed. After Dave’s divorce, he became a different person: he was unaccountable, he arrived late in the office and left early, he wasn’t prepared for client presentations, and he blamed all mistakes on the junior staff. Meanwhile, Robert was working insanely long hours to cover Dave’s constantly missed deadlines. Robert’s family was asking when they’d get more time with him because he worked nights and weekends in the office. By the time Robert called us, he was ready to buy Dave out and go solo. He’d already called his attorney.
Dave now needed to matter (in his personal life and at work) more than ever before and was searching for where he could now belong (since he no longer belonged with his wife). Dave’s way of mattering meant doing what he wanted, when he wanted, how he wanted—which didn’t work well with the organization’s agenda. He was also withdrawing and isolating himself from his work tribe, where he would have gotten tremendous support if only he could have shifted out of Critter State to benefit from it.
Robert needed to feel safe (“Would Dave really show up?”) and belong (“If we’re in this together, I need him to honor his promises to me”). When Robert felt unsafe, he would micromanage, become hypervigilant, and wait for the next disaster to strike. This wasn’t very much fun for the team. The team also missed Dave’s wackiness and spark. Robert began withholding information from Dave because he figured he couldn’t count on him anyway. This led to more trouble.
Robert and Dave both found themselves operating from the Critter State. However, they wanted to make their relationship and business work again, and they were willing to invest in it. So we coached them both as individuals separately to work through their own challenges and as partners together to forge a new commitment to one another and the business. The result was clarity about each other’s experience, what they needed most from each other, and what they needed most from the business.
Because Dave’s experience of mattering meant doing what he wanted, when he wanted, and how he wanted, Dave needed and got more flexible working hours as he redesigned his life, a reduced workload for six months (which enabled his second-in-command to rise up), and the assurance that he would be called upon to deliver client presentation work only for key accounts. More mattering and belonging.
Dave’s temporary plan worked well for Robert because what he needed most was to know what he could count on Dave for. Dave’s second-in-command worked closely with Robert whenever he felt concerned or unsure about project status and milestones. This brought Robert more safety.
With safety, belonging, and mattering firmly in place, the partnership was reinvigorated, both partners became more compassionate with each other, the staff was relieved and able to refocus on work rather than the prior partner conflict, and Dave’s second-in-command landed some huge new accounts. The business was once again thriving!
The greater the experience of safety, belonging, and mattering, the more resilient we are and the more we can adapt and pivot to meet change and growth—for ourselves and our customers. In every communication, in every conflict, we are subconsciously either reinforcing or asking for safety, belonging, or mattering (or a combination of the three). It’s neurological, and it’s primal—there is nothing you can do to override or change this subconscious programming, as much as you may try.
WHERE YOU CRAVE SAFETY, BELONGING, AND MATTERING
Safety, belonging, and mattering are prevalent in your life and your organization—let’s see where with a quick quiz. For each behavior below, what is the person craving: safety, belonging, or mattering?
1. Fight/flight/freeze/faint craves _______.
2. Talking about “us versus them” craves _____.
3. Victim and/or complaining craves _____.
4. Perpetually seeking recognition craves ________.
5. Procrastination and/or perfectionism craves ________.
What are the answers? (1) Safety, (2) belonging, (3) mattering, (4) mattering, and (5) a combo of mattering and safety. Sure, 1 through 4 could crave all three, but it’s helpful to look at what is most essential and then to provide that. It gets results faster.
So as a leader, and as a human, in any given situation, you must identify whether safety and/or belonging and/or mattering is most important to the people in your life and then do everything you can to satisfy those subconscious needs:
Safety + belonging + mattering = trust
This means leaders must behave in ways that make employees feel that they are safe, that they belong, and that they matter. Doing so will help shift them out of their fear-driven Critter State (where all decisions are based on what they perceive will help them survive) and into their Smart State (where they can innovate, collaborate, feel emotionally engaged, and move the organization forward).
Remember, this isn’t just true of employees. It’s true of clients, associates, spouses, friends, children. At our emotional core, we all want safety, belonging, and mattering. To influence anyone, we must influence emotionally. (We’ll dive into the specifics in Chapter 7.)
WHAT CRITTER STATE CAUSES TO HAPPEN INSIDE YOU—AND OTHERS
You’ll recall from Chapter 1 that Critter State occurs based on how we interpret the sensory input we receive. Vs, As, and Ks enter the reptilian brain and then move into the mammalian brain, where emotions are determined based on Ks (the feeling of “tightness” in your stomach is translated to the emotion of stress), which then leads to meaning making in the prefrontal cortex—specifically about whether safety, belonging, and/or mattering are needed or are already in place (in that case, yay!). If, as a result of all this, we are in Critter State, a series of actions occurs in our body to perpetuate Critter State—that is, if we don’t learn some new tools.
As we also mentioned in Chapter 1, when people go into their Critter State as a result of change alone, they often feel disengaged, disconnected, and stressed, experiencing chaos, distrust, and even aggression. On top of that, during times of change, we often see teams struggle with excessive workload because resources are scarce. So what happens? Multitasking, as we scramble to get on top of everything we need to do. In the United States, multitasking is often expected and even rewarded, but science shows us that it’s just another way to make Critter State worse.
According to the work of Susan Greenfield at Oxford, heavy multitasking reduces density in the part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC).2 The ACC is involved in a number of functions, but let’s focus on the cognitive ones crucial to change scenarios, which include reward anticipation, decision-making, empathy, impulse control, and emotion. When we have less gray matter density in the ACC, over time we see a reduced ability to make sound decisions, modulate our emotions, empathize, and connect with others.
All of this, of course, creates even more stress in all areas of our lives—in our organization’s culture, our relationships, and ourselves.
Stress doesn’t affect just our cognitive functions. It affects our bodies too. Stress causes the body to release cortisol, which triggers the release of cytokines—proteins key in cell signaling. Cytokines affect the behavior of many cells affecting cognitive and immune function (see Figure 2.3), and excessive cytokines can lead to the following:
• Being easily emotionally triggered
• Immune system damage
• Learning challenges
• Difficulty organizing
Figure 2.3 The Effects of Cytokines on the Brain
What can we do? As leaders, we need to give ourselves and our tribe the three things we all crave:
• Safety: “I can take risks and not be ostracized or penalized.”
• Belonging: “These are my people, my tribe. They understand me, and I fit in here.”
• Mattering: “I am seen, acknowledged for my gifts, and appreciated.”
That’s it. Safety, belonging, and mattering are the three things we need to declare complete devotion to another person, a cause, or an organization. They’re the three things we need to hang in there when the going gets tough. They’re the three things we need to be in our Smart State and to navigate change easily and powerfully.
So why do we so often fail to inspire these emotional experiences in those in need? Because we are in Critter State too.
HOW YOUR BRAIN BLOCKS PERFORMANCE
While we’re craving the experience of safety, belonging, and mattering, and while we’re wanting out of our Present State and in to our Desired State, we have a bit of a dilemma: even when we know what we should do, our brain is still working against itself.
Our default behaviors become “baked in” at an early age, and generally most of them help us survive. If a behavior helps us survive—or to say it more accurately, if our brain has “coded” the behavior as “something that helps us survive”—we will keep doing it because we are wired to stay “not dead,” thanks to our reptilian brain.
Here’s where it gets tricky: the more a neural pathway is used, the more of a default behavior it becomes. As neurobiologist Carla Shatz says, “Cells that fire together wire together.”3 This is why some of our most frequent reactions and/or behaviors operate at broadband speed, when they initially were at dial-up speed. Neuropsychologist and father of neural networks Donald O. Hebb explained this through his concept of Hebbian potentiation.4 The cortex develops “grooves of meaning,” like a long-playing (LP) record (for those of you familiar with vinyl LPs), so it is conditioned to ask for the same data (Vs, As, and Ks) over and over. This is why change can be hard: we have to deliberately create new pathways to potentiate new grooves of meaning. This is what we do in neuroscience-based executive coaching, and it’s why this book’s change playbook gives you a toolbox with the instruction manual.
EMOTIONAL AGILITY + TOOLS = POWER
Now that we understand where change occurs (the Logical Levels of Change), how humans make meaning, and what humans crave emotionally, and we have a basic understanding of the physiology causing all of this, it’s time to learn the tools and process to create the experience we want for ourselves and others—and to use change as fuel to power ourselves and our tribe.
In Part II, “The Power Your Tribe Playbook,” you’ll learn how to choose the meaning you make; bring safety, belonging, and mattering to yourself and others; get clear on the outcomes you want and anchor them in your physiology; and continually increase emotional agility in your tribe so that you can pursue those outcomes together.
1. Establishing safety, belonging, and mattering is a prerequisite for self-actualization, the Smart State, and emotional agility. Without those three essentials, a person or team cannot perform, innovate, feel emotionally engaged, agree, or move forward.
2. Whenever you face a challenge, consider how you can bring more safety, belonging, and mattering to the situation and the people involved.
3. Safety, belonging, and mattering are already prevalent in your life and organization. The question is not whether they are there. It is whether they are increasing or decreasing and whether they are stable or highly variable.
4. Change, adversity, or turbulence places excessive stress on a business’s people. Excessive stress adversely affects all key cognitive systems, including memory, learning, self-regulation, attention, executive functions, and emotional regulation.
5. Our default behaviors become “baked in” at an early age, and generally most of them help us survive. If our brain has “coded” a behavior as “survival related,” it will keep running that behavior until we learn how to change it.
• Before we can seek self-actualization—the Smart State—we must feel safety, belonging, and mattering.
• Safety, belonging, and mattering are essential to your brain and your ability to perform at work, at home, and in life.
• None of us actually buy products or services. We buy emotional experiences of safety, belonging, or mattering.
• Safety + belonging + mattering = trust.
• With safety, belonging, and mattering, we can navigate change because we aren’t alone. We’re in it together with our tribe.
See this chapter’s section on www.PowerYourTribe.com for the following:
• Chapter Quick Summary video
• The Brain-Based Secrets of Optimal Teams video
• Behavioral Stances: How to Be Less Predictable as a Leader