You Belong Here: The Power of Being Seen, Heard, and Valued on Your Own Terms

＂Providing guidance throughout, Dabbs prompts the reader with questions. She believes a better understanding of past experiences and how society has established systemic barriers to entry can help people design their future.＂--The Financial Times

In a world overcrowded with labels, don’t allow your identity to be defined by other people. Learn how to take back your power, choose to feed the aspects of your identity that serve you, and let go of those that don’t.

Everyone feels like an outsider at some point in their life--when we walk into a room and think to ourselves, ＂I don’t belong here.＂ To avoid these feelings of exclusion, many of us hide our authentic selves and allow others to define our identity.

You Belong Here offers a new framework that allows each of us to define how we want to be seen, heard, and valued on our own terms so we feel a sense of belonging in any situation. Further, it serves as a launchpad for organizational leaders and culture builders to create safe spaces for individuals to show up as their authentic selves.

Readers will explore our four identities:

• Our Lived Identity is made up of the aspects of our identity we inherit when we are born into the world.
• Our Learned Identity includes the parts of our identity that we’ve chosen or claimed as we make our way through the world.
• Our Lingering Identity is the identity we default to when we feel like an outsider and fall back into as a survival mechanism.
• Our Loved Identity is where we find our authentic selves and see ourselves through a lens of empowerment.

In the journey to understand our past experiences and how society has established barriers to entry, we can design our own future, rooted in our Loved Identity. We learn to rewrite the stories that aren’t serving us and embrace the ones that do. Rather than look for a seat at someone else’s table, we find the tools to build our own.

When we fully leverage this and live with authenticity and purpose, we can be seen, heard, and valued in a way that gives us a sense of belonging at home, at work, and in society. Belonging is realized when we understand everyone is an outsider and it’s the power to create space for those differences that unite us all.

Kim Dabbs is the Global VP of Social Innovation at Steelcase and principal architect and spokesperson for Steelcase’s award-winning DEI and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategies in the world. Dabbs gives weekly talks and workshops to the 11,000+ Steelcase employees around the world and gives monthly thought leadership talks at organizations such as the Aspen Institute, Drucker Forum, Ford Fund, MIT, and The Conference Board. She also leads the selection and funding of Steelcase’s 100+ community partnerships globally. She is a Korean-born American adoptee who previously was Executive Director of the West Michigan Center for Arts and Technology and now lives in Germany.