September 3, 2026

The unwritten rules of belonging – and how organizations can rewrite the script

Dr Sona Sherratt

I remember learning, very young, that my body could become a kind of question. Not a question I had asked. Not even one I fully understood. But one I was expected to answer.

At school, on streets, in rooms where I was the only brown child, I learned that people noticed my skin before they knew anything else about me. I learned that some parts of me were read before I spoke. I learned that difference did not always arrive loudly. Sometimes it came through a look. A pause. A comment. A joke that everyone else seemed able to move past.

I also remember the strange intelligence children develop when they realize they are being watched. You begin to study the room. You learn when to speak and when to stay quiet. You notice what makes people comfortable. You notice when you are becoming “too much.” You learn to translate yourself.

At some point, without anyone formally teaching me, I learned to contract. That contraction was not always visible. On the outside, I could still achieve, smile, perform, be warm, be competent. But inside, there was often a small calculation happening: how much of me is safe here?

That question has followed me into adulthood, into leadership work, and eventually into my doctoral research on psychological safety, belonging and the unwritten rules of organizational life.

What your body knows before you do – Sona Sherratt at TEDxHultAshridge

For years, I have worked with leaders and organizations on inclusion, culture and leadership development. We often talk about psychological safety as though it is a leadership concept, a team condition, or a survey item. And of course, it is all of these things. But the more I listened to people, the more I became convinced that psychological safety is also something far more intimate.

It is felt in the body. Before we decide whether to speak, challenge, disagree, or share an idea, many of us have already scanned the room. Is it safe? Will I be taken seriously? Will I be punished? Will I be dismissed? Will I be seen as difficult, emotional, aggressive, ungrateful, not leadership material? For some people, that scan happens occasionally. For others, it never really switches off.

What the research says – context shapes confidence

My doctoral research explored these experiences across three global organizations: a humanitarian body, a military-adjacent institution and a multinational business. I conducted 40 semi-structured interviews with women and people from minority backgrounds, and analyzed 20 reflective “letters to a younger self” written by participants.

I wanted to understand how people experienced psychological safety, belonging and inclusion in practice. Not in policy documents, not in leadership slogans, but in the small moments where people decide whether they can fully show up.

Organizations often read voice and silence as individual characteristics. Someone speaks up, so we call them “confident”. Someone stays quiet, so we wonder whether they lack courage, capability or presence.

But what if we are misreading the signal? What if the person who is quiet has learned something accurate about the room? What if their silence is not a deficit, but data? The easy assumption would be that they lack confidence. But what I found in my research was that context was shaping confidence. That distinction matters.

One participant described being repeatedly interrupted in meetings. When she spoke, a man would cut across her or rephrase what she had said. Sometimes, it was her own manager. She told me that much of her energy was spent “trying to fight the system, to get heard.” Eventually, she said, she had become physically ill. She described stomach issues, saying she was “not able to digest these things.” That phrase stayed with me. Not able to digest these things.

We talk about exclusion as though it is an emotional experience, and it is. But it is also physical. People described tension, vigilance, sleeplessness, exhaustion, nausea and the bodily fatigue of constant self-monitoring.

What does belonging have to do with burnout?

This is where burnout needs to be understood differently. Burnout is not always the result of workload alone. Sometimes burnout is sustained embodied vigilance. It is what happens when people spend years managing themselves in environments that require them to shrink.

Masking is part of this. So is code-switching. So is softening a sentence before you say it. So is preparing your face before entering a room. So is laughing along when something hurts because naming it would cost too much. So is deciding not to challenge a comment because you know you will be asked to prove the harm, soften your tone, or reassure someone that you are not accusing them of being a bad person. This is the invisible labor of belonging. And it is not equally distributed.

“Small moments often reveal something indicative of large systems. What sounds like a throwaway comment about appearance may actually reveal the unwritten rules of professionalism."

One woman of color described being asked why her hair was “untidy.” Her response was simple: “No, this is my hair.” A small moment, perhaps. But small moments often reveal something indicative of large systems. What sounds like a throwaway comment about appearance may actually reveal the unwritten rules of professionalism: whose body is treated as normal, whose expression is acceptable, whose difference becomes a problem to be managed.

Unwritten rules were everywhere in the research. Rules about what confidence should sound like. Rules about what leadership should look like. Rules about who can be direct and who must be diplomatic. Rules about who is allowed to show emotion and who must remain composed. Rules about who gets the benefit of the doubt and who has to prove they belong again and again.

The people who fit these rules often do not experience them as rules. That is part of how power works. One of the most unrecognized privileges in organizational life is the freedom not to notice.

Meanwhile, others notice constantly. They notice who is interrupted. They notice whose ideas need endorsement before they are taken seriously. They notice when the real conversation happens after the formal meeting. They notice who gets described as “strategic” and who gets described as “not quite ready.” They notice when leaders say they value challenge but become defensive when challenged.

Over time, people adapt. They prepare more. They speak less. They regulate emotion. They become careful. They become skilled at reading rooms. And organizations often reward this adaptation. We call it professionalism. We call it high standards. We call it resilience.

But I have come to believe that we need to be much more careful with the word “resilience”. Yes, resilience can be a strength. But when people need resilience because they are repeatedly absorbing harm, exclusion or misrecognition, then resilience is not evidence of thriving. It is evidence of conditions that need to change. And asking people to become more resilient while leaving the system untouched is not leadership. It is avoidance.

The practical implications for L&D

The hopeful finding in my research is that psychological safety is not only eroded in small moments. It can also be built in small moments.

Participants remembered leaders who noticed. Leaders who listened without defensiveness. Leaders who gave credit clearly. Leaders who interrupted interruptions. Leaders who followed up after difficult conversations. Leaders who did not simply invite a voice, but protected the person taking the risk of using it.

One participant described being hired while pregnant and later being hospitalized shortly after starting. She apologized to her leader, expecting disappointment. Instead, he told her, “I’ve never regretted hiring you. I hired the best person for the job and you are it.”

She remembered that moment years later. Why? Because at the exact moment she expected judgment, he conferred legitimacy. This is what leaders often underestimate. People remember the moments when their dignity was either protected or exposed.

“Every leader creates a bodily experience for others. People expand or contract in our presence. They take up space or surrender it. They speak freely or edit themselves.”

For me, the opposite of exclusion is not simply inclusion. Inclusion can still imply that some people are being invited into spaces already defined by others. The deeper issue is dignity.

Dignity is what allows people to speak without rehearsing every sentence. To disagree without calculating the cost. To make a mistake without it becoming evidence about their gender, race or background. To contribute without having to make themselves smaller first.

For L&D leaders and organizations, this has practical implications. If we want learning experiences and leadership cultures that genuinely build psychological safety, we need to work at the level of everyday behavior, not only values and frameworks.

Practical implication for leaders

1. Design learning that surfaces unwritten rules

Ask leaders: What does “professional” mean here? Who fits that definition most easily? Who has to adapt? What behaviors are rewarded in some people but criticized in others?

2. Teach leaders to notice patterns, not just incidents

One interruption may be accidental. Repeated interruption is data. One missed invitation may be oversight. Repeated exclusion from informal networks is culture.

3. Build skill in micro-interventions

Leaders need simple, practiced language: “Let’s come back to her point.” “I want to make sure we credit that idea properly.” “We have not heard from everyone yet.” “I noticed I interrupted you. Please continue.”

4. Create reflective spaces where people can explore the cost of adaptation

The “letters to a younger self” in my research revealed things that standard feedback processes often miss. Reflection allows people to name what they have learned to carry.

5. Stop treating resilience as an individual fix

Ask instead: What are people being asked to withstand? What are we normalizing? What would we need to change so that fewer people have to be so resilient in the first place?

The next frontier of psychological safety is not simply getting people to speak up. It is understanding what happens before they decide whether speaking is worth the risk.

Every leader creates a bodily experience for others. People expand or contract in our presence. They take up space or surrender it. They speak freely or edit themselves. They leave energized or depleted.

So, perhaps the leadership question is not only: am I inclusive? Perhaps it is this:

“Do people become more fully themselves around me, or do they become smaller?”

That is where the real work begins.

Meet the expert

Dr Sona Sherratt

Professor of Leadership at Hult International Business School

Dr Sona Sherratt is Professor of Leadership at Hult Ashridge Executive Education. Her research focuses on psychological safety, inclusive leadership, organizational culture, belonging and the unwritten rules that shape people’s experiences at work.

Her doctoral research at the University of Cambridge examined the impact of unwritten organizational rules on the psychological safety of women and members of minority groups in their workplaces.