We all want to know that we’re truly accepted into the communities we join. An initiation is any activity that’s understood as official recognition and welcome into the community. The initiation helps members understand clearly who’s part of the community. It marks the completed journey over the boundary and into the inner ring.
After the initiation, insiders gain new privileges and are valued for having crossed over the boundary. They have nothing more to prove. They feel confident and welcome in their belonging. Ideally, all insiders’ names are known. All the world’s major religions have many kinds of initiations that mark the transition to full membership. This includes recognition as a fully privileged adult member. Among the common and ancient initiations are Christian baptism, Jewish bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah, Hindu aksharabhyasam, and Andean Shamanic mountain pilgrimages.
Initiations can look anyway you like. They certainly don’t have to be elaborate. Processions, dances, and fire-lit halls may be fun, but a warm, personal letter or telephone call that welcomes a new member can be powerful. A pat on the back with the right words or a dinner with a community gatekeeper can be profound events. They simply need to be actions that are immediately understood as recognition and welcome. For example, Peace Corps volunteers are sworn in by a State Department diplomat after completing months of training. Each is given a pin with the Peace Corps logo. Employees at the New Belgium Brewery are made company shareholders on their one-year anniversary. They then give a speech to all shareholders explaining what it means to them to be an owner. First-time Burning Man festival goers are instructed to get out of their vehicle and roll in the desert dust three times and then strike a gong on their first crossing into the Burning Man site.
An initiation is a kind of ritual, and the best rituals come with symbols and tokens. Developing a ritual that’s right for your formal or informal community can make a profound difference in how welcomed a new member feels. If a clear initiation into the inner ring is missing, then two things become unnecessarily difficult. Newcomers won’t know how or when they can become members because there’s no clear path to follow.
First, even with a simple initiation, it’s clear to all that individuals remain explorers until they choose to cross the boundary. This can set visitors at ease because they know that they’re participating without any requirement to adopt the values and beliefs of members if they’re not ready to take that step. Second, it’s difficult for all participants to understand clearly who’s on the inside (and who isn’t). There may be a general sense of who the core members are, but less active or new members may wonder about their own status. They may wonder what privileges they have and feel anxious about exactly what constitutes insider status.
Accidental initiations can take the place of intentional initiation. Especially in informal communities, most people look for confirmation that they’re accepted and valued inside the community. They’ll look for something to interpret as an initiation if one isn’t offered. This may be an extemporaneous compliment from a leader, an invitation to teach other insiders, or more intimate invitations away from outer ring activities, such as a private party, an intimate conversation, or an unadvertised gathering. Eventually members will consider some activity a default initiation—even if it wasn’t meant to be.
For example, in a formal community like higher education, when college applicants get letters from universities announcing their admission, the message is more than just a bit of positive news: it’s an initiation. It’s a welcome into an inner ring. It’s a moment many people remember for their entire lives. That letter, phone call, or e-mail message acknowledges a boundary crossing. Students know that they’re accepted and valued. Opening the letter or answering the call can be a ritual. Universities also offer a welcome convocation so there’s a staged ritual for those who not only have been admitted but have accepted that welcome.
Then there’s the informal community. I have a friend whom I’ll call Scott, who’s very well known. He was successful in the music scene early in his career and now lives in an elegant Manhattan townhouse. Many people claim to be his friend, brag that they know him, and angle for invitations to the exclusive events hosted in his home. When he and I first met, we seemed to hit it off quickly and talked about deep and important ideas, but I could see that there were lots of people who were trying to be part of his “inner circle.” Many people are invited to his home each week. I didn’t know if our relationship would be any deeper than that of the dozens who stood around with glasses of wine and laughed at his jokes.
One day Scott called me late at night because he had broken up with his girlfriend. While we were three time zones apart, he shared his most vulnerable fears with me. I stayed on the phone for at least two hours listening and discussing what his next steps might be. With that phone call, I knew that we really were in an authentic inner ring of friendship together. It was my own initiation to his inner ring. Imagine if, instead, one night Scott had put his arm around me and said, “I appreciate you are one of my closest friends. I know you’re not trying to break into show business. I know you aren’t asking me to invest in a company and I know you’re always honest with me even when we disagree. You’re different from 90 percent of the people who visit me. It means a lot. Thank you.” That would have been an initiation, too.
There’s a common phenomenon in many groups, particularly highly selective elite ones, where many members become convinced that they don’t belong. This can be true even when each member has been invited inside an exclusive community. When we experience this, we may worry that our own admission was an accident, and, further, that at any moment, someone may recognize this and reject us as frauds.
The tragedy is that even when many members feel this concern, we continue our lives as if this fear doesn’t exist. Our community becomes a crowd of individuals, each one lonely and convinced that he or she doesn’t belong in the crowd. This is a crisis of belonging.
In the preface I shared with you my discovery that this crisis was rampant among my peers at Yale. I can’t count all the hours and words expended by us all to earn our spots in those classrooms, yet many of us feared that someday someone would stop us in the hall and ask us to leave. They would in that moment reveal us as the frauds we felt confident that we were. Fortunately, there’s an easy way to overcome this fear. When we feel trapped by a crisis of belonging or notice that others are in this crisis, the solution is simple: extend invitations. Invitations resolve the crisis of belonging and as a solution they are so simple as to be almost unbelievable. The invitations can be to social gatherings, insider events, or one-on-one time. When we as leaders extend invitations, two things happen that break down a crisis of belonging.
First, when we extend invitations, we establish ourselves as having the power to invite, no matter what formal role or title, if any, we might have. To those who are feeling a crisis of belonging, getting an invitation from anyone indicates that the inviter is firmly planted in the group and therefore has the power to invite others. This may sound silly, but it’s actually how the world works. So when we ourselves feel a crisis of belonging, inviting others to connect with us allows us to plant ourselves more firmly within the community. An invitation to lunch, a walk in a park, or a hot coffee can make a huge difference. We often make invitations more challenging than they need to be. We fear that others will either reject us or simply dismiss our authority.
Second, when those who are trapped in a crisis of belonging receive an invitation from any insider or community leader, the invitation itself becomes evidence of their belonging. Their concerns that somehow they were “really” outsiders passing as insiders are challenged; our invitation provides the necessary evidence that they are indeed insiders.
This evidence is so strong that it’s not even important whether they accept our invitations. Simply providing invitations can resolve their crisis. In the preface I also shared the story of learning how my friend Melo’s life was changed by the simple dinner invitations I extended to him. Melo joined us only a few times over three years. No matter: each invitation I extended demonstrated that I had the power to invite and that the others belonged. The genuine invitations, not only the meals themselves, made a difference. The story reminds me that I never fully know the power of my invitations, even those that don’t get responses. I simply make them because they can, and do, change lives.