VALORA CALMA | FORCES & FLOW: Make Room Before You Ask Someone to Be Brave
Sep 19, 2026
I once gave a presentation about microaggressions at work and what leaders can do when someone tells them something is wrong.
My original call to action sounded reasonable:
Believe them.
Listen.
Document.
Intervene when necessary.
Then someone asked what a person could actually do tomorrow.
The answer became much smaller.
Make room at the table.
Workplace belonging can be physical
Imagine several colleagues standing in a circle before a meeting.
Another person approaches.
Nobody intends to exclude them, but nobody moves either. The circle remains closed.
Now imagine one person notices.
They shift half a step.
Open the circle.
Make eye contact.
Leave enough room for the other person to join.
No corporate initiative. No policy. No speech.
Just a physical message:
You belong here.
Belonging at work is often built through repeated signals that tell someone whether they are part of the group.
People read more than our words
We communicate inclusion through geometry as much as language.
Who receives eye contact?
Who gets invited into the informal conversation?
Who gets asked for an opinion?
Whose idea receives acknowledgment?
Who is interrupted?
Who has to interrupt to be heard?
Who walks into the room already knowing the unwritten rules?
A leader may say, “Everyone’s opinion matters.” But the behavior in the room determines whether people believe it.
Belonging has an energy cost
My engineering background makes me think about this in terms of system losses.
Every mechanical system has energy that does useful work and energy lost through friction and resistance.
People experience something similar.
Imagine entering every important meeting while using part of your mental energy to calculate:
Am I welcome here?
Can I disagree?
Do they trust my expertise?
Was that comment intentional?
Should I say something?
Will speaking up make things worse?
That energy is no longer available for creativity, technical reasoning, collaboration, or leadership.
This leads to a question more leaders should ask:
What are people spending energy fighting here that they should not have to fight?
Sometimes the answer is belonging.
Being first costs more energy
After one droplet travels down glass, it leaves behind a wet path. Another droplet may travel along it more easily.
Human systems develop paths too.
It usually takes less energy to follow the norm than to challenge it.
The first person to raise a difficult concern may spend more social capital. The first woman entering a particular technical space may spend more energy establishing credibility. The person questioning an established practice may face more resistance than everyone who follows later.
And then organizations sometimes tell that same person:
Be confident.
Speak up.
Be resilient.
Be tougher.
I think leaders need to ask another question:
How expensive have we made courage?
Reduce the cost of courage
Courage will always require something from us. But good leadership does not make it unnecessarily expensive.
That has become an important idea for me.
Reduce the cost of courage.
Open the circle.
Make eye contact.
Ask the quieter person what they think.
Give credit to the person who introduced the idea.
Interrupt an interruption.
Back someone who raises a legitimate concern.
Explain the unwritten rule.
Make the introduction.
Say, “Come join us.”
These actions may feel insignificant to the person doing them. They may feel enormous to the person receiving them.
Inclusion begins before someone is struggling
We often respond to belonging problems after something has already gone wrong.
Someone reports an incident.
Someone disengages.
Someone leaves.
But belonging is shaped much earlier—in the moments when someone is standing just outside the circle, attempts to speak and stops, or does not yet know whether disagreement is safe.
Leaders influence those conditions. We make certain behaviors easier and others harder, sometimes without realizing it.
Sometimes leadership starts by simply moving your chair.
Open the circle.
Make room.
Reduce the cost of courage.
Related:
What Raindrops Taught Me About Leadership
Stop Performing and Start Connecting
Stay grounded. Rise strong.
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