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You Belong Here
How to Make People Feel Safe to Be Their Best, Take Bold Risks, and Win
Mike Lipkin & Diane McIntosh
“You Belong Here underscores the criticality of a sense of belonging and will prove to be a useful tool for leaders in creating environments where people feel safe and valued and, thus, are able to thrive and realize their full potential.”
DARREN ENTWISTLE, president and CEO, Telus
“A beautifully humane, accessible and practical set of considerations for bonding people when so many feel anxious and alone.”
Roger S. McIntyre
MD, FRCP, professor of Psychiatry and Pharmacology, University of Toronto
“You Belong Here” is one of the greatest compliments we can receive. It means we are part of a community that celebrates us as one of their own.
In a peri-pandemic world filled with shocks and surprises, people need leaders who make them feel safe to be their best and take bold risks to win. Safety and risk are not opposites. They depend on each other. People will only swing for the fences if they know they will be rewarded for their courage.
In this trailblazing partnership between a renowned professional coach and an acclaimed psychiatrist, Mike Lipkin and Dr. Diane McIntosh take you on a step-by-step journey to becoming a Keeper of the Safety Flame—someone who creates belonging in a hybrid world, grows enriching relationships, owns their power, wins on the brink, and shows the way. You Belong Here will give you the neuroscience, the tools, and the strategies to create an environment where others flourish so you will too.
Until someone feels connected by a common bond or purpose, they won’t feel safe. They’ll be afraid of messing up and being embarrassed or humiliated, and all of their energy will go into preventing that from happening. It’s only when they feel part of the clan that they’ll be able to fully express their gifts and maximize their contribution.
Preview The Book Roadmap
Speak the language of “You Belong Here” (YBH). The language of YBH is the vocabulary of connection. It’s a direct route to rapport and personal harmony. It ladders you up through the 5 Levels of Belonging: Unwelcome. Discomfort. Tolerance. Acceptance. Belonging. In every interaction, your mission should be to move people to the level of Belonging.
There are 7 core components of YBH:
1. Make others feel welcome.
2. Listen with intention.
3. Be cognizant of the context of the conversation.
4. Be authentic, vulnerable, and self-effacing.
5. Build rapport by demonstrating your love of others.
6. Declare your absolute support for others-and follow through.
7. Work to avoid Microaggressions.
We are not judged by our feelings but by our actions. Develop your Multiple Personality Agility. Be the Keeper of The Safety Flame. Leadership is not a title – it’s a responsibility to each other.
There are 8 proven guidelines for creating belonging in a hybrid reality:
1. Repeat your raison d’etre relentlessly.
2. Commit to optimizing communication.
3. Be an authentic actor.
4. Master the technology.
5. Tell a great story.
6. Animate your style.
7. Listen like you’re all-in.
8. Recover quickly
Change your rules for Relatedness. Build the strength of weak ties.
The 6 rules for relationship health:
1. Treat yourself the way you want others to treat you.
2. Bring people joy.
3. Give much more than you receive.
4. Fight fair.
5. Clarify and contractualize mutual commitments.
6. Own everyone’s success but accept their failures.
Understand the art and neuroscience of conflict resolution. Ask: what’s the win here? Mike and Diane’s intentional steps to resolving conflict. Know that without the yin, the yang will crash and burn. 10 things that can help navigate the differences between men and women.
Accept that the only person you can control is you. Be brave. Make the invisible visible. Realize that you have a remarkable capacity for change. The good neuroplasticity versus bad neuroplasticity. Keep body and soul together. Inflammation is how the body heals itself, but chronic inflammation makes it sick. Remake your memories to enrich your future. Wow, I never thought of it that way before. Redefine your relationship to risk. Create your inner shield.
5 ways to create your own predictability:
1. Believe in your ability to surmount any difficulty.
2. Accept that you might need to endure temporary confusion or uncertainty.
3. Commit to finding new mental models to master the new realities.
4. Find people to support you through crises.
5. Build your strategy and then take action.
Understand that pressure is the price you pay for success. Feel scared and safe at the same time. Don’t beat yourself up, build yourself up. Failure is a sign that you’re winning. The road back from burnout. Accept that living on the brink is the cost of creating breakthroughs. We need others’ perspective and caring. Social support is critical. Recognize that stress attacks us all – even the champions. Pressure and panic are conjoined twins. 11 Stress relief techniques. Make others feel safe when you are scared. Drink the FGA (Forgiveness, Gratitude, Agency) Tonic. Know that trust is the most valuable thing you can give. Trust always means risk. Build belonging by being whole in a splintered reality. The naked you versus the dressed you. Silence isn’t golden – it can be toxic.
The 5 facets of Faithworthiness:
1. Live your code of values.
2. Be whole.
3. Be consistent across your roles and mediums of communication.
4. Say it, then do it.
5. Be in service to others.
Understand that resilience can be reproduced. Grief is the price we pay for love. Just own it. Make deposits into your and others’ health and well-being accounts. It’s not about chasing happiness, it’s about being happy while chasing. Build on Your Maturity Factor: be intentional. Build intentional relationships.
7 steps to building the future:
1. Focus on achieving the best outcome.
2. Map out the steps required to reach your destination.
3. Build your team.
4. Celebrate your wins – size doesn’t count.
5. Confront your negative thoughts.
6. Prepare for the breakdown.
7. Keep the faith. Ask where you’re going next.
The 3 fundamentals of planning:
1. Declare your purpose.
2. Declare your goals.
3. Declare your strategy.
Know that the ultimate safety zone is courageous creativity. Commit to the vision that you have of yourself. The Own- Your-Brain test. Every story has beginning, a middle, and an end.
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
“We want our readers to say within the first few pages, ‘Finally, here is a book that is going to help me, and my people, live our best life, whatever the circumstances. It’s going to help us create our future so we can achieve the dream.'” ~ Mike Lipkin and Dr Diane McIntosh.
“The phrase we most like to hear from others is, ‘I never thought of it that way.’ Sometimes a mere nuance can make a massive difference. Often all it takes is a slight shift in your direction to discover a whole new vista of opportunity.
That’s how we want you to read this book. Don’t agree immediately with what we say. Just don’t immediately disagree with it. Resist the temptation to state, ‘that’s impossible.’ Be open to the possibility that a single sentence can endow you with the superpower to change someone’s life, including your own. Ask yourself a simple question: ‘How can this insight help me give others exactly what they need in this moment – including myself?’
Every breakthrough has a gestation period. Sometimes it’s as short as a second and sometimes it can take almost forever. Take all the time you need. When the student is ready, the breakthrough happens. There is a reason why you’re reading this. Find it.
Just as a recipe has both ingredients and sequence, there is a specific flow to You Belong Here. Go with it. It’s a fast moving, accessible, practical read. It’s designed for people who don’t have time to read. We want you to ‘get it’ quickly and intuitively.
In every chapter, we assign you specific exercises to master each milestone. We call them “Quick Wins” because they are actions you can take as part of your everyday routine to expand your mastery. Stop and ponder each one. Then do something, even if it seems awkward or out of character with who you believe yourself to be. You’ll discover things about yourself that could redefine those beliefs. Every action is a deposit on the person you want to become.
There are mind-blowing stories and breakthroughs that await you in this book. You have to read them to believe them. Don’t worry if you’re ready. Don’t even worry about getting ready. Just get started. Let’s go.
What Readers Are Saying
SUSAN UTHAYAKUMAR
MD, chief energy and sustainability officer, Prologis
JOHN RUFFOLO
founder and managing partner, Maverix Private Equity
DANI REISS
CEO, Canada Goose
MARTIN PERELMUTER
president, Speakers Spotlight Speakers Bureau
SILVIO STROESCU
head, BMO Wealth Digitech Transformation, and president, BMO Investorline at BMO Financial Group
RON TITE
author of Think. Do. Say. and Everyone’s an Artist
MIKE PARRA
CEO, Europe, DHL Express
MICHAEL ADAMS
chairman, Environics Research Group
KAREN WERGER
CPA, CA, CBV vice chair, Global Leader Valuations & Modeling, Deloitte LLP
JEFF SROUR
SVP and chief information officer, Corporate Business Technology at Johnson & Johnson
ADRIAN THOMAS
CEO, Hammond Power Solutions
KAREN BROOKMAN
president and CEO, WCD on-demand print and information solutions
DOUG LOVSIN
president, Freson Bros.
KAREN AZLEN
founder and CEO, Introduction Capital
PAUL TONET
general manager, WD-40 Company Canada
JIM HUNT
vice president, sales, Palliser Furniture Upholstery Ltd.
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You Belong Here is available in multiple formats and is available from multiple sources.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
MIKE LIPKIN
Mike Lipkin is president of Environics/Lipkin, a global research and motivation company based in Toronto. He is also an international strategic coach, guide and Potentiator to leaders everywhere. His passion is creating breakthroughs with others by any means possible. He combines his personal experience of having talked to over a million people in 67 countries with his rigorous research on extraordinary performance. Mike was raised in Johannesburg, South Africa. He immigrated to Toronto, Canada, in 2001, where he now lives with his wife, Hilary. This is his eighth book.
Dr Diane McIntosh
Dr. McIntosh is a widely respected psychiatrist, author, educator, mental health advocate, and authority on the diagnosis and treatment of mood and anxiety disorders. In addition to 25 years’ of direct experience providing psychiatric care to patients, Diane’s career-long focus has been on improving access to psychiatric knowledge and expertise through technology and education. She co-founded SwitchRx, an online psychotropic switching tool used by over 90,000 healthcare professionals worldwide, and PsychedUp, a continuing medical education program developed to encourage appropriate and rational prescribing of psychiatric medications. She is the author of This is Depression, a comprehensive and evidence-based guide to one of the most common psychiatric disorders. Diane is the Founder and CEO of an innovative mental health solution, RAPIDS, which was developed to support clinicians by providing them with rapid access to personalized, evidence-based psychiatric guidance.
Start a conversation with mike
33 Bloor Street East, Suite 1020
Toronto ON Canada M4W 3H1
416.969.2822
mike.lipkin@environics.ca
www.mikelipkin.com