Our team has to make people feel included if we want to have more than 6-8 people active on each team.

If people feel excluded, they will have a bad experience and quit.

People can get excluded through social bullying:

• Not included in communications
• Not invited to events
• Ideas not genuinely listened to
• Not allowed to contribute to decision processes
• Not introduced to other people
• Embarrassing a person in front of the group
• Criticism behind somebody’s back

Social bullying doesn’t have to be deliberate. Groups who turn their brains off do it without meaning to.

To avoid excluding people, we have to care about including people.

We need to spend some effort to include people. That includes spending the mental effort to think about it even when we’re focused on tackling other problems.

Including people means doing things that make them feel like part of the group:

• Talk to people other than just your friends
• Introduce them to more people
• Communicate what’s happening on the team
• Communicate team business in ways that everybody can access (not just conversation / email / texts between inner circle)
• Ask peoples’ ideas and listen for real
• Invite people to team events
• Pay attention to other peoples’ feelings
• Confront issues instead of talking behind somebody’s back
• Take feedback from other people when making decisions

It is difficult to avoid having an inner circle or clique on a team.

From inside a clique, it can seem like everybody is allowed to be part of the group, but from the outside it doesn’t feel that way. It takes presence of mind and some effort to avoid a clique situation.

It’s pretty easy to achieve an inclusive group of 6 people. It’s much harder to do in a group of 10 or 20 or 30. Spend the effort – it’s worth it to have a stronger team and give more people some great experiences.