Microinclusions: a small way to increase sense of belonging and fit on tech teams

When I read this paper in late 2023, it instantly became one of those that I just couldn’t get out of my head. I think because the construct it examines—microinclusions—is something that has been implicitly important to me throughout both my personal and my work lives, but that—like many ideas and concepts—I hadn’t ever really put into words. And so I’m grateful that Gregg Muragishi and his colleagues did this research and published it for us all to benefit from, and I’m glad that they did this work in the context of software engineering, because the need for it and the potential impact of the findings in our field are tremendous, I think.

The authors open by asking:

“What does it mean to genuinely belong and fit in a professional context?” (Muragishi et al., 2023, p. 431)

Before you move forward in the article, I would encourage you to take five minutes to reflect on and answer this for yourself. This reflection, I believe, can help prime you for what the science has to say, can help anchor your lived experiences to the empirical.

In my experience, one possible answer to this opening question is that you know it when you feel it. I feel like I belong and I feel like I fit and I feel like I’m wanted by my leaders and my teammates and my colleagues when they make me feel that way. It’s a feeling that others create for me — the agency here lies outside of myself.

And so often, I’ve been made to feel this way through the enactment of microinclusions, or:

“interpersonal treatment that clarifies specifically the stance that others take toward (me) in the context of joint work: whether others are receptive to and supportive of (my) contributions to shared goals or not'' (p. 431)

I should warn you that this paper is ambitious, so perhaps brace yourself for multiple reading sessions. Your time investment will be well worth it, though, I promise. Through four distinct experiments, the authors test the theory that “microinclusions may be particularly impactful for women for whom underrepresentation and negative stereotypes make opportunities to contribute especially fraught” (p. 431). I won’t spoil the precise results for you, but their findings do bear this out.

The authors end with this call to further inquiry:

“The critical next question is how to create the mindsets, practices, and cultures that will help organizations reliably foster work environments in which everyone can contribute” (p. 455).

Let’s all take this as a personal challenge, shall we, to do a little informal field research of our own? I urge you to examine both how others have contributed to your sense of belonging and fit through the enactment of microinclusions, as well as how you can (and probably even do!) similarly lift and propel others up and forward through the conscious practice of microinclusions. Because it feels good to make others feel good about the excellent work they’re doing and the superb skills they bring to that work. It feels good for you, and it feels good for them, and I sincerely believe that these good interpersonal feelings buoy us all toward better work at the end of the day.

The only caution I might issue is to be careful to not allow a microinclusion for one to become another’s microexclusion. Sometimes the well-intentioned celebrating or highlighting of one team member’s skill or knowledge can unintentionally exclude others, but if you’re reading this research, and making a conscious effort to implement its findings, I think you’re probably well-equipped to identify these potential cases!

I hope that you enjoy this research as much I did, and are as inspired by it as I’ve been. Happy reading!