Day Two Was About Belonging

And the quiet responsibility of being seen at Xebia.

Day one was about tension.

AI.

Value.

Speed.

Uncertainty.

The future arriving faster than our language can hold.

Day two was different.

Day two was about people.

Not in the polished corporate way.

Not as a slogan on a slide.

But in the messy, human, slightly awkward, surprisingly tender way people begin to become real to each other.

We lined ourselves up by distance from birthplace.

By how long we had worked here.

By siblings.

By pets.

By introversion and extroversion.

By family stories.

By the invisible things that shaped us before we ever entered a workplace.

And somewhere between laughter, awkward silences, walking conversations, champagne, security awareness, and conversations about authority…

I realized something.

Onboarding at Xebia is not just about learning a company.

It is about discovering what kind of self is invited into the room.

People first is easy to say

Almost every company says some version of it.

People matter.

People are our greatest asset.

We care about well-being.

Bring your whole self.

But day two asked a better question:

What does people first actually mean when people arrive carrying real lives?

Divorce.

Adoption.

Children.

Different cultures.

Different energy levels.

Different nervous systems.

Different ways of speaking, processing, connecting, and recovering.

People first cannot only mean friendliness.

It has to mean room.

Room to speak.

Room to stay quiet.

Room to need a break.

Room to process slowly.

Room to bring brilliance that does not always look polished at first glance.

That matters to me deeply.

Because I know what it feels like to be underestimated.

I know what it feels like to have the qualifications, the experience, the answer…

and still be read as uncertain because my brain is processing language, acronyms, context, and meaning all at once.

I know what it feels like to carry a lifetime of needing to prove my existence.

And I also know that leadership begins to mature when we stop confusing confidence with competence.

Diversity without inclusion creates damage

At one point, when we were taking a walk in triples, I found myself speaking about diversity and inclusion.

Not as a checklist.

Not as representation optics.

Not as something that looks nice on a careers page.

But as something much more serious.

Diversity without inclusion can create trauma.

Because when people are invited into a room but not truly seen, heard, understood, or supported…

the room does not become safer.

It becomes sharper.

People start masking.

Shrinking.

Over-performing.

Explaining.

Proving.

Adapting themselves around systems that never adapted to them.

And this is not only about gender, race, nationality, or background.

It is also about neurology.

Personality.

Energy.

Language processing.

Economic history.

Family patterns.

Trauma.

Confidence.

Silence.

Even in a room that looks similar on the surface, there can be enormous diversity underneath.

And if we do not learn to see that…

we miss the talent standing right in front of us.

Authority is not the same as status

Later in the day, we explored the word authority.

It is a complicated word.

For some, authority feels like expertise.

For others, it feels like power.

For others, it carries the shadow of control.

But the people I thought of were not people who simply held power.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Barack Obama

Oprah Winfrey

Simon Sinek

Brené Brown

Different people.

Different contexts.

Different kinds of influence.

But the pattern was clear to me.

Authority, at its best, is not domination.

It is integrity made visible.

It is the ability to carry a message with consistency.

To move people without dehumanizing them.

To challenge systems without becoming cruel.

To turn pain into language that helps others rise.

That is the kind of authority I respect.

Not the authority of title.

The authority of alignment.

The red thread and the golden thread

When we talked about people first at Xebia, I found myself describing two threads.

The red thread:

connecting the inner fire and passion of individuals toward organizational impact.

The golden thread:

sparking business value back to the deeper meaning in people’s souls, and weaving those beautifully together.

That may sound poetic.

But to me, it is deeply practical.

Because organizations often break when those two threads are separated.

When people bring passion but cannot connect it to impact, they burn out.

When companies chase business value but disconnect it from human meaning, they hollow out.

Healthy transformation requires both.

The fire inside people.

And the value created outside them.

One without the other becomes unstable.

Together, they create movement.

🐉 Dragon Wisdom: Belonging is not absorption

There is a danger in strong cultures.

When a company feels warm, connected, generous, and alive…

it can become easy to confuse belonging with becoming absorbed.

But a dragon does not belong by shrinking its wings.

A dragon belongs when it can land fully, breathe freely, and still remain itself.

That is the test of culture.

Not whether people are friendly.

But whether people can stay whole.

What I am learning

Day two at Xebia showed me something important.

This is a place with rituals.

Some are playful.

Some are meaningful.

Some are strange in the best way.

Magic words.

Knowledge exchange.

Book budgets.

Walking conversations.

Clickbait session titles.

Champagne for new beginnings.

Space for people to bring both work and life into the room.

But beneath all of that, I saw something deeper:

A culture trying to make knowledge move through people.

Not just through systems.

Not just through slides.

Not just through processes.

Through trust.

Through conversations.

Through visibility.

Through generosity.

And that matters.

Because knowledge without relationship stays static.

But knowledge inside a living network becomes movement.

A different question after day two

After day one, I asked:

How do we lead when we do not have the answers yet?

After day two at Xebia, I am asking something slightly different:

How do we create rooms where people can become visible enough to contribute what only they can see?

Because that is where authority begins.

Not when someone claims it.

But when their way of seeing changes the conversation.

And maybe that is the real work of onboarding.

Not simply learning where we fit.

But noticing what we bring.

And choosing, carefully and consciously, how much of ourselves we are willing to let the room see.

🐉🔥