290. The Power of Mattering in Leadership: How Being Valued Fuels Impact with Zach Mercurio

What if the key to motivation and well-being isn’t finding your purpose, but first believing you’re worthy of having one? Zach Mercurio returns to The Leadership Project with a powerful insight: “It is almost impossible for anything to matter to someone who doesn’t first believe that they matter.” He explains why many self-help books and engagement programs fall short — because they overlook the human need to matter and feel significant to others.

In his new book The Power of Mattering, Zach reveals how feeling seen, valued, and needed drives our sense of purpose. When we feel we matter, we gain the confidence to add value — creating a cycle where feeling valued leads to contributing more. Yet in today’s rushed, digital world, our ability to connect deeply has faded. As Zach says, “Hurry and care cannot coexist.”

The solution lies in three simple habits: noticing others, affirming their impact, and needing them. These small acts cost nothing but can transform how people experience their worth. Zach challenges leaders to ask, “When you feel that you matter to me, what am I doing?” — and to do more of it. Because when people feel they matter, they do things that matter.

🌐 Connect with Zach:
• Website: https://www.zachmercurio.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachmercurio/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zachmercurio/

📚 You can purchase Zach's books on Amazon:
• The Power of Mattering: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D8XMWCLJ/
• The Invisible Leader: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1599328518/

Chapters

• 0:26 Introduction to Zach Mercurio
• 2:06 The Power of Mattering Explained
• 10:30 The Collective Nature of Well-being
• 18:10 Lost Skills of Human Connection
• 28:54 The Cost of Anti-Mattering
• 36:07 The Noticing Practice
• 43:35 Affirming People's Unique Gifts
• 49:29 Making People Feel Needed
• 55:34 Key Takeaways and Closing Question

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:00

What if the single biggest performance unlock in your team isn't a KPI but a feeling, who on your team goes home unsure whether they truly matter, and when was the last time you showed someone not told them exactly how their unique gifts made a difference? Today, I'm thrilled to welcome back a favorite on the show, Dr. Zach Mercurio, author of the invisible leader, and to celebrate his new book, The Power of Mattering, Zach's core idea lands like a bell. It's almost impossible for anything to matter to someone who doesn't first believe that they matter. And mattering isn't fluff. It's the foundation built from two experiences, feeling valued and adding value. In today's conversation, we get practical and give you the tips and tricks you need to rebuild the everyday skills to make people feel seen, heard and valued. Let's get into it. Hey, everyone and welcome back to The Leadership Project. I'm greatly honored to be rejoined today by one of our favorites on the show, Zach Mercurio, you would remember from Episode 31 and he introduced us to the concept of the invisible leader and the importance of purpose. Today he's rejoining us to celebrate his new book, The Power of Mattering. So, Zach Mercurio, the author of the invisible leader, and now his new book, The Power of Mattering, which is something that we all need to pay attention to. And I don't want to delay any more with any more introductions here. I want to get deep into this and to understand what inspired this and what we can do as leaders to tap into this Power of Mattering. So Zach, without any further ado, please say hello again to the audience and tell us what inspired in since the last time you met us, what inspired you on your work and ultimately led up to the release of your new book, The Power of Mattering?

Zach Mercurio: 2:03

Thanks. Mick, I'm happy to be on again. Congratulations on over 200 episodes. It's amazing.

Mick Spiers: 2:09

Oh, thank you, Sir. Well, you and you in all of those episodes, you're still one of our our audience favorites, and also a favorite of us on the show. You made us stop and reflect and rethink about this, this whole concept of purpose, and it made a lasting impact on my life, personally, but also those around me. So thank you for all that you do. I'm really keen to see what you've been doing since?

Zach Mercurio: 2:35

Yeah, the first book was around purpose, which is our unique contribution, and the contribution that we make, and I had a realization, as I was doing work around purpose, especially before the pandemic, but then through the pandemic, that it's very difficult to find your contribution. If you don't first believe that you're worthy of contributing, it's very hard to discover your purpose if you don't believe that you're worthy of having one. It's very hard to use your strengths if you don't first believe you have strengths. It's very hard to share your voice if you don't first believe your voice is significant and there was still something missing. You know, when you look at employee engagement surveys, we it's been flatlined for pretty much over a decade. In fact, it's the lowest it's been in a decade. If you look at feelings of loneliness, if you look at anxiety, if you look at mental health issues, all of those things have remained relatively unchanged, despite the proliferation of self help messages, the proliferation of personal development programs, well being programs, messages to find your purpose. And as we looked at our data from some of our earlier studies on purpose and meaningful work, and then surveyed over 1000 people on what cultivates meaningfulness, motivation, engagement, we stumbled upon a very clear answer, that interactions in which we feel significant to other people are the necessary prerequisite to discovering your purpose, to experiencing meaningfulness. If I were to summarize pretty much the last half century of research really, on what cultivates lasting motivation, engagement and commitment in all aspects of life, I would summarize it this way. It is almost impossible for anything to matter to someone who doesn't first believe that they matter. And so I actually think that this book The Power of Mattering is actually, if you can do this in nonfiction, I don't think you can, but it's the prequel to the invisible leader. Because to discover your contribution, you first have to believe that you're worthy of one. You have to believe that you matter. And the experience of mattering to other people. Comes through small interactions with one another. So that's where we've been. And what's been powerful is that it's named something for people that they either have experienced or have not experienced and they didn't have a name for it.

Mick Spiers: 5:15

Really powerful Zach, and I think there's going to be a lot of people listening in the audience that that may be sitting in that very situation. When we spoke about the invisible leader, you gave us some exercises of what we could do to try to find our purpose. But I think there are a lot of people out there that would start with a assumption or going, Oh, that's, oh, that's good for Zach. He's got it all together. That's good for Mick. You know, he's he's accomplished. This isn't for me. So how if someone is listening and they might have no imposter syndrome, you even talk in the book about loneliness at work, where they they don't really feel something there, where does someone start if they don't feel that? This is for them.

Zach Mercurio: 6:01

I'd actually say that it's not on you, and that's the whole point of the book. It's on all of us. An individual's well being is a community endeavor. We experience well being through relationships. We come to see our purpose through relationships. For example, you can believe that you matter on your own, and it's important to do all of that self work, to believe in yourself, to believe that you matter. But it takes other people to show us how we matter. And what I'm trying to do is get people to think about the inputs they have into the system that creates a system that encourages and facilitates true well being, the experience of mattering. And so if you're in a position where you think this, this isn't for you, mattering is for you, because the experience of feeling significant like take a moment and think about the time in your life when you most felt significant to another person. Mostly you're probably not thinking about a big action that they did, or getting an award, or getting more money, or winning employee of the month, you're probably thinking of a very small interaction in which you felt seen, in which you felt heard, in which you felt valued, in which someone remembered something about you, showed compassion to you. And this is really important, because the experience of feeling significant happens through very small interactions. What's good about this is that as people, we have interactions every day, all day long, and so we have the opportunity to show up in those interactions and make the choice to make sure the person in front of us feels seen, heard, valued and needed. And here's the boomerang effect when we do those things. Research shows that we actually see the evidence of our significance in our environment, and we start to see how we matter. For example, if you're going to the grocery store today and there's a grocery store clerk there, instead of just going through the motions, which we're all accustomed to doing, and just getting through the line and moving on with your day, just stop. Learn the clerk's name, ask about their life, tell them, Hey, I know that life is really hard. This is I'm sure this is a hard job, but I want to thank you for being here. And when you do, you'll see that person light up. You'll see that person come alive again in a way that, unfortunately, is increasingly rare in our world, and that gives you the evidence that you matter. And so this is accessible to everyone. If you have interactions. I often say that, summarizing the research, when we ask people what makes your leader great, for example, they will frequently tell us these small micro moments. They'll talk about these small micro moments, which means that your next great leadership Act, or your next great act as a person, is actually your next interaction. So we can build ecosystems around us that help give ourselves the evidence of our significance by giving people the gift of showing them theirs.

Mick Spiers: 8:50

Really good, Zach, so yeah, you've given me something interesting to think about already, two things jumping into my head, and what you said about it being a collective sport, I'm going to say like that, it's, it's a society that makes someone feel valued and feel that they they matter. And I know that I'm going to fall into this trap in this interview. I'm going to at the end of the show, I'm going to summarize and ask leaders to make sure that they take the the power of mattering seriously, to make sure that they are seeing and hearing and noticing each other. But I'm going to say that it doesn't have to be just the leader listening to you now. It could be the peer group. It could be two peers that sit next to each other, that notice and notice each other and see each other and hear each other and make them feel valued. That was the first one, and the second one was almost like, similar to the power of gratitude in terms of some of Martin's elements work on on gratitude and how it feels for you when you give it outwards, the boomerang effect that when you when you go out there to make for someone feel. Seen, heard and noticed that it it's going to make you feel valued, that I added value to someone, to another human being today. Is that what I'm hearing with the boomerang effect?

Zach Mercurio: 10:12

Yeah, yeah. So, so it's a great depiction of this, and I like how you use the term adding value, because when we talk about mattering, and I think it's important to define this, mattering is the experience. Is the experience of feeling significant to other people. That comes from two primary experiences, the experience of feeling valued, and the experience of adding value and seeing how we add value. And Dr. Isaac Prilitanski, who's a psychologist who also consulted with me on this new book and the power of mattering. Talks about it this way, is that it's a it's an upward spiral. The more we feel valued, the more we add value. And the reason why is that when we feel valued by others, we develop two beliefs, and these two beliefs have been found to motivate and inspire lasting performance, productivity, engagement, commitment, and those two beliefs are the belief that I'm worthy, which is called self esteem, and the belief that I'm capable, which is called self efficacy. So when we feel seen, heard, valued and needed by someone else, we develop these beliefs that I'm worthy and capable. We develop the confidence we need to add value, and the more we add value, the more we see the evidence that we are significant. And it's like a cycle. The more we feel valued. And the cycle continues. And the outcome of those things are increased motivation, resilience, well being, performance are all lagging indicators of the degree to which we feel significant, because when we feel like we matter, we tend to act like we matter. One of the things that's happened, especially in workplaces, is that we've had this almost invisible belief that people should be valued once they add value, but psychologically, it's actually the opposite. People need to feel valued in order to add value. One of the reasons why I think engagement, for example, has remained unchanged despite billions of dollars of investing in program well being, programs, dei programs, perks, pay increases of upwards of 42% in the last eight years, we've tried everything, but engagement remains lower than it's ever been, and one of the reasons why is, I think, that we've expected people to care before we've done the rigorous work to make sure they feel cared for. So it's very important to know this loop, this virtuous cycle, people first need to be valued and feel valued, to develop the confidence they need to add value. The more they add value, the more they see the evidence of their significance, the more they feel valued. And the result is an upward spiral of motivation, resilience, well being and performance as the lagging indicators of the degree to which people feel that they matter and therefore act like they matter.

Mick Spiers: 12:58

Yeah, really good, Zach, there's nuggets of gold throughout there, but it feels like it starts with some action, though, to take time to notice what's going on around you, for us to have this self esteem, to go actually, no, I do matter here, and then I'm going to lean forward, to take the first step. And that's what I'm that's what I'm trying to codify here is taking that first step of then having the self efficacy to go, yes, this this worked on. And then if you're noticing what's going on, you're going to go again, and the cycle will keep on going up. But if you're not, what I'm trying to capture here, Zach is, if you're not paying attention, you might not notice it, and you might not believe it. How does that sound?

Zach Mercurio: 13:41

For yourself?

Mick Spiers: 13:43

Yeah for yourself.

Zach Mercurio: 13:44

Yeah for yourself. I mean, so one of the things that's, I think it's important, and I actually include this last in the book, is how to believe that you matter. The reason why I include it last is because we actually need others to see how we matter. So first thing I think that you can do to start to believe in your self efficacy is to start going and doing this in their everyday relationships, and start seeing how you're adding value and that this links back to our first episode on purpose. Once you do some do some of that work, you start seeing the evidence of your significance for yourself, but also find the relationships in your life and in your work, in which people help you feel significant and seeing heard, valued and needed, because those are actually the high quality relationships that we should be investing in and that we should be seeking. And that's one way to start building this sense of mattering if you don't have it for yourself and you need to go out and act on this. The other thing I think that's really important, is to develop what we've we've called and we've talked about a so that mentality being able to see how your actions inherently impact other people. And you know, when we first talked, I told the story of one of our custodians who, when I asked her, What's the most meaningful part of your job, she told me that it was cleaning the university dormitory bathrooms that she cleaned. And where all the students say Monday mornings after the weekends. And when I asked her why, she said it's because every time I go into that bathroom, I say to myself, I'm cleaning this bathroom so that these kids don't get sick, and so making sure that you're on a daily basis, you're thinking about your bigger so that and how you add value can help boost your own self efficacy and own self esteem. But I do want to share again that it's not enough. It's not enough on our own. You cannot expect someone to go develop confidence on their own. We don't develop confidence in the belief that we matter by sitting in our office saying to ourselves, chanting self affirmations and telling ourselves to believe in ourselves and that we are enough, because biologically, psychologically and sociology, sociologically, you are not enough. And I know that's hard for people to understand, but think about this. The only reason why you're here listening to this podcast is because someone cared about you enough to keep you alive. The only reason why you're here is because some software engineer, IT person is making sure this network is stable enough for you to listen. The only reason why we're here is because of other people. In fact, Maslow's path to self actualization a pyramid that was based on his work. Ironically, all of the path to self actualization relies on others food. We don't We need other people to provide food lodging. We need other people to give us shelter. We don't cultivate our own love. Other people love us. We don't cultivate our own belonging. We don't cultivate our own safety. Other people make us feel safe. We don't cultivate our own esteem. Other people give that to us. The number one predictor of self esteem is verbal reinforcement from others. So the path up upward to self actualization actually relies on others. And I think this is the key point, is that your sense of mattering actually relies on the relationships around you. This is very if you are a leader, you've made the choice to be in a position in which you can architect the interactions that give that to other people. So it does take some courage to care, courage to go first when you may not be feeling it yourself, especially if you're in a leadership position. But I do want to make that clear. I think we've spent the last half century educating people to help themselves, right? For example, if I look at the if I look at the nonfiction bestseller list here in the United States, I will hear every every self help book there is how to deal with trauma that someone else inflicted on you. There's no best selling book called How not to be a traumatizer, right? How to show up better in relationships. So I think that the key to creating cultures of mattering, the key to creating cultures of sustainable well being, the key to leading in this generation is to acknowledge your responsibility in the well being and sense of significance of those around you and how others have that responsibility to you. And I know I just went off there for a little bit, but I think that I get asked a lot about, like, what can I do? What can I do? And, yeah, you can do a lot, but really, you know, I always say a well individual in an unwell system becomes an unwell individual.

Mick Spiers: 18:22

All right, Zach, this is really, this is really interesting. It's really good. And the self help industry is multi billion dollar industry, by the way, and it's, it's out there every day, pushing a lot of this.

Zach Mercurio: 18:35

And it hasn't worked. It hasn't worked very well. It hasn't worked, if I like, you know, we could do a line graph again, self help book sold, anxiety, depression, loneliness, and you would see them going up together. In fact, there's more access to free personal development. There's more access to individualized coaching than than ever before. And yet, people are more lonely, more disengaged, more disconnected than ever and experiencing lower well being than ever. And why is that? Well people are having the lowest quality interactions that has have ever been measured and self reported. And what makes a quality interaction, it's when people see us, hear us, value us, show us how we were needed.

Mick Spiers: 19:20

Very good. So big takeaway for me is it's not looking in the mirror and just convincing yourself of your self esteem and that I matter. It's it's getting out there in community, in whatever your networks look like, and seeing, hearing and noticing each other. It's being able to build on each other, and then to feel valued, then add value to someone else, and then the boomerang and the compounding spiral that we're going to go in an upward direction.

Zach Mercurio: 19:51

Yes, the number one where we feel these things like we don't matter. We're lacking purpose. The first thing we typically do is go read a book. But don't just go read a book. Go make a. Friend. And I think that once you can realize that you're we tend to go inward, but when we go inward, we actually deprive ourselves of the key ingredient that almost every well being scientist says, create sustainable well being and working in life, which is high quality relationships. And so we have to go outward.

Mick Spiers: 20:20

So let me share something with you here, Zach, because when you were talking before about talking to people interactions, whether it's be at the supermarket or whatever the case may be, I've done that, I think, most of my life, where I will strike up a conversation with taxi driver, Uber driver, how's your day? How are you? And you know, all of these things, and trying to make the person feel valued, and thanking them for what they do, etc, I try to do that all the time. For people that know me well, they're very used to it. For people that don't know me, well, I'll either get the recipient, the stranger, taken back going, where did that come from, or even people that are with me noticing the way I talk to a waiter or a waitress, etc, and taken back on, that was a bit odd. I don't find it odd. So how did we get to this stage in society where looking out for each other became not the done thing, not the usual thing. I should say.

Zach Mercurio: 21:24

Yeah, well, we started rewarding individual achievement and acquisition, and de incentivized the inefficiency that comes with care and the short term inefficiency of care, which is, which is, ironically, in the long term, there's nothing more inefficient than feeling uncared for if you're an employee and you have a leader who doesn't care for you, you know what I mean. But I think that what we reward individual achievement, we reward self help. We reward pulling yourselves up by your bootstraps. We reward that. It's all about you and me and what I can achieve and acquire, and, again, self actualization. So I think we've been educated that way. Largely, the economy relies on that as well. It relies on the fact that we all feel like we don't matter quite yet. And there's something that we can do to feel that we matter. So our whole mostly especially in the West, our economic system is built on making you feel that you don't matter quite yet, and there's something that you can acquire and achieve that will make you feel that you matter. So we're all in this hyper spiral of being self obsessed. But the second thing, the second key factor, is for the past 25 years, we have actually been losing the skills to see, hear and value other people. And when we don't feel competent at something, we usually avoid doing it, or we get defensive and call it touchy feely, or it's soft, right? When people call like caring for people touchy feely or soft a, they probably are the people who haven't experienced it most in their lives. And B, they're probably people who don't know how to do it, and those things often result in in defensiveness. Or why are you doing that? But what's happened is, is that I have been able to like get out of social situations in which I learn and hone these skills, because we've been using digital technology for the last 25 years to send short messages to one another, like, for example, Mick, if you give me some bad news, I can send you a text, Slack, WhatsApp message and just say, Hey, I'm sorry to hear that with a thumbs down emoji. I actually don't have to sit with you and deal with the discomfort and work through the discomfort and demonstrate empathy and then show compassion. And every time we've gotten out of those social situations in which we socially learn the skills to care, we actually become less proficient at it. Think about this. There are some people, and even in my generation or the younger generation. There are some people that, in the last, however, so many years, have never had to show compassion to another human being in real time. And so the less we use a skill, the less proficient we get at it. And and here we are. And the other thing I would say is that our attention has become fracked. And, you know, there's a psychologist. Her name is Gloria mark. She did some great research on attention span, and 10 years ago, our attention span on any one thing without getting distracted was about two and a half minutes. I mean, that doesn't sound great, but it's not bad. Today, it's about 47 seconds, because we can be sitting somewhere and doing five other things. So there's more for us to do and hurry and care cannot coexist. You cannot care for something that you don't understand. You cannot understand for something that you don't take the time to see and hear. And so I think we're in also a bit of a hurry addiction, which means a couple of things. One, we have to relearn the skill to pay attention. We have to relearn the skills and practices. To care. These are skills that we can learn, and I think that our our survival and thriving as humans depends on it, especially in the age of artificial intelligence, that you know can do your tasks, but it can't take moral responsibility for them. It can't be accountable to another human being. It can't build a trust and caring relationship. Only humans can. And so these very skills that we've lost are the skills that we need more than ever. But we have to recognize that we've lost them. We have to recognize that they're re learnable, and we must do that. And we have to recognize that they're not soft, they're actually quintessential to what it means to be a person.

Mick Spiers: 25:39

Yeah, really good. Zach, and somewhere along the line, it did become touchy feely, or even woke or, you know, all kinds of things for people to actually care and take an interest in each other. That's interesting. What you said two things. One is that it is a skill, and we'll talk about maybe some practices that we can do to rebuild those skills in a moment. But then also, are we really present, or are we so distracted by our devices? I think one of the greatest gifts that you can give anyone right now is your undivided attention with where your where your smartphones, not even on the table, not face down on the table, not even on the table. Like put it away somewhere and look someone in the eyes and go, Oh, tell me more about that. I think that's the greatest.

Zach Mercurio: 26:23

I don't think people. I don't think on a whole. You know, anecdotally, many people know how to do that. I mean, how many times have you been sitting in a coffee shop recently and you've seen two people on their phones with each other, or when the phone's not there, they don't know what to do? You know, one of the things that I think, that I disagree with some of the psychologists out there that are saying that we need to put down our phones and that will solve everything. Putting down our phones will not heal disconnection, what we do, what we do when we put down our phones will so if you have a whole group, generation of people who have, including myself, who have missed out on this, the opportunities to socially learn and hone the skills to care, having all of us put down our phones, but then we haven't done the work to name, rebuild and redevelop those skills. It's not going to make much of a difference. So I think we have to there's a massive re skilling of what it means to be human, that needs to happen, which sounds odd to say, but we have to look at the last 25 years and see that these skills have withered.

Mick Spiers: 27:28

That's really interesting, Zach, so I'm going to share a story with you, or something that I pay attention to a lot. You mentioned coffee shops. The one that always captures my attention is when I see a young couple that makes me sound old. Oh my God, when I say a young couple out at a really nice restaurant, like it's that, clearly, they're on a date. They've gone to a rice nice restaurant. It's an expensive restaurant, and they're on their phones instead of talking to each other. And I was thinking, are they so distracted that something else is more important? But now you've got me thinking, Have they forgotten how to talk to each other? They're on the date and they've forgotten, they've forgotten how to say, Oh, how many you know? Do you have any brothers or sisters? Or they don't know how to have a conversation with each other anymore? Is that what we're seeing?

Zach Mercurio: 28:19

Yeah, the writer David Brooks recently wrote a great book called How to know a person, and he basically says, We've forgotten how to know one another. We've forgotten how to be interested in one another. Again, we've forgotten how to be curious about one another. We've forgotten about how to ask questions beyond, how are you how was your day? How's it going? And ask questions like, you know, what have you been thinking about most? What I What has your attention today? We've forgotten how to show compassion. I'm sorry to hear that. Let me know what I can do if that help. Those are text messages, right? Those are things we've learned. We've learned these little deflections through, you know, responding to difficulty in short transactions, and so we don't know how to show compassion. It's tough to show empathy. It's tough to seek understanding. And like you said, I mean, we've forgotten the ability to sit and listen and where. So here's why I work in organizations, because it's where the people are. Like, I don't necessarily love business, but I love it because it's the most ubiquitous experience any human being can have. It's the last place where we have to come together. Think about it. It's the last place that actually pulls us off of our devices, where we have to come together for something else. And so it's really not happening in education right now. We're teaching people what to do as a human being, not to how to be a human being. So one of the last places that we can rebuild our skills is in organizations. And I believe that organizations, that all the outcomes that organizations say they want, hinges on our ability to do this.

Mick Spiers: 29:55

All right, so I want to get to some of the skill building in a moment. Zach, but I. Want to go on a tangent first, and we were almost touched on it earlier. I want to get into the cost of anti mattering so when we don't have this, and I will specifically go into the workplace for this one so to inspire people to understand why this is so important. What happens when someone feels invisible and they don't feel seen when they don't feel heard. What is it costing us?

Zach Mercurio: 30:26

I think most people who are listening know what it costs us. Think about that feeling when you go into a room and you're around a lot of people, maybe even friends, maybe even colleagues, but no one knows you. No one notices you. No one notices that you're a caretaker now for an elderly parent in the hospital and that you're struggling. No one's been able to name a gift that you've brought unique relative to others in the last couple months, nobody has recognized the difference that your work makes you do input all this effort and you feel like no one sees you. How do you respond? How do you react? And there, there are two reactions that typically happen when a human being feels insignificant and we either act in withdrawal. So withdrawing are things like quiet, quitting, leaving an organization, being silent, withholding information, or we act out in desperation, complaining, blaming, gossiping, trying to get the attention that we're not getting. And which is interesting, because an organization these acts of desperation actually create a cycle of toxicity in an organization. But the root cause is usually not that people are narcissists and they're difficult people. In fact, the most difficult, quote, unquote, difficult or toxic people I've been asked to work with when you really seek to understand them are often the most unseen, unheard and unvalued. You know, Martin Luther King Jr once said that the protest is the language of the unheard. And I think that many people are protesting the conditions of anti mattering. And so anti mattering creates these downward spirals of withdrawal and desperation and can result in probably the most insidious force in an organization, which is learned helplessness, the belief that I and what I say and what I won't say, don't say, can't say, do, don't do, doesn't, can't and never will matter. And so anti mattering was a term coined by psychologist Gordon fledt, who talked about it in relation to the physicist Paul Dirac, who actually coined the term anti matter in physics. And anti matter has an equal, opposite positive negative charge to map matter. And I think the same is true with mattering and anti mattering. Mattering is developed in interactions like we said. Anti mattering is developed in small interactions as well, in which someone looks over us, talks over us, eye rolls us when we give an idea, forgets our name, doesn't know anything about our personal life, doesn't notice that we're struggling or or that we feel left out, and all of those things can be incredibly insidious. I'll end talking about anti mattering with a quote by the American psychologist named William James and he wrote, no more fiendish punishment could be devised that someone should be set loose in society and remain completely unnoticed. He called it the most fiendish, fiendish punishment and work human last year, found that 30% of employees self reported they felt quote, unquote invisible in work, just 39% of employees in a Gallup survey said they felt cared for as a person in work. So way too many of us are facing this most fiendish punishment of anti mattering.

Mick Spiers: 33:51

Yeah, really powerful, Zach. So the things that I'm taking away there, I love that you started with, how does it feel yourself? Right? So if you've been in a situation you where you felt unseen, unheard, or it might be your boss completely forgot about the last conversation you had with them. How did it How did it feel? That's a good place to start.

Zach Mercurio: 34:14

Your kids, your kid, your kid stops wanting to hug you. You know your partner, your partner doesn't ask about your work or your life anymore. I mean, this is all if you're not experiencing a work you can you have experienced it in some aspect of your life.

Mick Spiers: 34:29

Somewhere. Could have been the school yard. It could have, yeah, all kinds of things. It could have been, right? So, very good. So remember what it feels like yourself, and that no one deserves to feel like that, and then start having a look around your team and your organization, and if and if people are disengaging. Was it because they felt unseen, unheard, unvalued, if people start lashing out some of the toxic or disruptive behavior, what what led them to that? Was it because they are they trying to get attention? Is it a protest? Is it trying to get your attention that, hey, I matter too, or I've got something to say and no one's listening to me, is what I'm taking away there, Zach, and it is going to cost the business, and it's costing their mental health. It's going to disrupt others around them as well, and it's going to impact your your business, if that's what you care about. Let's get into the skills now. So in the book, you talk about framework of noticing, affirming and needing, and I want to unpack them one at a time. If we have lost this skill of noticing to see someone, to hear someone, what can you say to the audience of someone that might be self recognizing this sack and going, Yeah, I think I have lost that skill. How does someone restart to build these skills, to connect to other human beings?

Zach Mercurio: 35:47

Yeah, I break it down into three distinct actions, right, to be a better noticer, for example, is to observe. Be a better observer. Observe closely. Note what you observe. Actually, write it down, document it somewhere. One of the most important ways that research has shown, and just general experience has shown, whether you're in journalism or a detective or a student, is we can retrain our attention by writing things down by actually document documenting it moving from our brain to our body to a piece of paper or to typing it out and then sharing back what you've observed and noted. I mean, one of my favorite examples that I learned, everything that I've learned about how to show people they matter, comes from real leaders who do this. Well, one of my favorite examples was this distribution center manager, and she had a small team of about 26 people, and they were in this distribution center that was scored really low on their engagement surveys, except for her team. And so they asked me to go figure out what was going on with her team so we could scale that in other areas. And so I asked all of them, I said, What's going on here? What do you all do here? That's different? And they all said, it's our leader, it's our manager. She just gets us. We do anything for her. And so I asked her, I said, What do you do? And she had this notebook, and she said, every Friday, I write down each of my team members names, and I write down one thing I heard them talk about last week that I wanted to remember, if it was a piece of equipment that wasn't working and they were complaining about it and frustrated about it and frustrated about it, I'd write it down. If it was a meeting that they were nervous about, I would write it down if their kid was starting a new sport, I would write it down. And on Monday, I ground myself by starting my week looking at that notebook, and in my phone, I schedule a three minute check in with each of them, and they don't know I keep this notebook, but she said, What I say is say, she says, I remember last week that you were nervous about this meeting. How did it go? I remember that we said that we'd fix this equipment. Did that get fixed? I remembered that your kids started baseball for the first time. What was that like? And she told me that she was doing this, and she didn't realize it then, but she's realized that there's magic in being remembered. And what I love about this is that she didn't leave it up to chance. We've come to call this joke around. We call it her noticing notebook, but she had a process, right? So, of noting things down, of observing these details and sharing back what she noticed. One other way to do this is, as you are observing asking better questions. She would ask her people like, what is getting in the way of you having your best day? Here, that's her practice. What is getting in the way today of you having your best day? What are some log jams that you're facing? How can I remove them? Asking questions that go beyond the HOW ARE YOU how's it going? How was your day? Or I just heard a leader start a meeting by saying, how's everybody doing today? Good. Can you imagine if you weren't good? Would you be in the back? Be like, no, not me. Or I hear, I see people all the time. They send out these mass emails, like in a turbulent time, the CEO has sent an email. I hope everybody's doing well. If I'm not doing well, the last thing I need is your hope. I need your support. But in order to support me, someone has to understand me, and it starts with asking good questions, remembering details of people's lives, noting those things down, sharing those back. And that's what helps people feel at the foundation of noticing helps people feel noticed.

Mick Spiers: 39:16

Really good, Zach, I like love the practice. I'm going to start doing it myself. I do try to remember things that people have shared with me and play it back to them, but I think my memory is fallible, just like everyone else's. I think the physical, intentional practice of taking notes, I think, is a absolutely wonderful idea. A lot of people always talk about making a good first impression. Zach, I like to think about making a good second impression is remembering something from the previous conversation and going, Oh, Sakura, I remember the last time we chatted. You spoke about this. Have you thought about or that that's really that? If so, when someone does that to me, it makes me feel that I matter, that I'm that I've done something.

Zach Mercurio: 39:58

You're remembered.

Mick Spiers: 39:59

Yeah, it. Exactly.

Zach Mercurio: 40:00

I mean, to have someone else to know that someone else thought about you when you weren't present is really what being noticed is all about. I mean, I don't think there's anything. There's few things more powerful than knowing just that your presence and absence means something right to just one other person, and when you're remembered, you know that, but you can't leave it up to chance. You know, one of the things I do on the top of my one on ones is I just write, don't forget to ask about.dot.it just is a small thing, but it just triggers me to remember to ask about something. And if I don't have something there, I'm not observing really well at all. The other thing is to make sure you're checking in with people on their emotions, because emotions are data too. Energy is data. Oftentimes, our meetings with people and interactions with people are transactional. We ask for things from them give me an update. What's the status on that instead of really asking people how they're doing and really seeking to understand what their energy and emotional state is, because that's data as well, and leaders who are great notices tend to do that as well.

Mick Spiers: 41:05

Yeah, good. And the other thing that was, I think adding to that, compounding on that was then when you said about asking the better questions and being curious, it's not just about asking the question. It's actually about the other person thinking, oh, oh, Zach really wants my opinion on this. Now, I feel valued. I feel valued, and I can add value. So coming back to the circle that we started on the start of the conversation, if you ask me or what do you think we need to do differently with topic X, I might be first taken aback if you've never asked me that before, going, Oh, do you really want to know? And then second I'll be going, Oh, great, Zach wants to know. And and now I feel like my opinion matters. Not not just I matter, but my opinion matters as well. How does that sit with

Zach Mercurio: 41:51

Yes, it's great, and I would go further, and it sort of ties into the affirming practice of showing people their unique gifts and how they make a difference. But when you ask people for their feedback. A lot of leaders say to me, Zach, I ask people for their feedback, but they don't give me any. They don't answer. I hear silence, and it's oftentimes you're not telling them why you're asking them. And one of the things like Project X, right? Hey, Mick, I rely on your creativity. I'm not going to really be able to move forward with Project X, until I get some of your ideas. So would you be willing to share some with me? Spend some time with me, right? It's much different than Do you have any feedback on this? Yeah, good one. Yeah, right. So, so there's also a piece of the more you come to notice people, the more you actually start noticing their uniqueness, their unique gifts, their unique strengths, their unique ways of seeing things, their unique perspective, their unique impact, and so the better and more authentically you can actually approach them and ask for feedback and ask for their voice in a way that helps them feel honored as the unique people they are.

Mick Spiers: 42:54

Yeah, good. All right, so let's, let's go deeper into affirming. How do we get the affirming part right?

Zach Mercurio: 42:59

So it's very key to understand the definitional distinctions between things like appreciation, recognition and affirmation. So if you're a leader, appreciation is showing gratitude for someone's presence, for who someone is. You can appreciate someone through a free meal Employee Appreciation Day, a symbol to show, hey, we value your presence. Recognition is showing gratitude for what someone does. It's elevating someone's performance. We're recognizing someone's performance or recognizing what someone does. But affirmation is showing someone how their unique gifts make a unique difference. It's very specific in the sense that it's giving someone the specific evidence of their significance. A lot of organizations miss the mark on this because they give symbols of appreciation or symbols of recognition, but people go into work and feel that their manager can't name their strengths unique relative to others, or they go in every day and someone doesn't never seize the downstream impact of a project they're working on. So affirmation comes from the Latin root a firmer, which means to firm up or make stronger. And so when we show someone the specific evidence of their significance, we're actually introducing evidence into their belief system that helps them believe strengthen, strengthen and firm up, the belief that they're significant. And it has two sides. One is showing people the difference that they make, the downstream impact of them and their work. And the other side is showing them how they do that, revealing their unique gifts. And so that's what affirmation is. And you can't symbolic appreciation and symbolic recognition in the absence of everyday interactions in which people feel affirmed, often will fall short. You also can't perk and pay your way out of this, right? So, like, what I mean by that is compensation. Literally means to compensate. It means to make up for someone's time and effort. Or they're loaning to you compensation. Can be a symbol of value, but it can't value somebody, because it's an inanimate object. Only people can value people, getting recognized, getting a bonus, or getting recognition for high performance, getting a gold star. That gold star can't value somebody. It's an inanimate award plaque, whatever it is only people can so that's what affirmation is. It happens through interpersonal interactions.

Mick Spiers: 45:28

So the three powerful words that are coming through for me, Zach, specific, unique and significance. And I'm going to ask the audience here to think about when you're giving someone appreciation, are you just saying, Good job, or are you calling out exactly what was specific about it, specifically calling out and going when you did this thing, you brought your unique skills in some certain way, and it was impactful in this way, and that's where the significance comes in. So it wasn't just our good job Zach, it was specific, unique to Zach. And then what was the impact? The So, the so that you talk, you talk about the So, so that all the time, by you doing that, we were able to achieve this. And that's where the significance comes in.

Zach Mercurio: 46:21

Yeah, I mean, and that's, that's what makes gratitude meaningful and being very specific. But you know, and what we found is that when people feel that they matter, there are four key gifts that are revealed by their leader. One of the, one of the greatest gifts that leaders have is you're in a position to illuminate in others what they may not see in themselves. And a lot of people we talk about when they feel that they matter to a leader, they or leader reflects back to them something that they didn't see, and they name it. And the four things, the four gifts that everyone has that came up were strengths. So this is what someone loves to do and what they're good at. So as you're looking at your team and the people around you be attuned for the things that that they come alive for the things that they want to talk about all the time, and guess what? Write them down so that when you're giving feedback, you can name those strengths. The second is, people have a unique purpose, so they make a unique impact on the team. So think about the difference they make when, when that person is in the room, and the difference of when they're not in the room, and making sure that you can name that that purpose. The third is their perspective. Every single person around us lives a unique life. They have unique way of seeing the world. And then the third is their wisdom, what only they have learned, what only they can teach you. And so as you're giving this meaningful gratitude, you know, naming these unique gifts, I see that you make an impact in this way, or I really value you and rely on your strength of creativity or your perspective. You know, I know you've gone through a lot of hardship and come out on the other side in your life, and we need that now, that perspective or your wisdom, like in your past roles, you overcome these challenges, this is something that's really valuable to us. Being able to name those things and then show them the difference that they make is especially powerful for affirming somebody.

Mick Spiers: 48:12

Yeah, really good, Zach, so that's another good bit of exercise there. Have a think about your own team. Maybe get that notebook out and think about what are their strengths, what is their purpose? Have a think about their unique approach to perspective, taking what do they bring to the table as unique perspectives, and what wisdom do they bring to the table? And these are things that you can affirm back to them. Really good. Now, what about needing? Where does needing fit into the model?

Zach Mercurio: 48:39

Needing is really the end, right? It's sort of the book end, right? To affirm people. You need to notice them. For people to feel authentically needed and relied on. They need to know how they're relied on and how they're needed and see the difference they make. Feeling needed is feeling essential as a person. It's feeling indispensable as a human being, that your unique gifts, your strengths, the way you show up, your presence is not replaceable. As a human being, skills and the ability to do a job that can be replaced. Human beings can never be replaced. And you know, the five most powerful words I would say here, to give you a practice right now that you can use is, if it wasn't for you, you know, think of someone you rely on right now. Bring that person to mind. Now think about the last time you explicitly told them, right? So oftentimes, our feelings of knowing that we rely on others outweigh our actions of telling them. And so use these words, like if it wasn't for you, and show them how they make a unique difference. You can also use data I had, just recently, I had a manager of a creative ad agency, digital creative agency, who was asking me struggling with a younger account manager because of you just didn't have much confidence to sort of take the lead and run with the autonomy that she was giving him. And. She said she had this brilliant idea. She actually pulled data from accounts that he had worked on, on the results for the client and accounts that he hadn't worked on, and she was able to actually show him how he was needed using data. And it really helped him see the difference that he made and that he was relied on, because psychologically, when people feel replaceable, they tend to act that way, you know, and I see this in manufacturing jobs or jobs with a lot of frontline people who say, Oh, we just need a warm body in here. Or, you know, we could get anybody to do this job. Or the managers who say, don't forget that you're replaceable. When people feel replaceable, they act replaceable. When people feel irreplaceable, they act irreplaceable, they show up, they commit, they engage. So using those five words is powerful. If it wasn't for you, don't take it for granted that someone knows that they're needed, right? Show them.

Mick Spiers: 50:53

Yeah, it hits home really hard. Zach, I gotta say, so when someone feels replaceable, they'll act replaceable. And when you said the words, if it wasn't for you, I'll tell you the person that popped into my mind was my wife, and I can confidently tell you that I always make her feel needed and that if it wasn't for her, I don't think I've ever used those words, but I think pretty darn close. I can't think of a time I've done that in the workplace. I'm going to ask myself, why not?

Zach Mercurio: 51:23

You know, actually, the showing people how they're needed, when we do an assessment, and I'm in a room and I do an assessment with leaders, of having self assess where they're at and noticing, affirming and needing practices needing is always the lowest. One of the reasons why is, I think it gets to our own, that individualism we talked about all the way at the beginning, that it's always up to me. I don't need anybody else. So it's always the hardest, but ironically, we need to feel needed. You know that we have the two primal fears that we have as people, is the fear of being uncared for and the fear of being useless. And the two primal needs we have that drive everything else, and the need to feel cared for and the need to be useful, the need to feel needed, the need to know that our presence and our absence means something to people.

Mick Spiers: 52:10

I'm going to go into that self reflection part again and then say, How does it feel when you don't feel needed? And then ask yourself the question, are you making others feel like that, that they're not needed, that they are replaceable. This has been really powerful sack. I'm going to summarize a few things and draw us to a close here. So we've been through a lot in this conversation, and you've really opened up my eyes to the power of mattering and making me, making me see things through a new lens again, just like you did last time and around this thought that to add value, we need to feel valued, but then that can be a virtuous cycle, that when we start adding value, we feel valued, when we add value, we feel valued, and it keeps on going, but also that it's a team sport, that we can do this with each other, and it's And it's not just the leaders responsibility. It's all our responsibility to make someone feel valued so that they can add more value, and to do this with each other, and the boomerang effect of when we give it out will will also feel better about ourselves and also add to this compounding and that it all comes down to this framework of noticing, affirming and needing, and to ask yourself the the key questions, have you forgotten how to have these conversations like we're talking about with the dinner date? Have people forgotten to have the conversations that make for someone feel noticed, make them feel seen, make someone feel heard, to give the affirmations that are that are specific, that are unique and show the significance of it, and the if it wasn't for you to make someone feel needed, I think that these are all things that we can all start taking notes, like your friend that you're talking about, start taking notes where we do notice, so that we can do these affirmations and that we can make someone feel needed, and when they feel like they matter, they will do things that matter. That's the biggest takeaway for me. Zach, this has been absolutely wonderful. I'd like to leave you with the last word. We normally go through our our four questions, but you've, you've answered them in the last interview. So I'm just going to leave you with the last words of what would you like to see people do to start taking action around noticing, affirming and needing and unlocking the power of mattering?

Zach Mercurio: 54:31

If you don't remember anything that we talked about this episode at this point, because there was a lot Ask, ask the people around you this question. Ask the people you lead, ask the people in your life this one question. It you know, when you feel that you matter to me, what am I doing? And really listen and really pay attention and do more of those things. And I think that that's the most powerful data you could get, more powerful than any engagement survey or any other way of collecting data, right? Because. So again, you're getting at the fundamental human need to feel significant. So when you feel that you matter to me, what am I doing? And write those things down and do more of those things? Because, you know, I imagine a world in which everybody lives in a community where they feel seen, where they feel heard, will they feel affirmed, where they feel needed. And you know, think about the problems we have to solve right now. We need more of people's unique strengths and gifts than ever. We need more people to be adding value, but before we ask them to add value, we have to make sure they feel valued.

Mick Spiers: 55:37

So I want to thank you Zach, and I want to be specific with this. I want to thank you for your gift, and your gift is to get us to stop and reflect and rethink on on something that we don't often stop to think about the power of mattering and the significance of being significant and the significance that we're in it together. I want to thank you for your gift of sharing that with us and to let you know from a so that point of view, that your words have an impact on leaders all around the world, for them to take this seriously and to make sure that they do, make sure that people feel seen, heard and valued, and when they feel that they matter, they'll do things that matter. So thank you so much again for your time, the gift of your time and the gift of your wisdom, Zach, absolutely amazing.

Zach Mercurio: 56:22

My pleasure. Thanks, Mick.

Mick Spiers: 56:24

What a powerful conversation with Zach Mercurio. He's really shown us there how we can rebuild the everyday skills to see, hear and value people, even in a 47 second attention span world, Zach drew a sharp line between appreciation, gratitude for who someone is, recognition, credit for what they do, and affirmation, evidence of how their unique gifts make a unique difference. We heard powerful words like if it wasn't for you, and how to invite real voices by telling people why you need their perspective. So if you want a culture where motivation, resilience and performance are the outcome, start with the input creating the lived experience that I am worthy and capable here your homework for today, three moves to put this into practice. Number one, notice, slow down enough to truly see someone. Use their name, ask for their view and say why you need it. Number two, affirm name a specific strength and the specific impact it had. I rely on your strength because it helped me or helped others achieve something. Make it clear to them. The number three need say the quiet part out loud, if it wasn't for you, and then give concrete evidence of what it was that they brought to the table and why it was important make Reliance visible. So ask yourself these questions, who in your world most needs to hear how they make unique difference, and what evidence will you give them? Where are you mistaking perks and praise for affirmation? And what will you change this week to reframe that. How will you design your team's cadence, your meetings, your one on ones, your rituals, so that mattering is a habit, not a hope. And your challenge here is to run a seven day mattering sprint each day for one week, intentionally notice someone affirm a specific gift and impact, and express how they're needed, and then track what happens to them and to you. Once again, it was great pleasure to have Zach on the show this week. And if today resonated with you, please do share this episode with someone who needs to hear that they matter and tell them why. In the next episode, I'm going to be joined by Matt pepsill, author of the book expand the circle, and he's going to ask us to stop and rethink what it means to be a leader in a modern world. Thank you for listening to The Leadership Project, mickspiers.com a huge call out to Faris Sedek for his video editing of all of our video content and to all of the team at TLP. Joan Gozon, Gerald Calibo and my amazing wife Sei Spiers, I could not do this show without you. Don't forget to subscribe to The Leadership Project YouTube channel where we bring you interesting videos each and every week, and you can follow us on social, particularly on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Now, in the meantime, please do take care, look out for each other and join us on this journey as we learn together and lead together.