How Leaders Can Create A Culture Of Significance

“As we age, the instinct to matter crystallizes into the fundamental need to be seen, heard, valued, and needed,” says Zach Mercurio Ph.D., author of the book, The Power Of Mattering: How Leaders Can Create A Culture Of Significance. “The need to matter never goes away. And if our need to matter is satisfied, we flourish.” 

Mercurio explains that mattering is created through small, repeated interactions that ensure people feel noticed, affirmed, and needed. 

These three ingredients form these three leadership practices: 

1. Noticing: the practice of seeing and hearing others. 
2. Affirming: the practice of showing people how their unique gifts make a difference. 
3. Needing: the practice of showing people how they're relied on and indispensable.  

Part One of Mercurio’s book illuminates the what and why of mattering and offers you a self-assessment to measure your mattering skill level. 

Part Two explores the how of mattering and details 25 skills essential for effectively leading. 

The final part, Part Three, shows you how to scale the skills across organizations. The skills are based on more than forty years of psychological and sociological research on what cultivates a sense of significance. 

Some of the key takeaways from the book for me include: 

• The experience of feeling significant to the people around you is called mattering and that need to matter to others is a basic survival instinct encoded in every person you lead. 
• When we feel like we don’t matter, our energy fades and our will to actively engage in life wanes. 
• Mattering is different from belonging. When we feel that we belong, we feel welcomed, accepted, and approved by a group. When we feel that we matter, we feel significant to group members. 
• Showing others the evidence of their significance isn’t about coddling them or giving them a participation trophy. When people are noticed, affirmed, and needed, they’ll have no need for a trophy at all. 

Finally, some of the best practices tips for leaders include: 

• Tell others why you rely on them.
• Remind people how you and the organization need them and their work.
• Check on people’s energy levels and emotions.
• Show people how they and their work impact others both inside and outside the organization.
• Make time to ensure people are seen. Schedule specific times to check in, offer, help, and have follow-up conversations.
• Hear someone by demonstrating a genuine interest in the meaning and feeling behind their words. 

Filled with practical advice and helpful exercises, The Power of Mattering gives leaders at all levels the timely and compelling skills they need to revitalize their teams—and entire organizations—by showing people how they matter. 

 

 Zach Mercurio

Mercurio shares these additional insights with us:

Question: Of Noticing, Affirming, and Needing, which one usually is the most difficult for leaders to routinely practice in their workplaces?

Mercurio: Attention is a leader’s scarcest resource. Today, "more" competes for their attention than ever.

More platforms, notifications, and instant connectivity have pulled many leaders away from their people. For example, one poll found that middle managers only spend about 28% of their time actually managing their people. Individual contributor (31%), administrative tasks (18%), and strategy-related tasks (23%) consume the rest.

As leaders’ attention has been fractured, we’ve also been losing our ability to pay deep attention to the person in front of us. The result is that seeing and hearing others—noticing them—has become increasingly more difficult.

Hurry and care can’t coexist. The latest data from Gallup shows employee engagement at its lowest point in a decade. It also shows that just 39% of employees strongly agree that someone cares about them as a person at work.

 

Leaders have to be intentional to slow down, make space, and redevelop their skills to see and hear the person in front of them.

Question: Of those same three, if a leader can excel in only one, which one do you recommend they choose and why?

Mercurio: People are unlikely to care if they don’t first feel cared for. Studies consistently show that people add more value when they feel more valued.

Research also shows that trusting a leader, the foundation of team performance, is nearly impossible if you don’t feel that a leader cares for you and has your best interests at heart. To care for someone, you must understand them. Understanding takes time, attention, and skill.

That’s why noticing people is the foundation of mattering, trustworthy relationships, and sustainably high-performing teams.

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Mercurio is a researcher, leadership development facilitator, and speaker. He holds a Ph.D. in organizational learning, performance, and change from Colorado State University, where he serves as a senior fellow at the Center for Meaning and Purpose and as an instructor in the Organizational Learning, Performance, and Change program.

 

Thank you to the book’s publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.