Zach Mercurio: How to Create a Culture Where People Truly Matter

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Episode recap:

Zach Mercurio shared the importance of creating an atmosphere where people feel significant and can express their ideas openly instead of feeling ignored or underappreciated at work. The conversation also highlighted the significance of soft skills, and the concept of "mattering" in the context of job satisfaction and well-being. The conversation ended with discussions on strategies for better noticing and hearing people, the importance of psychological safety in the workplace, and the need to recognize the value of unsung heroes in an organization.

Bio:

Zach Mercurio is the author of The Power of Mattering: How Leaders Can Create a Culture of Significance, published by Harvard Business Review Press. He is a researcher, author, and speaker who works with hundreds of organizations to forge purposeful leaders who enable mattering, motivation, well-being, and performance. He also serves as one of author Simon Sinek’s “Optimist Instructors.” Zach earned his Ph.D. in Organizational Learning, Performance, and Change from Colorado State University. Zach lives in Fort Collins, CO, with his wife, two sons, and two adopted dogs.

Quotes:

• "Think about what this person needs right now to best alleviate their struggle. Compassion is empathy in action, and it doesn’t have to be big."
• "Anytime you evaluate somebody, they will be on the defensive and give you a self-protective answer. You won't get the full story."
• "It is almost impossible psychologically for anything to matter to a person who doesn't first believe that they matter." 

Takeaways:

• Schedule a 3-minute personal check-in with each team member this week, asking about something specific they previously shared with you.
• Reflect on your last interaction: Did you make the person feel noticed, affirmed, or needed? Write down one concrete way you could improve.
• Pull engagement or performance data showing a team member's unique impact, then share it directly with them to demonstrate their significance.
• Create a team agreement that establishes psychological safety rules for meetings (like no interrupting, pausing before responding).

Timestamps:

[00:01] Why Work Quality Means Nothing Without People First  

[01:59] The Science Behind Feeling Valued at Work  

[04:42] Three Things That Make People Feel Like They Matter  

[07:55] Signs Your Workplace Makes People Feel Invisible  

[12:35] How Leaders Can Truly See and Hear Their Employees  

[29:29] Why Affirmation at Work Needs to Be Specific  

[34:28] The Secret to Making People Feel Truly Needed  

[41:59] How to Measure Whether Employees Feel Valued  

[44:59] Simple Daily Actions That Make People Feel They Matter  

[46:30] The Leadership Shift That Starts in Your Next Interaction

Conclusion:

A workplace thrives when employees know their contributions matter and feel genuinely appreciated. People are more engaged and motivated when they see that their work has purpose and their presence makes a difference. Building a culture where individuals feel recognized isn’t just good leadership—it’s the foundation of a strong, successful organization. When employees feel valued, they bring their best efforts, driving both personal and collective success.

Links/Resources:

Website - http://www.zachmercurio.com/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachmercurio/

Transcript

Zach Mercurio 00:01

I keep going. I'm sorry. So I said to them, you know, what do you do to make sure that the quality of the work is consistent across all these locations? And they went on about all of their processes and quality control processes in place, and all of the ways their people get trained and evaluated. And I loved it. I was like, this is really amazing. I go, what do you do to make sure all of those people on those teams feel seen, heard, valued and needed? And it was like, silence. It was like, Well, you know, we try to hire the right people, or we have a LMS super excellence in supervisory online programming, but they had all of these ways to scale these operational skills, scale operational excellence, but they didn't have ways to scale the skills needed to produce the human energy to be excellent. 

And this is typically what happens. So I said, What if what it's going to take to get a people first culture down to the front line is we have to robustly scale these skills as robustly as we scale anything else, because just hiring good people, promoting good leaders, doesn't work. Intuition doesn't scale. Hard practices and skills scale. So I've been on a mission to get organizations to use what they do well, which is scale process into scaling human skills. And sometimes, when executives think about it like that, it kind of turn, it activates a strength they have, and can kind of turn the tides a little bit.

Marcel Schwantes 01:34

Yeah, let me go back to the research a little bit and tell me if I get this right. You spent five years looking poring over the data on mattering and significance, and then you realize that there was sort of a gap there, maybe about, well, this is all great, but what are the skills that we need to learn and implement? Is that right?

Zach Mercurio 01:56

Yeah. I mean, the first study that we did was with a group of university cleaners, and it was on how cleaners, in a very difficult, overlooked job, experience meaningfulness in their work. So we were looking at meaningfulness, which is the experience that my work is significant, and what we found, you know? And I opened the book with this, because it's a story that really helped me to name that it's really moments of mattering that's driving this. And there was this woman named Jane, and she was, she was near homelessness, and she just needed a job. And she said she took this job at the university because the only one that would hire her. And she said all of her friends were telling her, you know, why couldn't you have done something more with your life? Like, why are you? Why are you just cleaning? And she said she was really struggling with her self worth. She would just clock in, clock out. And she said that she had one supervisor who brought her into a training room and opened a dictionary to the word custodian, and said, You are this person. 

A custodian is a person responsible for a building and everyone in it that is you. And she told me, and I remember her face right now, even she looked at me and she goes, you know, Zach, that was the first time in my life someone made me feel worthy. First time in her life someone made her feel worthy and useful. And that moment, she said, changed her belief systems about herself and her job. She's now been at that job for almost 18 years, and what we've found sense is there are these moments of mattering that contribute to thriving and well being. And what we started doing is we started working with groups and other organizations to ask, okay, what? What are people actually doing when you feel that you matter. It's an exercise you could do right now listening, you know, think about who makes you feel that you matter in your life, and think about what they do, and then think about what are the skills they used. So we asked that to 1000s of people in all of these different groups, I mean, from cleaners to the people on the manufacturing front lines, to the top 200 leaders in the US Army, which was a fascinating experience, and they all said some version of three actions, right? Noticing. 

They felt noticed, they felt seen and heard. They felt affirmed. So someone actually named their unique strengths or saw something in them that they didn't see in themselves and named that, or they felt that they were needed, that they were called upon, that they were essential, that there was a problem that only they could solve. And so we distilled all of this research from the last 40 years with the research on what people are saying, people are doing in their lives, and it aligned really well to these, to these skills that we can that we've heard about in other areas, but now we can bring them together in service of this primal instinct, right? Called mattering.

Marcel Schwantes 04:52

Yeah, so noticing, we need to be noticed. And then there's two types of firm of being a. Right, and seen and heard. So that's affirming. And then we need to be needed. So that's what it boils down to, these three components of mattering,

Zach Mercurio 05:09

yeah, well, noticing, so there's two parts of noticing, feeling seen and heard. Oh, that's it. So yeah, that's all right. And then affirming is, yeah, we have to see the evidence of our unique significance in our environment. And then needed is we have to feel essential, like we have to feel like we're not dispensable.

Marcel Schwantes 05:24

Okay, good noticing is feeling seen and heard. Got it? Okay, yeah, all right. Well, before, because I want to break down these, these components and their parts and talk about the practical elements. But before we do that, I want to talk a little bit about the opposite of mattering. So you label it simple enough, anti mattering. So what happens? How do we if I'm walking into a business establishment and it's clearly a place of anti mattering. What am I seeing? What am I hearing? What am I experiencing in that kind of culture?

Zach Mercurio 06:09

Yeah, well, I mean, just as creating mattering happens in moments, creating experiences of anti mattering happens in moments, and anti mattering is just what it is. It was coined by a psychologist named Gordon flat, and he paid homage to this physicist named Paul Dirac, who coined the term for dark matter, right, the inverse of matter, so it has the inverse effect. So not anti mattering is experiences where you feel insignificant, and it usually comes from five places, right, feeling unseen, unseen, feeling like you're overlooked, like you're forgotten, like your work isn't recognized, feeling unheard, feeling that your voice doesn't make a difference, feeling unvalued. So this is feeling the opposite of affirmed, feeling that your unique gifts or your strengths or your work doesn't really add any value. Feeling forgotten. And this is a big one, like a lot of frontline workers that we work with indicate that they feel forgotten, they're, you know, I always found it troubling that people had unsung heroes in their organization. 

No hero should be unsung. And then finally, is feeling dispensable. And I hear this one a lot. My manager told me that, don't forget that everyone's replaceable. Then it's astonishing, because when people feel replaceable, they will act replaceable like, don't be surprised if someone who feels like a resource acts like one, yeah, and they just, they just up and leave. So those five things is something to be aware of, like moments that create feelings of being unseen. And one of my one of the examples that stand out for me, is there was a window washer that I worked with, and she told me that she had this great idea during her first week on the job, she was responsible for a team that had to go in in the summer in Colorado and clean these bottom floor windows of this industrial complex every day. And she noticed in the first week that the sprinkler system was aimed wrong, and so it would leave these splotches. So literally, the only reason why the task existed was because of a preventable issue. 

And she was so excited, she went to her supervisor. She said, Hey, I have an idea. And the supervisor said, Oh, that's the sprinkler people's problem. I need you to just do your job. And it was five years later that the team that's the supervisor, asked me to come in and help these quote, unquote unmotivated people. Were they unmotivated? No, they're people who experienced anti mattering. What happens when we experience anti mattering is we get what's called learned helplessness, which is being conditioned by the environment around us that we and our actions don't, can't, and never will matter. So what she did is she went and told her team, she said, I had an idea, and they shot it down. And what do you think that team did? Oh, well, forget it. I mean, we're not going to raise our voice anymore. We're going to clock in and clock out. But these things presented as motivation issues, there are very few motivation issues in organizations. There are a lot of anti mattering issues.

Marcel Schwantes 09:25

Yeah, and you described kind of how I felt, maybe how you felt as well in that previous job, and how I felt at the hot at the hospital and Zach, it's almost like on an hourly basis, or it was for me, and things just kept spiraling and piling up to the point where it just my very soul was stripped out of my ability to do do work well I was and it caused some burnout as well.

Zach Mercurio 09:53

If you don't mind sharing, if you don't mind sharing, what were some of the what were some of the things in the environment that. Were creating that feeling,

Marcel Schwantes 10:02

Oh, that's easy. Fear is a stifling pressure cooker environment that was reinforced by constant fear, you know, looking over your shoulder kind of thing, because that's the that was the culture that I inherited from a previous high level consultant that led through power control, command and control, you know, and power moves and all that and then that trickled down to people that learned those behaviors or misbehaviors and that just kind of just floated around from floor to floor, department to department. So it was a bad, toxic environment. I think that's important

Zach Mercurio 10:54

for other and I think it's important for other people listening to think about this in this way that a lot of times we probably unintentionally create fear. Create these moments, you know, I've, I've come to call some of the moments that create that sprinkler issues, like that woman, yes, like, what are the sprinkler issues in your organization that may be manifesting that fear and that that you may not even know about unless you thought about it? Because, you know, one of the things that you bring to mind is that a lot of leaders lead by trying to get people to comply. Yeah, like, and when, when people comply, they do things because you want them to do it. And I think a lot of leaders miss the difference between compliance and commitment. Commitment is when someone does something because they want to do it, and that takes again, making sure they know that they matter, so they act like they matter. It is, it is almost impossible psychologically for anything to matter to a person who doesn't first believe that they matter. Yeah, and so it's interesting. They probably wanted high performance in that hospital. They probably wanted all of these metrics, but they were actually undermining the human psychology needed to get those metrics. And I think that's more rampant than we even think.

Marcel Schwantes 12:12

Yeah, yeah, I believe so, okay, so I'm thinking, I don't know, should we jump into how to create mattering.

Zach Mercurio 12:23

Yes, yeah, I'd love to. Let's

Marcel Schwantes 12:25

Okay, let's break it down. So this is for you listeners. This is when you take out your notebooks, or, you know, if you're, if you're listening in the car, yeah, please. You know, keep driving safely until you get home and then re listen to this episode, because this is almost like the lesson. Part of classroom is in session with Zach here. Okay, so let's, let's, let's start with, well, the first one noticing, so two parts of that, how to truly see people, how to truly hear people. What's a good starting point for how to truly see people. How do we how do we see better?

Zach Mercurio 13:06

Yeah, so I use the word noticing because there there's a it's active. You know, you can know your best friend but not notice that they're suffering or struggling. You can know your team but not notice that maybe someone feels left out of discussions or that they're not they don't have the same energy as they used to, or you can know your child really well, but not notice that they've stopped talking about their friends a little bit more noticing is the deliberate act of paying attention to the ebbs flows and details of people's lives and then offering them an action to show them that they're thought about. And that's that part of feeling seen, feeling heard, is when the meaning behind our words, the voice and perspective underneath the surface, is invited out in a climate of psychological safety. So there's this 222, components, seeing people. You know, I think that one of the things that's happening is that we have a bit of a hurry addiction right now. Yeah. And one of the things I think that's very important is that to actually see a person, we actually have to slow down, because you can't really notice somebody if you don't create the time and space to notice them, and if you don't do some work on relearning your attention, how to pay attention. 

One of my favorite examples is we had a distribution center manager, and she was having a lot of trouble keeping track of all of her team members lives and work, and so she started a practice three years ago that it was in his old Moleskine notebook she would write down. On Friday, she would write down each of her team members names, and then write down one thing that she heard them talk about or complain about, or that they were nervous about or that they were struggling with. Every week, she would do this, and then on Monday, she started her week looking at. Her night team of 19. She looked at their names, and she would schedule a three minute check in with each of them, and she goes, she would say things like, I remembered last week that you were struggling with this. I wanted to check in on how that went. I mean, there's, there's magic in being remembered. Yeah, you know, one of my practices is with my with my team is I write down on the top of my one on ones. I write down, don't forget to ask about Yeah, yeah, dot, dot, right? And it remember. It helps me remember somebody. So I would say the first step to seeing somebody is having some practice process tool. It doesn't have to be a noticing notebook, but having some practice to actually remember the details of others lives and check in on them. Yeah,

Marcel Schwantes 15:40

it's really connecting on a deeper level, isn't it? I mean, even, even the questions that we ask have to, have to change and be go from superficial, hey, how you doing to more, more meaningful questions. Yeah.

Zach Mercurio 15:53

So we also need the data to see people, and we often ask questions that don't give us the data to actually see beneath the service. And one of the example that I give all the time is that, you know, I travel a lot. I have a 10 year old and a seven year old. If someone asks me, how are you, my brain can't compute, like living the last 10 hours of a complex human life. So I just say, Good you and that's it. The person doesn't learn anything about me. I don't get to share anything about myself. You know, questions like, how are you? Those are greetings. Those aren't questions. So another practice, I mean, to see people, is go beyond the greeting. You know, if you're opening up meetings by saying, how's everybody doing good, you're missing an opportunity. Because if someone asks, how's everybody doing good? I hear that a lot. 

Imagine if someone wasn't doing well, would they raise their hand and be like, not me? Or I get this a lot. I hope everybody's doing well, that's great. But like, if I'm struggling, the last thing I need is your hope. I need your support. So we have these little like norms that actually, like, don't give us the data to see people. So a couple of ways to think about that is, ask clear questions instead of, how was your day? What was most meaningful to you today? What has your attention today? Ask open questions instead of like, how was the podcast good? You can ask, Hey, what is the what's the most interesting insight from the podcast and when? When are you going to use it and ask exploratory questions instead of evaluative questions. As leaders, we often ask questions that are subtly evaluative. Yeah, what did you get done today? What did you accomplish? 

An important lesson for leaders is, anytime you evaluate somebody, they will be on the defensive and give you a self protective answer. You won't get the full you won't get the full story. So instead of an evaluative question asked, what was a project that was challenging for you today? How did you today? How did you how did you make it through? How did you navigate through that? Right? So go beyond so that's a great point, is go beyond that. Have a tool to notice pay attention, have a way to ask deeper questions. Make sure that you're following up, and that can actually open up the space to help people feel heard as well, because once they feel seen, once they know that you notice them, they know you're serious about them, yeah, yeah. And so you're serious about their voice as well,

Marcel Schwantes 18:08

yeah. And it's funny as I you know, here we are talking about applying this to the workplace, but then the way that you describe it, just a thought triggered in my mind that these are the kind of questions that I asked my spouse as well to trigger deeper conversations, right? And even I mean going from work to now, maybe you know, a marriage or a partnership is you, we tend to just kind of zone out at the end of the day and do our own thing, scroll our phones and watch our Netflix, and we're not engaging. And even if we do engage, it's like, Hey, how's your day Good? How's yours good? And you turn over and you go to sleep. So this is prompting me now to like, okay, Marcel, like, tonight, tomorrow night. Yeah. Questions I need to ask my wife,

Zach Mercurio 18:55

especially in work, are our relationships can become defined by transactions of information. So a lot of the meetings I observe, for example, are update fests, I guess, like update, update, update, update, it's information transactions. That whole like adage, most meetings could be emails. Is accurate, because most meetings are transactions, right? But like, what can't be an email is me noticing that your parent is in the hospital and checking in on how you're doing, yeah, right? What can't be an email is, if we had a disagreement, is starting to repair that or offer forgiveness, right? Those are the things, and that's why great teams and great relationships, they tend not to just banter back and forth about what they're doing with one another. They talk about how they're being with one another. Yeah. And, you know, one of the things that I learned, I learned this, so parenting and leadership is very I mean, the parenting is leadership. 

I realized this through my research. My kid loves watching his tablet right his screen. I hate it. I don't want him to watch it, so I spend all my time saying, No, don't watch it. Time's up. And what do you think he does? All disgruntled and right. So I've been reading about these ways we can foster mattering, and I realized, oh, wait a minute. You know, I am totally undervaluing and not noticing him. And so I switched how I interact with him. Instead of saying, shut off your tablet, I sat down with him once, and I said, Hey, what are you watching? Like? He put his headphone off, and he was like, Oh, this, this episode of the show. I was like, What do you like about it? Put his headphones around his neck, right? And we started talking, and very soon, like the tablet got shut off, coming alongside with somebody helping them feel seen, helping them feel understood, helping them feel like their experience, their existence, is valid, is so important to any of the transactional outcomes we want.

Marcel Schwantes 21:02

That's good, yeah, and thanks again for that other lesson for my 11 year old. Next time he's his, you know, he's his face is buried in his iPad. I know what to do.

Zach Mercurio 21:14

Seriously, just go sit, hey. Like, what do you like? Exploration, understanding, interest, the outcome is the same. You still, you know, you still may need to say, hey, it's time to tablet over, but the way you get there is you're building that relationship, and I think that translates really well into making sure people feel heard like when you ask questions, making them feel like they can share their voice and that you're actually interested, and that you you're it's safe to do so, because if I'm just punishing my kid all the time, then do you think he's going to speak up when he did something wrong? If you're a coach of a sports team and you're just punishing people for doing something wrong, do you think they're going to ever say to you, hey, hey, coach, I've been screwing up this type of pass in the soccer game. I need some help with it. No, but that's where learning comes in. That's where everybody gets better, when people feel heard, yeah, so

Marcel Schwantes 22:12

good. Okay, this is really interesting to me. You know, to help people feel noticed and to really see them requires empathy, and yet, you talked about psychologist Paul Bloom's work, and he wrote the book against empathy, and how even if you don't exercise your empathy the right way, people can still feel unseen and unheard. So we'll talk a little bit about that. Yeah, and

Zach Mercurio 22:44

by the way, I love perspectives on seemingly positive phenomenon, like I love reading the other perspective. And Paul's word is great. But what he's actually saying he's not against empathy. But what he's saying is that empathy is coming to understand what someone's going through a struggle. But compassion is compassion is offering an action that alleviates that struggle. Yeah, and what he, he advocates for is what's called a rational compassion for actually thinking about what is the action I can take that will most alleviate that person's struggle. So a lot of us feel empathy. A lot of us get overwhelmed with that empathy, and we don't know what to do. But he, he recommends a strategic approach, which, again, I love because it's skills based, is to think about, what does this person need right now that can best alleviate that struggle. 

So compassion is empathy in action. It doesn't have to be big though. You know, I was coaching a leader who had a meeting, and he did a check in, and this one woman said she was overloaded, and he immediately said, hey, you know that meeting we have on Friday, every Friday, why don't you take that off, get caught up. Everybody relaxed on the call. And I love that because it's, it's small, but it's actually fairly sophisticated. He knew right away that, hey, I can give her some time to get caught up by offering that right now, and he'd offer an action that would immediately alleviate that struggle. He did not say, oh, here we all are. Can't wait to get through this week. Or it's just that time in the quarter. It's just our industry. I see so many leaders normalizing despair instead of doing something about it, yeah, but compassion, so compassion is taking an action, however small, to alleviate struggle,

Marcel Schwantes 24:27

Yeah, yeah, proactive compassion, right? 

Zach Mercurio 24:31

Yeah, proactive compassion. But you can also see, like, right now, if you're a leader, you're, you know that there are times of the year, times of the quarter, times in a project where people struggle. So instead of just saying, oh, that's just how it is, think about the actions or resources you have that you could proactively alleviate that struggle, and just that conversation, like just doing that, having that conversation with leaders, having that conversation with a team, can make a massive difference. Again, and that's what helps turn this stuff from common sense to common practice.

Marcel Schwantes 25:05

So let me touch a little bit on the making people feel heard, part of noticing. And you talked about social rules or norms that we have to create, that we have to, you know, employ in our workplaces. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Zach Mercurio 25:23

Yeah, I mean psychological safety. And I know you've had Dr Edmondson on, yeah. Psychological safety, right? Is the belief that we can speak up, share our voice, without fear of being retaliated against, without fear of being seen as ignorant, or being ostracized from the group. The word voice there is really important, because someone's voice is not the words they say. Someone's voice is their inner experience. Sociologists call that voice our inner experience. So when Edmonton talks about that in psychological safety, someone's voice is heard, they're talking about what's beneath the surface. How can that be invited out? That true perspective be invited out? And one of the ways to do that is to have social norms that guide how we interact with one another, so that they feel like that voice can be invited out and can be spoken without fear. And you know, some social rules look like, you know, if you are in an organization in the US, especially, you've probably heard of OSHA, like the occupational safety rules. We have those posters. We put them up. Yeah, those posters work. I know it seems weird, but they work because of one reason. Researchers have studied them. 

They work because they raise what's called hazard consciousness. So if people see a poster, if I see a poster in your workplace, Marcel, I know that you are aware of the hazards here because you put that poster up. The same is true for psychological safety. If we have rules ways of engagement, I, as an employee, know that you and all of us are aware that there are some hazards here that cause people to feel unseen, unheard, unvalued, and that their voice is insignificant, and so having that list of social rules like no interrupting. You know, pause after someone speaks, pause before you after your response to make sure you fully understand them. You know, no looking over ideas, whatever it is for your organization, having that, like safe meeting checklist, yeah, those norms of interaction is very powerful, because then if you interrupt me in a meeting, it becomes less emotional. I don't have to be like, Oh, what's wrong with you? Marcel, I can say, hey, you know those norms we agreed upon, and actually they're right here in the chat, in the Zoom call. I was just noticing the interrupting one there. And normally if people have talked about they're like, Oh yeah, it's very powerful.

Marcel Schwantes 27:49

I had a client that had people that signed their offer letter. They would also sign a performance agreement that had the team agreement rules, and they had to sign that too.

Zach Mercurio 28:01

Yeah, that's great. And what those do is it's, again, it's objective signals in the environment. Then this is a place where we're going to interact in a certain way, and when we don't interact in a certain way, we'll hold each other accountable. And it's a virtuous cycle. So you create the psychologically safe space people feel like they can report or talk about violations, which produces more psychological safety, and it's a virtuous cycle.

Marcel Schwantes 28:25

Yeah, okay, I'm ready to transition. So we've been talking about noticing, and one of the three, the second one, is affirming. And you have the way that you, you dubbed it, is how to show people they're significant. What's a good starting point here? 

28:44

Well, a great starting point is we're recording this on Employee Appreciation Day.

Marcel Schwantes 28:46

That's right, March 7.

Zach Mercurio 28:49

March 7. And a lot of organizations have appreciation programs or recognition programs, and it's important to know that you can have an appreciation program, that you give them kudos, you have peer nominations on a platform, and all of that is great. But if that person goes into their workplace every day, goes into a meeting, and they feel that they are insignificant and that their strengths aren't valued by the people they interact with daily, it's going to create even more dissonance. I remember I had a one of the janitors told me Don't give me a free sandwich or certificate. Say, remember my name, and say thank you. And I think that that is so emblematic of the need for moving from just appreciation to affirmation. So affirmation showing people how their unique gifts make a unique difference. So two sides, we have to show people their uniqueness. 

We have to show them how their uniqueness makes a unique difference. It's different than appreciation or recognition. So appreciation is showing general gratitude for someone. Recognition is showing gratitude for what someone does. But. Affirmation is showing people the specific evidence of their unique significance. So an example of that is collecting and telling people stories, real stories, indisputable stories of how they matter, how their work and how they are significant. I One of my clients was the National Park Service, and I had a Facilities Management manager who had a great practice to do this. I thought it was really innovative. He works with facilities managers who are in very like inhospitable environments, who help make sure these national parks facilities are available for all of us, and high turnover, low morale. 

So he started a practice every Friday, he would go around during the week and take pictures of visitors, like walking across a bridge that was just repaired, or like using a bathroom that was closed so the line is less because there's now two bathrooms reopening that or a visitor center walkway that was redone. And he would send these pictures every Friday, and he would say, Look what you did. Look through these, look what you did. That was it. And what I love, that's affirmation. You're showing some of the indisputable evidence that they matter. And I think that that's what goes beyond just a leader saying, Hey, you matter. Don't forget that you matter. Affirmation is showing some of the indisputable evidence that they matter. So one practice is to collect and tell stories of people's significance of their work.

Marcel Schwantes 31:27

Yeah, and you have another great one. Gosh. I was hoping you would share this one, but you can get the Cliff Notes. Version is, is the plumbing story where you, you showed up to deliver the session to a group of plumbers, right? I mean that to me, is like the epitome of making significance happen for people that don't feel like they matter. Share a little bit about that. 

Zach Mercurio 31:49

Yeah, so, so another way to do it is, again, when you have it has to be real. So a lot of organizations struggle with this. A lot of organizations that want to be purposeful. They tell people, oh, we're changing the world. We have a big purpose, but people actually have to see it and feel their significance in the moment. So I worked with these plumbers after a 14-hour shift, it was the most difficult group I've ever worked with, I thought, because as I went on, as I went in front of the room, they turned these cold metal chairs away from me, they're I heard them complaining about being there as I was starting my

Marcel Schwantes 32:24

talk right? They even said, I'm gonna sneak out after I eat the sandwich. Someone said,

Zach Mercurio 32:28

Yeah. Someone said, I'm gonna sneak out, like, loudly. And so what I did is I had this prepared. I kind of knew this was gonna happen. And I, my kid, loves, loves this donut shop. And this donut shop is was in this new plaza that was developed in my the town I live in, in Fort Collins, Colorado. And you know, this group did the plumbing infrastructure for that project, that new plaza. So I just put a picture of my kids stuffing a face, stuffing his face with this donut, and his eyes closed. And it's pure joy. I found it on my phone, and I showed it to them. I go, What do you notice here? And that was it. And one guy in the back was like, Oh, your kid loves donuts. And there was some laughter. But there was a woman who actually was like that, that's the exchange, which is the name of the plaza. She said, Guys, we did that. And it was like, you could hear a pin drop, because I said, you see that joy on his face like that only exists because you did the plumbing infrastructure for that project. Yeah. They couldn't argue with me. They couldn't say, Oh, this is the fluffy stuff. This is the touchy feely stuff. It was right there. You can't argue with that. And I had a journeyman plumber come up to me, and it was actually an emotional moment, and he said, I've been doing this work for 30 years, and I've never thought about my job that way. I've never thought about the people that use the buildings I do the plumbing infrastructure for.

Marcel Schwantes 33:54

Yeah, that's good.

Zach Mercurio 33:55

So other ways that you can do that is anytime you say, Thank you, right, go beyond the thank you and tell people exactly how they made a difference for you and name, name the unique gifts they used. I really noticed your strengths here. I really noticed your wisdom, your perspective. I really saw this unique impact you make. Just go one step further and give more meaningful gratitude. That's another way to tell someone the story of their significance.

Marcel Schwantes 34:22

Love it, yeah, yeah, because we talk so much about gratitude, the 100 books have been written on gratitude, but do people still feel significant when, when you give gratitude, right? But doing it, doing it this way and just that illustration and the and the, the emotional response from the plumber after 30 years, just that, just, that's the icing on the kid. It's very

Zach Mercurio 34:46

it's that's very common. You know, if someone introduces yourself to you, if you're at a networking event, and if they say, Oh, well, you know, I'm just a I'm just an accountant, I'm just this, I'm just that, after this podcast, be attuned for that. That because that word just is a signal, and it's a signal that people have lost a sense of that significance. Yeah, and I hear that a lot. You know, when I ask people when they most felt like they mattered, one of the words that they typically use at the beginning of their answer is, well, I actually felt like I mattered when, and that word actually is really important because it means that this is this it doesn't happen often actually mattered. So these small moments, and you know, one of the things that we're particularly bad at is we tend to have an underestimation bias, where we underestimate how small acts of gratitude, small things we do, actually make a big difference. So you know, if you're listening right now, think of someone you're grateful for in your life, and now think about the last time you actually told them, and there's often a gratitude gap there.

Marcel Schwantes 35:55

Yeah. Oh, okay, boy, that's deep. So now I'm you got me thinking, Okay, let's transition to the last of the three. And we've already touched on it's needing. So we need to show people that they are needed. I love I mean, you mentioned earlier, when people feel replaceable. They act replaceable. That's classic to me. So maybe we can start with people that are still feeling it. This is just too touchy feely. I'm not into serving leadership, yada yada. Why is this so important for the workplace, for business?

Zach Mercurio 36:41

Everybody, every leader wants effort, right? Everybody wants effort. They want productivity. They want performance. People will not exert effort if they feel dispensable. I'll give you an A great example of this. In 1913 a French agricultural engineer named Max Ringelmann had students pull on a rope as hard as they could. Now the first time they did it, he had them pull on the rope individually as hard as you could, and he attached it to a dynamometer that measures force. And then he had groups pull on the rope as hard as they could. And what he did is he added up all of the force readings, did a sum of the force readings for the individuals and a sum of the force readings for the group. And if I were to ask you, who exerted the most total force the individuals or the groups, most people and most audiences tell me it is the groups. Obviously it wasn't. It was the individuals. The individuals had the most total force ratings. 

Why? Because they knew their effort was indispensable. They knew their effort was irreplaceable. They were the only one pulling the rope, so no one was going to do it for them. And this is why, when you make someone feel dispensable, they will act dispensable. They won't show up, they won't commit they'll go somewhere else for an extra 25 cents on the hour in a heartbeat. But when you make sure someone knows how they and their efforts are indispensable, and you show them measurably every day, we couldn't do this without you, and you mean it, people show up, they commit they act irreplaceable. It's a basic psychological law. If I were to ask you to come to my dinner party tomorrow night, and you were just being nice, and you said, Yeah, I'll go. And then you get up tomorrow morning, and you don't want to go very easy for you to get out of that plan, right? But if I told you, hey, Marcel, I need you to come to my dinner party tomorrow night. I need you to bring that dessert. 

You make you wake up tomorrow morning. You don't feel like going, but then you think, oh, shoot, Zach needs me to bring dessert. How hard is it to get out of that plan? Very hard, right? This is not about psychologically manipulating people to attend your dinner parties, but it is about the power of when we feel that we're needed, we show up, we commit. Yeah. So if you, if you think this is about, this is about as touchy feely as feeding someone who's hungry for lunch. I mean, we go, let's go back to the beginning. This is a basic need. This is you, if you're a leader right now, and you think this is touchy feely, your survival also depended on mattering to someone,

Marcel Schwantes 39:20

Right, yep, yep, all right. So bring this down to the practical. You know, for those, those of us that are start starting our journey into helping people feel needed, what are some ways to do it? 

Zach Mercurio 39:38

Yeah, I mean, I would just start with five words. And there's these five words that came out of our interviews. When we asked people what the people around them did to help them feel that they matter, almost everybody said some version of they said, if it wasn't for you. So that's it, if it wasn't for you. I mean, think of someone on your team that you rely on, but you've never told them you. Yeah, you know, most of times we assume that people know that we rely on them, but many people underestimate their own impact. So when we don't tell them if it wasn't for you and say why we rely on them, they won't know that. 

So use those words if you have an employee group that you're listening and you think is the unsung heroes, tell them if it wasn't for you, better yet, if you can show them measurably how they're indispensable. I worked with a the CEO of a marketing agency, and she had this junior employee who was helping with some social media campaigns for some clients struggling with confidence. You know, always came to her asking for like, validation and support. And she did something really remarkable. She actually pulled the engagement data from campaigns that he was involved in against campaigns he wasn't involved in on the team, and showed him because he knew she knew he was a high performer, a really good talent. And she said, Look, when you're involved, this is the difference. And she said, after,

Zach Mercurio 41:12

Right, because he measurably saw how he was needed.

Marcel Schwantes 41:17

Okay, this one is for the metrics data geeks listening. How do we measure this, this thing called mattering?

Zach Mercurio 41:26

Well, there are a number of ways. I mean, there's a general mattering scale. I don't know if you have show notes, but we can offer that there's, yeah, there's a scale that's been validated. It's five questions. It asks people to rate how much they feel that they matter to those around them. You can also take all of these practices under the noticing, affirming and needing practices, and do a self assessment, you know, and it's a frequency of behavior. It's not how good of a leader you are, it's how frequently you check in on people's personal details. You know, one to five, how frequently do you give meaningful gratitude. One is not very often, five is always. And what's remarkable is once we do this and actually give ourselves an objective number, again, it comes out of common sense into common practice. For example, no one gives themselves a five on anything. So this gives you an opportunity to say to yourself, Okay, what do I need to do more of? And where do I start? And you can also measure your teams on this as well. And then the best part is when those team assessments and the leader assessments come together, and teams and leaders actually talk about this, you know, what can we get better? How can we get better at this? Because what an organization talks about, they typically become,

Marcel Schwantes 42:40

I'm looking at the book right now, yeah, I mean, and it's right, it's, it's right, there you got the mattering blueprint, yep, evaluating your own mattering behaviors, assessing general experiences of mattering. There's your mattering audit, folks. It's, I mean, this

Zach Mercurio 42:58

is, yeah, so chat, chapter eight of that book. If you don't want to read anything else in that book, and you're one of those leaders, that's like, I listen to the podcast. I got it, go to chapter eight, because chapter is how to scale it. Yeah. And there's a great example of a full scale transformation there, and a dispersed team globally that was quite remarkable, who took this on and took it seriously, and that, I think people will be really interested in, and it's all right there, you can just use it, use that, just use it, use that, use the tools. Make them your own. But the key is, is, again, the key of that chapter is to make this scalable, to take it out of intuition and make it measurable. Make sure that the environment makes it possible and talk about it. Add it into your everyday narrative.

Marcel Schwantes 43:52

Funny that you said, make sure the environment makes it possible, because that could be the actual stumbling block. Absolutely, you inherited a culture that doesn't value significance. 

Zach Mercurio 44:03

So, yeah, that's a really important one, because environment either makes behavior possible or determines it will occur. So like, for example, if I move into my neighborhood and there's a swimming pool, it makes it possible that I will swim. If I have to pass a swimming test to live in that neighborhood, it determines that I will swim right? Some environments don't even make it possible to care distribution centers who manage people's everyday moment and they want their leaders to care and improve engagement. The environment's not making it possible to do that. Or your environment. You give people trainings on psychological safety, but they're not measured on it how psychologically safe people feel the environment doesn't determine that it will occur a lot of times, I think what's happening is we have the concepts right. We're going to all the trainings, we're listening to the right TED talks, we're reading the right books. But our environments aren't determining that the behavior will occur as it determines the quality of everything else in our organizations. I want to get people to. Level of rigor.

Marcel Schwantes 45:02

Yeah, that's good. All right. As we wind down here, Zach, anything we missed that we should cover, that our listeners must absolutely know.

Zach Mercurio 45:15

I think that this can be overwhelming, and one of the things I don't want this to do, I never wanted this book to ever produce any feelings of guilt, because guilt as a when I've been researching this as a parent, I started to feel guilty. And guilt is a guilt is a barrier to action, because when you start feeling guilty, you start feeling defensive. Well, I don't need to do this. This isn't me. This isn't me. This isn't my organization. This isn't my This isn't my leadership style. This isn't how I was raised. This isn't how we do it in my industry. All of those are usually excuses to not do the hard work, and so remove the guilt and try it. It's a practice. It may feel forced at first, but that's how you get better at it, and so don't feel guilty. Think of it as an ongoing practice and ongoing aspiration. You know, I teach and research the things I need to hear most. So if you think I'm just this, like perfect mattering guy, I'm not out there screaming, if it wasn't for you. To everybody who walks by me, right? I have to deliberately think about it, practice it. I have to know when I want do overs if I screwed up. So I really encourage everybody listening to take it, take it to heart like that. Instead of this is some out of touch theory in a book, it's not it's something that we have to practice and do and it's messy. Yeah,

Marcel Schwantes 46:45

yep, okay, we've arrived at our speed. Round you ready? Strap on the seat belt. Ready? I'm ready. Okay, here we go. Best book you've ever read,

Zach Mercurio 46:57

Ah, man, search for meeting by Viktor Frankl that's

Marcel Schwantes 47:02

just about every it's funny. The last two guests also cited that as their best book, okay, greatest lesson you've ever learned in life.

Zach Mercurio 47:13

It was by another custodian in our study who I asked her what her favorite part of her job was, and she said it's the part she hates the most, which is cleaning the university bathrooms. And she said that I 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 and I loved that she had this so that mentality, so linking what you're doing to its inevitable impact, so that it's probably one of the best ideas I've ever

Marcel Schwantes 47:37

learned. Well, I love it. I love it, all right. Somebody that inspires you right now,

Zach Mercurio 47:43

I'm gonna have to go with my seven year old. He has a facial difference. He's actually has a genetic condition that makes his eyes much smaller. He doesn't have eyelid muscles that help him open his eyes. And so he has a difference. And a lot of people look at him. A lot of people stare at him. A lot of people give comments to him, but the courage and the way in which he approaches those conversations, like with other people with empathy, is incredibly inspiring.

Marcel Schwantes 48:07

Okay, keeping this one PG, PG or PG 13, something that nobody knows about you.

Zach Mercurio 48:16

Um, I'm really into nobody knows about me. Oh, gosh, this is hard. You know, I'm really, well, I'll go a little bit deeper. I was going to give a hobby, but I'm really into, like, dystopian sci fi books and horror movies. Are you totally? Yeah, nobody knows that but, but the reason is, I just love the, I mean, I love the escapism of it. You know, it's again, I talked to you about the importance of looking at the underbelly of positive phenomena, yeah. And I think that's so important, like not to just take things at face value, but look at the full spectrum of human experience. And so I watch a lot of I watch a lot of that type of stuff. Well,

Marcel Schwantes 48:59

that's interesting. I am hooked right now by a series on Apple TV called severance. Oh,

Zach Mercurio 49:04

everybody, I get messages all the time. Zach, given your work, you need to watch this. I have to watch it. Oh,

Marcel Schwantes 49:11

man, that's good. All right. Name a person dead or alive you'd like to have dinner with? Hmm? I would

Zach Mercurio 49:23

actually like to have dinner with my grandfather, oh, who had passed away when I was very young. Okay, so I didn't really know him on my dad's side, but I know of him, and I never got to really talk with him, so I think that's he's one of those relatives that I haven't gotten to talk to. So I think I'd really love to talk with him.

Marcel Schwantes 49:40

Yeah, interesting. I never met my Grandpa, grandpa on my mom's side. So, yeah, okay, your biggest hope for 2025,

Zach Mercurio 49:50

my biggest hope is that we will go beyond thinking about things like there's a loneliness epidemic, there's a disengagement crisis. We have a technology. Geodiction, which, although those things are very popular to talk about right now, but go beyond that to then thinking about thinking about how the solution to those things is available in our next interaction. That really, really, this is a mattering deficit. I'm convinced of that, and which is good news, because it means we can do something about it. It's not theoretical, it's interactional,

Marcel Schwantes 50:28

yeah. Well, congrats. You have survived the speed round.

Zach Mercurio 50:34

Good. I'm glad.

Marcel Schwantes 50:36

Okay, we bring it home, as we do with every guest, with two traditional theme questions. Here's the first one. It's the love question. So sticking with any topic we talked about, about mattering and significance, how do I lead with more actionable, practical love, day in and day out?

Zach Mercurio 50:56

Biggest advice I would give is to what I call schedule your good intentions. You already know the right thing to do. Right? You already know that you should check in with somebody. Write that thank you note. Give somebody some affirmation. The next step is turning that into a deliberate practice. I am the kindest person in the world. When I'm out walking my dog, I think of all the people I should thank, all the letters I should write, all the people I'm grateful for. But then I go back to my desk and I have this big to do list, and I get right into that. It's amazing how often we put off kindness for answering another email. Schedule your good intentions. If you have the intention. Put it on your to do list, put it on your calendar and do it. Try it.

Marcel Schwantes 51:47

Yeah, this. This so aligns with the whole theme of love and action, folks. I mean, if, if you don't put deliberate or have deliberate, intentional action behind what you're learning, this whole thing means literally squat, you know, love and action. That's the word. Action is in there for a reason. So, very good, very good, okay, uh, bring us home. What's that one thing you want people to take away from your book,

Zach Mercurio 52:13

that your next great leadership act is your next interaction.

Marcel Schwantes 52:21

Yes, I love so

Zach Mercurio 52:23

how you show up in that next interaction is how you start changing a culture, and how you maintain a culture

Marcel Schwantes 52:32

that could be your next, your very next interaction after listening to this show, absolutely,

Zach Mercurio 52:37

whether you're disagreeing with somebody, whether you're having to get something, someone to do something, whether you are thanking somebody. How do you make sure that that person feels noticed, affirmed and needed in that interaction?

Marcel Schwantes 52:49

Yeah, yeah, okay. The book, again, is called the power of mattering, how leaders can create a culture of significance. I'm holding the advanced readers copy yours will not look like this. Zach, if people want to connect with you, learn more about you, what you do and how to how to find your services. Where can they go? 

Zach Mercurio 53:13

Yeah, you go to zachmercurio.com M, E, R, C, U, R, I, O, and I'm also on LinkedIn. I have a really interesting LinkedIn community of people who agree with me, disagree with me, but all in service of, how do we re skill leaders to care? And it's really just insightful discussion. So check that out.

Marcel Schwantes 53:35

Yep, I follow you on LinkedIn. I haven't had a reason to disagree with you yet. 

Zach Mercurio 53:40

So, oh, oh, if you do, let me know. I mean, I do. I have some of the, some people who will say, Oh, well, you know, this is all touchy feely stuff. And I'll say, oh, like, give me your so give me your counter post. What is your counter post to this? You know? Yeah, it's exciting, yeah,

Marcel Schwantes 53:54

yeah. Well, for every one of those you get, I get, probably get about 20 of those, because I got the fuzzy word in there called Love, that frames most of the work I do. So, yeah, I hear you.

Zach Mercurio 54:06

I mean, love is the engine of all of this.

Marcel Schwantes 54:11

Yeah? Zach, it's been real. It's been fun, man. We got to do it again. Thank you. So now this is great, yeah, this is great. Good, good. Yeah. All right, guys, you can keep the conversation going on social media with hashtag love and action podcast. And look for my show notes. Go to my website. Pull that up. I'm gonna have the YouTube link for you to watch this very episode. You can go to my website. Marcel schwantes.com, for Zach Mercurio, I'm Marcel. Remember in the end, love wins. We'll see you next time.