260: How to make work meaningful with Zach Mercurio

Transcript

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Aoife O’Brien: [00:00:00] Have you ever given much thought to what’s actually wrong with work and what needs to be fixed? We’ve seen with the latest Gallup report that engagement is at its lowest for over a decade. So it’s some scary numbers there. It’s really shocking stuff, and maybe in some ways it’s shocking. In other ways it’s not.

Well, my guest. today has the answer to that. You are listening to The Happier At Work Podcast, which is the award-winning podcast for people first, leaders in client placing roles. I’m your host, Iffa O’Brien. My guest today is Zach Mercurio, and he’s talking all about the power of mattering. Zach was my guest previously.

We had. Such an insightful conversation. I will put a link to that episode below. Definitely go and check it out. The episodes really compliment each other and we talk about how to fix below the surface what’s actually going on, and it’s all about mattering. Feeling like you matter. I really hope you enjoy today’s episode.

I know you are gonna get [00:01:00] so many takeaways from it. I would love to know what’s one thing that you’re gonna do differently, and if you’re so inclined, I would love to see a rating or a review on your favorite platform because it really helps people to find out about the podcast. Zach, welcome back to The Happier At Work Podcast.

I’m so delighted to have you back to build on the conversation that we had. We talked. Almost two years ago, maybe about a year and a half ago. But I loved the conversation so much and I took so many things away from it. So maybe for listeners who haven’t heard that original episode, a little bit about your background, but I’d also love to know what’s changed in that time since we last spoke.

Zach Mercurio: Yeah, a couple things. I mean, I spend about 30% of my time in a place called the Center for Meaning and Purpose, where I study the experience of meaningfulness and mattering in life and in work. And when we talked three years ago, I was in the middle of this project, this research project, helping to answer the question, you know, when people feel that they matter to other [00:02:00] people, what are they doing?

And helping to codify and name the behaviors and the skills that people use. To create those experiences of feeling significant. , And so I’ve been on that journey and as we’ve been on that journey for the last few years, the data has only made it clear that it’s more important than ever. You know, one of the things that happened in early 2025 is Gallup released their latest employee engagement data.

Yeah. And engagement, and the numbers are not good, and engagement was at its lowest rate. In a decade. . Now this is despite the fact that there has been over $1 billion collectively invested in improving employee engagement over that same time period. Yeah. There’s over a hundred validated assessments that people can use to measure engagement.

We’ve. Invested in wellbeing programs, DEI initiatives, , there’s more access to personal development than ever yet disengagement remains. So what’s going on? [00:03:00] And there was a data point that stood out early this year that really affirmed everything that we’ve been seeing. And the data point was that just 39% of people felt that they had someone at work who cared for them as a person.

. Just 30% said someone at work where they spent a third of their life invested in their unique potential. , After we talked in 2024, Workhuman did a study and found that 30% of workers feel invisible in work. Loneliness has remained unchanged. So for example, , after we talked, there was a study done that found that eight outta 10 workers experienced loneliness.

And in 2023, Vivek Murthy, who was the US Surgeon General at the time named Loneliness. A loneliness epidemic. Yes. And so what’s happened is we spent more time in meetings, we’re more connected than ever. Once loneliness was named an epidemic, slack usage increased almost three folds. We have more platforms than ever.

The average US adult [00:04:00] sends 30 to 40 text-based messages a day to colleagues. Wow. So we’re more connected than ever, but we’re still lonely. And why is that? Well, when you look at the data on what predicts loneliness, it’s not the quantity of interaction, it’s the quality of interaction.

. So what makes a quality interaction?

Researchers call it companionate love experiencing the behaviors of attention, of care, of compassion. In other words, feeling that you’re significant. So what’s been actually happening is we’re not facing a disengagement crisis. We’re not facing a loneliness epidemic. The data, since we talked last, makes it very clear we’re facing a mattering deficit.

. People feel insignificant in the interactions they have every day. People are engaging in low quality. Interactions on a daily basis, and this cannot be solved with programs, platforms, perks, pay increases. It could only be solved in interactions. And so that’s the journey that we’ve been on. Moving to really nail down what are the characteristics and the [00:05:00] skills necessary to create interactions.

In which people feel significant to each other on a daily basis.

Aoife O’Brien: From our last conversation, like one of the things that we talked about was the leading and lagging indicators and all of those things that you were talking about, like the engagement crisis. The number I know, , globally is like 21% in Ireland, by the way.

It’s 9%. , You know, wow, it’s so, so low. That is what we talked about is the fact that those are the things that you look at after the fact. And it’s before the fact. It’s what drives these things are, you know, is what really is important. What do you think are the things that get in the way from us implementing this?

Zach Mercurio: So I think there are three things that get in the way. And a lot of this has come out since we talked as well as we were researching this. ’cause we have a whole section on why there’s this mattering deficit and one of the reasons is, [00:06:00] is that. Over the last 25 years, we’ve been able to use digital devices and technology to communicate with each other in short transactions, and we don’t even know what’s happening to us when we do that.

So for example, if you give me some bad news, I can now go on a Slack platform or open up my messages on my phone and just send you a sad faced emoji and say, I’m sorry to hear that. I’m thinking about you. I actually don’t have to sit with you anymore. In the discomfort, seek understanding, practice empathy, which is a learned skill, and then show compassion, which is a learned skill.

And so one of the things that’s happening is we’re not getting the social situation repetitions. Just like physical reps and physical exercise. We’re not getting the social repetitions. That we used to get to develop the skills to see, hear, value, and show others how they’re needed. I mean, I experienced an example of this personally.

I was leaving my, house. I was going to a [00:07:00] meeting. I was in my car. My grandfather had just had a stroke. He was in the hospital. My, I knew my mom was going to the hospital to, to see him, and I, I was backing up and I stopped and I just picked up my phone and I sent a quick text that said, Hey, I hope everything goes well today.

And I put it down and I felt as if I had done my duty right? Because now with digital technology, I can put that phone down and I can just go to my meeting. I don’t have to think about the person who needs me anymore. And I real, I had a realization. I was like, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. What’s going on? And so I stopped and I, I made the phone call and I had that difficult conversation, but it just made me realize how easy it is for to, for us to get outta the situations that actually build the skillset Yeah.

That we need to see, hear, value, and need others. So our increased use of technology has made us worse. At these skills. The second thing going on is in the 1960s, a military psychologist in the United States called the skills to care for one another as soft. So we are in a half century of calling these things [00:08:00] soft skills, but psychologically when we see something as soft or simple.

We are susceptible to an overconfidence bias. Ah, yes, of course. I was just, that’s exactly what I was thinking right now. I’m like, soft skills. Well, I can do so we think we’re better at it. We think we’re better at it than we are. Yeah. It’s why if someone had a training on how to listen well and then someone had a meeting about the budget and they needed to cancel one of those meetings, everybody would cancel the meeting on how to listen.

Well. Right. Because when we see something as simple or soft, we approach it with less rigor. And one of the things I think is happening is we have a collective overconfidence bias when it comes to our skills to care for people. And I see this with leaders all of the time. I would never have to convince a leader that they needed a quality control process for their products, but I have to go in and convince a leader that they need to make sure their people feel seen, heard, valued, and needed, and have a process for teaching the skills to do so.

Why is that? Why do we need to write articles that says, here’s the ROI of empathy, here’s the ROI of caring, I mean, what’s the ROI of hugging your mom? Right. [00:09:00] So the problem is, is we’ve seen these things as soft and simple. We haven’t approached them with as much rigor. So what’s happened is we’ve left them up to chance.

We’ll just hire good people. We’ll trust that they do the right things. We’ll send people to a psychological safety training and trust, they’ll do it. But we haven’t created systems. That rigorously scale the skills to care and promote leaders based on their ability to make sure people feel valued and know how they add value while performing well.

And then the final piece, the final barrier, the third barrier is that we’re all in a hurry and hurry and care cannot coexist. And there is a recent McKinsey study that found that for people, managers, just 23% of their time. Spent with their people, the rest of their time is spent on administrative tasks, strategy tasks or individual contributor tasks, things that the organization asked them to do.

And one of the things that’s happened is, is that we’ve have more things competing for our [00:10:00] attention and our time than ever because of these technological platforms. Because of all the notifications, because of all the pressures which has taken us away from the person who’s in front of us.

Aoife O’Brien: I think that’s so powerful.

Everything that you’ve said there. And I delivered a webinar on digital wellbeing the other day. But what you are saying, we, we kind of talked more about the. When you have a phone with you, it impacts on your ability to build a relationship. But beyond that, what you’ve shared is just those quick interactions can be not, damaging is probably the wrong word, but we think, like you say, I’ve done my job, now I’ve checked in.

But actually, it doesn’t build that relationship. It’s the phone call. It’s the spending time being with people in those hard times. That’s what really matters.

Zach Mercurio: Yeah. And what we also haven’t been talking about as much is what’s happened to our social learning. Yeah. [00:11:00] As a result of using our phones. So we often say, you know, that’s why the solution to reconnecting is not putting your phone down.

The solution to reconnecting is what you do and know how to do when you put your phone down. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, because we forgot. So just, just, just putting your phone down is not gonna heal our disconnection crisis. What we do when we put our phones down will. And, and that’s, that’s what I’m concerned about is that there’s a lot of advice.

There’s books written about how we need to digital detox, put our phones down. But what we’re not doing is who’s picking up the slack to make sure we’re redeveloping the skills we need to show the person across from us that we see them hear them, and value them when we put our phones down, which is actually gonna make the difference.

Aoife O’Brien: How do we do that?

Zach Mercurio: Well, one, first of all, I mean, I’ll go back in education. Our educational systems worldwide need to be prioritizing social skills, skill building at every grade level. We need to be putting children in situations where they’re getting social reps. For example, [00:12:00] I was just out for breakfast and my kid, my 10-year-old was like, dad, I need, I need to go to the restroom.

And I said, oh, you know, go. It’s right in there. And he’s like, well, where is it? I’m like, I don’t know. You’re gonna have to ask them where it is. And he was like, what? I go, yeah, you’re gonna have to go and ask them. I don’t know where it is. So I made him go and ask that per the person where the bathroom was.

And I mean, this is a silly example, but those are the types of things that research finds that we need to start doing, especially for children and adolescents. To rebuild the social skills. Yeah. To actually inquire and engage with someone else. Yeah. But that’s not happening in a lot of educational systems.

I mean, less than 2% of the world’s population gets any formal education on how to listen well, for example. There’s no, we have yet no formal education in most school systems across the globe on how to be a human with one another. We learn what to do as a human, what to acquire and achieve, how to perform, how to produce.

So if you’re an organization though, [00:13:00] these people are coming into your organization. So if you don’t pick up the slack and create an ecosystem in which these skills are identified, they’re taught, they’re developed, they’re evaluated from a competency standpoint for your leaders and for yourself, then we will perpetually be in a disengagement, loneliness, and wellbeing crisis.

Because again. There is no, there’s no perk. There’s no platform, there’s no program, there’s no pay increase that can make up for the daily experience of feeling insignificant when it comes to wellbeing, when it comes to happiness.

Aoife O’Brien: Yeah. I think like what’s coming up for me when you’re saying about those social interactions is if you think about, like, I’m thinking fast food restaurants.

You go into McDonald’s, you go into Burger King, you don’t need to interact with a person anymore. You can just press a screen. Ooh. Yeah. Like they’re taking all of that human interaction away and that, that’s probably eroding that sense of how do I actually ask for what I want beyond just pressing a button on a screen [00:14:00] or asking my dad to do it for me, you know?

Zach Mercurio: Yes. And let, let’s think about this and work. I mean, let’s use the fast food example. At work, we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re turning work into a, a fast food enterprise. And what I mean by that is that now you can go on Slack and just send a quick message, and I love these platforms. I think they’re really helpful.

But we have platforms that allow us to give peer recognition by giving peer kudos, by giving like little thumbs up emojis or little messages, right? So now you can just go into your platform and say, oh, I’m gonna give somebody some positive praise. Press the button. And you don’t have to talk to them.

Yeah. But there’s nothing that can replace, there’s no emoji, there’s no thumbs up that can replace me saying, Hey, I’m really proud of you. I’ve been noticing for five years you’ve worked really hard on that. Yeah. I’ve noticed that you’ve persevered. I’ve noticed that you have the G, these gifts, this creative gift, and I’ve seen that in you and just let, I want you to know that I’m here for you.

Yeah. That’s a skill. That’s what creates mattering. And mattering is what creates [00:15:00] meaningfulness. And meaningfulness, as we know, is central to happiness.

Aoife O’Brien: You nearly brought a tear to my eye there, Zach, because what I was thinking is, and relating this back, not because I, you know, I’m not working in a big organization anymore.

I, I’m not on Slack on a regular basis. What I’m thinking is somewhere like LinkedIn and I’ll post something, maybe a success to do with the podcast, for example, and awards that I’ve been nominated for or an award that I’ve won, and I get the heart emojis and I get comments saying, well done. And I kind of still feel a bit empty.

I’m like, oh yeah, that didn’t do quite what I wanted it to do. And I’ll get one message, just one message from someone, and it’s still through a screen. And it’s not necessarily a phone call, but it’s a message to say exactly like you said, I, I’ve been following your journey. I’ve seen what you’ve been doing, and here’s some changes I’ve made because of you, because of the skills that you’ve brought.

And that’s really what makes a [00:16:00] difference.

Zach Mercurio: Because that’s being seen. Yeah. Someone sees you, you know, there’s nothing more powerful as a human than feeling seen by somebody. But there’s no shortcut. There’s no way to get around it. You can’t fake seeing somebody. You can’t. You can’t send an emoji to get out of seeing somebody.

You have to do the work. Yeah, slow down. Take the time to send that message. And you know what’s really remarkable about the people who do that is that they do it. I mean, they take the time. Yes. They think about the message. It takes intention. And for me, that’s what means more to me. You know, I’ve gotten a cup, you know, when you do work like we do where we put thought out into the world and put ideas out into the world, and hopefully it’s helping somebody, people, I think would be shocked to know how little.

Substantial feedback. You get back.

Aoife O’Brien: I was about to say exactly the same thing.

Zach Mercurio: And I remember, you know, one of the, I think one of the things we talked about beforehand was when I felt that I mattered, you know, how I feel that I matter in my work. And you know, a lot of the times I don’t get [00:17:00] that, that validation, but I hold on to the stories I do get.

And I think about them often, and I, I’ll give an example of, of what this looks like. Last year I was on the road a lot. I was in the midst of four workshops in a row and I was traveling every week and it was my last one and I was really tired and I was in the middle of West Virginia. I was doing some, uh, training for, um, a government agency there on mattering.

And I went in. I gave all my energy, but the audience was really flat. It didn’t seem like people were paying attention much. And I left and I was like, oh man, you know, what am I doing? What am I doing with my life? Yes. No one’s listening to me, no one’s taking this. You know? And I went home and, you know, I was, that sort of persisted for like a month and then a month later I get this email and it was a very long email and it just said your, the subject line was your session last month.

And this woman said that she wasn’t gonna go to her the session that morning [00:18:00] because her husband had just passed away from a long battle with cancer. Ah. And her husband had been a teacher at a high school his whole life, and they had a younger son as well. And she said, I went to your session and there’s two things that happened.

One, your session on mattering gave me language to identify what the legacy of. My husband was, he made everybody around him feel that he mattered. And I never had that language that he saw people, he heard people, he took the time for people. And that allowed me to share with my son, who’s now five years old, what his legacy was and will allow me to share that with him.

And then she wrote, and it reminded me that while I’m grieving, I matter. Right now, I have to be there for somebody like I do matter. I. Can say something to somebody today that can dramatically shape their life, and I just wanted to thank you for that session. And that I hold onto that email. Right.

Because that’s what mattering is, like [00:19:00] being, seeing that our presence makes a difference. And she had to take the time to write that. Yes. And send that to me. Yeah. But, but it takes time, right? To show people the evidence of their significance. That they’re seen, that they’re heard, that they’re valued.

Aoife O’Brien: But I think, and, and maybe it’s a social media thing, but people assume, so I see your stuff on on LinkedIn and I think it’s amazing and there’s so much interaction and so I would have this assumption that, wow, you must get this feedback all the time. And now you’re saying to me, actually, I don’t, because that’s all, that’s all the superficial stuff.

And you just, this is an important, make these assumptions.

Zach Mercurio: This is an important lesson as well. I think for people listening and leaders listening, one of the other barriers is we tend to underestimate our impact. On other people. Yeah. There was a psychologist, his name was Nick Epley. He did studies where he asked people to write small notes of gratitude to, people in their lives that they were thankful for, and he had the senders of the note rate how impactful they thought those notes would be.

On the emotions of the the other person. And then he [00:20:00] had the receiver rate and report back what impact it had on them. And this study’s been replicated almost every time the sender underestimated the impact. They second guessed whether it would be. Useful to reach out. This has been replicated with just reaching out and doing a basic check-in.

Al always means more to the person than we think it will mean. It’s called our underestimation bias. And Nick Epley has a line that I love. He says, when in doubt, reach out. I. But it’s, I love that. So easy to remember feeling, you know? Yeah. But our like, what happens is our feelings of gratitude for one another often outweigh our actions of gratitude.

So, for example, everybody listening, like, think of someone in your life who you’re grateful for, on your team, that you’re grateful for. Now, think about the last time you explicitly told them why you’re grateful for them. Oftentimes, there’s a gap. You can do this with thinking. Think about someone on your team or in your life that you rely on.

When’s the last time you explicitly told them oftentimes [00:21:00] this is this barrier. We’ll see this gap between our feelings that people matter to us. Yeah. And our actions of showing them how they matter to us.

Aoife O’Brien: Yeah, and why, why is that? Is that the underestimation thing? Is it maybe fear of vulnerability? Like what’s preventing us from doing that?

Zach Mercurio: There’s a classic bias in psychology. It’s called the attribution error. We tend to attribute. People’s behavior to themselves. So like for example, if someone comes into a meeting and they’re quiet, we’ll say, oh, well that person’s just an introvert. Or they’re, they’re quieter. It’s attribution error.

Instead of saying, I may be creating an environment that is disabling this person from speaking up. Wow. Yeah. So we attended at Tribute things to the other person versus at Tribute our own impact on that person. Yeah. And so it’s a natural bias that we have because it gets us out of uncomfortable situations and your brain is desperately trying to stay [00:22:00] comfortable.

Yeah. It’s not myself, but this attribution errors always happens. Right. So, and we underestimate that impact. It’s why when I got that email. From her, that woman, I was shocked. I was like, oh my gosh, this really did matter. It’s why when I, when I ask people, when they most felt that they mattered and they share stories, they’ll use this word all the time, they’ll say, well, I actually felt significant in that moment.

Or I actually felt. If a surprise I would do it was important as if it’s a surprise. Right. So again, we underestimate our impact. Wow. Pretty severely. Yeah. Wow. Going back to this idea you talked about, like we’re all in a hurry all the time. Is that linked to this idea of busyness? And I’m just kind of connecting the dots here, but this idea of business as a badge of honor and.

Busyness as a way of mattering, you might say. And so we’re pursuing busyness as a way to feel significant, but actually that’s driving greater disconnection. The, the only way to cultivate [00:23:00] mattering is through interpersonal interactions. because mattering is the experience of being significant to other people.

Yeah. So when we’re trying to pursue status or ego driven goals, that’s when we’re trying to pursue productivity performance at all costs, or we’re actually in a system that makes us, fear, makes us afraid to not produce because our jobs will be cut or we’ll feel like we’re useless or we’ll feel that we don’t have status in psychology.

It’s called status anxiety. You know, we’re constantly in this anxiety state of anxiety to achieve status. I mean, that’s a result of our systems, what they reward us for. That’s the importance of ex of systems that reward us to care for one another instead of just perform and produce that are important for people.

But I think that what’s really happening is that we simply have the ability now. To do more at once. I mean, think about it like 30 [00:24:00] years ago, if you were in a meeting with somebody, it would be impossible for you to be also sending an email. But now someone can notify us of something going on right where we are while we’re in front of somebody.

Mm. And all of those notifications, all of that almost unlimited accessibility that people have to us. Adds more burden and adds more to our, to our plate and our attention is being fracked as well. Gloria Mark is a psychologist. She studies attention. Yeah. And what she found is that, do you know her? Do you know of her?

Aoife O’Brien: Yeah. Her work is No know her work. Yes. Yeah.

Zach Mercurio: Yeah. What she found is that our ability to pay attention to a single activity, and 10 years ago was around, two and a half minutes, and now it’s about 47 seconds. And it’s because of the information overload that we have, all of the notifications and things pulling our attention away.

So one of the things we have to do. Is we have to relearn the skill to pay [00:25:00] attention. To sit, pay attention to the person across from us. Yeah. To truly work, to hear what they’re saying, to remember the details of what they’re talking about and checking in. And all of those things are skills.

They’re learnable skills.

Aoife O’Brien: Yeah. The beauty about this is that it’s a skill. It might be something that we’ve forgotten. And when you talk about attention, what, again, I’m thinking back to social media and our smart devices thinking. They are designed to take our attention, and that’s the whole purpose of them.

You know? And that’s what’s driven this sense of disconnection and feeling like we don’t matter. But the beauty is, and going back to what we were saying earlier, it’s not just about putting the phones down. It’s about knowing. How do we build up that sense of mattering with the other person? How do we build those skills?

So can we talk about some of the skills associated with that?

Zach Mercurio: Yeah, and I think this is actually a great point for everybody listening right now. Even if you don’t remember anything, but you remember this, that when you put down your phone and you get in front of [00:26:00] somebody, you are, you’re still dealing with the effects of being on your phone earlier.

So the effects is that our at our ability to pay attention has literally decreased because we’re not paying attention most of the time. So one of the things that, one of the things that we know that you can do to pay better attention is a practice called noting. Noting is simply writing down what you want to remember about another person as you’re talking with them.

And it’s a practice that’s. You know, gone by the wayside if you’re in meetings a lot with people. But it’s a, it’s one of the best practices to pay attention. And you can even say to somebody, Hey, wait a minute. I just wanna make sure I remember that. Even that, even that act of saying, wait, I just wanna remember that what you said can make someone come alive.

One of the things that we found, for example, I worked with an ER nurse. Very fast paced environment. They are going from one case to the, to the next [00:27:00] high pressure. She had a little memo pad and she would write down all of the positive patient stories that happened the shift before, and each, each of her nurses that worked on them.

And then when they started their huddle, she would say, Hey, I just wanna point out, I know this is gonna be a hard shift, but there was three positive cases I wanna highlight and I wanna highlight who worked on them. I wrote this, I wrote them down, and she, I would observe her, she would like leaf through, and she goes, let me, let me, let me show you what you did.

The, the nurses would be zoned in on her. Like, just, just craving to be remembered. Right. So noting what you hear, asking deeper questions when you’re in those interactions. Like instead of how are you doing? How was your day? Um, or if you’re a leader and you’re having a meeting, instead of saying, how’s everybody doing?

Good. Imagine if you weren’t good, be like, not me. Yeah. Um, instead, you’re not gonna speak up in that situation. Ask questions that give you the data to pay attention. So what has your attention today? Hey, what’s everybody thinking? But no one’s [00:28:00] saying. Uh, what are some things that you’re struggling with, today?

How can I help? One of the leaders that I observed would just go around to say and ask people, you know, what do you need from me today? What do you need from me today? What do you need from me today? And she was a supervisor with a cleaning crew that just in passing and she got so much more data so that she could remember and pay attention than things like, how are you?

How’s it going? Good to see you. So go beyond the greeting. So those are a couple ways, noting and asking better questions. And then when you do note something, make sure that you go back and use noticing language. So, hey, last week I noticed that. I remembered that I wrote down that you were struggling with this piece of equipment.

I wanted to see if we got that fixed. I was thinking about you this weekend, right? Those little signals signal to someone else, oh, we paid attention.

Aoife O’Brien: If we feel so busy and like we’re in a hurry all the time. Like that seems like a [00:29:00] huge barrier for leaders in organizations. It strikes me as something that it’s not.

An additional thing to, to put on your, to-do list, but rather a different way of interacting with people. But will it take more time outta people’s day? And how do we kind of overcome that barrier?

Zach Mercurio: I wish I had changed one heading in my book of a section. It said, make time and create space, but I had this big realization after it went to print, it was published.

You can’t make time. If you can manufacture time, I really want to meet you because you’re like the creator of everything. You can’t make time. But we can use time. Yeah. And what I’ve observed is that even in these very, very fast-paced occupations, nurses, cleaning crews that are cleaning airplanes, when they come in and out, they don’t, add more interactions.

They make use of the interactions they already have. They optimize the interactions they already have. One of, one of my favorite quotes is by a composer named Claude Debussy, and it’s, [00:30:00] and, he said, a music is the space between the notes. And what I love about that is that, you know, he was talking about this liminal space, this InBetween space between the notes, right?

That actually makes the music come alive. Well, in our organizations culture is created in the InBetween as well. You know, the notes in our organizational culture are the meetings, the rituals, the one-on-ones, the performance evaluation conversations. But where culture is actually created is. In the in between.

So those few minutes where you’re passing someone by in the hallway, that’s a moment to check in. You don’t have to create more time, but you have to be intentional and skillful and consistent. That time in the elevator. If you have elevators or work in an office anymore, that’s a time to check in.

If you’re a remote worker, you know when you get on a call and you’re a little bit early and the meeting hasn’t started and someone comes on and your first initial interaction is to mute your video and answer another email [00:31:00] instead, come off mute, look at the person and say, Hey, I’m glad we got a little extra time together.

I remembered last week you were working on this project and you were kind of nervous about that meeting. How did that go? Right just there. That that could be the most important moment of that person’s week, our research shows and helping them feel engaged. So optimize the in-between moments. Think about the interactions you already have, map them for a week.

And write down to yourself how, how many of these interactions are transactional. I’m just asking for updates, asking for information, and which interactions can I make more transformational? And not just ask about what the person’s doing, but ask about how they’re doing. I think so the lesson is not about adding more time, it’s about optimizing the time you have.

Aoife O’Brien: And I’m, I’m, I’m kind of thinking Zach, like there will be some people who are listening who maybe are not having these regular interactions and like to me it’s prioritizing the interactions that you have. As a leader because that’s, [00:32:00] it’s, it’s your part of your job, so you need to prioritize those. And for the ones that you are having, it’s, it’s bringing them up a level and getting into the why and the how people are doing things.

Zach Mercurio: Yeah. A lot of people ask me like, Zach, what, what are your thoughts on remote work? And it’s a great context to talk about this within how you use your time. If you’re managing remote workers, you should not be using your rare on-camera time to do updates. You can use email or Slack with those of things.

You can use email. Yeah. Yes. So you should not be using your time together to exchange information. You should be using your time together to check in on how people are doing, to check in on what barriers they’re facing, how you can remove them to resolve conflicts of ways of working with one another, to, uh, discuss how the people are not what they’re doing.

That’s one immediate change. Like if you’re a manager right now, I would say in person too. You should not be using your time together to exchange [00:33:00] information. that’s certainly mistakes that, that’s one doing that that I’ve made. Yeah, I know. Both as a leader and and a, an employee. Yep. And a team.

Team member. Yep. The best teams that I’ve observed do not spend their rare time together on what they’re doing with one another. They spend their time on optimizing how to be with one another. Yeah. Yeah. And the re like going back to your, what you said, it’s the interactions, it’s the relationships that we have with people.

Now, all of this takes three things, though. It takes intention . so a lot of, a lot. One of the other barriers is that we’ve tend to, some of this stuff has become automatic. Yeah, like all of our one-on-ones start the same. Our weekly meetings starts the same. There’s this principle in psychology called automaticity, and basically it’s what allows you to brush your teeth without thinking about it that much.

It’s allows you, it allows you to drive. To drive where you’re going. Yeah, you’ve gone a hundred times and you could be zoned out and your brain just knows what to do. The problem is, is that this happens in. Relationships as well. We go into automatic mode. Yeah. [00:34:00] The, the way out of automatic mode is called articulated intention.

It means to articulate your intention. In this meeting, we are gonna focus, I’m gonna understand how people are doing. I’m gonna ask a curiosity based question. Right. So we have to articulate that intention. We have to have attention. And then the, we’ve been talking about this, you have to have skill.

Aoife O’Brien: Yeah. Love that skill of actually have so you can, so you can’t also leave this part and you can’t learn it.

Zach Mercurio: You can’t also leave this podcast and say, you can’t say, alright everybody, we’re gonna stop. Stop doing updates in our meetings. We’re gonna start checking in on how people are. You have to take a, just take a step back and ask yourself, do I have the skills to do that?

Yeah, I know how to do that. And if I don’t, where can I get those skills to ask better questions to. Be a better empathizer to show compassion because I will say when you start seeing people more closely, they will become more complex. Mm-hmm. So you’ll see struggles, you’ll see difficulties, you’ll see things that you think in the short term are inefficient to deal [00:35:00] with.

But that is an opportunity and that’s data that you need to lead people.

Aoife O’Brien: Love it. Do you have a personal story of mattering over a time where you felt that you didn’t matter?

Zach Mercurio: Yeah, I mean, I’ll, I’ll tell a story that I just realized that I experienced mattering a couple of years ago that I didn’t know happened.

And it happened actually, I mean, gosh, how long ago was it that I was in high school? I was a senior in high school in my last year of high school. But someone had asked me, you know, Zach, when’s the first time you felt that you mattered as a person? And I hadn’t ever thought about that. And I’ve been studying mattering and I’ve been asking other people that question and I had to think back and I was in a.

A journalism elective class in my senior year. We got to pick an elective class, and I remember my, I had two older brothers who were, were pretty successful. They went to college and I, was sort of susceptible to comparing myself. And I was sort of a mediocre student. I wasn’t really that a of a [00:36:00] grade student and I had very low self-esteem.

I did not think I could go to college. And in fact, I was started rebelling against the idea of college as a defense mechanism. And I remember there was a journalism elective teacher that every week brought in a brochure of a college with a journalism program. ’cause I liked, I did like to write. And she would say to me, Hey, check this out.

I think you can do this. And then the next week she’d bring a brochure in. She’d go check this out. And then I remember one week she’d brought a brochure and it was of this college in Virginia where I ended up going. And she said, I can really see you here. Like, are you listening to me? Like I can really see you here.

And I ended up going to that university. I ended up majoring in journalism. It actually, and I actually, the way I write now as a result of that experience as an undergrad and that moment is the only reason why I’m in on this podcast right now. Because somebody took the effort to show me that they believed in me, [00:37:00] that I, that I did matter.

And I think it just is underscores that these very small moments where we do this for other people can dramatically alter the trajectory of their careers and their lives. Yeah. I think it, it’s, it’s so powerful and it, it, I think it’s, it’s especially pointed when you as a leader can see the potential in someone.

But what about when someone is underperforming? Yeah. A lot of people say to me, Zach, how do I hold people accountable and show them that they matter? You show people that they matter so that you can hold them accountable. This is often what happens is that we critique before we care. In studies of performance, improving feedback, almost 40% of performance, improving feedback actually decreases performance.

Yeah. And one of the reasons, one of the reasons why, and researchers dig into why, is that the person receiving. The feedback doesn’t feel that they’re cared for by the person giving it. Yeah. So if I don’t feel that I’m significant to you, nothing you say is gonna be [00:38:00] significant to me, and this is very important because the relational groundwork that allows us to hold people accountable.

Is often skipped over. Yeah. And then all of a sudden we want accountability. but when you show someone that they matter along the way, when you show someone that they’re valued and that they add value and that their presence and their absence means something. . And that their work deeply means something, and you show them the evidence of that every day, and then you come to them when they’re underperforming and say, Hey, you know that impact that I know you can make.

You know, I’ve told you how much I believe in you and what you can do here. I, I’ve showed you that you have these gifts and strengths. I mean, you’re really good at these things. I think if you make a couple of these changes, you could even make a different impact here and even stronger impact here.

and hey, I’m here to support you. Let’s check in about it next Tuesday, how you’re doing Research finds that that type of feedback, that type of relational groundwork is much more likely to improve performance. .

Aoife O’Brien: [00:39:00] So is it about if you notice someone is underperforming, you haven’t put in this groundwork?

Is it starting with that groundwork before? Yes. Even the critique.

Zach Mercurio: Yeah. And I would say that also, , some research shows that there are three elements of good, good critique . one is you should express your belief in the person. Yeah, I believe in you. I want first, first of all, I want you to know that I believe in you and here’s why.

And I believe in the impact that you can make. Second is name the gifts and the strengths they have to make the change you want them to make. Hey, and I’ve been thinking about. Some of your performance and some of the changes we need to make. You’ve been really creative in this area of of work. I think that we can use that creativity on how you’re responding to this challenge right now.

So let’s figure out how we can do that . so name their strengths they already have, and then the third is show them that you’re there for them. And hey, like I’m not just gonna put you on a performance improvement plan and leave you up to yourself to [00:40:00] figure out your own performance. I’m in this with you.

So let me know what you need from me. to perform well, and by the way, we’re gonna have a conversation every Mo Tuesday morning at this time. Not on a status update, but on what I can do to help you perform better. Me, not just you.

Aoife O’Brien: I, I love the reframe that it’s. Not just the sole responsibility of the person.

It goes back to this idea of the environment that we create. And that is one of the big takeaways that I had from our previous podcast conversation is it’s not about this person is a difficult person. It’s what kind of environment have I created? Yes, that, that you know, that that person is behaving in that way.

I do have a cha a little challenge back for you in relation to these three steps, and that is what if as a leader, I don’t see the potential, I don’t believe in the person I can. I find it really difficult to name their gifts. I just [00:41:00] can’t see that. So on the one hand, is it the job as the leader to find that and like do your very best to find it?

Or is it that? I just can’t see it. And what do we do in that situation?

Zach Mercurio: Yeah. If, I mean, so if you can’t see it and you’ve worked to see it . Then it’s probably not the best place for that person to be. Yeah. You know, and offboarding someone into another role in a caring way is a totally legitimate response to performance issues. but if they’re under your care, they’re under your care. You cannot give up on somebody if you’re their leader. Yeah. And too often I see leaders giving up on people. Yeah. In a year or two years, which is actually a short time in a human life.

Aoife O’Brien: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It really is.

Zach Mercurio: So if they’re under your care, it’s your job.

To find their gifts, to support them and to believe in them. And if you’re not doing those things, you’re not doing your job.. And you should be off boarded. Love it. [00:42:00] Challenge. Challenging. I mean, it’s challenging now. It’s coming, it’s challenging, but it’s Yeah. Like Yeah. Your, your, your job as a leader is to build a relationship.

Leadership can’t happen without relationships. Your job as a leader is to get, get the, be illuminate in others what they can’t see in themselves, to naming their strengths to being in an environment they feel seen, heard, valued, and needed. Yeah. To connecting them to something bigger, to making sure they have the resources to meet the demands of the job they’re trying to do.

If they’re under your care, that’s your responsibility, and so if you’re not meeting that responsibility while they’re under your care, then you’re not, you are not doing your job as a leader. yeah. And I think that’s really important. I think it’s also empowering. I’m not, I’m not saying it to be like difficult.

Yeah. But I’m saying that that’s your job. Yes. Your job is to lead the people doing the job.

Aoife O’Brien: Yeah. and I think a lot of leaders don’t necessarily grasp that, or they maybe neglect their responsibilities if they do know about it , but Zach, for me, there’s been. This kind of overarching theme in what we talked about.

We first [00:43:00] started talking about the huge crisis that we’re seeing in the workplace, especially in terms of engagement and loneliness in particular. We touched on this idea of what kind of gets in the way and, and I. The thing that really stands out to me are the devices that we have in our way and the ease at which we can communicate with each other and feel like we’re building a relationship when actually we’re not really building relationship.

It’s like an illusion of building a connection with someone, but we’re doing it all wrong because we’re not building it in a really human way. We’re doing it in a, an emoji way, or a really quick and easy, and we feel like we’ve done something, but we actually. Haven’t, and talking about then the skills in relation to how we need to approach this, getting into the human interactions and the skills that we need to be able to actually do that.

If there was something that you could share, like a first step for leaders to take away from our conversation today, what would it be?

Zach Mercurio: I would ask everybody [00:44:00] under your care, when you feel that you matter to me, what am I doing? And write it down and do more of that.

Aoife O’Brien: And again, dare I say, that’s kind of an awkward conversation.

That’s kind of an awkward question to ask people if you haven’t been like that up to now. And. On our last podcast conversation. For anyone who hasn’t listened, go back and listen to that because this is a very complimentary episode to that last conversation we had. And basically what we said was, blame Zach and Iffa blame us.

Yeah. And say, listen, I heard this podcast. I’m trying something new. Can you let me know? And it takes some of that awkwardness away. I think if you haven’t had those human to human conversations with your team up to now, it takes some of that awkwardness away by saying, Zach told me to do it.

Zach Mercurio: And state your intention.

Oh yes. Yeah. You know, I want this to be a place where every single person feels significant, you know? And I’m gonna try some new things, and some things aren’t gonna work. Some things are gonna work. But I need your [00:45:00] help in building a place where everyone feels significant. You’ll be surprised at how forgiving people are for awkwardness and mistakes when your goal is to help everybody feel that they matter.

Aoife O’Brien: Yeah. When you state your intention at the start, I think it’s, it’s so, so important. Zach, the question I ask everyone who comes on the podcast, what does being happier at work mean to you?

Zach Mercurio: Happiness follows meaningfulness, but I really think there is nothing more powerful. For a human then knowing that our presence and absence means just one thing to one other person.

Means something to someone. Yeah. That our presence and absence means something to someone. And I think that if we, if we can show other people that, if we can show other people that we miss them when they’re gone, yeah. That their presence makes this place a little bit better, I think that not only are we helping them.

To experience happiness, but you’ll start to see your impact Yeah. On other people and start to experience happiness as a byproduct.

Aoife O’Brien: I think that’s, that’s such an important thing. ’cause we did talk about the, the [00:46:00] relationship aspect, but I hadn’t considered the absence. So if someone isn’t there, if there’s someone, if misses a meeting or if there’s someone who leaves an organization or on a, on a personal context, if there’s someone who doesn’t make it on the trip, know that your absence was felt and we missed you.

Yeah. A lot of times we measure the significance of our presence by how significant our absence is, ah, to others. Love that. And we haven’t really, we’ve talked around your book, but we haven’t really talked about it specifically. So how do people find out more about you? How do they get your, their hands on your book?

Zach Mercurio: You can go to power of mattering.com and a book is, the book is really, there’s 25. Skills for noticing, affirming, showing people how they’re needed. And again, it’s the skills that we’ve actually seen work and move the needle on creating experiences of significance for other people. I. [00:47:00] And it can help you name what you’re already doing.

That’s one of the fun things that we’ve gotten. We’ve gotten a lot of message from people that says, oh, I’ve been doing this. I’ve been noticing people in these ways, but I didn’t know I was doing something. Yeah. I didn’t know it was a skill, but once you know it’s a skill, you can continue to hone it and craft it and makes your environment, makes it possible.

So power of mattering.com .

Aoife O’Brien: And what’s your hope with this book, Zach? What do you anticipate with it? We’re seeing. You know, crises all over the world in terms of the workplace. So what, what’s your, what’s your hope with it?

Zach Mercurio: I want, I think that we need to approach with rigor, the human skills to care for people.

Yeah. And massively re-skill. I. Ourselves and our leaders and anybody who teaches, coaches, parents, another human being to fill the instinct to matter first before anything else.

Aoife O’Brien: Yeah, I love that. I love how you said ourselves because sometimes we have a tendency to say that other person doesn’t have that skill.[00:48:00]

That other person doesn’t make me feel like, like I matter.

Zach Mercurio: Yeah. Some people say to me, Zach, what do I do if my leader doesn’t do this for me? And I always say, do you do it for them? Yeah. Mattering is non-directional.

Aoife O’Brien: Yeah. Role modeling. Yep. Love it. Someone has to go first. Yes. Oh, someone has to go first.

Why not? You love it. Thank you so much for your time today. I really, really enjoyed this conversation. I took so much from it as always, and wishing you every success with the book.

Zach Mercurio: Thank you.

Aoife O’Brien: That was Zach Mercurio talking all about the power of mattering. I took so much from that conversation. I think it was so, so insightful.

As I mentioned at the beginning, there is another episode that we recorded together from a couple of years ago, so definitely go and check that out. The link is below in the show notes. And I would love to know what’s one thing that you’re gonna do differently? There are so many things that you could do, but just focus on one for now and I would love it if you could leave a rating or review [00:49:00] on your favorite platform.