Zach Mercurio's Blog

A couple of years ago, a supervisor asked me to work with a group of supposedly “unmotivated” maintenance workers. One of their daily summer responsibilities was washing the buildings’ bottom floor windows in a large complex. I interviewed each employee and asked, “If you were running this place, what would you do differently?” These were ... Read more

There’s no shortage of “be caring” advice for leaders — and for a good reason. Surveys show that about 50% of people don’t feel valued at work, almost 30% feel “invisible,” and just 24% think their employer cares about their well-being. For organizations, the caring deficit is consequential. Feeling disrespected and undervalued can be almost ten times more predictive of turnover than ... Read more

There’s no shortage of “be caring” advice for leaders — and for a good reason. Surveys show that about 50% of people don’t feel valued at work, almost 30% feel “invisible,” and just 24% think their employer cares about their well-being. For organizations, the caring deficit is consequential. Feeling disrespected and undervalued can be almost ten times more predictive of turnover than ... Read more

Last month, the U.S. Surgeon General named “mattering at work” a top priority for improving mental health. The announcement reaffirms what we’ve known for many years: Mattering and well-being are inseparable, especially where humans spend 35% of their waking lives. The official call to prioritize mattering at work is the culmination of several conspiring forces ... Read more

I can’t forget the smell, like the aftermath of banging two rocks together as a kid. This time, it was the reek of the driver’s side of my pickup scraping across the asphalt after it flipped. Pieces of glass sprayed my face and settled in my weekend slip-on shoes.

The right side of my face tingled from the impact and the firecracker that was the airbag saving my skull. I was on my way to buy my six and three-year-old boys firecrackers on the fourth of July, the little grey ones you snap on the ground. My eardrums vibrated as I tried the driver’s side door. It was stuck. I climbed out the passenger door and checked the two car seats in the backseat. They were empty.

“I dropped them off at home,” I remembered.

The witnesses say he ran the stop sign.

The first person who showed up did his job. He was there in just six minutes and parked the fire engine at a precise angle to block traffic. As if my once-and-a-lifetime traumatic event was like brushing his teeth, he did a full-body check. He called out, “One victim is green here, no others!” to the second firefighter already sweeping glass off the road. A third covered the fluid spill with the fire retardant.

The fourth person who showed up did her job, too. A police officer put her arm around me, asked how I was, and then initiated another full-body check. She took my statement and later called me with updates on the other driver and checked how I was doing. Another officer collected witness statements and directed traffic.

The sixth and seventh people to arrive were the Emergency Medical Technicians. They guided me to the back of an ambulance, took my vitals, and reassured my stunned wife that I was okay.

Then came the tow truck driver. He expertly elevated my car onto the flatbed within five minutes. The driver’s gruff voice asked if I was okay. He investigated my truck and, before he left, imparted his hard-earned wisdom: “Leave the car seats and get them replaced. They’re not safe anymore.”

I also became part of the insurance claim handler’s and junkyard workers’ holiday weekends. In seconds, each of these people became part of my life because of their work.

I study the meaning of work, and that day was a jolting reminder that our jobs bring us in and out of others’ lives we would otherwise never know. Society’s jobs are like organs in the body, integral to the functioning of the whole, whether we momentarily like our function or not.

There were thousands of invisible workers who saved my life that day, too. Because my truck rolled on its side, the firefighter said the curtain airbags prevented a head injury.

The people I didn’t meet who’ve become part of my life include Yasuzaburou Kobori, a Japanese automobile engineer who developed the safety net airbag system in 1964, every legislator and staffer who researched, wrote, and passed the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 which standardized side airbags to protect the heads of drivers and passengers, the engineers who designed the curtain airbags in my pickup to deploy with 10 to 20 milliseconds of a detected rollover, the engineers who designed those airbags into my car, the wage-earning manufacturing line workers who assembled and installed them, the quality control professionals who tested them, the delivery drivers who delivered the parts, and all the other people comprising the infinite stream of jobs that came together in a moment.

Everything worked that day because everyone worked. I went home to my two young boys and my wife because of line workers I’ll never meet, an engineer I’ll never know, and first responders I’ll never see again.

Work gets a lot of bad press. Aristotle called it a  burden, and a whole cadre of people now boast about shirking work in favor of “lying flat.”

Yes, there are bad jobs, underpaid jobs, repetitive jobs, and “bullshit jobs,” as popular anthropologist David Graeber claims. Still, the reality is that most jobs do exist to solve a human problem or fill a human need. Most jobs make the human community possible.

Most jobs are purposeful, even if they’re not pleasurable.

All work used to be purposeful. We made shoes for our neighbors’ feet. We farmed for our neighbors’ bellies. After the second industrial revolution, our jobs got smaller and more fragmented. Seeing the immense impact of our small jobs became more difficult.

If you look hard enough, purpose is still there. If your job exists on this planet, human beings are part of and at the end of your supply or service chain.

Even if the manufacturing facility worker who installed my airbag just worked “to get a paycheck,” their job existed to ensure my safety. I’m thankful they showed up to work that day. I hope they know that.

Even if the EMT complained about going to work on the fourth of July, I’m thankful she worked.

Even if the junkyard worker or tow truck driver feels like their job is small, it was significant to me that day, and I’m thankful they keep doing it.

While Aristotle lamented work as a burden, he also called it a necessary burden.

Work is necessary for societal functioning and essential for a community. Regardless of what you do, you’re likely to influence another person’s life today. I hope you see it.

“One ought to not even consider that a citizen belongs to himself, but rather that all belong to the city; for each individual is a part of the city,” Aristotle wrote.

I’m glad the city – the community built by human work – was there for me.

The post Work as Community appeared first on Zach Mercurio.

When my second son was born, he didn’t open his eyes.

The nurse told us it was normal; some newborns take longer to part their eyelids. Through excited and exhausted anxiety, I believed her. But by the third day, we hadn’t looked into Jaxon’s distinct green eyes. We started making appointments with specialists.

Jax is now a creative, independent, and infinitely imaginative three-year-old. It turns out he was born without eyelid muscles and has a much narrower eye opening due to Blepharophimosis, Ptosis, Epicanthus Inversus Syndrome (BPES), a rare genetic mutation that affects one in 50,000 people.

With surgeries and other treatments, Jax sees just fine and can do everything any other kid can.

The worst side effect of Jax’s condition has nothing to do with his condition. Most people don’t notice or care about his difference. Too often, people stare. Others direct comments at him and call his amazingly designed eyes “weird.”

Given my profession studying leadership and organizational psychology, I scoured academic journals for anything that could help me be a better parent for Jaxon.

I found an answer in a children’s picture book.

As a family, we regularly read R.J. Palacio’s “We’re All Wonders,” a made-for-kids version of the 2012 novel “Wonder,” which chronicles a 10-year-old’s life with a craniofacial disorder.

In the children’s version, the fictional narrator “Auggie” Pullman shares his struggles with being left out and offers simple lessons on coping with feeling different. But on the last page, he has an important realization, saying, “I can’t change the way I look. But maybe people can change the way they see.”

After reading that line, I realized the worst side effect of my Jaxon’s syndrome is 100 percent preventable.

You can change the way you see.

I’ve carried this lesson with me in my work developing leaders in communities and organizations. I find that most underdeveloped potential, behavioral concerns, and performance issues aren’t “people problems” but “seeing problems.”

Writer, poet, and German statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote, “The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.”

If we want people to become better, we must learn to see people better.

The Seeing-Treating-Becoming Loop

I once worked with a high-performing new supervisor of a frontline manufacturing team. We started talking about difficulties he was facing, and he immediately shared, “Well, I have this one woman who always calls out ‘sick.’ She’s difficult and is just here to get a paycheck and leave.”

He saw her as “difficult and there for a paycheck.”

 “Who do you want her to become?” I asked. He paused, then told me he noticed her potential and “just wanted her to feel proud of being here.”

“How do you treat her?” I inquired. He hesitated again, “Well, to be honest, I just try to avoid her and make sure she knows that her attendance issues could cost her the job.”

He was unintentionally treating her as he saw her: an issue to be dealt with.

I then asked, “What if you treated her like she had potential and you wanted her to feel proud of being here?”

If we see someone as “difficult,” we’ll treat them like an “issue.” If we treat them like an issue, they’ll think of themselves as a problem. Studies show people with low self-worth exhibit increased stress, have difficulty in relationships, and frequently underperform in work and school.

The cycle continues.

How we see people is how we treat them. How we treat them is who they become.

Alternatively, if we see someone as “having potential,” we’ll treat that person as having possibilities. If we treat someone as having possibilities, we build self-worth. What do people with high self-worth do? Research finds they take more initiative, are more open to feedback, perform better, and are more resilient.

The critical idea that our perception of people influences how we treat them is well-studied.

In 1950, psychologist Harold H. Kelley published a landmark study on how our treatment of others is affected by how we perceive them. He had two groups of students read about a professor described as either “rather cold” or “very warm.” Then, the researchers had the professor teach a 20-minute discussion group with the students, behaving identically for each group.

The students who were told the instructor was “cold” were less likely to participate. They also rated the “warm professor” as much more humorous, friendly, popular, and better.

How we see others affects how we treat others.

So, how do we change how we “see” others and break the loop?

We must first become aware of how we see.

"How we see others affects how we treat others." – @zachmercurio
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How We See Others

In psychology, the way we see others is called person perception.

Initially, we form perceptions of others by relying on physical and nonverbal cues. The limitation is that we tend to notice and remember negative signals while our brains scan our environment for threats.

In one study, Psychologist Tiffani Ito and colleagues analyzed participants’ brain activity while showing positive, negative, and neutral interpersonal cues. The brain activity was much more significant in response to negative cues. They concluded, “negative information weighs more heavily on the brain.”

Our brains also notice and emphasize characteristics, like clothes and facial features, that don’t fit a specific pattern. That’s why another child at Jaxon’s daycare kept calling him “the kid with the small eyes” instead of calling him “the kid with the normal-appearing nose, chin, ears, hair, etc.”

Second, our perceptions of behavior often result in labeling others by describing them in trait terms. There are over 18,000 trait terms in the English language. We describe others using words like “difficult,” “nice,” “creative,” “fun,” “quiet,” “low-performing,” or “high-performing.”

Studies show we make judgments about people by averaging traits based on our experiences with them. At first, that sounds fair.

The hidden problem is that we tend to average traits based on extremes and weigh experiences of a “negative” trait more significantly than a “positive” trait. We also favor certain traits, called “cardinal traits,” more heavily and tend to ignore moderately positive traits altogether.

Let’s return to the warm and cold example. Imagine you have two employees. A peer depicts Employee A to you as hard-working, on-time, warm, diligent, and practical. That same peer describes Employee B as hard-working, on-time, cold, diligent, and practical.

Researchers consistently find that the person described as “warm” would be perceived very positively, whereas the person described as “cold” would be perceived very negatively – based on one central trait.

Since we’re wired to point out and remember negative behaviors, we’re also more likely to ascribe negative traits to people. Further, the more recent an experience of a negative behavior is, the more likely we are to label someone using negative terms.

For example, if “Joe” is late for two days in six months, but generally on time most days, your mind is wired to label Joe as a “late” or “irresponsible” person, despite all of Joe’s other positive attributes likely on display daily. And if Joe was late yesterday, you’re almost certain to view him negatively.

The cycle begins.

How to See Better

Fortunately, the simple awareness of how we see can shift our perceptions. From this new understanding, we can learn to see others better and interrupt some of the brain’s outdated routines.

In the process, we treat people better, and people become better, which is what leadership is all about.

Let’s try it. Take a moment to reflect on someone you may be perceiving negatively

Ask: How do I see this person?

Write down two labels you’ve ascribed to them. Do you think they’re “awkward”? “Difficult?” “Challenging”? You can find labels any time you think or say, “This person is ___________.”

How did you form that perception? What information did you consider? What information might you have missed?

Now, list five positive traits about this person. 

How does the way you see this person affect how you treat them? Do you treat them as if they’re defined by their positive traits or by their negative ones? How might your treatment be encouraging the behaviors you say you don’t want?

Ask: Who do I want this person to become?

Write down who you want this person to become.

Ask yourself: Am I treating them as what they’re not or as who they can be? What can I do differently to treat them as they can be?

Regularly reevaluate your perceptions.

Are you overweighing negative traits and under-weighing positive traits? Have you overemphasized a physical feature that doesn’t fit with your patterns of “normal”? Do you have recency bias, are you judging someone because of what they did this week?

To become a better leader, change how you see.

But above all, before you make a negative judgment about anyone – an employee, a student, a passerby – remember this:

To someone, they are loved, and they are everything.

Jaxon thanks you.

The post To Become a Better Leader, Change the Way You See People appeared first on Zach Mercurio.

Consider the people who comprise your routines. Who do you need to notice more?

Noticing is the act of seeing someone’s uniqueness and showing an interest in their full life.

Feeling noticed is the opposite of feeling invisible, the inverse of being forgotten. When others pay attention to us and remember us, our essential lives’ hidden vividness and nuances become known.

Studies show that being seen is necessary to feel like we matter and promotes mental and emotional wellbeing, including a reduced risk for anxiety and depression. Social psychologists Morris Rosenburg and Claire McCullough wrote that feeling noticed is “the most elementary form of mattering.”

Yet, it’s the most fundamental human needs that we most often neglect. Or, as leadership educator Stephen Covey wrote, “common sense is not always common practice.”

Noticing others is not common practice.

In 2018, health insurer Cigna surveyed 20,000 Americans and found that 47 percent of respondents reported feeling “forgotten.”

Global surveys of workers find that 43 percent of employees feel “invisible.” A study on over 66,000 students in grades six through 12 revealed that only half of the respondents think their teacher would care if they were absent. Just 46 percent of students said they felt valued at school.

Poet Elizabeth Alexander’s question should level us: “Are we not of interest to each other?”

The distress and desperation caused by feeling unnoticed are well-documented. Psychologists find feeling unseen and unknown by others undercuts self-worth, motivation and can even predict depression.

In the classic novel “The Invisible Man,” Ralph Ellison compared feeling unnoticed to living in a hole, writing, “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”

Now, think again about the people you see every day or every week.

Do you know their goals, vision, and dreams? Do you know their struggles? If so, have you checked in with them about how they’re doing? Do you remember their full names?

Do you know who they rely on and who relies on them? Have you checked in on how their people are doing? Do you know their kids’ or spouse’s or partners’ names? Do you know what they do when they’re not working? Do you know their hobbies?

Who do you unintentionally or intentionally refuse to see?

Noticing others is a skill, a practice, and should be a public and occupational health priority.

Ask About and Remember Personal Details

What makes overlooking others so insidious is that it’s easy to do, a habit born out of our increased individualism and decreased social connectedness.

Do you know your postal worker’s name? Do you know the name of your coworkers’ kid, who you sometimes see in the background of that Zoom call?

For many, it’s these tiny lapses of curiosity that add up to perpetual invisibility.

I’m certainly not immune.

One recent afternoon, while facilitating a virtual workshop on, yes, mattering, I looked out my window. I saw my neighbor, with whom I’ve interacted hundreds of times, walking outside to get his mail. He’s retired. But at that moment, it embarrassingly struck me: I’ve never asked him what he did before he retired; how he spent the forty-five years before I started living a couple of hundred feet from him.

After my realization, I asked myself, “What else do I not know about others’ lives?”

For me, the answer turned out to be a lot. 

One of the most basic ways to help others feel noticed is to ask about, remember, and check-in on personal details.

Know people’s full names. If you see a dog jump into someone’s lap on a virtual call, don’t just sit and stare; ask what the dog’s name is. Learn what your delivery driver’s family members’ or friends’ names are. Check-in on them when your next package comes. Find out how your coworker’s family member is doing who was sick a few months ago.

Notice, remember, and check-in.

Show Your Interests in Others’ Interests

David was a 5-year old in Brooklyn, raised by a single mother who had many jobs to make ends meet. One of his favorite possessions was an ordinary deck of cards that he carried everywhere, including the local library.

One day, a librarian noticed him playing with a deck of cards and said, “We just got a self-working card trick book in. Do you want to learn something?” The librarian showed him a simple card trick. That day, David’s mom picked him up after work, and he showed her the trick.

“My mom went crazy,” David remembered as he recalled that critical moment on the Joe Rogan podcast 42 years later. “That began my love of wanting to learn tricks.”

That 5-year old boy was David Blaine, now recognized as one of the greatest magicians ever to live.

Noticing others is also about showing an interest in and nurturing others’ interests, regardless if those interests help you.

That librarian noticed David Blaine playing with a deck of cards and remembered he liked cards. When a book came in that she thought he’d be interested in, she remembered David. Then, she followed up and acted on her interest by teaching David that life-changing card trick.

There are countless stories of altered life trajectories because someone took an interest.

I once worked with a team who loved their supervisor more than I’d ever observed. Her team would say things like, “she just gets me” or “she always looks out for me.”

It’s tempting to say she was just a “natural leader” and had relational strengths.

But when I asked her how she created that climate, she pulled out a tattered notebook. In it, she wrote down things she heard each of her team members talk about repeatedly in their conversations. She made it a conscious habit to bring up and talk about her people’s interests regularly.

Noticing others is a practice that’s too important to be left to intuition.

As you think about the people around you, how can you better show your interest? How can you show someone you remember what’s important to them?

Remember and Honor Others’ Presence

The antithesis to feeling seen is being forgotten.

Psychologists Laura King and Aaron Geise conducted two experiments with undergraduate women. In the first investigation, researchers asked the women to participate in a group activity in a lab setting and come back in two days.

When they came back, the experimenter responded to certain women by saying, “I don’t remember you being here,” or “Are you sure you were here two days ago?” Other women were overtly remembered or complimented by the facilitator.

After controlling for numerous variables, the “forgotten” participants who experienced a moment of being invisible were found to feel a significantly lower sense of meaning in their lives and indicated lower self-esteem.

The researchers concluded, “…the innocent act of forgetting another person can exact an existential cost.”

Remember people. If someone misses a meeting, a class, or get together, tell them you noticed they weren’t there and why you wish they were.

Honor people’s presence.

I think the most critical step forward as a society – in communities, organizations, and schools – is to become interested in each other again.

The post The Art and Science of Noticing Others: How to Become Better at Making People Feel Seen appeared first on Zach Mercurio.

Every day I picked my preschooler up from school and asked him the same question: “Hey, what did you do today?”

Every day I got the same response: Silence.

As a researcher, I’ve learned that the quality of the answers we get is usually proportionate to the quality of the questions we ask.

I acknowledged that I was probably asking my toddler a lousy question.

If you follow my “Hey, what did you do today?” question to its inevitable end, all I would’ve ever gotten was an obligatory list of the day’s events.

That’s not quite the transformational parent-child conversation I was going for, and it certainly wasn’t motivating him.

Because I study the incredible things that happen when we think about our contribution more than our achievements, I decided to start a small experiment.

Instead of asking him the same drab question and expecting a meaningful answer, I asked two new ones:

• Who did you help today?
• Who helped you today?

To my dismay, nothing happened.

But I stuck with it.

Each day for two weeks, I asked those two questions. If he didn’t answer, I wouldn’t punish him; I just repeated the questions.

One day, he answered. He proudly told me how he helped his friend build a Lego tower. The next day, he told me how he loved being the door holder as his friends lined up to head outside to the playground.

In two days, I learned more about him than in the previous six months. I discovered what he was proud of, not just what he did. I heard about how he helped others, not what his schedule was.

He seemed happier and more excited about school.

One afternoon, he got into the car, and before I could ask my questions, he said, “Dad, I can’t think of who helped me today. I’ll look harder tomorrow.”

He’d look harder tomorrow.

The most powerful outcome of a question is it directs its recipient’s attention. What we pay attention to creates our thoughts. What we think about, we become.

As leaders, interviewers, educators, and parents, we ask hundreds of questions every day to our employees, job seekers, students, and kids.

I’ve noticed that we tend to ask many questions that inadvertently undercut others’ motivation, self-worth, and sense of mattering.

What we must ask ourselves is: Are we directing people’s attention to what matters?

How to Ask More Meaningful Questions

There are two significant problems with many of the questions we ask. The first is that most questions focus on what people do instead of who they are.

The second problem is that common questions focus on where people want to go instead of where they are.

For example, a question I hear repeated in classrooms and offices is some variation of:

“What do you want to do with your life or career?”

If you follow that question to its answer, you’ll likely end up with a list of self-oriented skills, jobs, and a linear, step-by-step life or career plan. Possibilities narrow as we slowly tie our identity to a finite catalog of specialized abilities. When something happens, and our capabilities go, so too goes our sense of self.

That’s why it’s always a risky bet to tie your identity to what you do. What happens when you can’t do it?

Further, we don’t learn much about other people by asking them what they do or want to do. Anyone can copy what someone wants to do and how they want to do it; what differentiates them is why they are.

How a person’s unique strengths make a distinct contribution is what makes them different.

An alternative is: “What do you want your life or career to do for others?”

If you follow that question to its answer, you’ll end up with ideas for what kinds of problems one wants to solve, the impact they want to make, and the legacy they want to leave. The skills, jobs, and plans become mere ways to solve those problems and deliver that impact.

Possibilities expand as our identity becomes less tied to fixed abilities and more tied to the contribution we want to make. And, we learn much more about who people are and not just what they want to accomplish.

A similar, limiting question I hear a lot in the career development space is, “What’s your ideal job?” A better question is, “What kinds of problems do you want to use your strengths to solve?”

Another question I propose we banish is:

“Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”

The problem with this question is not only that we’re expecting the respondent to be a mystic, but we’re also sending the message that “you’re not quite good enough…yet.”

We perpetuate an “if, then” philosophy. If I get this job or promotion, then I’ll be successful. If I go to college, then I’ll be good enough.

As a society, we tend to be great at showing people what they could become and terrible at showing people what’s good about who they already are.

Paradoxically, what’s already good about people is what will help them become who they can become.

People are more than what they might achieve in the future, and by asking questions like this, we can unintentionally erode a sense of mattering right now.

Ask Yourself Better Questions

Not only do we ask these limiting questions to others, but we also ask them of ourselves. And when we always ask ourselves questions that focus us on accomplishing and achieving things, it can be detrimental to our well-being.

Ohio State University psychologist Jennifer Crocker and colleagues have repeatedly found through longitudinal studies that people who set more self-image goals (goals made to enhance one’s status) experienced increased anxiety, depression, and disconnection from others than those who pursue more of what the researchers called compassionate goals (goals set for the benefit of others).

When we direct our and others’ attention to what they can contribute, we cultivate mattering, and I believe we, our schools, organizations, and society will be better for it.

The post How to Ask More Meaningful Questions appeared first on Zach Mercurio.

As people “return to work” during the COVID-19 pandemic, employers should be ready to address a hidden issue: a meaning deficit.

Historically, every significant disruption of how we work inflicted profound distress flamed by existential crises and the search for meaningfulness.

At the height of the second Industrial Revolution, in 1897, sociologist David Émile Durkheim published an enduring analysis of suicide. Durkheim found a central cause of acute mental distress was the loss or change of work. Not working, he found, depleted people of purpose, of having a social function and a meaningful contribution.

In 1938, as The Great Depression relented, psychologists Philip Eisenberg and Paul Lazarsfeld discovered that unemployment resulted in a profound loss of identity characterized by brokenness and instability.

Even among a large group of workers who kept their jobs through the Great Recession between 2007 and 2009, Stanford University researchers found in-patient visits for mental health-related services were nearly four times higher than before the downturn. Feelings of uselessness and worthlessness were the most significant commonalities among those with mental health issues.

Uselessness and worthlessness are symptoms of meaninglessness, a pivotal contributor to feelings of despair.

Unlike these previous challenges, the COVID-19 pandemic is a crisis of both work and health insecurity intensified by the necessary but inhuman practices social distancing and isolation.

Even more than past economic disruptions, the pieces are in place for distress induced by our collective, unavoidable grasp for meaning in disorder.

And whether we like it or not, work dominates human life and is an inescapable context through which we make meaning of life itself. 

Enabling meaningful work should be a priority for leaders and is a learnable skill.

The Looming Meaning Deficit

For the currently employed, the unemployed, and soon-to-be re-employed, emerging research shows the pandemic is prompting serious self-reflection. 

New surveys show people who can work from home are spending more time contemplating the quality and meaning of their jobs and lives. Many are reflecting on their roles outside of work and trying to determine how to meet all of life’s demands.

A study from Alicia Sasser Modestino, an economics professor at Northeastern University, found that many, predominately women, have considered quitting their jobs to keep up with childcare and life demands. Yet, even 11% of men surveyed – said they, too, are considering leaving their current position.

For the 55 million essential workers who ensured everyone else could stay home, the sudden and short-lived public praise of their jobs reveals disparities between their value to society and the value their employers place on them.

The millions of people facing job and financial insecurity, unemployment, and those who’ll get hired back after months without work, are more at risk for feelings of meaninglessness, especially as many take less-than-ideal jobs to survive.

Add to these issues the widespread calls for social reform and racial justice that have led many to explore unexamined existential questions, and the ingredients are there for a looming meaning deficit.

Filling the Meaning Deficit Through Enabling Meaningful Work

Experiencing purpose, significance, and mattering in work isn’t a luxury, a generational preference, or a nice-to-have. For centuries, psychologists, philosophers, and now neuroscientists find that meaningfulness is a fundamental human need.

My and others’ research finds that meaningful work is desired and accessible in nearly any job or occupation, including work people take initially to earn a paycheck.

While it’s tempting to argue, especially in an economic recovery, that people just need income to survive, it’s essential to acknowledge that human beings are simultaneously what they basically need and what they inherently desire.

That’s why leaders and economists need to understand the difference between the meaning of work (i.e., to earn a paycheck) and meaning in work (i.e., to experience mattering, worth, and dignity). 

If we’ve learned anything from the aftershocks from each of the major financial disasters and work revolutions, it’s that a job won’t cure despair if the person experiences despair in the job.

Many politicians and economists obsess about the quantity of jobs, but organizational leaders should focus on ensuring the quality of those jobs.

Decades of studies now show that experiencing work as positive, purposeful, and significant is a predictor of positive outcomes like motivation, engagement, and overall well-being in life.

Oxford University professor Ruth Yeoman writes that meaningful work must be recognized as a fundamental human need because it satisfies the inescapable human interests of dignity, freedom, and autonomy.

When those interests are not met, either because of unemployment or by a degrading job, a sense of hopelessness, desperation, and meaninglessness can ensue, especially in already vulnerable populations.

How to Make Work More Meaningful

A recent study by Mckinsey & Company found that over 55% of what contributes to employee well-being and engagement come from non-financial or job security factors.

The most significant factors in enhancing overall well-being are individual purpose and contribution, social cohesion and inclusion, and trusting relationships. These elements serve as the basis for creating environments that facilitate meaningfulness.

Here are some ways to enable meaningful work:

1. Cultivate a Culture of Mattering

Experiencing significance is found to be a key predictor in overall mental health. Psychologists Morris Rosenberg and Claire McCullough, in a classic study, find that mattering manifests when someone feels noticed, important, and needed.

While mattering seems like common sense, it’s not common practice. The Gallup Organization finds that upwards of 65% of people don’t feel appreciated at work. 

Some actions to cultivate mattering include:

Authentically check in on the people you see and talk to every day.Learn about people’s personal lives and remember those details and ask about them regularly. Encourage employees to do the same for each other.Learn how to foster psychological safety to demonstrate that people’s contributions are valued and needed.Continue to invest in personal development and well-being in all positions equally.Remind people regularly how their unique strengths are integral to delivering a bigger purpose. Show people how they’re indispensable.

2. Redesign Jobs and Tasks for Meaningfulness

In 1975, organizational psychologists J. Richard Hackman and Greg R. Oldham studied 658 workers in 62 different jobs. They found workers need to be able to do and experience three elements in a job or task to experience meaningfulness.

First, they must know the significance of the task to another person. Second, they must be able to identify how the task fits into a bigger outcome, and third, they need to be able to see how they can use their pre-existing strengths to accomplish it.

This model holds up in the research today and reaffirms that leaders can enable meaningfulness in any job.

Some actions to redesign jobs for meaningfulness:

Through recruitment, training, and onboarding, ensure that tasks and jobs are introduced by first showing why the work matters, what the job makes possible, and how the individual’s strengths are critical to doing the job.Regularly collect and tell stories of the work’s impact on others. Bring in the beneficiaries of the work to tell the story of how the work impacted their lives.Give regular, purposeful affirmation that directly shows people how their work on a specific task made a difference for you or others.Give employees autonomy to adjust how they can best do their jobs using their strengths. Invite people to provide feedback on their work and become an expert.

3. Ensure dedicated time and space to building meaning-giving relationships.

Our research on front-line workers finds that positive relationships maintain meaningfulness.

Meaning-giving relationships can reaffirm mattering, facilitate a sense of belonging, and can facilitate growth and development.

University of Michigan researchers Jane Dutton and Emily Heaphy find that these high-quality relationships are characterized when both people in the relationship are known and cared for, gain positive energy from interactions, and experience an equal investment in the relationship.

Creating space for all people in all positions to form these high-quality connections, in-person or virtually, is vital for sustaining meaningfulness.

Some actions to facilitate meaning-giving relationships:

Create peer coaching and mentoring networks and invest in personal and professional development for people to cultivate mattering and inclusion for those around them.Incentivize peer recognition. One of my favorite platforms is Bonusly, a digital platform that encourages affirmation of other’s contributions.Intentionally create the time and space for authentic, informal, meaningful relationships to occur, especially on virtual teams.Allow autonomy for people to choose who they work on projects with, incentivize collaboration, and work on teams.



Enabling Meaningfulness is a Leadership Skill

Most organizational leaders never formally learn how to cultivate mattering, instill meaningfulness, and promote meaning-giving relationships.

Enabling meaningful work is a skill that I believe will be the next century’s vital leadership competency.

People’s lives may depend on it.

The post Filling The ‘Meaning Deficit:’​ Why Meaningful Work Will Be More Vital in a Post-COVID World appeared first on Zach Mercurio.

Think about the first time you realized you mattered.

What happened? How did you feel?

Chances are your moment of mattering impacted and moved you. Most likely, you felt important because of what someone else said or did.

Feeling significant is a basic human desire and a critical factor for mental, emotional, and physical well-being in life, school, and work.

Mattering is also dependent on others, and fulfilling this vital human desire is a community endeavor.

In other words, others around you know they matter because of you.

So, what is mattering? Why is mattering so important? And, how can we learn to create the experience of mattering for others?

The Power of Mattering

For Jane, one sentence changed her perceptions of herself and her job. The self-worth that followed sustained her motivation and pride for 18 years.

Jane hopped around from one cleaning job to the next in what she described as a difficult life. After a family member she was caretaking for died, she knew she had to get a more stable job to survive.

That led her to take a custodial job at the university where I teach. When I spoke to Jane for a study on what makes work meaningful, I asked her, “Why did you stay?”

She told me that in her first training, a supervisor pulled out the dictionary and defined the word custodian for her as “a person who has responsibility for or looks after something.”

Despite being told her whole life that cleaning was an unskilled and dirty job, she said, “realizing I was looking after these buildings and everyone in them changed my belief patterns and has inspired me for the last eighteen years. I finally realized I mattered.”

Jane credits one sentence from a supervisor for fueling her energy and sense of self in work for 18 years.

Jane felt like she mattered.

The Science of Mattering

Researchers find mattering is the feeling that we’re a significant part of the world around us, it’s the belief that we’re noticed, important, and needed — right now.

While studies show experiencing mattering as Jane did increases a sense of self-worth and motivation, research also finds it reduces the risk of severe depression, anxiety, and can save lives.

Why?

First, mattering influences self-esteem, the confidence in one’s worth.

Researchers Robert Chavez and Todd Heatherton from Dartmouth College find self-esteem resides in the frontostriatal pathway of the brain. This pathway connects the medial prefrontal cortex, which deals with self-awareness, to the ventral striatum, which influences motivation.

Individuals with higher self-esteem seem to optimize this pathway, leading to more positive self-knowledge, self-worth, and increased internal motivation and energy.

Feeling significant is also found to increase serotonin levels, sometimes called the “confidence molecule” that influences overall mood and lowers anxiety.

Experiencing mattering also reaffirms that we contribute to others and that we have a purpose. A sense of purpose is associated with increased dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin, also known as the “happiness trifecta,” the neurotransmitters that control for mood, movement, and motivation.

Mattering may also help us live longer.

In the 1970s, Harvard scientist Ellen Langer studied two groups of nursing home residents, controlling for numerous risk factors. She gave plants to each of them. Researchers told the first group that they were directly responsible for keeping the plant alive. They told the second group that the staff would take care of the plant.

After 18 months, twice as many patients in the first group were alive.

As a global pandemic continues and calls for social reform expand, mattering is especially urgent, leading many to examine their significance as never before.

I think mattering is a public health issue, and cultivating it is an essential skill.

How to Create Experiences of Mattering

Studies show mattering has three components:

Attention — the realization that others notice us and that others are interested in what’s going on in our livesImportance — the perception that other people care about us and see us as uniquely significant and importantDependence — the feeling that someone else relies on us, that we are needed

To cultivate mattering, ensure people feel noticed, important, and needed.

1. Notice others

I’ve had many leaders come to me and say they struggle to find ways to appreciate and recognize their employees meaningfully. I typically reply by asking, “How are your employees doing today?”

If they can’t answer, I advise them to start there.

It’s easy to make mattering and appreciation more complicated than it needs to be. I think it’s because we overlook the importance of feeling noticed right here, right now.

Mattering is much more likely to be fostered in our everyday routines than at an awards banquet. That’s because the experience of feeling visible is a crucial ingredient for mattering.

One of the easiest ways to help someone feel like they matter is by committing to making eye contact and authentically checking in with the people you see every day.

Studies show that simply being told, “Good morning!” by a supervisor can be more potent than formal recognition.

It sounds easy, but actively noticing others is a habit that needs to be built into your everyday routines. We already have a lot of unproductive, anti-mattering habits like when we rush into our office to send one more e-mail before telling a co-worker goodbye for the day.

Or, when we brush past our partner on the way to the coffee maker in the morning without asking if they want a cup.

Try writing down a list of the moments in your day when you pass by or see the same people.

Do you actively notice and check-in on them? Do you remember their name?

If not, start there.

2. Communicate others’ unique significance

We tend to readily recount the negative aspects of a person and give plentiful advice on how they can get better. Yet, we’re slow to recognize and acknowledge people’s unique strengths and talents.

It seems we’re always treating teenagers and students as “what they could become” and not what’s good about who they already are. In the workplace, studies show that meaningful gratitude and affirmation are infrequent and that a majority of workers feel underappreciated.

To know we matter, we need evidence of how we matter.

That means naming people’s specific positive strengths, traits, and behaviors and showing then the difference those gifts make in the world around them.

A simple way to start is by giving what I call Purposeful Affirmation.

Start with describing the situation. Remind the person of the specific instance in which they made a difference for you. Then, spot the behaviors and strengths they exhibited in that situation. Finally, tell them the impact they had on you by using their strengths or enacting those behaviors.

Instead of just saying “good job” or “thank you,” you can show people the difference they make.

3. Show others they’re relied on

Feeling like we don’t matter can induce stress, frustration, and profound despair.

As mattering researcher Gordon Flett depicts in his volume on the research on mattering, people who are more at risk for severe depression tend to recount themes like “nobody would miss me if I was gone” or “no one cares about me.”

In other words, when we don’t feel like we matter, it’s easy for nothing to matter.

Showing others that you need the people around you and depend on them is critical.

As individuals, mattering means making sure the people around us regularly know that they’re needed and indispensable.

In schools, mattering means making sure that every student knows their presence is what makes the classroom complete.

In workplaces, mattering means ensuring all people know that they’re not disposable and that they and their work are essential for the whole.

In society, mattering means rebuilding systems so that every person experiences their humanity as dignified, affirmed, and valued.

The post The Science of Mattering: Why Feeling Significant Is So Significant appeared first on Zach Mercurio.