I’m recommending to all my clients that they listen to Bruce Daisley’s latest podcast on Mattering.
Zach Mercurio – what a name! – has written a new book called The Power of Mattering. I’ve eagerly pre-ordered it.
In it, he connects things that we already know instinctively, and articulates them in a way that creates new understanding and clarity. So many ‘penny drop’ moments.
“What we’re really facing is not a disengagement crisis. It’s a mattering deficit. And mattering is the experience of feeling significant to the people around you.”
“Hurry and care can’t coexist. One of the things that’s really pressing us down right now is our hurry addiction.”
“The liminal space, the in-between space… culture is actually crafted is in the in-between” [between the meetings, onboardings, Awards, etc.]
Zach redefines relational communication skills as “the hard skills of caring” – anything but ‘soft’. Seeing and hearing team members daily, and demonstrating that they are needed and significant.
As Zach puts it in his HBR article about the book, “These behaviors may seem like common sense, but they’ve ceased to be common practice in a world of brief digital communications and condescension toward soft skills, and they’re well worth relearning.”
I see the leaders I work constantly struggling to overcome the “hurry addiction” of our workplace cultures, so they can allow enough time and headspace for these brief moments of connection.
Every leader I’ve worked with has wanted to do this. But somehow, it often doesn’t feel legitimate in the midst of the endless drive for efficiency.
The most effective leaders I’ve supported were all somewhat counter-cultural. Unusual, in that they prioritised time and space to show their teams that they mattered. And their teams loved them for it, and would go to bat for them.
Even if it’s “common sense”, it’s not easy to do this at scale. But if teams of people who feel like they matter are also the highest performing, then these ‘hard skills of caring’ must surely be the ultimate scaling skills.
And there’s nothing fluffy about that.
