S2E1: Mattering and Your Authentic Purpose With Zach Mercurio

Zach Mercurio is an author, researcher, and consultant specializing in purposeful leadership, meaningful work, and positive organizational psychology. He wrote "The Invisible Leader: Transform Your Life, Work, and Organization with the Power of Authentic Purpose” and works with hundreds of companies, schools, and governments around the world to forge purposeful leaders and cultivate positive cultures that enable more meaning, mattering, motivation, well-being, and performance. Some of his clients and partners include J.P. Morgan Chase, The Government of Canada, Marriott International, American Express Global Business Travel, the Food and Drug Administration, Michelin, the National Park Service, and Hewlett-Packard. His writing on purposeful leadership has been featured internationally in outlets such as Forbes, Inc. Magazine, and The Denver Post and his research has been awarded by The Academy of Management, the Association for Talent Development, and The Association for Human Resource Development.

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Leadership Voyage
email: StartYourVoyage@gmail.com
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music: by Napoleon (napbak)
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voice: by Ayanna Gallant
www.ayannagallantVO.com
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Transcript

0:08

okay I'm really happy to kick off the second season of leadership Voyage today with Zach Mercurio it's great to meet you Zach thanks Jason you too yeah it's good to have you on and it's kind of funny uh we just kind of found out that we live maybe I don't know we'll guess 10 miles from each other which is kind of interesting but uh my wife works at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and her manager Lauren I think saw you speak or something like that in the last few years and it was just kind of a pro tip check check this guy out and and so I just reached out and it was great thank you for being receptive it's it's going to be a fun conversation I know that listeners are going to learn a lot uh from our discussion so thanks for setting aside some time of course of course yeah and it is kind of funny that we're on video and audio with each other 10 miles away that well you know what that's a good point uh next season we'll we'll figure something out um so a few years ago you wrote this book The Invisible leader and I checked it out last month really nice book thank you for writing it I say that in all in all sincerity and uh I'll just share with everybody it was interesting reading the title of a book uh called The Invisible leader I had an assumption in my mind before I ever opened it and what I assumed was this was about someone uh it's for someone who leads an organization or a team and it's about how do you make yourself invisible and and make it about your team maybe servant leadership and so on and so forth but uh I was very wrong and and it's interesting because the invisible leader is your authentic purpose and I love for you to explain to us what does it mean what is our authentic purpose so let me let me tell you a story about what happened during the pandemic with one of my clients so one of my clients is a car wash large Tunnel Car Washing system their purpose their stated purpose is to prepare people for the future their workers and to provide for the community in various ways through the product they provide which is part of people's everyday routines and they know a lot of people who work at a car wash don't grow up wanting to work at a car wash so they realized that they had to prepare people for the future yeah think about that as their their purpose and then you think about the Colorado economy shutting down um within two weeks of the pandemic breaking out and this company knows that this is their purpose and knows that they have to prepare people for the future and believes it and the Colorado economy shuts down and the general manager of the car wash walks into his office to have this emergency meeting with all of their managers and what he finds there is stacks of food and water and drinks they the the management team had created a food bank for all of the employees that were going to lose their shifts so they could still eat right yeah and the general manager text me a picture of it and he said the best part of all of this is they did it without me what I mean by purpose authentic purpose being the invisible leader is that when you believe in your bigger contribution that you're here to make which is the invisible leader it guides your Behavior's thoughts actions and attitudes reactions better than any one person in the military when your leader goes down there is this phrase called Leader's intent do what your leader would do if they were here the invisible leader is is the purpose it helps you answer the question you know do what your purpose would have you do with the contribution you would make have you do and that's what I mean by the invisible leader and actually that term was not coined by me it was coined by Mary Parker fallette in 1928 she was like man 28. yes yes and as a woman during that time as one of the leading management thinkers wow um her philosophy is really incredible and she said leaders and followers are both following the invisible leader the common purpose so that bigger contribution we want to make is the ultimate aligner of our actions thoughts attitudes and energy leaders who do it well embed it and enable it and allow it to guide an organization or a team more so than themselves love it and thank you for the story of the car wash with the pandemic hitting it's a memorable story and and speaking of stories one thing I will say I love for all of you listening you're going to go out and check check out the book The Invisible leader there are a lot of memorable stories and and it's we all know that storytelling is a great way to to help someone identify with with what you're trying to get across right and you talk about um someone in your book named Mary which I believe is is a made-up name but regardless Mary is someone who I think cleans facilities for a living on a college campus and she goes into retirement and then you reveal that she voluntarily comes out of retirement because presumably she's following her authentic purpose and what you told us in the book is Mary yes she gets paid to clean toilets or or whatever that is clean facilities but she's there on this college campus as someone who's supporting young adults in their college Journey essentially that she's not really there she's helping prepare kids or you know young adults sorry for their lives not there to clean bathrooms what I'm wondering about is you know you talked about the car wash we talk about Mary when you look at our Workforce how common do you think it is that someone is in touch with their authentic purpose and it is driving their actions yeah and let me back up a little bit so the stories that are shared and it is a pseudonym because it was part of a research study that we published and we embedded ourselves with a group of janitors for a year and a half trying to understand what creates meaningfulness for them and their work and in jobs that are often overlooked by society and jobs that many people would say gosh well they're just there for the paycheck they just have to get a job what we found is that meaningfulness is accessible in fact the the research on meaningfulness and work finds that there is no difference in any occupation any socioeconomic status with the accessibility of meaningfulness in work however what we do know is that people who experience meaningfulness tend to have you know what I've come to call a so that mentality they can link the discrete thing that they're doing with its inevitable impact regardless of why they got the job right you can get a job for a paycheck that's the meaning of the job in your life but the meaning in the job is what you experience when you're there why it exists um you know what's the only reason why a janitorial position on a college campus exists the only reason is not to clean toilets it's to keep facilities clean so students who live there can learn yeah marry over her 35 years had come to really see that believe it adopt that so that mentality and so for her it just became natural right over time we don't have data on how many people experience meaningfulness although you just gave me an idea for a new study we need to do but we do have data that shows it is accessible through what's called crafting job crafting crafting our perspective on our work crafting the perspective that so that mentality and not only the individual crafting that perspective but we know that leaders and people around other people can create environments where it's easier for people to see that so that like you know I think I read a study recently that set up to 60 of our day is comprised of mundane routine tasks even if you're in your dream job you're going to be waiting in line scheduling meetings rescheduling meetings sending emails yeah um you know I think author Annie Dillard said you know how we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives I think how we think about our moments is how we appraise our days so if we think about these isolated tasks as discrete things that are just we're doing it and we don't experience pleasure doing it so we think it's unpleasurable that's how our lives will be and our work will be but if we can link the little things that we do with their inevitable human impact that is what helps people derive a sense of meaningfulness in their work and that's what Mary did and that's what people who we we study do and it is accessible in every job and every occupation because no job exists to pay somebody every job exists to solve a human problem or fill a human need uh or fill a human desire and or help a team member and so people who experience purpose tend to be able to see that yeah and thanks for for framing it that way you know the job doesn't exist to clean a toy to uh clean a toilet exists to keep a campus clean so that a student has a good learning environment you know I don't know some might think that's semantics but I think you're making the point that when you're crafting your perspective or you have to sew that mentality it is a way you're looking at it so my question from here is there's a part of this that's within an individual's control let's say right I I could probably encourage myself to look at it this way if we look at it maybe from a business perspective as well either a manager or some kind of explicit or implicit leader in a team or an organization you know what can they do to skew the odds that that someone might look at they might craft a pro do what did you say crafting perspective how they would do that uh to their own advantage yeah I mean leaders are architects of the environment uh so it's much easier to believe in the significance of what you're doing if you experience the evidence of your significance in an environment so leaders who tend to give people the evidence of their significance regularly tend to make it easier for people to actually see it and it is tempting if you're listening to think oh you know this is this is idealistic you know to think this way you know I mean someone's cleaning a toilet come on that's hard work it is but I do want to make a quick point before I get into how leaders can do this we've become obsessed with work as pleasurable we've become obsessed that we deserve to derive pleasure from every part of our day and if we're not we should switch jobs we should quiet quit we should do whatever but what we find in years of studies around what makes life worth living is that we know there is a difference between what's pleasurable and what's purposeful and what's purposeful is not always pleasurable it is not pleasurable staying up with my kid all night because he's sick it is purposeful it is people who tend to thrive in their work in their lives tend to focus on what's purposeful and usually pleasure follows so I'll put that aside there no that's good thank you the set the second piece though is that what leaders can do I mean if someone doesn't believe that they matter as a human being it's almost impossible for anything to matter right so we need to be paying people living wages first we need to make sure that people have access to decent work that they don't have to worry about whether they're going to be able to afford an emergency surgery that they need to have or their family needs to have that they have predictable shifts right that they they uh are able to to move their schedule around to be a human right those things are essential that's decent work that is the prerequisite for any of this but the second thing is they also have to believe that they matter I mean they have to feel like what they do is worthwhile right I worked with a manufacturing company and they're having like a lot of turnover issues and motivation and engagement issues and one of the leaders that was responsible for their culture strategy and their talent retention strategy said you know Zach at the end of the day we're just putting Parts in boxes ah interesting yeah well that's about all you need to know probably exactly how you how you see a job how you see people inevitably affects how you treat them and so leaders who you know show people that they're seen show people evidence that their work makes a difference on other human beings leaders that help people see how they and their unique strengths are indispensable Irreplaceable to a bigger hole tend to create the evidence that show people the their significance which makes it easier for people to authentically see that they and what they do matter so evidence of significance of what they're doing that's great and and you brought up mattering and and that people do matter and we're going to hit that topic uh a little bit later here too where I can admit another thing that I I didn't know anything about just like the title of your book um sticking with this idea of an organization and and kind of teeing things up well maybe so that uh people can see that their work does matter um something you talk about in the book is purpose and Mission and I I will fully admit I think I've used uh Mission purpose Vision sometimes I've used all these words interchangeably without really thinking about it and and you make a nice distinction in the book uh let's hit that for a second what's the difference between a purpose statement and a mission statement and why is that distinction matter so purpose is why you exist it's the problem you exist to solve okay it's answers the question what would be lost if we disappeared mission is what you do and how you do it to deliver that purpose Envision is what would the world be like if you were fully done um it's important to know that you know people use these words interchangeably I don't care what you call them I mean like sure you know it's the essence of what they mean that's most important the reason why purpose is so important is because it focuses us on contribution you know our focus on usefulness to other people is the Crux of why purpose Works to engage people it's why purpose Works to create performance because we know that human beings are psychologically emotionally physically optimized when they're useful to other people when they're focused on contribution something bigger than themselves yeah so that's why purpose is so important but why another reason why purpose is so important is that a mission is what you do and how you do it mission um really the root of mission I think the Latin root means to send out can you imagine can you imagine being sent out to do something without a reason for doing it right yeah that's that's like what a lot of organizations have like we we are going to be the industry-leading X Y and Z nobody cares everybody in your industry says they want to be the industry-leading thing right it's not a differentiator um and you know Mission so Mission should describe what you do and how you do it better than anybody else to deliver your meaningful purpose and then your vision is not like to be industry-leading X because the problem is you can achieve that a meaningful vision is something that is so so uh detached from the current state of the world that it constantly pulls you forward um and it should be like if you completely finished your purpose what would the world be like like think about that car wash if everybody was prepared for the future and the community was fully provided for what would the world be like yeah vicious impact on the world yeah so um that's why those three are so important and the essence of those three are more important than what you call them oh great yeah thank you yeah and I mean it strikes me that you kind of connect these dots right if if I understand the purpose of the company and I'm truly buying into that and I can understand why my work matters then it seems it would be a lot easier potential you know to tap into the authentic purpose and and the point here I'm interested in too is how does the purpose of an individual and the purpose of an organization intersect not intersect when does it matter things like that yeah I don't think it's vital to have your life purpose connect to your job's purpose okay I think that's uh partly a Fool's errand because over 60 percent of the U.S population Works in service low-wage earning work many of whom probably wouldn't say that's their life's purpose on their life's purpose could be raising a family providing for I mean family you know so I think it's relatively elitist and unrealistic to think that the second thing that I'll say though is that um I think it's more important to help people be purposeful there's a difference between like having a purpose and being purposeful the Crux of what again creates the well-being outcomes that purpose enables is the fact that when we have a purpose it helps us to be purposeful being purposeful is contribution-centered thinking being and doing and so I think it's more important not to link someone's life purpose with their job purpose but to help people be purposeful in their jobs and that's what's accessible everywhere and it sort of cuts out the purpose anxiety that we see like oh my life's purpose doesn't perfectly match with this job so I'm wasting my time no purpose is where your unique strengths make a unique impact you use your strengths every day you impact other people every day therefore you have purpose every day um so I think purpose is is less especially in work is less out there waiting to be found but really right where you are waiting to be seen and acknowledged what is there a connection between the the what you're just describing as far as the elitist concept of my life I shouldn't have said that probably but well maybe I'll take that out um no like the concept that you know let's put it this way maybe our our expectations unreasonable to suggest to think our life's purpose aligns beautifully with our works purpose and does that relate in any way to this idea that um we expect pleasure from work yeah so let's look at like what individual purpose is again so individual purpose really arises where your unique strengths make a unique impact you know and for example like I I could say that my purpose is to help people to realize their own significance right for example you know one of the the the things that I like doing that energizes me and makes an impact is helping people see themselves and what they do in a different way that helps them see their significance right now um so everybody has that within them like you have a an intersection of your strengths where they make the greatest impact in your life right but that impact may not be accessible specifically in the job that you want or the job that you have but what you can do is you can use your unique strengths that you have that translate in other parts of your life in your work and that's to make an impact yeah absolutely so the what I think is I think there's a there's an expectation that you know your life's work should always align with a job but maybe it's more maybe it's more helpful to think about a job as one delivery system for delivering your strengths and your impact yeah okay yeah um because again like a job a lot of people have to get jobs because they need to support other human beings absolutely yeah you know like that like most people like that's a worthy purpose but when we can help people in that situation to use their unique strengths and show them how their unique strengths that have helped them to provide for these people those strengths make a unique impact in the place where they're going to spend 35 percent of their lives in their job that's where we can connect the two I think more authentically than expecting you know that every job fulfills our life purpose the other thing we get into when we think that is we get into this idea in Psychology called destination addiction that if I just get this I'll be happy that if I just get perfect alignment then I'll be happy we get into this if then argument the problem with that is that if you get there then what I've met plenty of people in their dream jobs yeah that are miserable yeah I've met trauma surgeons that their job is literally to save people's lives that have a meaningful job that don't experience meaningfulness in their jobs anymore and that's that's crazy stuff from for those of us not in the role it's kind of hard to imagine but it's all in the mindset I suppose like your suggestions the good work can become routine work very quickly your dream job can be become you know routine very quickly without the skills to connect your work to purpose regularly and without an environment that doesn't show you the evidence of your significance okay great let's take yeah let's go from here and and go back to the the mattering topic so I'll I'll admit 2022 started I guess a year ago I'm talking about a year ago I don't know that I'd ever heard this term mattering like when I type mattering in the document that I prepared with you and me it spell checks it it says sorry that's not oh that's not a word so so here's the thing I'm just like okay cool cool there's this from my point of view not dialed into mattering there's this slow trickle of awareness in my mind to its existence uh in the spring of last year in 2022 I saw an article from Psychology today talking about mattering being important for mental health I think you call out the Surgeon General acknowledging mattering is important um on LinkedIn and medium you are writing about this posting about this talking about this to me I think it's probably the most common topic I've seen from you over the last six months I've been aware of you now if we we can connect the dots and and infer what you've said but why don't you just tell us first and clearly what is mattering so that we all kind of understand what is mattering and why does it matter which is an ironic sentence I guess yeah okay so mattering is the belief that we're a significant part of the world around us it's the belief that we are significant to other people on this planet or in our micro worlds around us mattering is three things it's a survival Instinct that's been programmed into us for six million years it is a uh human need fundamental motivational human need and it is a universal longing and what I mean by that is let's go to the first one one the first thing that you did as a human being was you tilted your head upward and looked for someone to Value you we were searched with an encoded instinct to get a caretaker to Value us so we would survive like all human instincts that instinct never goes away that is the instinct to matter to someone else we all have that within us it's also a fundamental human need for motivation for example just the fact that you got up and got out of bed today you believed something you believe that your life and your time was worthy of the unrelenting attention that you give it you believe that having this podcast interview or making breakfast that somehow your life was significant enough to keep it going yeah and then the third is that we're encoded you know as human beings in almost every culture to have this longing for meaning in life for the meaning of life and meaning is when things have coherence and one of the ways that we get that meaning in life is researchers find us through other people showing us our meaning in their life which is mattering so life itself biologically psychologically would not activate without the belief that we matter so the degree to which we matter actually connects with the degree to which we have motivation the degree to which we have energy to act the degree to which we engage and there's and this is not a New Concept I mean research has been around for 50 years on it what I think the reason why you haven't heard about it is because it's so common sense it's such a no it's such a it's such like it's an instinct like we don't we don't wake up thinking about eating let's talk about I wrote a blog post on the importance of eating today what I was doing yeah what I was thinking about you know I I was uh I was at an appointment last week and I asked I was like you know why does my breath really matter you know and then and we go into the the parasympathetic I think that's right I'm not a doctor sorry and and it's like okay actually I kind of understand but I don't think about it you know like you said right self-awareness of mattering you know right it's baked in but yeah we're not necessarily aware of it now why are we thinking about it now yeah why are we thinking about it now because more people than ever I think are experiencing its absence ah yeah so when we experience the absence of something it tends to become quote unquote popular even though it was already there so uh and I think that like for example you know more than ever people are indicating loneliness you know isolation feelings of not and we know this like you hear these statistics every listener has heard the statistics these are people around you no one's going to run around saying I feel lonely and I feel like I don't matter but you can bet that people around you feel like that there was a study done that found that of of 66 000 like students who are in sixth grade through 12th grade when they were asked do you think your teacher would notice if you were absent over half of that sample said no strongly disagree that's a hard one to stomach um two-thirds of employees say they feel invisible at work um I think the statistics are similar for leaders invisible no unworthy um there's there's a statistic out there that's 40 of people in the world feel forgotten on a daily basis when someone doesn't believe that they matter it's really hard for anything to matter so we shouldn't be surprised yeah at levels of apathy people leaving organizations people you know low levels of Engagement people isolating themselves all of the other societal issues that we have I think are a result of people fighting for the significance they don't get hmm so let's let yeah this is much bigger than than business management leadership and let's keep it there let's keep it at the big level right you can walk around um today and um I I think so I was I was reading your book and listening to it um uh on Audible when I was in Chicago for work shortly uh like around Hanukkah Christmas time and I was on the train listening to some of it and I think there was something in there about like the effect you can have just by giving someone else a genuine smile and so I start walking around Chicago 2.8 million people whatever it is just smile just smiling at people right and I'm like that's really interesting I'm aware of it I'm thinking about it let's talk about what can people do to help others feel I think I focused on feeling noticed I think was what I like to focus on here it seemed to me to attract me the most what can people do to help other people feel noticed so to Jason yeah why did a book have to tell you to smile on other people I don't know I don't know but I know this is this is how it's happened right yeah yeah I mean this isn't this is why do why do we have to read books on how that giving to other people is better than taking from them no you're right I mean I've got earbuds in looking at the ground no no but I do it too I'm writing a book right now I create a creating mattering and sometimes I'm like what has happened to us but I do think that they're again common sense is not always common practice and so you get into like what's the practice what's the deliberate practice what I like what you did about the smiling is that you turned it from common sense into a deliberate practice and I think we have to get back to that these are practices that maintain our society and our workplaces and you mentioned like this is much bigger than work I study work and I don't think it is bigger than work because a a a healthy Society cannot have unhealthy workplaces people spend a third of their lives yeah that they're awake for in their jobs so people try to separate work from life it's just a job it's not my life it is your life your life exists wherever you're living and breathing including at work you know stop your biological functions because you clock in um and so work is important but what can you do one know the first and last name of your delivery driver call them by their name um ask the person in line how they're doing um if your co-worker was out sick check in on them um if your co-worker's been struggling on a project offer a proactive action to help if you're in a meeting someone goes around and they say they're overloaded offer an action to help alleviate them being overloaded um affirm people instead of just saying thank you uh tell people the difference that they make when you're leaving an airplane and you see those people come on who are cleaning the airplane don't just put your head down and get your bag and leave look at them and say hey thanks for cleaning this looks great um if you get a food service worker instead of just treating them like a transaction treat them like a person say hi say thank you do this for your leaders as well remind people of their strengths regularly the the last one show people that they're needed when's the last time you said to someone if it wasn't for you um I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing I wouldn't be who I am today I wouldn't be living where I'm living we have a lot of those people in our Lives who we can go through our entire existence without ever telling them that they're needed um and that's a model that I like to call noticed affirmed and needed I mean it's very easy to remember not a number right uh and those are the practices that create mattering and I think it's the Bedrock of healthy societies healthy organizations and without it what happens is you get people fighting for significance so they'll try to find other people who agree with they with what they agree with to help them feel a sense of belonging and significance that they're not getting in their General communities or workplaces I think double thinking yeah I think it's a part of the reason part of the reason minus the macro political reasons the part of the reasons why there's so much divisiveness is actually a lack of individual feelings of significance in life but to lead for the craving for significance yeah there's a lot of depth there Zach thank you for all that um see how I just called you by your name thank you um no seriously um really interesting topic really important and you just said Bedrock which probably suggests that's why you're writing the book or you figure that out along the way that it is the Bedrock and decided to write the book I mean just curious as we're kind of coming close to the end of our discussion which has got a ton of great actionable things for people to to take is there anything else you really want to highlight about mattering that you think we sh we should know beyond what we've already said no I mean I think I've said it I said it well but I think that that it one thing I do want to mention is that it's a practice that must be deliberately honed and you know practice like we all know that eating well is important but it's something that you have to stick to it's a discipline like anything else um it takes work it takes learning uh it takes relearning and so I think that all the stuff we're talking about it can seem simple like it can seem like oh Mary just is a great person because she sees her job in this amazing way but no I mean she was there for 30 years you know she developed this practice over 30 years so like anything I think everything we've talked about as a practice and I certainly don't have it all figured out um there are a lot of times I get up in the morning and I feel unmotivated um you know I don't feel like energy I'm not running around screening my purpose statement in the street right so I think that knowing that it's a constant practice is important especially when you listen to podcasts like this got it yeah thank you because you're right there's so much of the we get a little snippet and then we think oh that'll change everything but the the deliberate practice of building that habit awesome awesome to call that out thank you um great so much I've learned today Zach you've had a great effect on on me through the book and and uh and through our discussion I know I'm going to be uh trying some new habits as a result of it um try to build some new habits um I ask all guests the same question and I'm going to start off this second season the same way what I ask everyone is what is something that you've learned recently um well I think something that's really interesting that I've learned recently I'm reading this I'm reading this book by this um this like Jewish thinker this Rabbi about the difference between things in space and things in time so like the sacredness of time and how we try to manipulate the things in space like the things we have to do our tasks or money or things to make us more comfortable and we spend all of our time trying to manipulate things to make us feel better instead of being able to be in and embrace like the absolute irreplaceability of like the minute that we're in and soak it all in so we're so interested in making like all the things around us optimize time but it's really time that optimizes the things around us and so I'm reading this philosophy like and it's uh I read a lot of philosophy stuff and it's uh it's changed a lot for me interesting cool like am I trying to manipulate stuff to make my time feel better or am I trying to really be in the time yeah and I'm in sorry something to think about yeah thanks for sharing that that's cool definitely a unique a unique one I've not heard an answer like that before very cool no that's awesome thank you cool well Zach Mercurio for those who are really interested in this discussion today uh feeling inspired by it wanna learn more about mattering about your materials anything going on where would we where would you like to to direct them yeah you can um so for some for a recent article I wrote a couple months ago and that's recent for me because I it takes me a while to write I um you can go to Zach mercurio.com and there's a Blog section there if you want some more background on mattering and then all of these practices I have some blog posts from last year that articulate them a little bit better and then feel free to jump on LinkedIn if you're on there and follow me there that's probably the place that I'm most engaged with and active on because people actually Converse about things so feel free to jump on there and join the conversation and a lot of people you know I post things that I end up disagreeing with so yeah uh you know go and disagree with me good an invitation to disagree with so yeah we have if you read some of the comments on some of the things that I post it's cool I mean you got someone that's like nah it doesn't matter it's just work and then you get a cool yeah so it's good I like that awesome so Zach mercurio.com find Zach on LinkedIn and I can't thank you enough for your time today I really appreciate you spending some of that time that that we have that's so precious as you just called out uh for a really great conversation again I've learned a lot I know others will and and have a great rest of your day Zach thanks so much thanks