How leaders can make people feel seen through small, deliberate moments

Executive overview

Most workplace recognition programmes miss what actually makes people feel they matter: small, human moments of being seen, remembered, and named. Leaders account for nearly 50% of whether employees experience meaningfulness at work — yet most interactions remain transactional.

Zach Mercurio's framework centres on mattering — the experience of feeling significant — as a prerequisite for engagement, not a reward for performance. People need to feel valued before they add value, not after.

The practical entry point is noticing: a three-step process of observe, note, and share that turns good intentions into consistent practice.

People who feel like they matter act like they matter.

Why transactional leadership falls short

• Just 39% of employees report having someone at work who cares about them as a person.
• Only 30% feel someone knows and invests in their unique gifts — matching research showing 30% of people feel invisible.
• Employee engagement has hit near-decade lows despite a $1 billion engagement industry.
• Engagement itself depends on three preconditions: psychological meaningfulness, psychological safety, and availability of support — all outcomes of feeling that you matter.
• Most meetings are information transactions; what cannot be an email is genuine human check-in.

The Pygmalion effect: how we see shapes how we treat

• How we see someone is usually how we treat them; how we treat them shapes how they see themselves; how they see themselves determines how they act.
• Label audit: write down the labels you've assigned to a difficult person, then ask whether you are treating them as labeled or seeking to understand them.
• Reframe: instead of "toxic employee," try "a person behaving in ways I perceive as difficult" — this separates person from behaviour and opens curiosity about causes.
• A maintenance supervisor who avoided an absent employee started telling her why she was missed; attendance improved because she wanted to be there.
• Hurry and care cannot coexist. Leaders must create time and space to truly see people.

Bids for connection: turning toward, away, or against

• Bids (Gottman) are small gestures — a sigh, a question, eye contact — that are the fundamental unit of emotional connection.
• The quality of a relationship is determined by seemingly meaningless and inconsequential exchanges.
• Turning toward: acknowledging the bid. "I noticed you sighed — is everything okay?"
• Turning away: disregarding it. "Yeah, that's just how meetings with sales always are."
• Turning against: outright rejection. "I've got a lot going on — let's stick to the agenda."
• Relationships with consistently higher turning-toward ratios are healthier over time.
• Identify your personal risk conditions — time of day, overload, certain email tones — when you are most likely to turn away, so you can intervene before you do.

Liminal space: where connection actually happens

• Connection does not happen in scheduled rituals; it happens in the moments between them.
• Early on a video call before others join: instead of opening another tab, check in.
• Passing someone in a hallway: "I know you were nervous about that sales meeting — how did it go?"
• A janitor's most memorable career moment was a student stopping to say hello and use her name — not a monthly award ceremony.
• A physician on a paediatric ICU still recalls the charge nurse saying "I'm so glad it's you tonight" — one sentence that kept her going.
• There is no more powerful feeling than knowing your presence and absence means something to one other person.

The observe–note–share framework

• Observe: go beyond "how are you" — ask "what has your attention today?", "what are you struggling with?", "how can I help?"
• Note: write it down. A distribution-centre supervisor kept a Moleskine notebook, logging one detail per team member each Friday. Her team was the only outlier on a low-engagement survey across 20 teams.
• Note-taking counteracts shrinking attention spans and the volume of competing demands on leaders.
• A simple tactic: write "don't forget to ask about…" at the top of one-on-one agendas.
• Share: close the loop. Months later, "last time we talked you were working on X — how did it go?" creates deep connection through the act of being remembered.
• The most common gap is sharing back: good intentions stay unrealised without a scheduled trigger.

Making good intentions a practice

• Schedule acts of care the same way you schedule tasks — put them at the top of your to-do list.
• A "do-over journal": at day's end, note moments where you turned away and decide what you will do differently next time.
• Self-awareness question: in what situations am I most at risk of turning away or turning against?
• Mattering is not a programme or platform; it is the cumulative effect of optimised everyday interactions.
• Leaders are their team's secure base — people take risks and innovate when they know someone has their back.
• Leaders themselves often feel isolated and need mattering too; showing leaders they matter is a practice individual contributors can adopt.