733: The Way to Notice People Better, with Zach Mercurio
Coaching for Leaders
Dave Stachowiak
4.8 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 12 May 2025
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Zach Mercurio is an author, researcher, and speaker specializing in purposeful leadership, mattering, meaningful work, and positive organizational psychology. He teaches a course with past guest Simon Sinek on how leaders can show everyone how they matter. He is the author of The Power of Mattering: How Leaders Can Create a Culture of Significance*.
When you ask people what mattered in their careers, few cite the bonus, or the stock options, or the employee of the month award. What they do talk about are the times they were remembered, supported, thanked, and seen. In this conversation, Zach and I discuss how to do that better.
Key Points
When people are asked about when they mattered, they recall small moments of being remembered, helped, thanked, or seen.
The behavior of a leader accounts for half of increased feelings of mattering and meaningfulness at work.
Rather than identifying with a person’s behavior identify first with the person.
Look for the positive traits in a person or identify something that you love.
Music is the space between the notes. In our informal interactions, we have the choice to turn against, turn away, or turn towards.
Leaders who notice people well consistently follow three steps: observe, note, and share.
Resources Mentioned
The Power of Mattering: How Leaders Can Create a Culture of Significance* by Zach Mercurio
Interview Notes
Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).
Related Episodes
Start With Why, with Simon Sinek (episode 223)
How to Shift Behavior for Better Results, with Mitch Warner (episode 690)
How to Bring Out the Best in People, with Donna Hicks (episode 724)
Expert Partner
Are you noticing people communicating in a such a way that feels boring or robotic to stakeholders – or perhaps just losing them in the data? David Hutchens, one our our expert partners, helps leaders and organizations develop a more human, engaging voice through the power of storytelling.
To discover more about how his work may support your organization, get in touch on our expert partners page.
Discover More
Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | When you ask people what mattered in their careers, few of them cite the bonus or the stock options or the employee of the month award. |
| 0:09.0 | What they do talk about are the times they were remembered, supported, thanked, and seen. |
| 0:16.2 | In this episode, how to do that better. |
| 0:19.5 | This is Coaching for Leaders, Episode 733. |
| 0:24.1 | Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential. |
| 0:32.4 | Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I'm your host, Dave Stahofiak. |
| 0:40.4 | Leaders aren't born. They're made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. |
| 0:48.8 | One of the things that we all want, we all need, is to matter, Matter in our families and our relationships and, of course, |
| 0:56.0 | mattering in our professional responsibilities and roles and relationships as well, too. Today, an |
| 1:02.5 | invitation on how we can do a better job at creating a culture of significance in our |
| 1:07.4 | organizations by noticing people in such a genuine and effective way. And I'm so |
| 1:12.7 | pleased to welcome Zach Mercurio. Zach is an author, researcher, and speaker specializing |
| 1:18.9 | in purposeful leadership, mattering, meaningful work, and positive organizational psychology. |
| 1:24.7 | He teaches a course with past guest Simon Sinek on how leaders can show everyone how they matter. He is the author of The Power of Mattering, how leaders can create a culture of significance. Sack, so good to see you. |
| 1:37.7 | Thank you, Dave. I'm glad to be here. I love this book, and I love the work that you're doing on helping us to get better at thinking about this word mattering. |
| 1:48.6 | And it's so human and it's so central to who we are. |
| 1:53.7 | And I think that's probably why a story that you told in the book, grab my attention, |
| 1:58.6 | and maybe also because it's my story, too, of being a parent. |
| 2:02.6 | And you tell about how your oldest son loves his tablet and can get, go down the rabbit |
| 2:11.1 | hole on it. And like every parent, you're being mindful of screen time and him not spending too much time on that. And I'm, |
| 2:19.3 | you decided to make a shift in how you approach this dynamic, this tension that I think a lot of |
| 2:23.9 | us feel who are parents. And I was wondering if you could share that story. Well, yeah, I have a 10-year-old |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 23 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Dave Stachowiak, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Dave Stachowiak and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.