Chris: Have you ever left work after a long day and wondered if anything you did mattered? Was it significant to anyone, or did it make a difference to the business? If so, you’re not alone. My guest today says helping people understand why they matter, is one of the biggest ways leaders can overcome employee disengagement, loneliness and enhance productivity.

Welcome to Work Better. The Steelcase podcast where we think about work and ways to make it better. I’m your host Chris Congdon and my guest today is mattering expert Zach Mercurio. Zach is a researcher and advisor on purposeful leadership and meaningful work, and the author of the new book: The Power of Mattering: How Leaders Can Create a Culture of Significance.
Different from belonging or inclusion, mattering is the experience of feeling significant to those around us because we add value. And Zach says it’s a primal need of everyone. We discuss how daily interactions can help enhance employee engagement, decrease loneliness, and improve worker well-being.

Creating a culture of mattering is no small matter. Enjoy this conversation.

===================================================================

Chris Congdon: Zach Mercurio, welcome to work better.

Zach Mercurio: Thanks, Chris, glad to be here.

Chris Congdon: So, Zack. you’ve written a book about mattering, and I think that it is so interesting that you’ve chosen that word matter, and I’d like to start out by defining what’s different between mattering and some of the other kinds of things that we talk about with like belonging, or inclusion or purpose like, why does mattering matter?

Zach Mercurio: The matter is to be significant to another person. And first and foremost, it’s a survival instinct. So when you were born, one of the first things you did scientists find is you actually rasp your hands out in a hugging motion. It’s called our grasp reflex. To find someone to matter to. None of us would be here listening to this conversation, if at some point we hadn’t mattered enough to someone else to keep us alive.

So first and foremost, it’s an instinct to feel significant, and it turns into a need to feel, seen, heard, valued, and needed by those around us as we grow up, and we go to work. And it’s different from belonging, or, you know, inclusion which we’ve heard a lot about in that belonging is feeling welcomed and accepted and connected to a group belonging is like being picked for the team. Inclusion is being able and invited to take an active role in that group. It’s being asked to play in the game. But mattering is feeling significant to individuals in that group. It’s feeling that the team wouldn’t be complete without you.

And why it matters is that mattering is created through interactions. It’s created interpersonally. And why that matters now is that when we look at data on the experience of work, despite all the programs and initiatives we’ve thrown at things like disengagement or mental health issues in work or loneliness, we still see persistent rising levels of disengagement, persistent rising levels of loneliness. And when you look at that data, what you find is that what’s happening is people in everyday interactions are feeling more unseen, unheard, unvalued than ever, which is driving this visceral reaction to having a need not met which are things like quiet quitting, or or acts of desperation.

Chris Congdon: I want to unpack that even more because I think you’re making a really important distinction. And you’re right, like, when we look at data from it feels like every day. There’s something about how disengaged people are. Or, again, loneliness, other well-being issues that they almost feel insurmountable in some ways. And so this distinction between these kind of other things and this idea of like mattering, I think, is a really important one. And one of the things I wondered about. You know, when I first looked at your your book, Zack was gosh you know, in a lot of businesses human beings are a resource. You know, you need to apply people as a resource to a project or to a problem that you’re trying to solve. But like, why do businesses care if people feel like they matter? Why should they?

Zach Mercurio: Well, if you look at the last 50 years of psychological research, I mean, I could sum it up in one line. You look at the motivation research in work, it’s almost impossible for anything to matter to someone who doesn’t believe that they matter.

Chris Congdon: Say that again. Say that again.

Zach Mercurio: It’s almost impossible for anything to matter to someone who doesn’t first believe that they matter.

Chris Congdon: Interesting.

Zach Mercurio: So think about this. Think about the last time you cared about something when you didn’t feel cared for. Think about the last time you were committed to something that you didn’t know why it mattered to someone else.
Right? Mattering is this primal need. That’s not only comes first as human beings. But it When you think about all of the lagging indicators, we say we want things like performance, productivity, engagement. These are all lagging indicators.

They’re all lagging indicators of human energy. And so if you’re an organization, if you’re a leader and you want people to be more productive. But you’re not creating an environment that regenerates the energy for them to be productive. That’s where we get into this perpetual frustration, this perpetual disengagement. I really believe that the reason why we are in this quote unquote disengagement crisis, which I don’t think it’s that I think it’s a mattering deficit. But 4:43: the reason why we’re in this disengagement crisis is because we’ve expected people to care for so long without doing the work to ensure. They feel cared for first, people are very unlikely to add value if they don’t 1st feel valued. And this is where businesses have gotten this wrong. A lot of times we’ve thought about since the industrial revolution. That people should be valued once they add value. Psychologically, it’s actually the opposite. We need to feel valued to add value.

Because, for example, when I feel value, when I feel that I matter, I get two beliefs that result from that self-esteem, which is the belief that I’m worthy and self efficacy which is quite important in work which is the belief that I’m capable. And when people feel that they matter to someone else, they feel more worthy, they feel more capable. So they have the confidence to go out and create, innovate, experiment, take risks, perform because they know that someone has their back. They know that they have a secure base. They know that they already matter so they can go out and produce and perform because they have the confidence to do that. And then, when leaders show them how they add value the more they feel valued. And that’s the virtuous cycle organizations create when they invest in the interactional skills. To make sure, everybody feels seen, heard, valued, and needed.

Chris Congdon: So, Zack, when you’re saying this, it seems so straightforward, so like simple. So if it’s that simple, why don’t we do that? I mean like I don’t know.

Zach Mercurio: Why? Why do I have a job.

Chris Congdon: Well, yeah. But I mean, but why is this topic? I think, resonating so much with people. What are we doing wrong that we’re not showing people how they matter at work?

Zach Mercurio: Well, I think, one, it’s resonating, because the language of mattering gives language to a lot of what people have experienced. But they don’t have words, for example,I’ve had people come up to me and say, I feel like I belong in my group, I feel like I can contribute to my group, but nobody notices that I’m a caretaker for my parent who is in the hospital. I feel left out of discussions that I have expertise in, and nobody knows that I’ve never had a supervisor name my unique gifts or strengths. Again, people are drawn to this language because it gives language to something.

But the other key point here is that what’s common sense is not always common practice. And for so long we’ve developed leaders based on intuition. So the first thing we’ve done is we’ve said, “hey, let’s promote leaders who are good at what they do.” They’re good at the job. But then leadership is a different job and leading people and caring for people and sacrificing for people and serving people is another job that requires another set of skills. A lot of those skills have been labeled since the 1960 as “soft.”

Chris Congdon: Soft. I was just gonna say.

Zach Mercurio: Right. So like when you tell someone something soft, your brain is susceptible to what’s called an overconfidence bias. If I tell you something soft or simple, and I tell you to go into a training for it psychologically, you’re going to devote less mental energy to that meeting because we think we don’t need it. And so we’ve approached these skills with less rigor than other processes or practices in our organizations.

And then the second thing that’s really accelerating is that we’ve been able to communicate with each other for the last 25 years sending short digital transactions. Yeah, you know, Chris, if you give me some bad news at work, hey? I didn’t get the project done. I can send you a little like sad faced Emoji, and be like, “okay, we’ll talk about it next week.” Once I close the platform, once I close the app, I don’t have to think about you again.

Chris Congdon: Yeah. So let’s pause a minute, because there’s two really important things there that I want to go back to. I mean the skill set that you need to be an effective leader to be able to make people feel like they matter. When you talked about that, I thought, yeah, I remember when I did my MBA. The classes that I took were, you know, it was about project management, it was about financial management. They were skills that I would have used the term kind of “hard skills” . I think I had one class that was about management in general, but nobody talked about “mattering.” And so how do we help leaders? See, first of all, that mattering skills matter, and that we need to learn them like, how does one go about learning those skills?

Zach Mercurio: Well, I think you know, it goes back to that second point is that we used to learn these skills via social learning; so in situations where we were able to show compassion, show understanding. For example, if I wasn’t able to have an out and send you that sad faced emoji or thumbs down, Emoji, and say, we’ll talk about it next week. I would have had to sit there in the discomfort, seek understanding of the many possible reasons you didn’t finish that project, potentially offer you compassion or offer you support, and the more the less we use a skill the less proficient we get at it.

And one of the things that’s happening is education isn’t filling the gap. So less than 2% of the world’s population researchers estimate now get any formal education on how to listen well, for example. So if you’re an organization right now, if you’re a leader, you can bet that you are probably under skilled at seeing, hearing, and valuing other people. And your people are probably underskilled.

But that’s also hopeful. I think it’s also hopeful and empowering, because one of the things that we’ve done is we’ve tried to name what these skills are. So we’ve asked thousands of people when you feel that you’re significant at work. When you feel that you and what you do matters. What is your leader doing? And if I asked the audience rhetorically, that question right now, I’m guessing not many of you are thinking when they gave you your direct deposit, or a pay increase, or employee of the month, or a big action or a promotion. Most likely you’re thinking about small interactions.

And this is what’s very important is mattering happens in moments. It happens in small interactions in which 3 things happen. We feel noticed, we feel, seen, truly seen, and heard, we feel affirmed.

We can see how our unique gifts make a unique difference, and then that we feel needed, we feel indispensable, and that we and what we’re doing are indisposable to some bigger outcome. And those are the 3 things that come about time after time.
So by naming them we can start to invest in them, and that was our goal. I had the same question that you had 5 years ago. How do we start this? You know, where have we gone wrong? And one of the problems that we realized is that we just couldn’t name them. We couldn’t categorize the skills to show people how they matter, but noticing people affirming them and showing them how they’re needed are 3 things that came up, that were the architecture of a moment of mattering.

Chris Congdon: So let’s break those down even further, because I think this is a good, a good learning opportunity for all of us. What is noticing look like, even as I asked that it sounds like kind of a dumb question. But really, what do you mean? Noticing?

Zach Mercurio: Yeah. So let’s unpack the difference between knowing a person and noticing them. Okay. So you can know your best friend.

Chris Congdon: But not notice the subtle signs that they’re suffering.

Zach Mercurio: Or struggling. You can know your team members very well, but not notice subtle signs that they may not be more interested in that project or that task group that they used to get excited about noticing is attuning yourself to the details, ebbs and flows of someone’s life and and their voice what they share with you, and showing them, giving them an action to show them that they’re thought about. And it’s a deliberate skill. And to notice people, we have to have the data to notice them.

So we actually have to gather the details of their lives. One way to do that, for example, is to ask better questions. And this is one of the skills that we find that leaders who do this well, they tend to ask really good questions instead of How are you? How are you doing today? How was your shift, or is this my favorite, when I’ve observed meetings, a leader will start, “how’s everybody doing, good?”

I mean, could you imagine, Chris, if you were not good? Would you be like, “not me,” Or I hope you’re doing well.

A lot of times, our one on ones, our meetings, our interactions, all start the same way because we’ve gone through these routines. Yeah, but just asking a question that people can actually answer is very powerful, like, “what has your attention today”? So make sure it’s clear what’s been the most meaningful to you today, make sure it’s open. What was the most valuable insight you gained from that meeting? Make sure that it’s exploratory, not evaluative. Instead of, “hey, what’s the status update on that project?”

It’s astounding how many of our interactions in work are simply exchanges of information. So status updates give me an update. Give me an update. Give me an update instead. Ask, “you know, hey, what are some roadblocks you’re facing with that project?” “What can I do to help any log jams you’re facing?”, you know? “What can I do to remove them?”

Ernest Shackleton, the leader of the crew, the Endurance, who explored Antarctica in 1915, had a question. He asked all the sailors while they were trying desperately to survive, and they all did, and he asked them, “What would you do if you were me?” “What do you need from me today” So that’s a way to start getting data to actually see people. And that’s one of the easiest barriers of entry in terms of a skill to start gathering the details of people’s work in their lives so that you can pay attention and show them that you’re checking in.

Chris Congdon: So, Zack, like, what if a leader is one of those people? That kind of doesn’t give a rip like you know, we all know those people. We’ve all maybe had them as bosses at one time or another in our careers where it’s like, I’m too busy, you know. I’ve got things to do. I’ve got places to go, people to meet. I’m too busy to take the time to notice you.

Zach Mercurio: Hmm. You know. Let’s just think about that last line again. I’m too busy to take the time to care for you. I mean, you’re probably too busy to truly be a leader. If that’s the case, I mean, leadership is relationships. You may be being a capital product project manager. But a true leader is someone who takes care of the people doing the job.

I mean, when we look at the discipline of leadership, there’s no escape from that, and you can’t care for something. You don’t understand whether it’s a houseplant, a pet, anything you can’t care for, something you don’t understand. You can care about people from a distance. A lot of organizations say they care about their people that they’re their greatest asset. But caring for people means you have to get up close and deeply understand them. Yeah. And understanding takes time, but doesn’t mean it doesn’t always mean more time. It usually means using the time you have with people to help them feel, seen and heard. It takes attention which we’ve been losing too, and it takes intention. I also believe that I’m an optimist, and so I don’t believe that anybody wakes up and says, I want to be an uncaring leader.

Chris Congdon: No, probably not. But…

Zach Mercurio: Or I think that they’re yeah. Yeah, yeah.
A lot of people are untrained in leadership skills. And so that lack of ability results in defensiveness like, I don’t know how to do it while I’m busy. So I’m just gonna say, “Oh, that’s just the fluffy stuff”. It’s an easy way out. I think that’s natural for human beings.

So I think sometimes people don’t know how to do these things, and so they can get defensive. And I think the other thing is sometimes they’re in environments that make it hard for them to do it. And so they get defensive. There’s nothing more frustrating than knowing what you should do and being in a system that makes it impossible for you to do it. So if you’re a distribution center manager and you go to a session on how to create mattering for people. But then your day is tracked by a GPS device that tracks your productivity all day. Your environment makes it very difficult for you to do that. So this is also a systemic issue.

Chris Congdon: So Zach, one of the things you said earlier, if I’m, if I’m quoting you back right, was about mattering happens in moments, like in terms of techniques, of how we notice people or how we affirm them. Do you have a suggestion like just writing a nice email? A best practice? Is it having a conversation? Like what would you suggest is the best way to do that?

Zach Mercurio: Yeah, having a conversation, but also having a practice to remember what was said, and then making sure that you actually schedule checking back in on what was said or what you heard, or what you noticed.

One practice that comes up a lot when we’re researching leaders is that they tend to have some deliberate way to remember and check back in on details of people’s lives.
There’s one story that stands out to me that really caught my interest because this leader at a distribution center had one of the only engaged teams in a sea of disengaged teams in the center, which is why I got brought in. And I went to her team, and I said, “What’s going on here?” And they all said some version of it. It’s her, it’s our supervisor. She just gets us. We do anything for her. And I asked her, I said, “what do you do?” And she had a notebook. She had this old Moleskine notebook. She told me 3 years ago she had a very difficult time keeping track of her 29 team members, and that she would write down on Friday each of their names. She took about 5 to 10 min to do this and write down one thing she heard them talk about, complain about, ask about that week, or share. Like if their kid was starting a new sport that weekend, if they had a problem with a piece of equipment, and she would write those things down.

And then on Monday morning she goes, “to get myself in the right headspace I would look at that list, and I scheduled just in my mind and on my calendar a 3 min check in”, and I would go to each of my employees and I said, “Hey, I remember last week that that piece of equipment broke for you. Did we ever get that fixed?”

And she said just she told me she looked at me. She goes, Zach, there’s magic in being remembered. And what I love about that is that it was so simple. It didn’t take much time on her part, but it took intention. It took attention. So noticing is a skill. So being able to note somewhere what you observe about your team members, and at the end of the week, look at that and say, “what do I want to, or need to check in on next week about a conversation I had about a detail I noticed?” and then when will I do that? And that practice just there can really revolutionize a team.

Chris Congdon: Yeah, you know, that’s such a great tip. Because, like, I try and remember things. But I try and remember them and hold them in my head, and you can’t always do that. So just that simple idea of writing it down each week just makes so much sense.

Zach Mercurio: And you don’t have to keep a note. If you don’t have to keep a notebook like I’m nota journaler. So on the top of my one I just write. And I’m one of those people that’s actually really task driven. And so I have to I teach everything I need to hear the most.
So I write down at the top of my one on ones. Don’t forget to ask about dot dot, and that’s it, and it just jogs my memory. It’s very hard for my brain to scan down onto that agenda without saying, Oh, Emerald, (that’s one of my assistants name). Oh, Emerald, you know I know that your son had their first baseball game this weekend. How was that? And just like the ease at which you see someone relax into a meeting when they feel remembered, is pretty remarkable.

Chris Congdon: Yeah, I think that’s such good advice. I want to ask you about a couple other things that may be connected to your work on mattering. One is, we’ve been doing a lot of research over the years about the notion of community creating a sense of community at work and in the work that we were doing. We saw some really positive attributes when people feel part of a community, there’s higher levels of trust and higher levels of shared responsibility or feelings of shared responsibility. How does being a member or feeling a member of a community tied to feeling, of mattering?

Zach Mercurio: Well, I think that you know, feeling part of a community. That sense of belonging makes it easier to feel that you matter because you have more opportunities for these moments.
Now, what you do in these moments is very important. But one of the things that happens is when people are in spaces that facilitate community. They’re more likely to have these very small interactions that are opportunities to see somebody or hear somebody or affirm somebody. There’s a composer whose name is Claude Debussy, and he wrote music in the space between the notes. And what I love about that is that when a note, when a piece of music is heard. It’s really heard. When the note’s over, it’s heard in between.

And when we’ve been studying culture, culture happens in the in-between moments as well this liminal space, right? When you’re walking in the hallway past somebody, and you have that chance to either look at your phone or look up and say, “Oh, how did that meeting go last week that you were nervous about? I wanted to check in on that.” That’s a moment of mattering.
When you have that moment where you’re coming into a conference room in a meeting, and someone sits down next to you, and you’re able to sit down in a way that you’re facing each other, and someone says before the meeting starts, instead of just saying, Oh, you know, I need to sneak out for a quick phone call, looks at the person and says, “hey, I just want to let you know I noticed the update on that project or that sale you won. I wanted to let you know that I’m really proud of you. You’ve been working on that for a while.”
So I think that what happens is meetings, and one on ones and performance evaluations and budget meetings, and all those things are the notes in organizations. But what really creates a sense of significance is what happens between the notes in these very small liminal spaces. So when you’re in spaces that facilitate community. You’re facilitating more opportunities for these interactions and more moments of mattering.

Chris Congdon: Yeah. So let’s talk about that. Although I do want you to say that line one more time, it was great. “Culture happens in the in between moments”

Zach Mercurio: In between. Yes.

Chris Congdon: In the in-between. Yeah, I love that so much.
We talk a lot about space. So I want to go there and talk about places a little bit, but that space can shape behavior and behavior over time is what creates the culture. Yeah. And I think this layer of these in between moments might seem insignificant and particularly if we’ve gotten accustomed to working in some new ways, which I think we have.
We’ve gotten accustomed to having these very short, very task based kind of meetings, often like 30 min intervals, just one after the other. And it’s just meeting, meeting, meeting. It doesn’t feel like it leaves time for the in-between that we actually need as human beings. What are your thoughts about the ways we’re working today?

Zach Mercurio: We maybe need to rethink. Yeah, I mean, I say, in both remote work and in-person work you should not be using your very rare time together to be exchanging information. That should be an email. What I mean by that is, most of the meetings I observe are update fests. You know, it’s just an update update, update, right?

But what can’t be an email is like looking you in the eye and saying, “Hey, I noticed last week you were struggling with that piece of equipment. Did we get that fixed?” If not, let’s figure it out right now. What can’t be an email is resolving on a team a difference in ways of working with one another that affects the outcome that you’re giving an update on. I really want to see people focus their effort and time together on how to be with one another and work on how to be and work with one another, instead of spending your time exchanging information on what you’re doing with one another.

But the roadblock to this is that again, a lot of leaders don’t have the skill to have those conversations. I get things like, “well, if I have that conversation, I’m going to open up a can of worms, and I don’t have time for that.” And it’s a pretty short sighted way of thinking about things. And this is not a leader’s fault. This is how we’ve been socialized to look at the short term efficiency of something and judge it that way. But there’s nothing more inefficient. I mean, the worm’s already in the can, right? There’s nothing more inefficient than when people aren’t able to say what they’re really thinking.

And so I really want to encourage people to use spaces, and especially in remote work where time is shorter, we use technology. Anytime we use technology to communicate, research shows the interactions are shorter and quote unquote, “more efficient” in those settings. You should definitely not be using that time to give updates.

Chris Congdon: So let’s talk a little bit about space. Because again, as I said a moment ago, we do think that space can shape behavior. I don’t know how much you’ve given this thought before, but like if you had advice for those of us who are in the business of making physical places for people to work, do you have any thoughts that you’d say, “you know, I really wish that you people who make offices would do X.”?

Zach Mercurio: That’s a great question. I mean, I think it fits really well, because the mattering approach to work we take an ecological approach, which means that the environment does two things to behavior. It either makes it possible or it determines it will occur. So a very interesting thing to think about from that approach is, does your environment make moments in which people can see, hear, value and show others how they’re needed possible? And how does your environment determine that it will occur?

For example, I would love to get away from just the square conference room table. It has people pitted about 15 feet away, and most of the time what happens is the person in power is at the top. And then everybody else has to figure out their pecking order. But what this does, think about it, think about how much physical distance has to be covered for the leader to get to you, to have that moment, right? So that’s one, right?

One thing is the distance between people. You know, making sure people are in spaces where they feel comfortable, but they can easily turn to somebody and look at them and engage with them and make eye contact with them and help them feel seen is very important when you’re thinking about spaces, making sure no one can get lost in the crowd.

So a lot of times there’s some tiered seating. Or I go into a conference room and I’ll see there’s overflow seating around the edges, and all of that overflow seating is lower than the seats at the table. So if you’re like, I do a lot of presentations. If I’m looking, those people are seated behind and beneath people. You literally cannot see them.

Or another thing is, when I go into a setting and people are having a large meeting. And this is an environmental thing again, where you know the audience will be talking, and they have no way at their seat to press something and have their voice heard. So there’s no microphone. So it just gets lost. The voice gets lost.

And I mean that deflating feeling of when you’re saying something like I would have liked to have more seat-based audiovisual components in all spaces for people to literally have their voice be heard, because often that gets drowned out. So those are like little things that make a massive difference.

Chris Congdon: Yeah, no, I think they’re tremendous insights, and I agree with you. I hate those long rectangular tables, and I know that they can be beautiful sometimes, and they can fit into an environment. But I’m with you actually much preferred, you know, spaces where the shapes are more rounded, where you can make eye contact where you are physically seen, and your proximity is close enough to where you actually can hear each other, and it sounds little, but it just makes such a huge difference.

Zach Mercurio: Can I add one point?

Chris Congdon: Absolutely.

Zach Mercurio: So we’re talking about the 80%. We’re talking about the 20% of people that actually have an office. And my research started with the 80% of people who are out in the service work wage earning sector. Doing the work that keeps all of these office spaces running. And one of the things that I noticed is my research, my initial research studies, was with a group of janitors, cleaners, and how they come to experience meaningfulness in their work.

And their break room was this, mashed together metal, cold metal chairs, and literally it was a closet with no window, and it just said, custodial on it. What I would love to do, what I would love to see happen in our world of work is to create spaces that dignify the people in the spaces doing that work. I mean, I want to see a manufacturing facility create a beautiful break space for a frontline wage earning worker who feels good about themselves. I want to see the organization that’s removing the custodial closet and inviting them to the same level as the quote unquote knowledge workers and having them have a glass office.

Because when we do that, that’s that’s really so central to this experience of mattering, it goes up and down the organization, and I think that it’s so important that you know our best practices should be what we do for our the most of our employees, which is usually at the bottom of that organizational chart. And so I would love to see organizations invest more there.

Chris Congdon: I could not agree with you more, and we’re already advantaged that we have an office to come to for those of us in those kinds of jobs. But I think you’re absolutely right in so many sectors, the economy. What are other ways that we could demonstrate that people matter?
And your point is very well made. I do think we’re seeing more manufacturing organizations reaching out to us, which is great, wanting to think about the very things that you’re talking about like, how can you create a better, a better cafe, a better place for meetings to happen that feels more human. So I think it’s a brilliant idea.
I feel like there’s so many things that I want to talk about with you today, Zach, it’s like there’s just not even enough time to get to it all. So I just want to thank you so much for being with us for this time. And I really want to suggest to everybody that this might be one episode, that you want to bookmark and play it again, because Zach said so many things that I just thought were really powerful, and they’re worth writing down and listening to again.
So Zach, thanks so much for spending time with us today on work better.

Zach Mercurio: Thank you, Chris. I enjoyed it.

Chris: As Zach said, creating a culture of mattering requires a thoughtful individual approach, and when put into practice can lead to improved wellbeing and mental health, and better work experiences overall.

If you liked this episode, check out Season 5, Episode 1, “Making it Safe for Employees to Speak up with Connie Noonan Hadley.” Connie offeres actional ideas on how leaders can help employees feel safe to speak up and provides insights into creating a culture of psychological safety.

If you enjoyed today’s conversation, would you share the episode with a friend or colleague, like us and visit us as steelcase.com/research to sign up for weekly updates on workplace research, insights and design ideas delivered right to your inbox.

Thanks again for being here and we hope your day at work tomorrow is just a little bit better.

Many thanks to everyone who helps make Work Better podcast possible including producers Katie Pace, Rebecca Charbauski, Stav Kontis, Chiara Licari, Brandon Lacic and Celeste Johnson. Creative art direction by Erin Ellison, editing and sound mixing is by soundpost studios, technical support by Mark Caswell and Jose Jimenez, and digital publishing by Areli Arellano and Jordan Marks.