Oprah Winfrey

When you feel like you don't matter at work, when you feel invisible or replaceable, or you have to endure rudeness and incivility, that sense of feeling like you don't matter is painful.

So a coping strategy for that is actually...

distancing ourselves and disengaging, quiet quitting.

These are the results of feeling like you don't matter.

So even the least human-centered workplaces should be incentivized to lead with mattering because what we know is that engagement

leads to productivity, leads to creativity, better teamwork, higher profits.

So there are ingredients to mattering.

It's been studied since the 80s, and I've sort of created this acronym, SED, to remind me of the main ingredients of mattering.

So what does it feel like to matter at work or in our friendships or in our families?

It's to feel significant.

appreciated, invested in, and depended on.

So significant.

It doesn't mean, you know, needing a toast or an award at work.

What struck me was how often people said when I asked them if they mattered that it was the small things that somebody appreciated what they said or made them feel like they were critical to the team, that we couldn't have done this without you.

You're an important person here.

We need you here.

Well, feeling significant is feeling noticed, right?

When you walk into a room, people are making eye contact and asking about you.

Appreciation is, I like to think of it as appreciating the doer behind the deed.

So if you have a colleague who's always planning cocktail parties after work, happy hours, instead of saying to them, thank you so much for this fun night, you could say, thank you for being such a community builder here.