Just over five years ago, we created the Mattering Matrix to help you as a leader, understand how to demonstrate to the people you’re leading that they’re important to you, the team, and the organization.

Over the past few years, we continue to hear from you that you’re concerned that your own level of exhaustion and depletion will make it hard to provide inspiring leadership to your teams.

To demonstrate that others matter to you,
you must matter to yourself first.

In that vein, we’re focusing the next few weeks of posts to the Mattering Matrix again. It can provide guidance to you both personally and professionally on ways to care for your team and for yourself.

To be clear, we believe in the importance and the centrality of Black Lives Matter. There is no question that the important work to interrupt systemic racism is key to our success as a nation and our successes in our organizations and communities.

Our Mattering Matrix is one tool you can use to create respect, psychological safety, and equity in both your personal and professional worlds. It can support efforts to change systemic and institutional bias because it’s a framework to help you understand and work with the power of genuinely seeing people and being seen by others.

•    •    •

There’s little research on mattering, particularly in a work setting. There is, however, research on VALUE and CARE:

• The people who believe their leaders VALUE their contributions are more aligned behind the vision, more likely to move initiatives forward, and are less likely to leave. 
• The people who believe their leaders CARE about them, show greater loyalty to the leader, share differing opinions in ways that further innovation, and are less likely to leave.

•    •    •

Combining value and care can support you in your leadership at work, at home, and in your community. It will also enhance your ability to see your own needs through these challenging times.

When we can see our own needs,
and the needs of others,
we’re more likely to be curious about
and share our differences.

This creates an environment of psychological safety
which can enhance everyone’s ability
to show up at their best.

This week, consider whether you’re demonstrating VALUE and CARE to the people in your world. If you’re not, what would it look like to begin doing so?

Stay tuned for our post next week when we’ll focus on the importance of mattering to yourself, along with some suggestions for what it could look like.