Most leaders claim that people are their most important asset, yet few could muster enough evidence to prove them guilty of living it.

We say the right things in town halls and company values statements. We put "our people first" in bold font on recruitment pages. But then we track revenue, market share, and profit margins with obsessive intensity while treating employee metrics as an afterthought.

This contradiction isn't just hypocrisy—it's a strategic blind spot.  The grand slams get the glory, but they're built on consistent, daily actions by people who have decided your organization deserves their best work. Without that decision, made afresh each day by your most valuable talent, even the most brilliant strategy becomes just another PowerPoint collecting digital dust.

Have we been tracking what really matters?

Psychologist Zach Mercurio's book, The Power of Mattering, names a dynamic I've witnessed in every organization I've led. He argues that the struggle to retain top talent isn't a crisis of engagement, but a "mattering deficit."  The simple, profound truth is that sustainable success isn't built on grand gestures. It's built on the consistent, daily practice of showing people they matter. On building your team's Mattering Average.

The invisible crisis driving quiet quitting

Gallup reports employee engagement at a ten-year low. Only four out of ten employees feel that someone at work genuinely cares about them as a person. This is unbelievable. In a world more connected than ever, with endless platforms and meetings, the majority of our people feel invisible.

This isn't a soft, feel-good problem; it's a hard-nosed threat to your bottom line. This is the root of the "quiet quitting" phenomenon. It's the reason for plummeting employee retention rates. The opposite of loneliness isn't proximity—it's significance.

When people feel they don't matter, they disengage. They don't just underperform—they stop taking risks. They cease offering the discretionary effort that fuels innovation. They act replaceable because they feel replaceable, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that drains your organizational culture of its vitality.

We try to solve this with big, flashy programs—the corporate equivalent of swinging for the fences. We launch massive engagement initiatives and new recognition platforms. These initiatives look impressive on paper but rarely move the needle. Why? Because mattering is not built in programs; it's built in moments. It doesn't require a big budget, but it does demand a different kind of currency: attention. I learned this lesson not when my company was flush with cash, but when we had none.

Small moments create massive impact

During a turnaround at NuTech Engineering, our 50-person manufacturing company had zero budget for recognition programs.

I turned to something ridiculously simple: handwritten notes. I made it my practice to write personal messages to every employee on their birthdays and work anniversaries. Nothing fancy—just a personal message from the president mentioning a specific contribution and recognizing their loyalty.

The response floored me. That simple act, born of constraint, became the cornerstone of our culture. It taught me that the most powerful recognition isn't about the size of the budget. It's about the depth of the attention.

Start with the discipline of noticing

How do you create these moments consistently? Mercurio makes a brilliant distinction between knowing someone and noticing them. You can know your team members' names and roles yet still leave them feeling invisible.

Noticing is a discipline. It's the intentional, consistent practice of seeing people.

At Sotheby's International Realty, I managed 32 offices across Canada. Our 500 agents worked in the field, making face-to-face contact rare. I spotted an opportunity in our regular marketing email, which went out to all agents with our new property listings a few times a week. I realized I could use this information for something more. I decided to send a personal email to each agent, congratulating them on their new listing.

This practice required structure to become sustainable. Every morning, I dedicated 30 minutes to reviewing the listings and crafting these messages. What started as a simple note evolved into a ritual that sales managers later told me had a profound impact on agent retention.

Years after I left the company, employees would still bring up those small gestures, remembering them with genuine warmth.

Move beyond recognition to affirmation

While recognition celebrates performance, affirmation provides something more powerful: indisputable evidence of an individual's unique significance. This goes well beyond simple appreciation ("Thanks for your hard work") or standard recognition ("Good job on that report"). Affirmation moves beyond acknowledgment to provide indisputable evidence of why that specific person was essential to the outcome.

So how do you move from recognition to affirmation? Start by asking different questions. Instead of asking, "Who hit their target?" ask, "Whose unique insight saved us from a mistake?" Instead of "Who closed the deal?" ask, "Who built the trust that made the deal possible?" Affirmation requires you to look past the what and see the who and the how. It's the difference between saying "Thanks for the report" and saying, "The way you synthesized that complex data into three clear points gave our entire team the clarity we needed to move forward. We couldn't have done it without that specific skill."

This is the core of effective leadership development and the secret to building a resilient organizational culture. When people receive specific affirmation about their unique contributions, it does more than boost morale—it creates clarity about where they add the most value, guiding their future efforts toward their zone of genius.

At Sotheby's, I was looking for an opportunity to move beyond simple recognition for our top performers and offer genuine affirmation. Two of our leading agents had developed a remarkable business development initiative. It was in the form of a performance workshop, where one of the agents would role-play the "client from hell"—demanding, unreasonable, full of objections—while the other demonstrated how a skilled realtor navigates these challenges. Their performance was comical, entertaining and a master class in handling difficult clients.  It offering practical value that every agent could immediately apply.

A simple award would have been recognition. Inviting them on a national tour was affirmation. It was public, tangible proof that their unique skill was vital to our entire organization's success.

I invited these two standouts to join me on a cross-Canada tour as featured presenters in our regional meetings. They stepped into the spotlight at each office, sharing their expertise and elevating their visibility throughout our national network.

The results were immediate and tangible. Our agents across the country received incredible training from their own proven colleagues. The featured agents enjoyed newfound status as the go-to resources in Toronto for incoming referrals. But the most significant outcome was internal: these agents didn’t just feel appreciated—they understood their strategic importance.

This is where consistency becomes critical. A one-time "thank you" provides momentary satisfaction. A consistent practice of affirming unique contributions transforms company culture. It builds a team of people who don't just perform their jobs—they understand why their work matters. That understanding is the ultimate fuel for loyalty and breakthrough performance.

Discover your unseen leadership impact

Want to understand your real impact? Listen to how people remember you. Recently, I reconnected with a high-performing individual from my time as CEO of Dundee 360 Real Estate. His unsolicited comment caught me completely off guard: "You were my first true mentor."

I never called myself his mentor. I was just doing what felt natural.  To me, developing people was simply part of leading a team. I had no idea those everyday actions were accumulating into something he would carry with him for years.

That conversation is a powerful reminder that what we see as routine leadership can be a career-defining moment for someone else. It forced me to consider: how many other vital contributions are we leaving unacknowledged?

Pause and think about your team. Not the org chart, but the real team. Who is the person whose quiet judgment you seek before making a final call? Who is the one whose absence for a single week creates a palpable void? Now ask yourself the hard question: when was the last time you told them why?

This isn't routine appreciation. This is a declaration of significance. These moments transform how someone sees their role and their value. They shift an employee's identity from a replaceable resource to an indispensable part of the organization's success.

And here's the profound business impact I've witnessed: when people feel indispensable, they act that way. They don't just meet expectations; they hunt for ways to exceed them. They take the kind of ownership you can't mandate. They innovate, they elevate others, and they don't just stay, they commit. For all the right reasons.

Your mattering average defines your legacy

You have a choice about focusing on what matters most. You can keep chasing expensive engagement programs, hoping for a breakthrough. Or you can focus on what actually builds championship teams: consistently raising your team's mattering average.

This isn't about abandoning results. It's about recognizing how they're truly built. Through the discipline of noticing: the handwritten note that lands on a desk at NuTech, the personal email celebrating a win at Sotheby's, the deliberate choice to affirm a team member's unique talent on a national stage. These aren't just gestures. They are the deposits you make in your people that compound into trust, loyalty, and extraordinary performance.

Three practical ways to start building your mattering average today:

First, create a "noticing rhythm" – Schedule 30 minutes each week specifically for recognizing unique contributions. This could be writing notes, sending emails, or making brief calls to team members. The key is consistency over intensity.

Second, develop "affirmation specificity" – When you recognize someone, don't stop at "great job." Add the crucial "because" that follows. "Your presentation was exceptional because you anticipated the questions our client didn't even know they had yet."

Third, institutionalize affirmation stories – When someone excels, don't just tell them—tell others about them. Create opportunities for team members to share how a colleague's specific strength made a critical difference. This multiplies the impact exponentially.

In a world grappling with a deep mattering deficit—where four out of ten employees feel invisible—your legacy won't be defined by the rare breakthrough moment. It will be defined by the quiet consistency with which you showed each person that they matter. That is The Consistency Effect.

Who on your team needs to know they matter this week? Don't wait for the perfect moment. Your legacy—and your results—are built right now.