Six-pillar Roadmap For How To Move From Merely Surviving To Truly Mattering
Question: There is so much
to learn from your book. What are the best first steps a reader should take,
beyond the One Small Steps recommended in the book, to incorporate the
learnings into their lives?
Miles: I would start by resisting the
temptation to change everything at once. The first step is to become more aware
of where you are experiencing a Mattering Gap—the distance between what you are
giving and how significant you feel while giving it.
I suggest asking yourself six
questions through the lens of the M.A.T.T.E.R. Framework:
- Meaning: Can I see how what I
do contributes to something that matters? - Autonomy: Where am I acting
more like an executor than an author of my own life? - Trust: Where am I withholding
a truth, from someone else or from myself? - Time: Does my calendar
reflect what I say matters most? - Energy: What consistently
gives me energy, and what continually extracts it? - Reciprocity: What am I
giving, and what am I receiving in return?
Then don’t try to fix all
six. Identify the one that is most out of alignment and create one piece of
evidence that you can change it.
If time is the problem,
reclaim 10 minutes for something that matters. If autonomy is the problem, make
one decision you have been unnecessarily waiting for someone else to make. If
trust is the problem, have the conversation you’ve been avoiding. If energy is
the problem, eliminate one unnecessary energy drain.
The goal isn’t simply
insight. The goal is evidence. We change our lives when our intentions
repeatedly become evidence that our voice matters, our time matters, our energy
matters, and our contribution matters.
Question: How best during
a performance review can a business leader make an employee feel like he/she
matters?
Miles: The biggest mistake a leader can
make is treating the performance review as a transaction: here is what you
accomplished, here is where you fell short, and here is what I need from you
next year.
Instead, use the review as an
opportunity to help the person see that they are known, valued, and that their
contributions matter.
I would ask five questions:
- What are you most proud of
accomplishing this year? - What part of your work gave
you the most energy? - Where did you feel you made
the greatest difference? - What is getting in the way of
you doing your best work?
And perhaps most importantly:
- What can I do as your leader
to help you grow and contribute at a higher level?
Then listen without
immediately turning the answers into action items.
Mattering is not the same as
praise. Someone can receive an excellent performance review and still feel
invisible. People feel that they matter when they know their contribution is
seen, their perspective is valued, their development matters, and their presence
is more than the output they produce.
One of the simplest things a
leader can do is be specific. Don’t simply say, ‘You’re a great contributor.’ Tell someone exactly what changed because of their contribution and who
benefited from it.
Meaning turns a task into a
contribution, and specificity makes that contribution visible.
And leaders should remember
that the performance review itself is only one moment. If someone has to wait
six months to find out whether their work matters, the organization is missing
hundreds of opportunities to provide that evidence along the way.
Question: As someone
contemplates their death, how should they relate mattering to leaving a legacy?
Or don’t those correlate?
Miles: I think they correlate, but they are
not the same thing.
Legacy asks what remains
after we’re gone. Mattering asks what becomes different because we’re here.
And there’s an important
distinction between the two.
Research by Tom Gilovich and
Shai Davidai found that when people reflect on their greatest regrets, they are
much more likely to regret not becoming the person they hoped to become than
failing to meet the obligations they felt they should have met. In other words,
we can spend a lifetime becoming who we think we’re supposed to be while moving
further away from who we actually hoped to become.
That connects deeply with
what I call the Slow Fade.
Most people disappear from
their own lives incrementally. We take the promotion. We accept another
responsibility. We become indispensable. We keep saying yes because other
people need us. We become very good at being the person everyone else needs.
And then one day we look up
and realize, ‘I’ve become very successful at being needed. But have I
become the person I wanted to be?’
That’s where I think
mattering changes the conversation about legacy.
If we’re only thinking about
legacy, we can become preoccupied with what we’ll leave behind: the company we
built, the books we wrote, the awards we received, the money we accumulated, or
whether people remember our name.
But mattering asks a more
immediate and human question: ‘Who is different because I am here?’
Maybe it’s a child who
developed confidence because you believed in them. Maybe it’s an employee who
found their voice because you gave them an opportunity. Maybe it’s a friend who
didn’t feel alone because you stayed. Maybe it’s a community that became stronger
because you contributed.
Those things may never appear
in an obituary. But they are forms of legacy.
So, when I think about my own
mortality, I don’t want my primary question to be, ‘What will people remember
about me?’
I want it to be: ‘Did I use
the life I was given to make a meaningful difference while I was here—and did I
become the person I was capable of becoming?’
Because ultimately, legacy is
what remains. Mattering is what happens while we’re here.
And perhaps the greatest
legacy is not that people remember your name, but that they carry something
forward because your life touched theirs.
Question: What would
it look like for workplaces, schools, or communities to truly prioritize
mattering?
Miles: Prioritizing mattering requires a
shift in how we lead and how we design the environments people move through
every day. It means moving away from treating people as problems to solve—and
toward creating the conditions where they can actually thrive.
