Foley Mental Health Month Program: Cultivating More Meaningful Interactions

Foley & Lardner endeavors to create a high-performance culture that also values well-being — a culture that encourages every member of the firm to be their “Best Self.” Our firmwide well-being initiative Foley Best Self marked Mental Health Month this year with a focus on our Healthy Mind pillar, providing resources and programming to support our people’s mental well-being and cognitive capacity.

At Foley, we believe that healthy, engaged, and connected people provide better client service and have more fulfilling careers. To this end, our firmwide Mental Health Month program featured a conversation with researcher and author Dr. Zach Mercurio led by Best Self Chair Casey Knapp on The Power of Mattering: Key Skills to Create a Culture of Significance. This research-based program explored how fostering a culture of mattering can significantly boost engagement, satisfaction, and performance across teams in a time when disengagement and disconnection are on the rise.

Dr. Mercurio began by sharing the science behind mattering — defined as the experience of feeling significant that comes from feeling valued and adding value. “The first human instinct is to matter to someone, and that does not go away because we go to work.” he said. Research on work motivation and engagement shows that it’s hard for anything to matter to someone who doesn’t believe they matter. The “Mattering Effect,” on the other hand, is the motivation, resilience, well-being, and performance that comes from knowing someone at work truly has our back and energizes us to achieve sustained engagement and do hard things.

The heart of the program focused on the practice of cultivating interactions that involve Noticing (seeing and hearing others), Affirming (showing people how they make a difference), and Needing (showing people how they’re essential to the bigger purpose) in order to foster a sense of significance. “Things like withdrawal, burnout, and inconsistent work quality can only be solved through an interaction,” Dr. Mercurio said.

“We have to rebuild the essential human skills of common-sense interactions like checking in and showing appreciation that matter most right now.”

He outlined a number of these skills that attendees could take away from the program and implement with their teams and their clients to create a culture of mattering. A few examples are:

Ask meaningful questions like “What’s an effort you’re proud of today?” and “What are you struggling with that I can help you address?” that are clear, open, and help us understand the people we work with.
Know, name, and nurture each person’s unique strengths, purpose, and perspective.
Do check-ins to assess who on the team is Green (present, engaged, ready to provide the best service), Yellow (frustrated, offline), or Red (overloaded, can’t be fully present) and take action to help them feel more seen.
Give affirming feedback that demonstrates your belief in someone’s capabilities, affirms that resources are available to help them improve, and offers your support.
Make tasks matter by focusing on the why and who instead of the what and how.

Dr. Mercurio concluded the program by encouraging attendees to think about who on their team needs to be noticed more and reminded how they’re appreciated. Then implement small interactions to help the people around them — including the high performers that may benefit from them the most — feel like they are seen, heard, and valued.

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