Session Resources
Every Piece Matters
Building a Culture of Significance in the Modern Workplace
GBR SHRM 2026 Annual Conference | September 23, 2026, 11:00 am | Cypress 1
Melissa Montgomery, M.S., SHRM-CP, BPC, EQAC | People by Design
Everything from the session
Everything from the session, and a few things that would not fit.
Whether you were in the room on Wednesday or you found this some other way, everything from the session is here. The hour asks people to write something honest down and then say it out loud to somebody, which is not a small thing to ask of a Wednesday morning.
Below is the full workbook, both case studies, the diagnostic you can now score online and send to your team, complete facilitation instructions so you can run all three exercises yourself, and every research citation from the session.
All of it is free and none of it requires an email address, except the one thing that has to come back to you.
Start here
Put your one thing in, and choose a thirty-day reminder.
If you were in the session, you wrote something on a card. In thirty days you will have forgotten it, and that is not a character flaw, it is just how thirty days works.
Type it in below exactly as you wrote it. If you choose the optional reminder, we will email your commitment back to the address you provide in thirty days.
If the form does not load, open My One Thing in a new tab.
The instrument
The Mattering Deficit Diagnostic
Nine questions, about three minutes. You are scoring your organization, not yourself. Your first instinct is the accurate one, so go fast.
Nothing you enter here is sent anywhere. The scoring runs in your browser and disappears when you close the tab.
Your result
Want to run this with your whole team?
The print version scores on paper in three minutes and works in any room. Download it, make copies, and compare results across a leadership team. The gap between what executives score and what frontline managers score is usually the most interesting conversation in the building.
Download the print version (PDF)The materials
The full workbook
Everything you had in your hands, plus the pages that did not fit in sixty minutes. Print it, reprint it, hand it to somebody who was not there.
The complete workbook
All four sheets, the diagnostic, all three worksheets, and the commitment card, print-ready.
Download (PDF)Both case studies
The Jackets and Eleven Seconds a Day, with root cause analysis and discussion questions for your leadership team.
Download (PDF)Take it back with you
Run the three exercises with your own team.
These are not demonstrations. They are complete, facilitated exercises, and they are yours to use. Each guide has the setup, the exact timing, the script including where to stay quiet, the debrief questions in order, and the ways it fails so you can avoid them.
Every one of them works seated, in any room, with no floor space and no technology. All you need is paper and a timer.
What's Left NOTICING | 13 minutes
Prove that most of what we know about the people we work with is public record. The crossing-out is the exercise, and the ten seconds of silence afterward is the lesson.
Facilitation guide (PDF)The Specific Thing AFFIRMING | 10 minutes
Eleven seconds, three parts: the specific thing, the specific effect, and why it had to be them. Most teams have never separated affirmation from output recognition, and the difference is not subtle once you hear it.
Facilitation guide (PDF)The So That Chain NEEDED | 14 minutes
Follow one task down three links until you reach the person at the end. Then find out whether you know their name. This is the one that changes how people see their own work.
Facilitation guide (PDF)If you run one of these with your team, I would like to hear how it went. Not for a testimonial. Because the exercises get better every time somebody tells me where they broke.
Two minutes
Tell me what worked and what did not.
Honest is more useful than kind. The exercises in this session exist because people told me where the last version fell apart.
If the form does not load, open Workshop Feedback in a new tab.
If you want to go further
What this looks like at full length.
The session you attended is the sixty-minute version of a three-hour workshop. The full version adds the interdependence exercises and the accomplishment wall, a pre-session reflection your team completes in advance, and a thirty-day follow-up where we find out what actually changed.
People by Design partners with people wherever they are, in career, family, purpose, or community. That includes leadership teams and it also includes students, parents, faith communities, elders, and anyone in transition. If your organization is somewhere in that picture, the first conversation is free and it is a conversation, not a pitch.
Show your work
Everything cited in this session
The three-practice framework is Dr. Zach Mercurio's. The Puzzle Philosophy, the diagnostic, and the exercises are People by Design originals. Here is the full list, with live links.
- Mercurio, Z. The Power of Mattering: How Leaders Can Create a Culture of Significance. Harvard Business Review Press, 2025. Publisher
- Mercurio, Z. "The Power of Mattering at Work." Harvard Business Review, May 2025. Read
- Gallup. State of the Global Workplace 2026. Global engagement 20 percent in 2025, down from a 23 percent peak in 2022. Manager engagement 22 percent, down nine points since 2022. US engagement 36 percent. Employee thriving 34 percent. Report
- Workhuman and Gallup, 2024. Recognition, done well, could prevent approximately 45% of voluntary turnover. Release
- Gallup. Employee replacement cost estimated at approximately one half to two times an employee's annual salary. Cited in the case study discussion in the packet. Gallup on turnover cost
- Flett, G. L. (2022). "An Introduction, Review, and Conceptual Analysis of Mattering as an Essential Construct and an Essential Way of Life." Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment. Read
- Elliott, G., Kao, S., and Grant, A. M. (2004). "Mattering: Empirical Validation of a Social-Psychological Concept." Self and Identity.
- Rosenberg, M., and McCullough, B. C. (1981). "Mattering: Inferred Significance and Mental Health among Adolescents." Research in Community and Mental Health, 2, 163-182.
Both case studies in the packet are composites, assembled from documented patterns and from situations that recur across organizations. They are not accounts of specific clients and no real organization is described.