Zach Mercurio

My in-person and virtual programs blend science, powerful stories, and practical tools to compel your people to action. All of my topics are customized for your group’s industry and context. Formats for the below programs range from a 45-minute keynote to an immersive, multi-hour applied leadership workshop. If you scroll down, I’ve detailed my most requested topics.

Example topics include:

• “How to Create a Culture of Significance: The Power of Mattering”
• “The Practice of Purposeful Leadership”
• “Discover and Activate Your Leadership Purpose”

What if you could incite motivation, improve well-being, and address the disengagement and disconnection crises in your next interaction? You can, by meeting people’s most fundamental need: to matter.

Based on the captivating science of mattering and hands-on work with hundreds of organizations, you’ll discover why the most effective leaders prioritize showing people their significance and learn the essential skills to ensure they feel truly seen, heard, valued, and needed.

In this interactive keynote experience that’s been featured by author Simon Sinek, included in The Harvard Business Review, and presented to clients such as the U.S. Army, you will learn:

• How feeling valued and adding value predicts sustainable motivation, well-being, and performance
• The art of optimizing daily interactions so that people feel truly seen, heard, valued, and needed
• How to master the art of meaningful check-ins, giving meaningful gratitude, illuminating potential, designing tasks that matter, and showing people how they’re indispensable to a bigger purpose
• How to maintain the belief that you matter

Research finds that people who work with or for a Purposeful Leader are more resilient and higher-performing. Why? When people are connected to purpose, they are four times more likely to be engaged, are more motivated, learn faster and are more fulfilled.

Yet, while 79 percent of leaders rightly think that staying aligned with a central, human-centered reason for being (purpose) is critical to success, just 34 percent say that they enact purpose regularly when making decisions and in their everyday practices when working with their teams.

In this mind-shifting program that redefines leadership, I provide clarity about what purpose is, show how purpose scientifically works to compel people and organizations, and introduce the key research-backed practices of Purposeful Leadership to cultivate fulfilled and resilient lives, teams and organizations.

The Power and Practice of Purposeful Leadership program has been presented to thousands of people around the world including Fortune 500 executives, front-line workers, healthcare providers, education administrators, governments, entrepreneurs and students.

IN THIS KEYNOTE EXPERIENCE, YOU’LL LEARN…

• What purpose is and how it works
• How to develop a contribuition-first mindset and leadership approach
• How to discover and state your leadership purpose
• How to activate purpose and cultivate a culture where everyone sees how they matter

Eighty-three percent of people in diverse occupations identify that finding meaning in work is a daily top priority, and more than 50 percent of people across numerous occupations and industries indicate they would take a lower paying job for more meaning.

At the same time, compelling research finds that people can actively craft their work as meaningful and connected to a bigger purpose – even in routine tasks.

In the Activate Purpose in Work session, I empower and compel people at the individual, team and leadership level to begin crafting all work as meaningful for themselves and others to feel more fulfilled, engaged and to increase performance.

Activate Purpose in Work is ideal for all-organization meetings and events and is applicable and empowering for any employee type from frontline worker to executive.

IN THIS PROGRAM, YOU’LL LEARN…

• The science and practice of building purpose into everyday work
• The research on the key factors to experiencing meaningfulness in work
• How to connect your job or function with the larger organizational purpose or mission
• How to discover your own purpose and connect it to the organization’s purpose
• Techniques to craft everyday work as meaningful for yourself and your team
• How to respond and handle difficult situations by connecting to purpose

Many initiatives to improve employee engagement fail because they tend to overlook the predictors of engagement – the strongest of which is the experience of meaningfulness. With employee engagement rates remaining strikingly low for nearly a decade, I provide a new way to think about engagement by focusing on cultivating a culture of meaning.

People experience meaningfulness when they (1) feel they are significant, (2) can see how their work fits into a bigger whole, (3) are able to fully utilize their strengths and skills, (4) develop meaningful relationships that add value to their whole lives, and (5) are able to participate in a fearless organizational culture.

In Design a Meaningful Employee Experience, I provide key research-backed strategies for intentionally designing and maintaining an employee experience that elicits a sense of meaningfulness to drive motivation and fulfillment, which can result in retention and low turnover.

The Design a Meaningful Employee Experience is ideal for both organizational and team leaders who are the architects of the core processes that impact the daily life of people in the workplace.

IN THIS PROGRAM, YOU’LL LEARN…

• The researched factors that predict the experience of meaningfulness in work
• How meaningfulness influences motivation, engagement and fulfillment
• How to create an environment of mattering
• How to design jobs and tasks to maximize fulfillment and motivation
• How to cultivate employees’ strengths
• How to develop a psychologically safe culture that fosters authentic relationships
• How to enact a holistic approach to employee development