Noticing + Mattering = Leadership TNT
What if the secret to great leadership isn’t in grand strategy, but in tiny, human moments?
Lately, I’ve been seeing three words crop up again and again: Noticing, Mattering, and Belonging.
In this piece, I explore how noticing the Tiny Noticeable Things (TNT) can help leaders cultivate resilience, mattering, and retention in high-stress, human-focused work.
Why Mattering Matters
Mohamed Abdallah has written a number of posts and as a starting point his post on The Mattering Model comes highly recommended. In short, he suggests Belonging + Becoming = Mattering. In his words.
“In this model, mattering sits as the umbrella concept. It is achieved when people both feel valued (belonging) and are given opportunities to add value (becoming).”
This really resonated with me, and I think it’s highly relevant to children, young people and adults. The lens I’m going to focus on is what this might mean for leaders and comes from a number of conversations I’ve been having recently on Vicarious Resilience and the role leaders might adopt.
Leadership TNT in Action
This leads me to explain what I mean by Leadership TNT. Leadership needs no explanation, but TNT however does. I recently read a summary of Lead Well: 5 Mindsets to Engage, Retain, and Inspire Your Team by Paula Davis where she spoke about TNT meaning Tiny Noticeable Things.
This really resonated with me as I’ve long spoken about the importance of Noticing both to improve self-awareness and in deepening relationships. I’m looking forward to reading Paula’s book to dive deeper into what can make a difference to teams.
An important element of TNT for me is the Tiny aspect. The small things we notice, and share are what often make the difference between staff feeling they matter and belong or not.
From Vicarious Trauma to Vicarious Resilience
For more background I’d suggest you read my posts on Energy Creators vs Energy Absorbers and my series of posts on Understanding Compassion Fatigue and Vicarious Trauma (this is post 1 of a series of 4 which I wrote in 2023).
However, what I want to draw attention to is the shift from talking about Vicarious Trauma (energy absorber conversations) to Vicarious Resilience (energy creator conversations). In a recent conversation with Stuart McKenzie I spoke about Vicarious Trauma being the shadow of Vicarious Resilience. This also links with my passion for Solutions Focused approaches, where an element is talking about what we want as opposed to what we don’t want.
Other conversations that have triggered (in a good way!) my thinking were with Jason Pascoe, pAul Montgomery and Tim Ward. These have taken a wide variety of elements within them but an overarching theme has been how might we support those working in the caring sector to thrive rather than just survive in what can be tricky and complex situations.
From a leadership perspective, I think diving deeper into being deliberate in our use of TNT can help staff feel that they matter and belong. This can surely only help with recruitment and retention as opposed to relying on systems and processes to ‘rescue’ people once they are in a tricky space?
What’s Next?
I will write more about Vicarious Resilience and what might be some practical steps leaders can take in a future article.
What are your TNTs?
How are you creating space for staff to feel they matter? Let’s share what works.