Can holding a stick improve listening at work? The effect of Listening Circles on employees’ emotions and cognitions

The effects of listening with "time-sharing" on psychological safety and social anxiety: the moderating role of narcissism and depression

Listeners who interrupt speakers upset the speakers and prevent the benefits of good listening. Interruptions can be avoided with "time-sharing," where each partner listens (silently) for an equal amount of time. Yet, is time-sharing good for all? In an experiment with 50 pairs (95 participants with useable data), participants conversed freely for one minute and were then assigned either to a time-sharing (of three minutes each) or a free conversation condition. Consistent with our hypotheses, speakers in the time-sharing condition showed reduced social anxiety if they were high on narcissism but elevated social anxiety if high on depression, explaining past inconsistent effects of time-sharing.

Listening to bridge societal divides

The U.S. is plagued by a variety of societal divides across political orientation, race, and gender, among others. Listening has the potential to be a key element in spanning these divides. Moreover, the benefits of listening for mitigating social division has become a culturally popular idea and practice. Recent evidence suggests that listening can bridge divides in at least two ways: by improving outgroup sentiment and by granting outgroup members greater status and respect. When reviewing this literature, we pay particular attention to mechanisms and to boundary conditions, as well as to the possibility that listening can backfire. We also review a variety of current interventions designed to encourage and improve listening at all levels of the culture cycle. The combination of recent evidence and the growing popular belief in the significance of listening heralds a bright future for research on the many ways that listening can diffuse stereotypes and improve attitudes underlying intergroup division.

Listening and attitude change

We review research on the role of high-quality listening behavior in attitude change. We examine how listening behaviors can impact attitudes and the mechanisms underlying these effects. The article discusses research that explicitly examines high-quality listening, as well as research that examines behaviors that may indicate high-quality listening or that incorporates high-quality listening into larger interventions. The reviewed research suggests that receiving high-quality listening increases psychological safety and open-minded self-reflection, leading people to consider perspectives they otherwise would not. This in turn leads to less extreme, clearer, and more nuanced views on the topic of conversation. Finally, we highlight the need for further research to better understand the role of listening in attitude change, particularly in non-western cultures.

Listening training in organizations

Employee listening training in organizations has been sparse and under-researched until recently. The substantial work that Itzchakov and Kluger and their colleagues have conducted in the last six years has laid the foundation for researchers to come. When employees learn to listen better, it decreases turnover intentions and burnout. When employees exist in a positive listening culture, it creates well-being and ties to the bottom line. Employee listening training should not focus on theories or barriers to listening; rather, it should be experiential and contextual. The listening circle technique, as well as other techniques they share freely, show great promise as being easy to implement and tied to a host of positive outcomes.

Felt understanding in intergroup relations

In this paper, I review recent research on the importance of intergroup felt understanding - the belief that outgroup members understand and accept the perspectives of ingroup members - in intergroup relations. I first discuss felt understanding in conceptual terms in the broader context of research on intergroup meta-perception, before reviewing recent findings on how feeling understood in intergroup terms predicts more positive intergroup outcomes such as trust. In the second part, I consider future possibilities for this work, including (1) how felt understanding relates to other concepts such as 'voice' and feeling empathized with; (2) how felt understanding might be fostered through interventions; and (3) connections between felt understanding - and the more general concept of responsiveness - and intergroup contact.

Development of listening competence in business education

Previous research indicates that listening is the most important type of oral communication in the workplace. Unfortunately, there is little evidence showing that business programs share this view. The goal of this literature review is to close the gap between employer preferences and business school priorities, thereby enhancing the listening competence of business graduates. Research has identified four listening styles. Task-oriented listening and critical listening focus on message content whereas relational listening and analytical listening are relationally oriented. Although competence in all four styles is needed, the most appropriate style to use is contingent on why one is listening. We propose a systems approach utilizing the ADIE (assessment, design, implementation, evaluation) model for developing the listening competence of business students.

How to get through hard times: Principals' listening buffers teachers' stress on turnover intention and promotes organizational citizenship behavior

When principals listen to their teachers, they may foster an open and receptive work environment that helps teachers adapt during stressful times. Two studies examined the role of perceived principals' listening to teachers on workplace outcomes. Study 1 (N = 218) was conducted during the first nationwide lockdown in Israel. Study 2 (N = 247) was conducted during a later lockdown and controlled for social support to test the independent effects of the two distinct interpersonal experiences. Findings supported our hypothesis that principals' listening would relate to lower teacher turnover intention. In addition, in line with our hypothesis, teachers high on perceived stress generally reported higher turnover intentions. However, the detrimental effect of perceived stress was not observed when teachers evaluated their principals as good listeners. Finally, we anticipated and found that principal listening is associated with organizational citizenship behavior. Specifically, teachers were more likely to help one another when feeling listened to by their principals.

Attitudes in an interpersonal context: Psychological safety as a route to attitude change

Interpersonal contexts can be complex because they can involve two or more people who are interdependent, each of whom is pursuing both individual and shared goals. Interactions consist of individual and joint behaviors that evolve dynamically over time. Interactions are likely to affect people’s attitudes because the interpersonal context gives conversation partners a great deal of opportunity to intentionally or unintentionally influence each other. However, despite the importance of attitudes and attitude change in interpersonal interactions, this topic remains understudied. To shed light on the importance of this topic. We briefly review the features of interpersonal contexts and build a case that understanding people’s sense of psychological safety is key to understanding interpersonal influences on people’s attitudes. Specifically, feeling psychologically safe can make individuals more open-minded, increase reflective introspection, and decrease defensive processing. Psychological safety impacts how individuals think, make sense of their social world, and process attitude-relevant information. These processes can result in attitude change, even without any attempt at persuasion. We review the literature on interpersonal threats, receiving psychological safety, providing psychological safety, and interpersonal dynamics. We then detail the shortcomings of current approaches, highlight unanswered questions, and suggest avenues for future research that can contribute in developing this field.

Are human resource managers with good listening competency more likely to avoid job burnout?

BACKGROUND

Listening is an important responsibilities of human resource managers, whether it will bring role stress to human resource managers, or lead to the risk of job burnout. This study aims to analyze the impact of listening competency on job burnout among human resource managers, and examine the mediating effect of role stress.

METHODS

This study adopted a cross-sectional method to randomly select 500 human resource managers from China's top ten human resource management cities to conduct an online questionnaire survey, and 232 valid samples were obtained. Descriptive statistical and one-way ANOVA were used to explore the status of job burnout among human resource managers in China. Correlation analysis, multiple linear regression and mediating effect analysis were employed to test the relationship between listening competency and job burnout, as well as the mediating effect of role stress.

RESULTS

(1) 34.5% of the respondents reported mild burnout, while 3.0% respondents showed serious burnout. Emotional exhaustion was the most serious. (2) Those are good at listening could easily avoid job burnout. Among them, listening skills were conducive to reducing the degree of depersonalization of human resource managers, and empathy was more conducive to improving their personal sense of accomplishment. (3) The role stress had a significant mediating role in the relationship between listening competency and job burnout. Which means that listening competency can avoid job burnout by reducing role stress of human resource managers.

CONCLUSIONS

This study revealed the current situation of job burnout among human resource managers in China, and explored the influence of listening competency on job burnout. This study enriched the research content of job burnout, and provided references for preventing and intervening job burnout of human resource managers.

The Power of Listening at Work

Listening is associated with and a likely cause of desired organizational outcomes in numerous areas, including job performance, leadership, quality of relationships (e.g., trust), job knowledge, job attitudes, and well-being. To advance understanding of the powerful effects of listening on organizational outcomes, we review the construct of listening, its measurement and experimental manipulations, and its outcomes, antecedents, and moderators. We suggest that listening is a dyadic phenomenon that benefits both the listener and the speaker, including supervisor-subordinate and salesperson-customer dyads. To explain previous findings and generate novel and testable hypotheses, we propose the episodic listening theory: listening can lead to a fleeting state of togetherness, in which dyad members undergo a mutual creative thought process. This process yields clarity, facilitates the generation of novel plans, increases well-being, and strengthens attachment to the conversation partner.

Parental listening when adolescents self-disclose: A preregistered experimental study

Parental listening is believed to be an important quality of parent-child interactions, but its effects on adolescents are not well understood. The current study experimentally manipulated parental listening in video-recordings of an adolescent's self-disclosure to test effects on anticipated well-being (positive affect, self-esteem, and less negative affect) and self-disclosure intention. Good listening was manipulated in two situations relevant to vaping: hurt feelings of alienation from pressuring peers and having transgressed by vaping. Participants (N = 1001) aged 13-16 years viewed videos and reported on their anticipated reactions. Following a preregistered analytic plan, viewing good listening was found to predict greater well-being and self-disclosure intention. Consistent with self-determination theory, anticipated psychological need satisfaction for autonomy (freedom to be self-congruent) and relatedness (connectedness to parents) mediated the effects of listening on downstream outcomes. Parental listening effects on adolescent outcomes generalized across both situations of disclosure, in line with preregistered hypotheses.

Can high quality listening predict lower speakers' prejudiced attitudes?

Theorizing from humanistic and motivational literatures suggests attitude change may occur because high quality listening facilitates the insight needed to explore and integrate potentially threatening information relevant to the self. By extension, self-insight may enable attitude change as a result of conversations about prejudice. We tested whether high quality listening would predict attitudes related to speakers' prejudices and whether self-insight would mediate this effect. Study 1 (preregistered) examined scripted conversations characterized by high, regular, and poor listening quality. In Study 2, we manipulated high versus regular listening quality in the laboratory as speakers talked about their prejudiced attitudes. Finally, Study 3 (preregistered) used a more robust measure of prejudiced attitudes to test whether perceived social acceptance could be an alternative explanation to Study 2 findings. Across these studies, the exploratory (pilot study and Study 2) and confirmatory (Studies 1 & 3) findings were in line with expectations that high, versus regular and poor, quality listening facilitated lower prejudiced attitudes because it increased self-insight. A meta-analysis of the studies (N = 952) showed that the average effect sizes for high quality listening (vs. comparison conditions) on self-insight, openness to change and prejudiced attitudes were, ds = 1.19, 0.46, 0.32 95%CIs [0.73, 1.51], [0.29, 0.63] [0.12, 0.53], respectively. These results suggest that when having conversations about prejudice, high-quality listening modestly shapes prejudice following conversations about it, and underscore the importance of self-insight and openness to change in this process.

Perceived Responsiveness Increases Tolerance of Attitude Ambivalence and Enhances Intentions to Behave in an Open-Minded Manner

Can perceived responsiveness, the belief that meaningful others attend to and react supportively to core defining feature of the self, shape the structure of attitudes? We predicted that perceived responsiveness fosters open-mindedness, which, in turn, allows people to be simultaneously aware of opposing evaluations of an attitude object. We also hypothesized that this process will result in behavior intentions to consider multiple perspectives about the topic. Furthermore, we predicted that perceived responsiveness will enable people to tolerate accessible opposing evaluations without feeling discomfort. We found consistent support for our hypotheses in four laboratory experiments (Studies 1-3, 5) and a diary study (Study 4). Moreover, we found that perceived responsiveness reduces the perception that one's initial attitude is correct and valid. These findings indicate that attitude structure and behavior intentions can be changed by an interpersonal variable, unrelated to the attitude itself.