Listening has powerful organizational consequences. However, studies of listening have typically focused on individual level processes. Alternatively, we hypothesized that perceptions of listening quality are inherently dyadic, positively reciprocated in dyads, and are correlated positively with intimacy, speaking ability, and helping‐organizational‐citizenship behavior, at the dyadic level. In two studies, teammates rated each other on listening and intimacy; in one, they also rated speaking ability, and helping‐organizational‐citizenship behavior, totaling 324 and 526 dyadic ratings, respectively. In both studies, social relations modeling suggested that the dyad level explained over 40 percent of the variance in both listening and intimacy, and yielded the predicted positive dyadic reciprocities. Furthermore, as predicted, listening perceptions correlated with intimacy, speaking ability, and helping behavior as reported by other workers, primarily at the dyadic level. Moreover, rating of listening, but not of speaking, by one dyad member, predicted intimacy reported by the other dyad member, and that intimacy, in turn, predicted helping‐organizational‐citizenship behavior. Counterintuitively, listening quality is more a product of the unique combination of employees than an individual difference construct. We conclude that perceived listening, but not perceived speaking, appears to be the glue that binds teammates to each other dyadically, and consequently affects helping.

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Purpose -Following the call of DeNisi and Smith Sockbeson (this issue) to integrate the literatures on feedback and feedback-seeking, the authors propose to view feedback and feedback-seeking as behaviors falling on a conversation continuum ranging from telling subordinates something about their behavior (feedback) to listening. The authors develop a model according to which listening creates a special type of supervisor-subordinate relationship (an I-thou experience), which in turn allows subordinates to recognize faults and strengths in their behavior as to facilitate performance improvement, without the costs of formal feedback.Design/methodology/approach -Theory development and narrative research review. Findings -Feedback and feedback-seeking are communication behaviors emitted by a supervisor, or a subordinate, that can be conceptualized as points on a continuum ranging from telling (i.e. supervisor or subordinate giving feedback), through question-asking (i.e. supervisor's or subordinate's feedback-seeking), to listening (e.g. supervisor or subordinate listening to one another).Research limitations/implications -Under many circumstances, listening can address organizational needs much better than feedback.Practical implications -The feedforward interview in Listening Circles can be used to enhance performance at work. Social implications -Shifting the attention from feedback to listening by managers and researchers could facilitate a host of positive outcomes including better performance, lower burnout, higher job satisfaction and less extremism.Originality/value -This paper shows that listening is found on the other pole of feedback (telling) and exposes the benefits of considering listening, and not only telling.

A leader’s expressed humility has a favorable influence on subordinates’ job satisfaction, creativity, and performance. However, we know little about how humility affects one’s same-level coworkers. Shifting focus away from leader’s humility, we suggest that coworker humility can also produce positive effects but has a relationship-specific component. Some coworker relationships are characterized by greater expression of humility than others. Specifically, we hypothesize that when a coworker expresses a uniquely high degree of humility to another coworker (i.e., relationship-specific humility), the latter coworker experiences a uniquely high level of psychological safety (i.e., relationship-specific psychological safety), which in turn leads that coworker to perform better (i.e., relationship-specific performance). Pilot Study 1 (N = 155, in 32 teams, yielding 823 relationship-specific ratings) showed that humility has a substantial relationship-specific variance component, even in unacquainted teams. Pilot Study 2 (N = 180, in 39 teams, yielding 854 relationship-specific ratings) built on these results in a sample of moderately acquainted teams and showed that relationship-specific humility is associated with relationship-specific perceptions of performance. The Main Study (N = 133, in 32 well-acquainted work teams, yielding 555 relationship-specific ratings) tested our full model. It demonstrated that the association between relationship-specific humility and relationship-specific performance is mediated by relationship-specific psychological safety. We discuss how our findings advance humility research in the workplace by showing that a portion of humility expression is relationship-specific and stems from each employee’s unique interaction with another specific person, and that such relationship-specific humility affects relationship-specific performance.

Sustainable social relationships can be produced by good listening. Good listening may be exhibited by people who endorse Carl Rogers’s schema of good listening; a set of beliefs about what constitutes high-quality listening. To measure it, in Study One, we constructed 46 items. In Study Two, we administered them to 476 participants and discovered three factors: belief that listening can help the speaker, trusting the ability of the speaker to benefit from listening, and endorsing behaviors constituting good listening. These results suggested a reduced 27-item scale. In Study Three, we translated the items to Hebrew and probed some difficulties found in the last factor. In Study Four, we administered this scale in Hebrew to a sample of 50 romantic couples, replicated the factorial structure found in Study Two, and showed that it predicts the partner’s listening experience. In Study Five, we administered this scale to 190 romantic couples, replicated Study Four, and obtained evidence for test–retest reliability and construct validity. In Study Six, we obtained, from the same couples of Study Five, eight months after measuring their listening schema, measures of relationship sustainability—commitment, trust, and resilience. We found that the listening schema of one romantic partner predicts the relationship sustainability reported by the other romantic partner and showed incremental validity over the listener’s self-reported listening. This work contributes to understanding the essence of good listening, its measurement, and its implications for sustainable relationships.