Can listening training empower service employees? The mediating roles of anxiety and perspective-taking

ABSTRACT

Can improving employees’ interpersonal listening abilities impact their emotions and cognitions during difficult conversations at work? The studies presented here examined the effectiveness of listening training on customer service employees. It was hypothesized that improving employees’ listening skills would (a) reduce their anxiety levels during difficult conversations with customers, (b) increase their ability to understand the customers’ point of view (i.e., perspective-taking), and (c) increase their sense of competence. The two quasi-experiments provide support for the hypotheses. Study 1 (N = 61) consisted of a pre-post design with a control group and examined the effect of listening training on customer service employees in a Fortune 500 company. Study 2 (N = 33) conceptually replicated the results of Study 1 using listening training conducted in one branch of a company that provides nursing services compared to another branch of the company that did not receive training. The results indicated that listening training had lasting effects on employees’ listening abilities, anxiety reduction, and perspective-taking during difficult conversations. The discussion centres on the importance of interpersonal listening abilities to the empowerment wellbeing of employees in the workplace.

KEYWORDS:

• Training
• interpersonal listening
• well-being
• empowerment
• anxiety

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful for the constructive comments by Avi Kluger, Jennifer Grau, Netta Weinstein and Harry Reis, and thanks Drey Taylor and Nithin Skaria for their help with data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. https://www.grauic.com/index.php.

2. The conclusions remained similar using an ANCOVA with the measurement at Time 1 as a covariate. Specifically, the main effects on listening perception, state anxiety, perspective taking and competence at Time 2 were significant when controlling for these measures at time 1, Fs(1,58) = 9.77, 8.03, 9.10, and 6.33; ps =.003,.006,.004, and.015; η²_p =.14,.12,.14, and.10; respectively.

3. The findings were replicated using PLS-SEM.

4. Perspective-taking was used as the dependent variable for power analysis because a sense of competence was not assessed in Study 2.

5. http://www.urielcenter.co.il/document/50,124,74.aspx.

6. The findings were replicated using PLS-SEM.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by a grant Number 460/18 from the Israel Science Foundation