Avoiding harm, benefits of interpersonal listening, and social equilibrium adjustment: An applied psychology approach to side effects of organizational interventions
Abstract
Creating positive change in the direction intended is the goal of organizational interventions. Watts et al. (2021) raise this issue of “side effects,” which include changes that are unintended and often in the opposite direction of the organizational intervention. With our expertise in applied psychology, military psychiatry/neuroscience, organizational behavior, and corporate safety, we argue for three additional factors for consideration: avoiding harm, the benefits of high-quality interpersonal listening, and a discussion of side effects as a natural part of the change process. We offer these as a means of extending the conversation begun by Watts et al.
The Power of Listening in Helping People Change
Guy Itzchakov, Avraham N. (Avi) Kluger
Listening
Giving performance feedback is one of the most common ways managers help their subordinates learn and improve. Yet, research revealed that feedback could actually hurt performance: More than 20 years ago, one of us (Kluger) analyzed 607 experiments on feedback effectiveness and found that feedback caused performance to decline in 38% of cases. This happened with both positive and negative feedback, mostly when the feedback threatened how people saw themselves.
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Communicating for workplace connection: A longitudinal study of the outcomes of listening training on teachers' autonomy, psychological safety, and relational climate
Guy Itzchakov, Netta Weinstein, Eli Vinokur, Avinoam Yomtovian
Listening
Training teachers to listen may enable them to experience increasingly attentive and open peer relationships at work. In the present research, we examined the outcomes of a year-long listening training on school teachers' listening abilities and its downstream consequences on their relational climate, autonomy, and psychological safety. Teachers in two elementary schools engaged in a similar listening training program throughout the entire school year. The measures included indicators of a supportive relational climate that are known to be important to teacher well-being, namely, autonomy, psychological safety, and relational energy. Results of growth curve modeling showed linear increases in all three outcomes, such that more listening training corresponded to a more positive relational climate. Specifically, the teachers reported increasingly higher quality listening from their group member teachers, felt more autonomy satisfied, psychologically safe, and relationally energetic. Furthermore, latent growth curve modeling indicated that the teachers' listening perception was positively and significantly associated with all three outcomes. We concluded that listening training is associated with teachers perceiving higher quality listening from their peers and, therefore, feeling more autonomy-satisfied, psychologically safe, and relationally energetic and discussing theoretical and practical implications.
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