Cultivating Humility in Business Education: A Listening-Focused Pedagogy for Future Leaders
Abstract
In an era when humility and connection are vital for peace and sustainability, many leaders in business and government fall
short by prioritizing their self-interest over ethics. Business schools, as key institutions shaping future leaders, may inadvertently reinforce this imbalance. To shift this lean toward self-interest, we propose a listening-focused pedagogy to cultivate
humility and character in business school students. High-quality listening fosters interpersonal connection and promotes
complex reasoning. Complex reasoning about oneself and others is a cornerstone of humility, which is central to morality
and business ethics. We hypothesized that acquiring listening skills would enhance both high-quality listening and humility.
To test this, we conducted a longitudinal quasi-experiment over four academic years (2018–2021) with data from 260 MBA
students. Our findings show that the listening-focused course significantly increased students' listening skills and humility
compared to control courses. These results demonstrate the course’s potential to have a meaningful influence on the character development of business students. We conclude by discussing theoretical and practical implications for business ethics
education, offering our materials to support replication and the broader application of this pedagogy
The Effect of a Dilemma on the Relationship Between Ability to Identify the Criterion (ATIC) and Scores on a Validated Situational Interview
Gary P. Latham, Guy Itzchakov
Goal Setting
Four experiments were conducted to determine whether participants’ awareness of the performance criterion on which they were being evaluated results in higher scores on a criterion-valid situational interview (SI) where each question either contains or does not contain a dilemma. In the first experiment, there was no significant difference between those who were or were not informed of the performance criterion that the SI questions predicted. Experiment 2 replicated this finding. In each instance, the SI questions in these two experiments contained a dilemma. In a third experiment, participants were randomly assigned to a 2 (knowledge/no knowledge provided of the criterion) X 2 (SI dilemma/no dilemma) design. Knowledge of the criterion increased interview scores only when the questions did not contain a dilemma. The fourth experiment revealed that including a dilemma in a SI question attenuates the ATIC-SI relationship when participants must identify rather than be informed of the performance criterion that the SI has been developed to assess.
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Avoiding harm, benefits of interpersonal listening, and social equilibrium adjustment: An applied psychology approach to side effects of organizational interventions
Guy Itzchakov, Justin B. Keeler, Walter J. Sowden, Walter Slipetz, and Kent S. Faught
Listening
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.
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