High-quality listening in the age of COVID-19: A Key to better dyadic communication for more effective organizations
Abstract
Consider the following scenario. You are preparing for a team discussion about an important project. The meeting was scheduled for 15:00 p.m., but due to technical problems, it starts at 15:15. Your next meeting begins at 16:00. You notice two team members have joined by smartphones rather than computers. This is because their kids use the family’s laptops for virtual school. Three other employees are working from their bedrooms, the only private place in their apartments. You also see a side conversation in the chat room that has nothing to do with the meeting topic. During the meeting, several people turn the cameras off. You forge ahead. After introducing the project’s goals, you realize you were muted and need to start over. This situation would have seemed completely unrealistic just a few months ago. However, since COVID-19, these kinds of challenges are now commonplace. While listening was never easy in the best of times, it is even more challenging today. In part because we are all learning to do old things in new ways. Ann Richards famously contrasted challenges facing men and women, noting,“ ... Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backward and in high heels.” A similar comparison of the pre and post-pandemic workplace listening is apt. For many, virtual listening feels like dancing backwards in high heels, a bit off balance. We are all seeking to regain equilibrium in our communication. This article is intended to facilitate better virtual listening in the post-pandemic era. First, we introduce and define listening. Second, we present empirical evidence on the dyadic and organizational benefits of listening and listening training. Third, we discuss the challenges of virtual listening by providing specific examples from managers. Finally, we offer detailed recommendations for what managers and employees can do to improve their virtual listening skills and practices to support virtual listening.
Feeling torn and fearing rue: Attitude ambivalence and anticipated regret as antecedents of biased information seeking
Guy Itzchakova, Frenk Van Harreveld
Attitudes
Theoretical work on attitudinal ambivalence suggests that anticipated regret may play a role in causing
awareness of contradictions that subsequently induce a feeling of an evaluative conflict. In the present paper we empirically examined how the anticipation of regret relates to the association between the simultaneous pre-
sence of contradictory cognitions and emotions (objective ambivalence), and the evaluative conflict associated with it (subjective ambivalence), in the context of decision-making. Across three studies (Ns = 204,127,244), manipulating both objective ambivalence and regret, we consistently found that when a dichotomous ambiva-
lent choice had to be made, (objectively) ambivalent attitude holders for whom feelings of anticipated regret were made salient reported higher levels of subjective-attitude ambivalence than participants in the other
conditions. Moreover, in Studies 2 and 3 we found that the effect of anticipated regret on subjective ambivalence
had consequences on information processing. Specifically, anticipating regret made ambivalent participants
search for attitude-congruent information. This effect was mediated by the increase in subjective ambivalence. This work provides the first empirical evidence for the role of regret in the association between objective-and-
subjective attitude ambivalence, and its consequences.
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More than Merely Positive: The Immediate Affective and Motivational Consequences of Gratitude
Lisa C. Walsh, Christina N. Armenta, Guy Itzchakov, Megan M. Fritz and Sonja Lyubomirsky
Organizational Behavior and Social Psychology
Although gratitude is typically conceptualized as a positive emotion, it may also induce
socially oriented negative feelings, such as indebtedness and guilt. Given its mixed emotional
experience, we argue that gratitude motivates people to improve themselves in important life
domains. Two single-timepoint studies tested the immediate emotional and motivational effects
of expressing gratitude. We recruited employees (n = 224) from French companies in Study 1 and
students (n = 1026) from U.S. high schools in Study 2. Participants in both studies were randomly
assigned to either write gratitude letters to benefactors or outline their weekly activities (control
condition). Expressing gratitude led to mixed emotional experiences (e.g., greater elevation and
indebtedness) for employees and students as compared with the control group. Students also felt
more motivated and capable of improving themselves, as well as conveyed stronger intentions to
muster effort towards self-improvement endeavors.
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