Learning to listen: Downstream effects of listening training on employees' relatedness, burnout, and turnover intentions

Healthcare professionals routinely work under conditions that make high emotional and physical demands. Identifying workplace resources that mitigate burnout and reduce turnover intentions is crucial for maintaining workforce stability during crises. Drawing on the Job Demands-Resources model, this study tested whether (a) healthcare workers who perceive their managers as highquality listeners would report lower turnover intentions, and (b) this protective effect would be especially pronounced among employees experiencing high emotional exhaustion. Methods: A total of 329 Israeli healthcare professionals, including physicians (n = 96), nurses (n = 103), and support staff (n = 130), completed validated measures of managers’ listening quality, emotional exhaustion, social support, negative affect, and turnover intentions during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Results: Managers’ listening quality predicted lower turnover intentions, supporting Hypothesis 1. This effect was significant for employees with high, but not low, emotional exhaustion, supporting Hypothesis 2. Subgroup analyses indicated that associations between managerial listening and turnover intentions were consistent across physicians, nurses, and other staff, with no significant subgroup differences. Conclusion: Managers’ listening quality emerged as a critical relational resource in healthcare settings, particularly under high strain. High-quality listening may help buffer the negative effects of emotional exhaustion and reduce turnover intentions. Practical interventions that enhance managers’ listening skills could therefore serve as a low-cost strategy to support staff well-being and retention during crises. Because this study used a cross-sectional design, causal relationships cannot be inferred, and future longitudinal and intervention studies are needed to confirm the protective role of managerial listening over time. Plain Language Summary: Healthcare workers face intense emotional and physical demands, especially during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. This can lead to emotional exhaustion and a strong desire to leave their jobs, threatening healthcare systems’ stability. Our study looked at whether the quality of listening by healthcare managers could help reduce these turnover intentions. We surveyed 329 healthcare professionals in Israel, including doctors, nurses, and support staff, during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Participants reported how well they felt their managers listened to them, how emotionally exhausted they were, and whether they intended to leave their jobs. The results showed that when employees felt their managers listened carefully and empathetically, they were less likely to want to quit. This effect was strongest among those who were highly emotionally exhausted. In other words, good listening by managers helped especially those struggling the most. These findings highlight the important role that managers’ listening plays in supporting healthcare staff’s emotional well-being and retention. Listening is more than just a communication skill; it is a relational resource that makes employees feel valued and understood. Improving managers’ listening skills could be a practical, lowcost way to help healthcare workers cope with stress and reduce staff turnover, which is critical during challenging times.

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