Sowing the seeds of love: Cultivating perceptions of culture of companionate love through listening and its effects on organizational outcomes

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.

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.