When attitudes and habits don’t correspond: Self-control depletion increases persuasion but not behavior

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.

The Listening Circle is a method for improving listening in organizations. It involves people sitting in a circle where only one talks at a time. Talking turns are signaled by a talking object. Although there are several reports regarding the effectiveness of the Listening Circle, most are based on case studies, or confounded with another intervention, and do not use theory to predict the listening-induced outcomes. We predicted that perceiving good listening decreases employees’ social anxiety, which allows them to engage in deeper introspection, as reflected by increased self-awareness. This increased self-awareness enables an acknowledgment of the pros and cons of various work-related attitudes and can lead to attitudes that are objectively more ambivalent and less extreme. Further, we hypothesized that experiencing good listening will enable speakers to accept their contradictions without the evaluative conflict usually associated with it (subjective-attitude ambivalence). In three quasi-experiments (Ns = 31, 66 and 83), we compared the effects of a Listening Circle workshop to a self-enhancement workshop (Studies 1 and 2), to a conflict management workshop (Study 2) and to employees who did not receive any training (Study 3), and found consistent support for the hypotheses. Our results suggest that the Listening Circle is an effective intervention that can benefit organizations.