Listening as a Virtue for the Organization of the Future

The concept of "quiet quitting" became well-known through social media around the end of 2022 and the start of 2023 (Scheyet, 2023). According to Pearce (2022), quiet quitting refers to employees who do only what is expected of them at work and no longer perform tasks that go beyond the minimum expectations. One explanation can be found in the pandemic, during which hospital staff, for example, experienced an increase in workload due to the rise in patients with (lung) COVID. Some of the staff could quit their jobs, but for those who couldn’t or didn’t want to, quiet quitting was the alternative (Espada, 2022).

It is not my intention to pass judgment on quiet quitting. My goal is to propose a different cause than Espada does, namely the lack of listening skills in an organization. There are numerous work methods, techniques, and interventions designed to facilitate conversations: to help people in a social context express themselves about a particular situation. Management organizes offsite sessions to focus on sharpening strategy and vision, and training sessions, peer reviews, and dialogues are held to gain new insights. However, the role of the listener is underemphasized in all these methods. A dialogue only emerges when there is both a speaker and a listener. A brilliant strategy is not implemented if it is not listened to. And if someone speaks out about their workload but is not heard, it’s not surprising that this person will do the bare minimum to keep their job.

Aristotle (n.d./2023) already discussed "good" listening in his Nicomachean Ethics as a virtue that enables effective communication. Good listening is not easily distinguished from bad listening because its goodness depends on the situation in which one listens. Rice (2022) identifies two roles for the listener. First, one must choose the right way to listen, given the specific context, and second, the listener must develop the appropriate moral and intellectual virtues needed to listen in a specific situation. For example, a coach must listen differently to her coachee than a manager listens to her employees. Listening too much to one employee risks overlooking the interests of other employees.

Therefore, if we follow Rice (2022), we must pay attention to determining the manner of listening based on different contexts, and organizations should focus on developing virtues that enable good listening.

Developing listening skills is vital for understanding others and for fostering employee engagement. This is essential given the tight labor market in the Netherlands and the potential impact of external factors such as wars, the aforementioned pandemics, and government policies. Moreover, it is the role of management to facilitate its employees in acting in the best interests of the organization.

Training, coaching sessions, or peer reviews are all methods through which good listening can be encouraged. But if there are other ideas for promoting good listening, I'm all ears.

References

Aristotle. (2023). Nicomachean Ethics (C. Hupperts & B. Poortman, Trans.). Damon. (Original publication date unknown).

Espada, M. (2022, August 23). Employees Say ‘Quiet Quitting’ Is Just Setting Boundaries. Companies Fear Long-Term Effects. Time. Retrieved from https://time.com/6208115/quiet-quitting-companies-response/

Pearce, K. (2022, September 12). What is ‘quiet quitting’?. Hub. Retrieved from https://hub.jhu.edu/2022/09/12/what-is-quiet-quitting/

Rice, S. (2022). Toward an Aristotelian Concept of Good Listening. Educational Theory, 61(2), 141-153. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-5446.2011.00396.x

Scheyet, A. (2023). Quiet Quitting. Social Work, 68(1), 5-7. https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/swac051