Research shows good listening leads to better personal and professional relationships at all stages of life. Dr. Tiffany Kriz discusses research on interpersonal listening and shares what motivated her research in this area on a recent episode of the Office of Research Services’ Research Recast(ed) podcast.

The associate professor of Management & Organizations explains that good interpersonal listening involves three components – attention, comprehension and positive intention. Giving full attention to the speaker is a foundation, but to achieve depth of listening and to experience the benefits you need to be focused on trying to understand how the other person sees and feels about things, and they need to feel you care.  She says feeling non-judgment is important for the speaker to open up, and as a listener you can ask questions to better understand and ensure you’re getting the whole picture.

Dr. Kriz’s research focuses primarily on organizational and occupational contexts – something she found lacking in existing publications when, as a graduate student, she started her research on the topic. 

“It’s important for employees to speak up at work, share their ideas, voice constructive suggestions,” Dr. Kriz explains. “There was a lot of literature on employee voice, but there wasn’t really that other side – the listening aspect.” 

She adds that employee voice needs to be coupled with listening in order for an organization to be effective. Employees perform better when they feel they’ve been listened to, and are more likely to continue speaking up and contributing to collective efforts.

“You’re not really connecting with other people if there’s no listening involved,” says Dr. Kriz.

In 2024, she received a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Partnership Engage Grant for her research into interpersonal listening in palliative care environments – a topic that hit close to home for her.

When her mother had a major stroke in 2020, Dr. Kriz headed home to help. Eventually, she had to return to her own life, but recognized that others were stepping in to help her mother when Dr. Kriz herself couldn’t be there. In order to pay it forward, she started looking into volunteer opportunities at a palliative care organization.

She met with the volunteer coordinator who told her: “Listening is at the heart of what our volunteers do.” Shortly after, she began training volunteers in interpersonal listening, and created a formal partnership with the organization to conduct research together.

“We’re looking at the volunteer aspect,” she says. “How are volunteers impacted by the listening that they’re doing? It can be hard to listen when people are facing this life-limiting diagnosis.”

Dr. Kriz has taken data from volunteers before and after their training, assesses how they think about listening and how they’re affected by their work with palliative care clients. 

Preliminary findings show that the training is effective in shaping how volunteers think about listening, which is likely to then shape how they engage in listening and how effectively they can serve their clients. 

“Listening can be enough to potentially change someone’s trajectory,” says Dr. Kriz.

Watch the full podcast: