The Art of Listening: Transforming Feedback into Organizational Success

In today’s fast-paced corporate world, understanding your audience or employees is no longer just a luxury—it’s a necessity. The ability to effectively listen, comprehend, and act on feedback can be the difference between a thriving organization and a sinking ship. So, how do you ensure that you’re truly ‘hearing’ what’s being said, and perhaps even what’s left unsaid?

Traditional Methods (Brilliant Basics)

Let’s begin with some tried and tested methods, aka the brilliant basics. These classic approaches have stood the test of time, some for the right reasons, some for the wrong, and equally, all can be done horrifically wrong or amazingly right.

• Surveys: Easy to scale and analyze. However, it is possibly one of the worst approaches to take if done on its own with no other supplementation.

• 1:1 Interviews: These offer qualitative insights, delving into individual experiences, and can be resource-intensive if not part of a blended listening approach. Try to meet your interviewee where they are—hover around the coffee machine or, if you want to get a little weird, hover in their desired line (the path traveled between point A and B, e.g., between their desk and the toilets).

• Focus Groups: Moderated discussions that capture varied opinions and reactions, allowing for springboard conversations. However, these can deafen the quieter voices and drive groupthink.

• Usability Testing: Observing user interaction with products highlights usability issues. It can drive bias if the sample group isn’t designed well.

• Feedback Forms/Letters: I love this simple, effective approach from Headspace. Everything doesn’t have to be digital (see image below).

Creative Methods: Pushing the Boundaries

You 1000% need to get the brilliant basics in place before you start to look at some of the more creative approaches below. While the approaches may seem more progressive and even audacious, they are only as good as what you do with the data and how you follow them up. It’s often about the conversation, not the method:

• Mystery Employee: Dive deep into company culture and processes through a covert lens. Set up a fake team and have them injected into the business for some time.

• Field Studies: Observe users in their natural environment. This can be resource-heavy, but the insights it unfolds are amazing something I discuss in my book. I highly recommend this if resources and time permit.

• Social Listening: Great as a supplement to a solid listening approach, the goal is to monitor platforms to capture real-time sentiments about your business. I’ve done this via Glassdoor, Twitter, Reddit, and so on. If your people are not happy or if they are loving life, chances are they are talking about it somewhere. Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, and Glassdoor are all great social listening spaces.

• Lego Serious Play: A great tool for asking employees to identify workplace/specific challenges. It’s also a simple approach to gaining insight into the perceived company culture, exposing both strengths and weaknesses.

• Role Reversal Workshops: Foster empathy and compassion by rolling up your sleeves and doing your job. Employees often become numb to the tension in the business because they have adapted. You’ll be amazed at what you find your people have to deal with.

• Cultural Immersion Trips: Evaluate expectations and appetite by selecting a test group and having them work at another business for a day. Then pose the question: if they offered you a role, would you work there and why? What made it different?

• Pet Focus Group: A relaxed setting can offer insights into well-being and interpersonal dynamics. If your pets are okay in social environments, bringing them into a focus group helps create a level of safety and calm. While I haven’t done this, there are reports linking pet interaction to reduced anxiety.

• Forest Walk: This is a tweak to 1:1 interviews. Instead of doing them in a meeting room, arrange to do them in a forest. Some of the best 1:1 interviews or conversations with managers happen outside the office. Read Jason Fox’s Battle Scars to see this in action. A friend of mine does 1:1 interviews and coaching while gardening.

• Diary Studies: Longitudinal insights into daily work life. Each month, ask a random selection of people to fill out a digital diary for a day or make people do it for a few months. I dive deeper into this in The Insightful Innovator.

• Card Sorting: This is one of the most underused approaches, yet it’s so simple. It’s about understanding people’s preferences and priorities. Go to the local watering hole with a list of cards for things you might want to prioritize for your people and ask them to sort them.

• Doughnut Stand: Create a coffee and doughnut pop-up shop at the entrance or canteen. Explain to employees that to get a free coffee and doughnut, they have to answer a few questions. At a conference a few years back, I set up a stand and wore a t-shirt with the question “What’s your problem?” printed on it. They would come, grab a cake, and have their question answered with a promise of no sell… just make sure they are Krispy Kreme doughnuts; now is not the time to be cheap.

• Shadowing: Direct insights from first-hand observation. Simple, but be mindful of the Hawthorne effect.

The Rub

The success of any organization is rooted in its people. Active listening should be a primary focus for companies. Instead of relying solely on one method, a truly human-centred approach requires a mix of multiple techniques, be it traditional surveys or some of the innovative methods mentioned above.

The ultimate aim is to genuinely appreciate and understand the unique voices within your organization. Every piece of feedback contributes to growth. It’s essential to listen and gather insights about the needs of your people to enhance and create better people SPIES (Services, Products, Interaction, Experience, and thus a better people subscription model).

Adopting these methods will need courage and an open mind, but I promise you, that if you choose to be brave, the insights and results they produce will take you from the mundane to the magical.