Every Fearless Communicator has a love-hate relationship with surveys. But, let’s take a step back and remind ourselves why we survey employees in the first place. Ostensibly, we’re trying to “listen to employees” because doing so helps the organization and, by extension, everyone in it, be far more successful.

So, put employee surveys aside for a moment and let’s re-examine the best ways we can (and should be) listening. And, to be clear, we’re talking about how organizations can bake effective listening into regular activities, processes and technologies— rather than one-on-one listening (although, to be frank, that’s a discipline that also needs some attention).

That sounds like it’s going to be quite the earful. So, we’re not tackling this topic alone. We sit down with Mike Pounsford, Founder of Couravel. Mike is one of the minds behind the internationally-renowned initiative, The Listening Project which helps organizations understand how and when to listen to employees better. Since we’ve always guided Fearless Communicators to build, implement, and manage listening strategies, please forgive the lovefest.

In our discussion we address the challenges you will face when rolling out and/or refining your listening strategies. That means we address all the following topics:

Episode Index

  • What listening must be (1:55)
  • The tangible benefits of listening (3:23)
  • Surveys vs listening (6:40)
  • Digital listening (10:38)
  • New listening tactics and the listening spectrum (14:20)
  • The Communications Fallacy and barriers to listening well (20:00)
  • Summary  (26:19)
  • Items of interest (29:10)
  • What Fearless Communicators can do tomorrow (30:55)
  • What’s caught our attention (32:42)
  • Outro (36:36)

By all means, give this episode of The Swear Jar a listen and let us know what you think.

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