Grand Challenge — High-Quality Listening: What It Is, and How Technology Can Advance It

Our invited guest was Prof. Guy Itzchakov (University of Haifa), whose research focuses on the effects of high-quality listening on speakers, listeners, and their relationships, including listening-training studies in organisations. Guy first presented his work on defining high-quality listening and its effects, followed by a discussion of the obstacles in listening research and the research prospects opened up by technological advances, such as using avatars as listeners, chatbots, and other AI tools.

Abstract

A frequent misperception is that speakers set the tone of conversations, while the listener is a passive actor — leading people to believe that listening is the same as being silent, or merely smiling and occasionally nodding. Nevertheless, the power of listeners to shape the conversation and affect speakers’ emotions, attitudes, and behaviours is enormous. Speakers who converse with good listeners have better memory of the content they shared, speak more fluently, feel less anxious, report less prejudiced attitudes, and perform better at work, among many other effects. The advancement of technology also raises exciting, previously unexplored questions: can avatars elicit the perception of good listening? Can we use technology to better understand which listening behaviours matter most? And how many speaker–listener iterations does it take to elicit listening-induced outcomes?