Papers by Avraham N Kluger
The Listening Circle is a method for improving listening in organizations. It involves people si... more The Listening Circle is a method for improving listening in organizations. It involves people sitting in a circle where only one talks at a time. Talking turns are signaled by a talking object. Although there are several reports regarding the effectiveness of the Listening Circle, most are based on case studies, or confounded with another intervention, and do not use theory to predict the listening-induced outcomes. We predicted that perceiving good listening decreases employees’ social anxiety, which allows them to engage in deeper introspection, as reflected by increased self-awareness. This increased self-awareness enables an acknowledgment of the pros and cons of various work-related attitudes, and can lead to attitudes that are objectively more ambivalent and less extreme. Further, we hypothesized that experiencing good listening will enable speakers to accept their contradictions without the evaluative conflict usually associated with it (subjective-attitude ambivalence). In three quasi-experiments (N's = 31, 66, 83) we compared the effects of a Listening Circle workshop to a self-enhancement workshop (Studies 1 and 2), a conflict-management workshop (Study 2), and to employees who did not receive any training (Study 3), and found consistent support for the hypotheses. Our results suggest that the Listening Circle is an effective intervention that can benefit organizations. 
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Papers by Avraham N Kluger