Can Manager’s Listening Behavior Benefit Employees? Power Distance May Have the Answer

Abstract

The current research investigated employee's perception of their manager's listening behavior (MLB). Drawing on the group-value theory, we examined the role of MLB and analyzed its effect through employee's power distance orientation. We distributed questionnaires to 219 employees and adopted two-wave data collection to ameliorate the bias of common method variance. Statistical analysis revealed that MLB was related to employees' well-being and work engagement. For employees with lower power distance orientation, MLB led to more self-esteem.For employees with higher power distance orientation, MLB did not affect their self-esteem. MLB was not always beneficial to the employees, as individuals may interpret MLB positively or negatively. Research findings have brought new insights into the listening literature, particularly from the perspective of manager's listening behavior. We encourage the organizations to incorporate listening skills into the education programs (for training incumbent managers) and recruitment criterions (for hiring new managers). Implications on the manager-employee relationship are also discussed.

A balanced work-life relationship helps boost employee performance

“…To help employees create a sound work-life balance, the practice of transformational leadership is suggested, in which managers should focus on transparent communication, listening and positive reinforcement in their managerial policies and practices, rather than the use of rewards and/or punishment (Kuo et al, 2024). Simply put, to ensure a healthy and supportive work environment, managers are encouraged to adopt transformational leadership in their management, in which the concept of work-life balance should be embedded in the design and implementation of employee management policies.…”

“…For the same reason, our research note does not follow the orthogonal layout, such as Introduction, Literature Review, Method, Findings and Discussion. Instead, we focus on highlights and findings of three cited journal articles (Itegboje and Chang, 2021;Kuo et al, 2024;Sani and Adisa, 2024) and, more importantly, we are keen to explain how managers may benefit from our viewpoints in their work-life policies and practices. By doing so, we may support personnel managers and HR practitioners in improving the efficacy of their employee management policies.…”