How do I get my managers to actually listen to their teams?

Start by showing your managers how they listen now, because most of them already believe they do it well. Then teach one skill at a time and follow it with feedback, because that is the condition under which the research shows a new skill holding.

By Michael Cinquino, Founder and Facilitator  ·  November 12, 2026

Would your managers say they are good listeners? In one study, 94% of 144 hospitality managers rated themselves good or very good listeners. So did 94% of the managers their own employees ranked in the bottom quarter (Brownell, 1990).

Here's why that number matters to the person asking this question. Your managers are not ignoring you when you tell them to listen. From where they sit, they already are. The same gap shows up when researchers set what people say about their own skill beside a recording. In a study of 140 licensed addiction professionals, how skilled they said they were was unrelated, the authors' word, to the skill coders heard on their tapes (Miller and others, 2004).

So I would do three things, in this order.

Show them. A manager who sees a measure of a real conversation has something to work with that an opinion cannot give. It has to be the manager's own choice. I do not sell measurement as a way to rate a team, and I would not use it that way.

Teach one move at a time. A move worth teaching first: before you make your case, show you understood theirs. Say back what they told you, and ask if you got it right. It sounds simple, and it is not what most of us do. In one study, adults with no counseling training typed to a simulated client after a short lesson on listening skills, and under 9% of their messages reflected back what the client said (Tanana and others, 2019). Knowing the move and making it are different things.

Follow up. Across training studies, skills eroded over the six months after a workshop when no feedback or coaching followed. With feedback or coaching, they held (Schwalbe, Oh and Zweben, 2014).

That is the shape of the day I teach, How To Talk So People Listen (And Listen So People Talk). Each skill is taught, then practiced with a partner, on conversations from people's own jobs. Every participant leaves with a free month of Heard for Meetings™, so the feedback does not end when the day does.

If you want your managers in that room, book a free discovery call at cdlab.io/book.

Bring the workshop to your team.

Tell us your dates and headcount. We'll follow up with a quote.