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 answer the following questions:

• What must organization listening look like to be effective?
• What are the tangible business benefits of listening?
• How are employee surveys different from efforts to listen well?
• What are the most common barriers to organizations listen effectively?
• What can Fearless Communicators do tomorrow to ensure listening produces positive and tangible results?

You'd expect our shared passion for listening strategies to be peppered with plenty of expletives. Strangely, this wasn't the case....(this surprised us too). Of course, the good news is that this episode is certainly safe for work.

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