Building a Listening Culture to Support Well‐being

In a 2021 study of the importance of engaging interprofessional team members and empowering them to integrate safety efforts into all aspects of their work, the authors found that one culture enhancement included "...numerous examples of people simply stopping to listen to each other's concerns with grace and gratitude. Workplace loneliness compromises engagement, retention, relationships, and mental and physical health.4 The presence of a caring listener on a team can help strengthen connectedness and remind colleagues that they are not alone and that they belong.4,5 Resources on listening and well-being can be found in Sidebar 1. Offering advice is so hard to resist that author Michael Bungay Stanier calls this, and titles his book, The Advice Trap.9 Nurses may fall into the advice trap when their wish to offer an opinion or expertise, solve a problem, or control a situation overwhelms their commitment to listen and understand.9 Responding effectively requires staying fully present with what the speaker is saying and their reason for saying it. Johns Hopkins Medicine Office of Well-Being. o Empowerment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mox6cQxjM5c o Listen before you speak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wVkdae1B4k * Cumpsty-Fowler C, Saletnik L. Influencing well-being in perioperative nursing: the role of leaders.