What a team learns when asking a question comes at a cost
Listening, evaluation and the conditions for participation at work
By Flávia Sgavioli
At the end of a project presentation, the team leader asks whether anyone has questions. Nobody responds. The meeting ends, but questions emerge later in private messages between colleagues. One person has not understood the priority; another has noticed a dependency that was overlooked. At the next meeting, a delay is met with surprise: why did nobody speak up earlier?
The scene is hypothetical, but it separates questions that a hasty assessment might conflate. Was the difficulty in understanding the task? In formulating a question? In anticipating the leader’s response? A team may need clearer instructions and different conditions for asking questions. To investigate silence, we need to examine what was happening in the relationship before interpreting it as a lack of initiative.
The risk of asking
In 1999, Amy Edmondson studied 51 teams in a manufacturing company and found an association between psychological safety and learning behaviour. The concept concerns a shared belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. Asking for help or acknowledging a mistake means exposing something about oneself to colleagues. The field study helps us understand the collective dimension of these situations, without establishing that a single change in leadership will solve every difficulty. [1]
A question can carry different risks depending on who asks and who responds. A new employee may fear appearing unprepared. An experienced professional may hesitate because they occupy the position of someone who is expected to know. This is a hypothesis to examine in a particular situation. Someone’s competence and the position they feel obliged to maintain can come into tension during a conversation.
This tension connects with a question I investigate in language learning: under which conditions can someone use what they know? Bringing that question into organisations also requires attention to task design, available resources and the distribution of responsibilities. Listening can help distinguish a knowledge gap from a difficulty that emerges only under particular conditions of exposure.
What takes shape while someone listens
Guy Itzchakov and colleagues investigated how listening quality contributed to the development of attitudes. Across five experiments, the findings supported hypotheses concerning reduced social anxiety and greater clarity about one’s own positions under high-quality listening. The research was not a test of corporate training and did not demonstrate the acquisition of professional skills. Its contribution here is a question: what does a listening relationship allow someone to formulate while speaking? [2]
There is a difference between reporting something already worked out and working it out in a conversation. An employee may begin with a vague complaint and, through questions about the task, identify two deliverables that depend on the same person. If the initial response is a generic demand for better organisation, that information may never emerge. I propose observing the course of the conversation, including questions that help locate the problem and interpretations that close the inquiry too early.
Leadership also belongs in this inquiry. Someone who feels obliged to demonstrate control may receive a question as a challenge to their ability to coordinate. This is an interpretive possibility that requires attention to context. Asking what another person’s words evoke in the listener helps us examine why a defensive response might arise precisely when the organisation needs a clearer understanding of a risk.
The decision that follows listening
Organisational research supports treating listening as a workplace concern. A review with meta-analyses led by Avraham Kluger found positive associations between perceived listening, relationship quality and work outcomes. The authors also noted the frequent use of self-report measures. These associations do not justify promising a specific productivity increase after a workshop. [3]
For team development, this suggests working with bounded situations. We can examine how a question was raised, the response it received and what happened next. Did the person gain clarity about the next step? Did the leader identify a previously unknown dependency? Was there feedback on the decision? Such records help assess a conversation through what it made possible to understand and do.
Listening also creates management responsibilities. If someone identifies a verifiable overload, the conversation may require redistributing tasks or renegotiating a deadline. Keeping the same demands while offering only a sympathetic response leaves the operational problem intact. The inquiry therefore needs to follow the decision that comes after listening.
At the next meeting, the invitation to ask questions can become more precise: which part of this project still depends on information we do not have? Whoever coordinates the work then needs to follow what emerges. The value of the question will also be judged by what happens to the answers.
References
[1] Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383.
[2] Itzchakov, G.; DeMarree, K. G.; Kluger, A. N.; Turjeman-Levi, Y. (2018). The listener sets the tone: High-quality listening increases attitude clarity and behavior-intention consequences. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44(5), 762–778.
[3] Kluger, A. N. et al. (2024; published online in 2023). A meta-analytic systematic review and theory of the effects of perceived listening on work outcomes. Journal of Business and Psychology, 39, 295–344.
This article is part of Flávia Sgavioli’s research on listening, language and subjectivity.
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