An investigation of supervisor listening skills: listening in leadership

The purpose of this study was to understand how supervisors’ active empathetic listening skills affect subordinates’ structurational divergence. Guided by structurational divergence theory, a model was proposed in which supervisor responding, processing, and sensing skills lowered subordinates’ structurational divergence through the mediation of perceived immediacy. The data supported partial mediation of perceived immediacy from each supervisor listening variable to subordinate’s sense of structurational divergence.