What Happens When We Truly Listen? How Listening Builds Psychological Safety at Work

Think about someone you know really well, a partner, a close friend, or a colleague you've worked alongside for years. Now recall a long, uninterrupted conversation with them. Chances are you learned something new: a story you'd never heard, a challenge you didn't know they were carrying. If that's true of the people we know best, how much might we still not know about the people we work alongside every day?

That was the question at the heart of a recent myosh Academy session, where psychologist Dr Natalie Flatt explored a deceptively simple idea: what happens when we truly listen? Her answer reframes listening not as a soft skill, but as the mechanism underneath trust, wellbeing, inclusion and performance. Here's what leaders and HSEQ professionals took away.

Communication and listening are not the same thing

We are communicating more than at any point in history, meetings, emails, Teams messages, surveys, pulse checks. And yet many people still leave work feeling unseen, misunderstood or disconnected. The reason, Flatt explains, is that hearing someone and understanding someone are two very different experiences.

“One of the greatest misconceptions in modern workplaces is that communication and listening are the same thing. They're not.”

— Dr Natalie Flatt

Most of us listen while doing something else, preparing our response, solving the problem, deciding whether we agree. We hear the words, but we miss the person behind them. And understanding, Flatt argues, is what people are truly seeking. The feeling of being genuinely heard, not fixed, not advised, not corrected, is one of the most powerful experiences we can have. When it happens, defensiveness reduces, trust increases, and people become more willing to contribute.

Listening interrupts the stories we tell ourselves

Unconscious bias, Flatt notes, often develops in the absence of information. Human beings are meaning-making creatures: when we don't know someone's story, we invent one. A younger employee asks for flexibility and we decide they're “not committed.” A quieter colleague rarely speaks up and we assume they “lack confidence.” An experienced worker questions a new initiative and we label them “resistant to change.”

Yet when we slow down and genuinely listen, a different reality usually emerges. The younger employee may be protecting their wellbeing after watching others burn out. The quieter colleague may be a careful, deep thinker. The experienced worker may be drawing on years of seeing similar initiatives succeed or fail. Nothing about the individual changes, what changes is our understanding.

“It's very difficult to stereotype someone once you know their story.”

— Dr Natalie Flatt

This is why Flatt calls curiosity one of the most underrated leadership capabilities. Curiosity asks “tell me more” and “help me understand”, questions that create a pause between assumption and judgement. In that pause, certainty gives way to learning.

Why listening is the most visible sign of psychological safety

Before anyone contributes an idea, challenges a decision or admits a mistake, they scan their environment for cues: Does my manager listen? What happens when people disagree? Will speaking up create risk? Those cues decide whether people stay silent or speak, and silence is costly, draining innovation, learning and the chance to catch risks early.

Psychological safety, Flatt emphasises, isn't built through posters or values statements. It's built in everyday interactions, when a leader responds with curiosity instead of defensiveness, when a manager asks a follow-up question instead of rushing to solve, when someone puts down their phone and gives another person their full attention. These moments quietly communicate: you matter, your perspective matters. This view is echoed in Australian workplace research; across a decade of the Indicators of a Thriving Workplace study of more than 75,000 workers, trust, connectedness and supportive leadership consistently emerge as critical to wellbeing and listening sits underneath all of them.

From diversity to belonging

Many organisations assume that diversity automatically creates inclusion. It doesn't. As Flatt frames it, diversity is about who is present, inclusion is about whether people feel valued once they arrive, and belonging is about whether people feel safe enough to contribute their authentic perspectives. One attendee captured it memorably in the chat: “diversity is being invited to the ball; inclusion is being asked to dance.”

“People don't feel like they belong because we tell them they belong. They feel like they belong because they experience being heard.”

— Dr Natalie Flatt

The same principle applies across generations. With five generations now working side by side, Flatt suggests we've grown comfortable talking about generations rather than with them. Listening lets us understand the experiences behind the behavior and often what looks like resistance turns out to be wisdom.

What this means in practice

If listening matters this much, how do organisations move beyond talking about it? Flatt's first principle is that listening isn't an event, it's a culture. Many organisations have feedback systems; far fewer have genuine listening systems. She points to three practical, low-cost initiatives: reverse mentoring (pairing senior leaders with junior employees to learn from them), coffee roulette (randomly pairing people across departments and levels for informal conversations), and listening circles (dedicated spaces where people share experiences while others simply listen, not to fix or persuade, but to understand). Decades of psychology research show that meaningful contact, not superficial contact, is what changes attitudes. For safety and wellbeing leaders, this is where tools that capture and act on employee voice, like those within myosh, turn good intentions into a repeatable system.

Key takeaways

• Communication and listening are different,  hearing words isn't the same as understanding the person.

• Bias often comes from incomplete information; listening fills the gap and interrupts the stories we invent.

• Curiosity (“tell me more”) is a core leadership capability that replaces judgement with understanding.

• Listening is the most visible everyday indicator of psychological safety.

• Belonging is an experience: people feel they belong when they experience being heard.

• Listening becomes culture through systems like reverse mentoring, coffee roulette and listening circles.

Watch the full session

This conversation with Dr Natalie Flatt is full of practical, human insight for anyone leading teams or shaping workplace culture. Watch the full recording to hear the examples, the audience discussion and Nat's closing reflection in her own words.

https://youtu.be/HIgLItZOuZg?si=JMbmaxeMsvtHU_ma

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This session is part of the myosh Academy free weekly webinar series. Explore the full library and register for upcoming sessions on the myosh Academy page.

Presented by Dr Natalie Flatt (Connect Psych Services), hosted by Kristina Shields (myosh).

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