A Possible Dark Side of Listening? Teachers Listening to Pupils Can Increase Burnout

Abstract

A growing body of the literature on interpersonal listening has revealed numerous positive outcomes in the workplace. For example, employees who listen well are perceived as leaders, perform better at work, gain trust, and succeed in negotiations, among other benefits. However, there is a gap in the literature regarding the potential negative consequences of listening in the workplace, especially when it is effortful and challenging. This study explored the potential relationship between teachers listening to their pupils and burnout. Conducted in 2024, this field study involved 106 middle and high school teachers from Israel. We used multiple regression analysis to control for well-known predictors of job burnout: motivation, job satisfaction, and competence. The results indicated that teachers’ perception of their listening quality significantly and positively predicted job burnout, even when accounting for these variables as well as seniority and school-type; 0.24 ≤ βs ≤ 0.36. This study highlights the potential negative consequences of workplace listening and contributes to the less explored aspect of listening in the literature with important implications for work-related outcomes.

1. Theoretical Background

Teachers are the most crucial in-school factor impacting pupil success, satisfaction, and achievement [1,2,3]. However, teachers face high levels of burnout and shortages globally, with challenging working conditions often driving teachers to leave the profession [4]. Stressful working environments significantly impact teachers’ motivation, self-efficacy, and job satisfaction. These conditions lead to burnout, absenteeism, and even leaving the profession. In Israel, where the present study was conducted, one out of five teachers leave the profession in the first five years [5]. This, in turn, negatively impacts both the quality of education and teachers’ well-being [6,7,8], both of which are crucial for maintaining high teaching standards and ensuring pupils’ success. Teachers’ listening plays a crucial role in fostering pupils’ voice behavior, which refers to the active participation of students in sharing ideas, concerns, or feedback [9]. When teachers engage in high-quality listening, they create an environment of psychological safety [10,11,12], where pupils feel valued and confident to express themselves without fear of judgment or reprisal [13]. This psychological safety enables pupils to voice their opinions and concerns and feel a sense of belonging and agency within the classroom [14].

Given the critical role teachers play in shaping pupils’ academic outcomes and well-being, it is essential to explore factors that can mitigate burnout and enhance job satisfaction. One such factor is the way teachers engage with their pupils, particularly through attentive and responsive communication [15,16]. When teachers are attuned to their pupils’ needs and challenges, it not only supports a positive learning environment but also fosters a sense of purpose and connection for the teachers themselves [17,18]. This connection can act as a buffer against stress and burnout, highlighting the importance of examining how teachers interact with their pupils in educational settings [19]. This paper focuses on a frequently overlooked aspect of human communication that significantly impacts teachers’ well-being, particularly concerning burnout: the act of teachers listening to their pupils.

While listening to these concerns is crucial for building trust and supporting pupils, it can also lead to emotional exhaustion and burnout for teachers [20]. This is especially true when teachers lack adequate training or resources to address these issues effectively [21]. The emotional labor involved in managing these complex interactions can be a significant stressor. For instance, teachers who frequently engage in emotionally charged conversations with students are more prone to burnout [22]. While good listening is essential in fostering a supportive classroom environment, it can also contribute to emotional fatigue if not balanced with self-care and professional support [17].

Listening in interpersonal contexts includes three dimensions: attention, understanding, and positive intention [23]. Good listeners demonstrate attentiveness, an attempt to understand the speaker’s message, and a benevolent attitude toward the speaker. These qualities are communicated through observable behaviors like eye contact, facial expressions, body posture, follow-up questions, and reflective responses. Attention involves focusing on the speaker’s message while minimizing distractions, both external (e.g., text messages) and internal (e.g., unrelated thoughts), and is expressed through behaviors like nodding and consistent eye contact [24]. Comprehension entails accurately grasping the speaker’s cognitive and emotional states, which is shown by paraphrasing and asking open-ended questions [25,26]. Benevolent intention involves listening with a positive regard and a non-judgmental approach, which can be conveyed through conversational cues that soften the tone and indicate openness [27,28].

When people listen well, they gain many benefits. For example, good listeners gain trust from their speakers [29], are liked by their speakers [30], are perceived as leaders by their employees [31], perform well at work [32], and gain closeness and social connections with their speakers [33,34,35,36,37]. In the educational context, school principals who listen well to their teachers suffer less from turnover intentions and enjoy organizational citizenship behaviors from their teachers [38]. Moreover, teachers who receive training on listening enjoy more autonomy, relational energy, and psychological safety at work [39].

However, listening to challenging information, such as that encountered in the teaching profession, can have considerable costs for the listener. Listeners who listen to negative disclosures from speakers experience higher levels of stress [40], compassion fatigue [41], and even secondary trauma [42]. Therefore, even though employees can reduce the burnout of their colleagues by listening well to them [43], they might experience burnout themselves.

Teachers who make an effort to listen to their pupils invest considerable emotional and cognitive resources, which can contribute to burnout over time. This emotional labor involves empathizing with students’ struggles, understanding their diverse needs, and managing the emotional impact of absorbing challenging or distressing information. The effort to maintain consistent attentiveness and provide emotional support can lead to emotional exhaustion, one of the key dimensions of teachers’ burnout [44,45]. Additionally, the constant need to manage and respond to pupils’ emotional and academic concerns can contribute to a sense of depersonalization, where teachers begin to feel detached or indifferent as a coping mechanism [46]. Moreover, the pressure to always be available and emotionally supportive can lead to a reduction in personal accomplishment, as teachers may feel overwhelmed and unable to meet the demands placed upon them, which further exacerbates burnout [47]. The cumulative effects of these factors underscore the challenges teachers face when balancing the emotional demands of listening with their own well-being. In the present study, we focused on teachers from a middle school and a high school in north Israel.

When considering the effects of teachers’ listening on their burnout, it is important to take two well-known predictors of burnout, namely, motivation at work and job satisfaction. Motivation and job satisfaction are both well-established antecedents of burnout, with higher levels of motivation typically reducing burnout, e.g., [48,49], and greater job satisfaction buffering against its onset, e.g., [50,51,52]. By isolating the impact of listening, we can better understand its unique contribution to burnout, beyond the effects of other variables. For instance, a highly motivated teacher might be less prone to burnout despite the emotional toll of listening, whereas a teacher with low job satisfaction might experience burnout more quickly, regardless of their listening.

In examining the effect of listening on teachers’ burnout, we also wanted to control for teachers’ perception of their competence. Listening is a behavior that a good teacher should have. Therefore, it is important to disentangle its unique effects from the effects of the general competence of teachers. Listening can arguably be an antecedent of competence such that the better teachers listen to their pupils, the more competent they perceive themselves at work. Indeed, previous work found that employees who received listening training perceived themselves as having higher competence during difficult conversations with customers relative to the employees in the control group who did not receive listening training [53]. Moreover, competence is also known as a predictor of teacher burnout [54,55].

Finally, we included in the regression model teacher seniority. Seniority often correlates with prolonged exposure to job demands and the cumulative effects of stressors on teachers [56,57]. Over time, experienced teachers may face increasing responsibilities, and the emotional toll of dealing with challenging students, which can lead to burnout [58,59].

2. The Present Study

2.1. Method

Participants

The participants were 106 teachers from a school in the northern part of Israel that includes kindergarten, middle school, and high school. Participation in this research was voluntary. Of these teachers, 11 were kindergarten teachers and therefore were excluded from the data analyses (the conclusions remain the same when including them). Sensitivity analysis indicates that the weakest correlation that the final sample size (N = 95) can detect with a power of 80% and α = 0.05 in a two-tailed test is |r| = 0.17 [60]. The mean seniority level was 15.89 years, with SD = 10.19. (We received information about seniority only from 54 teachers.) Of the school teachers, 49.5% were middle school teachers and 50.5% were high school teachers. We did not collect information about age and gender. This study received IRB approval from the Chief Scientist Office of the Ministry of Higher Education (#12849).

3. Procedure

We first obtained permission from the school’s management to conduct this study. The teachers received a link to an electronic questionnaire via the Qualtrics program. The teachers were informed that participation is completely anonymous and voluntary, and that they could skip any questions they did not want to answer. We also informed the teachers that no identifying information would be collected except for seniority and that the data would be used only for research purposes. The average time that it took to complete the questionnaire was 4.16 min with a standard deviation of 2.28 min. We also collected data on teachers’ perceptions of their pupils as part of a different project.

4. Measures

All measures were translated from Hebrew and ranged on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much). We also had a score of 0, which was labeled “not relevant”. We excluded from the data analyses observations that included 0 on the measures of interest.

Listening Perception. We measured teachers’ perception of their listening quality with the item “I listen well to my students”. Because listening perception is holistic, a single item is sufficient to capture it [23,61,62].

Motivation. We measured teachers’ work motivation with the item “I have motivation at work”.

Competence. We adapted two items from the basic psychological needs scale [63] to fit the educational setting. The items were “I have the capability to deliver my lessons interestingly and experientially” and “I succeed in making my pupils fulfill their potential in class” (α = 0.81).

Job burnout. Burnout was measured with the following item: “I feel burned out at my work”. This item has been extensively used in Organizational Behavior research to assess employees’ burnout, e.g., [64,65,66].

5. Results

Table 1. Descriptive statistics and correlations for study variables.

	M	SD	1	2	3	4	5
1. Listening perception	4.54	0.54	-
2. Work motivation	4.29	0.76	0.43 **	-
3. Competence	4.55	0.54	0.45 **	0.43 **	-
4. Job satisfaction	4.33	0.71	0.28 **	0.62 **	0.14	-
5. Job burnout	2.51	1.1	0.00	0.27 **	−0.15	−0.43 **
6. Seniority	15.89	10.19	0.00	−0.04	0.31 **	−0.11	0.13

Note: ** p < 0.01.

presents the descriptive statistics and correlations between this study’s variables.

We conducted regression analyses in three steps predicting job burnout. In the first model, we submitted teachers’ perceptions of their own listening with the established predictors of job burnout, namely, work motivation and job satisfaction. As can be seen in the first model in

Table 2. Multiple regressions predicting job burnout.

Multiple Regression 1	β	t	p
Listening perception	0.24	2.39	=0.019
Work motivation	−0.39	−3.26	=0.002
Job satisfaction	−0.26	−2.27	=0.026
Multiple Regression 2	β	t	p
Listening perception	0.27	2.53	=0.013
Work motivation	−0.36	−2.80	=0.006
Job satisfaction	−0.27	−2.34	=0.022
Competence	−0.08	−0.75	=0.454
Multiple Regression 3	β	t	p
Listening perception	0.36	2.82	=0.007
Work motivation	−0.44	−2.81	=0.007
Job satisfaction	−0.12	−0.78	=0.438
Competence	−0.29	−2.22	=0.031
Seniority	0.19	1.57	=0.124
Multiple Regression 4	β	t	p
Listening perception	0.35	2.79	=0.007
Work motivation	−0.46	−2.93	=0.005
Job satisfaction	−0.10	−0.64	=0.524
Competence	−0.28	−2.10	=0.041
Seniority	0.18	1.49	=0.143
School type a	−0.12	−1.05	=0.300

Notes: ^a 1 = middle school and 2 = high school.

, all three predictors were significant. Importantly, while work motivation and job satisfaction negatively predicted job burnout, βs −0.39 and −0.26, respectively, listening positively and significantly predicted it, β = 0.24. That is, the more teachers perceived they listened to their pupils, the more burned out they felt (see Table 2).

In the second multiple regression, we added teachers’ professional competence as an additional predictor. The results remained unchanged while competence was not a significant predictor. Importantly, the results of this regression analysis together with the moderate correlation between listening and competence, r = 0.45, indicate that listening is a unique predictor of job burnout in and of itself regardless of general professional competence (see Table 2).

In the third regression analysis, we added a fifth predictor to the model: teachers’ seniority. Seniority is an important demographic characteristic because it is associated with lower teachers motivation, e.g., [67]. Teachers’ job satisfaction may also decline with increasing years of service, partly due to reduced enthusiasm and increasing job demands [68]. Importantly, teachers’ seniority is linked to emotional exhaustion, a key component of burnout. More experienced teachers often report higher levels of burnout due to accumulated stress [69]. As can be seen in the third multiple regression in Table 2, the addition of seniority to the model did not change the effect of listening on burnout; it even strengthened it, with β = 0.36 and p = 0.007.

Finally, in the fourth regression analysis, the results remained similar when adding school types (high school and middle school). This addition did not change the effect of listening perception on burnout, which remained significant, with β = 0.28 and p = 0.022.

6. Better-than-Average Effect of Listening Perception

The better-than-average effect is a cognitive bias where individuals tend to overestimate their abilities, believing they are better than the average person in various domains, such as intelligence, driving skills, or morality. This phenomenon has been widely observed across different contexts, as individuals often hold inflated views of their competencies [70]. Previous work found that individuals overrate their listening ability in conversations with strangers. Specifically, Welker [71] asked participants to rate themselves from 1 (I’m at the very bottom) to 100 (I’m at the very top) in 15 common social activities. Of these 15 activities, participants were the most biased when they rated their listening ability by answering how well they listen to someone who is struggling. Specifically, the average percentile was 71.37, which suggests a strong better-than-average effect. We aimed to conceptually replicate these findings in the context of teachers’ evaluation of their listening skills. Our results supported the original study [71]. We found an even more extreme better-than-average effect as 98.1% rated themselves at about the mid-point of the scale, 3 (moderately). Furthermore, none of the teachers rated their listening abilities as 1 (not at all) or 2 (to a small extent).

In sum, teachers’ listening perception was positively and significantly correlated with their work motivation, r = 0.43; job satisfaction, r = 0.28; and competence, r = 0.45. There was no zero-order correlation with job burnout, r = −0.005. However, the multiple regression analyses shed light on the role of listening as a predictor of job burnout. The results indicate that teachers’ perception of their own listening predicted more job burnout in models with several control variables. Specifically, two well-known predictors—motivation and job satisfaction—along with a predictor capturing global professional competence and seniority, a demographic variable that impacts teachers’ burnout, were examined

7. General Discussion

The results of the present field study suggest an interesting pattern regarding the predictive role of teachers’ listening, work motivation, job satisfaction, and competence on their burnout. Specifically, work motivation (all regression models), job satisfaction (regression models 1 and 2), and competence (regression model 3) predict lower burnout in teachers. However, teachers’ perceptions of their own listening predict higher burnout. These results are interesting when also considering the positive correlations between listening and these variables 0.28 ≤ r ≤ 0.45.

These results highlight the significant “tolls” that listening can impose on teachers. Contrary to the common perception that listening is passive and effortless, our findings suggest that this view is misguided. While our study’s correlational design limits causal inferences, the regression models consistently show that listening can contribute to increased burnout among teachers. Our results are also consistent with a meta-analysis that found a positive correlation between listening to difficult events and listeners’ stress levels [40] as well as research that found that listening increases compassion fatigue among employees who deal with difficult information in their work such as clinical psychologists, social workers, and nurses [72,73,74].

It is interesting to compare the present results with the results of listening on speakers’ burnout. When speakers receive good listening, they report lower levels of burnout [75,76]. Relatedly, a meta-analysis on the effects of listening on job outcomes found a moderately negative correlation between employees’ perception of the listening they received and their burnout, r = −0.31 (the paper reported a correlation of r = 0.31 between listening perception and no burnout), with a 95% CI of [0.27, 0.36] across eight studies, 12 effect sizes, and 5862 employees [32]. These results establish that being listened to is a strong predictor of reduced employee burnout. However, the findings suggest that for listeners, listening well does not have the same positive effects. In fact, the consistent negative correlation between listeners’ own listening and their burnout indicates that listening can actually contribute to burnout in those who are listening. The zero-order correlation of r = 0.00 between listening and burnout highlights a discrepancy: while speakers benefit from reduced burnout, listeners may experience no benefit or even increased burnout.

The present findings have practical implications for education training programs at schools. Training programs in schools often emphasize strategies and interventions aimed at enhancing students’ well-being, such as social–emotional learning, mental health support, and academic achievement [6,77]. However, educational policies and programs often tend to prioritize pupil outcomes, viewing teacher well-being primarily as a means to improve student performance rather than an end in itself [78]. While there is considerable focus on student support, teachers’ needs for support and professional development are often neglected. For example, teacher stress and burnout are frequently secondary considerations despite their significant impact on educational outcomes [79,80]. The lack of attention to teachers’ emotional and psychological needs can undermine their effectiveness and job satisfaction.

The regression coefficients for teachers’ perception of their listening quality predicting job burnout, with βs ranging from 0.24 to 0.36, reflect a small-to-moderate effect size. In comparison, a meta-analysis of various well-established burnout predictors, including workload, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and autonomy, reported effect sizes ranging from |0.08| to |0.44| [81]. This suggests that the magnitude of listening as a predictor of burnout in the present study is in the range of well-established predictors.

A possible takeaway from the finding that teachers’ listening efforts toward their pupils can increase their burnout is that educational training programs should also focus on meeting teachers’ psychological needs, providing social support, and reducing burnout. These factors are crucial for maintaining effective teaching. By addressing teachers’ well-being, training programs can foster a healthier and more productive educational environment that benefits both teachers and pupils [82,83].

8. Limitations and Future Research

The results of this field study should be considered in light of several limitations. First, all the teachers were from the same school; thus, the generalizability of the results is limited. Future research should try to replicate these findings in more schools. Second, we measured teachers’ perceptions of their own listening quality. While these self-evaluations were the most significant predictor of their feelings of burnout, our data do not provide any insights into how the pupils perceive the quality of the teachers’ listening.

Moreover, the only demographic we measured was the teachers’ seniority to make this study as anonymous as possible. However, other demographic variables might also play a role in predicting teachers’ burnout. Examples of such demographic variables are gender, age, and tenure. However, in the case of the school where the study was conducted, teachers’ gender might not be an effective variable since over 90% of the teachers in the school are female. Therefore, there will probably not be enough variance for gender to be a robust predictor.

A limitation of this study is that we relied on self-reported measures to assess teachers’ listening quality, which is inherently susceptible to social desirability bias. Despite this limitation, self-evaluation was necessary to maintain consistency across various data sources, given the research focus on exploring the associations between teachers’ perceptions of listening, competence, motivation, job satisfaction, and burnout. Additionally, the use of self-reported listening quality has been frequently used in previous listening research, e.g., [53,84,85,86].

A key factor that could influence the implications of our findings is the nature of teacher–pupil conversations. Different effects might emerge in conversations about academic content or pupils’ mental health issues. When conversations are primarily related to academic material, the focus may be on enhancing teachers’ listening skills to support learning effectively. Conversely, if listening is more impactful in conversations about pupils’ mental health issues, it might indicate a need for a different approach. In such cases, policy implementation might advocate for a better distribution of responsibilities between teachers and specialized mental health professionals within the school. Allocating specific tasks to trained mental health staff could alleviate the burden on teachers, allowing them to concentrate on educational roles while ensuring that students’ emotional and psychological needs are adequately addressed. Although our study did not address this distinction directly, future research should explore the role of these topics in the association between teachers’ listening and burnout to better inform policy and practice.

An interesting avenue for future research would be to test the effect of teachers’ perception of their own listening on burnout after receiving listening training. Listening training has been consistently found to improve employees’ listening skills [21,53,87,88,89,90]. Such training could help teachers recognize that listening is a limited resource requiring energy, effort, and time. Importantly, it could also teach them how to allocate this resource more efficiently, reducing the risk of burnout when listening to difficult situations from their pupils, pupils’ parents, or management.

9. Conclusions

The findings of this study suggest that while listening is often celebrated for its positive outcomes in the workplace, it may also have unintended negative consequences, particularly for teachers. The significant and positive relationship between teachers’ perceptions of their listening quality and their experience of burnout suggests that listening, especially when it is effortful and emotionally demanding, can contribute to increased burnout. These results underscore the importance of recognizing listening as not only a valuable skill but also a resource that requires careful management. This study contributes to the existing literature by offering a new perspective on how this essential skill can impact well-being in professional settings.