Every organisation asks its people how they feel. Very few close the loop.
The survey goes out. The results come back. And somewhere between the dashboard and the people who answered, the conversation that would have changed something never happens. We build the human capability that closes that gap, inside your organisation, and we measure what shifts.
Every organisation asks its people how they feel. Very few close the loop.
The survey goes out. The results come back. And somewhere between the dashboard and the people who answered, the conversation that would have changed something never happens. We build the human capability that closes that gap, inside your organisation, and we measure what shifts.
Someone tells their manager something hard. What happens next, in both of them, decides whether they ever speak up again.
Most listening programmes are built around collecting feedback and routing it to action. The part that gets left out is the moment in between: a nurse telling a charge nurse about the night shift, a team leader telling their manager the change isn't landing, a new starter saying they're struggling.
That moment is human and emotional. It's where trust in any listening programme is won or lost. And it can be built, and measured.
I started riders&elephants in 2017 with a deck of cards and one question: how do we want to feel at work, and how don't we? Nearly a decade on, I feel the most useful thing we can do for an organisation is give its people a shared language for how work feels, and give its leaders the skill to really hear it.
Jeremy Dean Β· Founder
It isn't a data problem. You already have the feedback.
The gap is the human connection that makes people trust it, and leaders act on it. These are the patterns we see again and again, in organisations of every size.
The survey trap
Concerns are collected anonymously, then the conversation never happens. Each round without a response makes people a little more cynical about the next.
Insight with nowhere to go
Local leaders end up carrying problems they can't solve, because there's no route for the issues that belong further up.
Nobody taught us how to hear it
Leaders are trained to fix, reassure and move on. One defensive answer to one hard concern can undo months of goodwill, and the leader rarely knows it happened.
Silence about what can't change
When nothing comes back about what isn't possible, people assume nothing will happen at all.
Every survey without a response teaches people that speaking up changes nothing. Every survey followed by a real conversation teaches them it does.
Unspoken Conversations. A listening capability your people learn, and keep.
A platform stores what people say. A capability lives in the conversations: in what's said, what's heard, what's acted on and what's fed back. Unspoken Conversations is a structured way for people to raise a real concern, say how they feel about it, and be properly heard. It spreads in four parts.
Experience it
People raise a real concern with their leader, say how it feels, and are listened to. Leaders go first, so the practice cascades from the top.
Learn it
Leaders learn the four Cs and practise listening without fixing, in about an hour.
Lead it
It's passed on. Leader to team, leader to leader, team member to team member, and upward, so the same practice runs in every direction.
Keep it
Teams keep the tools, and your own certified facilitators keep it going long after we've left the room.
It runs on the Emotional Culture System.
Most people were never given the words for how work feels. The Emotional Culture System gives them a shared language, starting with The Emotional Culture Deck, now in twelve languages including te reo MΔori, and used in more than 70 countries.
Four frameworks, each with its own question, so the same practice works wherever the concern sits.
CultureHow do we want our team culture to feel, and not feel?
LeadershipHow do we want our people to feel, and not feel?
ChangeHow do we want to feel, and not feel, through this change?
StakeholderHow do we want our stakeholders to feel, and not feel?
Professor Michael Parke's four Cs.
The four parts are how the capability spreads. The four Cs are what leaders do, consistently, to build a culture where people speak up and are heard.
Candour
Leaders model openness, and a little vulnerability, so others feel safe to do the same.
Consult
They ask for input consistently and constructively, not only when something has gone wrong.
Consider
They acknowledge concerns and suggestions, so people feel heard and valued.
Closure
They close the loop: what's changed, what we're working on, and what isn't possible right now, and why.
Closure doesn't always look like change. Sometimes it looks like being properly heard. Professor Parke calls this emotional closure: people feel lighter and more settled even when nothing about the issue has changed yet. Both build trust.
Built into the meetings you already have.
No new survey, and no new meeting. Every survey you already run becomes the starting point for a conversation in each team about what the results mean for them.
The team conversation
The team talks about how work feels, and each person raises what matters to them.
Follow-up one-to-ones
Each leader sits down with each of their people, and listens first.
A short weekly check-in
The team keeps it going in its stand-up, huddle or team meeting.
Measure, then repeat
Before and after, and week to week. Then again after the next survey, or every quarter.
Learned in about an hour. Kept going in minutes a week.
The method comes first. The platform makes it work at scale.
We designed our own platform to carry the practice from the room into every week that follows. It never replaces the conversation. It makes sure the conversation leaves something behind.
In the room
Everyone joins from their phone. The shared screen guides the conversation step by step, and each person's choices land on the screen as they make them, so the facilitator can see the room's picture forming.
For each leader
A leader sees their own team's picture the same day: how the team feels about its work, the concerns it raised, and the few things it agreed to change. Then week by week, from the team's short check-in.
For the people leading the programme
Every team side by side, and the patterns that repeat across them. Without names, and without anyone's personal notes.
Measurement built in
The same short check-out questions for every team, so results compare across teams and sites, while what each team raises, and the words it uses, stay local. Answers stay confidential, and leaders see only their team's combined results.
How a concern travels
A survey collects concerns first and sends them away to be heard later, by someone else, if at all. This works the other way round.
Heard before it's recorded
Face to face, with how it feels.
Working todayThe team deals with what it can
Many concerns end here, resolved or properly heard.
Working todayThe team decides what goes up
Only what it can't solve, with its agreement and without names.
Building nowThemes roll up
Across teams, sites and regions, alongside your survey results.
Building nowThe answer comes back down
Through the same conversations, so people hear what happened next.
Building nowLeaders upstream receive fewer, weightier issues, already heard. And follow-through becomes something you can see: what was resolved in the team, what went up, and what got an answer. A survey measures sentiment. This measures responsiveness.
What happens when people say how they feel as they raise a concern?
With Professor Michael Parke, we tested exactly that, in a randomised field experiment inside working organisations, which is rare in this field. 115 employees and 36 leaders, in seven organisations across four sectors: not-for-profit, government, consulting and commercial.
Each employee raised a real concern with their leader. Half were randomly asked to say out loud how they felt about it. The other half noted the emotion privately and raised the concern without it. Leaders were asked only to listen. When the emotion was shared, leaders rated what they heard as:
More valuable
What employees said was seen as more useful information.
More trustworthy
More honest and more reliable.
More likely to be acted on
Leaders were more willing to follow up and make a change.
At no cost to the leader
Every emotion shared was an unpleasant one, and leaders felt no worse for hearing it.
These results held when allowing for differences between organisations, teams and formats. Field experiment complete, publication in preparation.
And what people told us
After the conversation, everyone who took part answered a short, confidential check-out. The people who raised a concern said they'd been heard. The leaders who listened said they understood their people better.
One of the organisations was Sanitarium, where it began with a production team on the factory floor. Results varied by setting. Frontline shift work is harder ground, and we learned it needs more time, and more than one conversation, to build trust with a new practice.
The Listening Paradox
Leaders in the experiment weren't allowed to fix anything in the moment. Many of them walked away feeling they hadn't helped.
Their people felt the opposite: 93% felt supported. Leaders underestimate how much listening alone helps, so we show them the research before they try it. Listening properly often means not answering on the spot, and coming back later with a considered response. That's a skill, and it can be taught.
"Verbalising unpleasant feelings when raising issues helps transform those feelings from being seen as a harmful disruption to being seen as useful data."
Professor Michael Parke Β· The Wharton School, University of PennsylvaniaBuilt with Professor Michael Parke.
Michael is the co-founder and research lead of this work with us. He studies employee voice, emotions and leadership, and in particular how employees speak up with candour, and how leaders respond with constructive change.
Most research on emotions at work happens in laboratories or surveys, because researchers rarely get into real teams at work. Together we take the research into working organisations, and the practice back into the research, so every programme we run can teach us something.
Since the end of 2023 that has meant five studies and more than 250 people measured, published openly as the work allows.
See the evidence βProfessor Michael Parke
Professor of Management, the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Michael would be glad to brief your leadership or people and culture team on the field experiment: what happens when people say how they feel as they raise a concern, and what leaders get wrong about how much listening helps.
Apply for a research briefingThis work also builds on published research. In a long-term care study, a stronger culture of compassion among staff was linked to lower absenteeism and emotional exhaustion, and to better patient mood, quality of life and satisfaction (Barsade and O'Neill, 2014). And the published work of Professor Christina Bradley at Boston College has found that acknowledging emotions during team conflict reduces their intensity.
From factory floors to hospital wards.
The people closest to the work tend to find this practice before their organisation does. Here are three who took it further.
Sanitarium
One HR leader's experiment became a practice across seven factories, shift-based and multi-generational, and ended in a field experiment with Professor Parke.
Read the story βMel Warhurst, Southern DHB
5,000 staff, eight hospitals and one small thank you. Mel trained and certified with us, then ran the practice with frontline teams through COVID and staff shortages.
Read the story βDr Jo Sinclair
An anaesthetist who used the practice to support doctors' health and wellbeing, and is now a certified practitioner in our method.
Read the story βSmall enough to learn. Measured from day one.
We begin with a bounded first phase in two or three contrasting parts of your organisation, perhaps a frontline service, a support team and a leadership team. Everyone in each takes part, starting with its leaders.
Your first facilitators are trained alongside us from the start. The measures are agreed with you at the beginning, and you grow the work only if they shift.
The capability stays with you.
- Your own certified facilitators, and a community of practice to support them
- The method and the shared language, in your people's hands
- The measures you've gathered, and ownership of your own data
- Your choice of survey platform. We work alongside it, not instead of it
We don't propose to run your listening for you. We build it inside your organisation, so it never depends on us.
If your people have told you, let's make sure they hear back.
Tell us where you are: a survey you've just run, a change that isn't landing, or a listening programme that isn't building the trust you hoped. We'll tell you plainly whether we can help.
riders&elephants is a New Zealand company, founded in 2017, working with organisations in more than 80 countries.
Start a conversation
A short call with the R&E team about what you're seeing and whether this fits.
Talk to usApply for a research briefing
Professor Parke walks your team through the field experiment and what it means for you.
Apply for a briefingExperience it first
Your leadership team experiences the practice for itself, before deciding anything.
Book an experienceBehind every data point is a human being.
