A New Standard for Listening at Work.
Nicole Lowenbraun and Maegan Stephens spent years researching how the best communicators listen differently. What they found: effective listeners don’t have one mode. They have four.
Most listening advice tells you to pay attention. Use active listening. Nod along.
But fast-paced, cross-functional, do-more-with-less workplaces demand more.
Your customers, colleagues, and leaders need different things in different moments. The real skill is recognizing the goal of the conversation and adapting your response to meet it.
She needs your honest evaluation. Your direct report doesn’t need you to challenge his idea in this moment. He needs to know you heard him. The client who just lost a deal doesn’t need your action plan. Not yet. She needs two minutes of your support.
The gap between listening well and listening right is where most workplace communication breaks down. Not from bad intentions. From good listening aimed at the wrong goal.
The S.A.I.D. Framework
The S.A.I.D. Framework identifies the four listening goals, reveals the listening style you default to, and shows you how to adapt in real time.
Listen to validate and connect.
When the moment calls for empathy, resist the urge to fix. Acknowledge what the person is feeling before moving to solutions.
Listen to drive action.
When a decision is needed or a conversation is stuck, listen for what will move things forward. Interrupting is sometimes the right call.
Listen to absorb and understand deeply.
When you’re learning something new or navigating complexity, your job is to take it all in. Hold your questions. Remember what matters.
Listen to evaluate and challenge constructively.
When quality matters or risk is on the table, your job is to catch what others miss. Think critically. Speak up.
In Practice
Read the context. Is this person celebrating a win, stuck on a decision, orienting you to something new, or asking for your critical eye?
Notice when your default isn’t landing. If you’re driving toward a decision and the other person keeps circling back, they may need you to immerse first.
Reflect. Did the person get what they needed? If the meeting ended without alignment, the listening style may have been the gap.
This isn’t a personality test. Your listening style isn’t fixed. It’s a skill you can build and adjust, conversation by conversation.
Find Your Style
Most of us have a style we lean on without thinking about it. Knowing yours is the first step toward adapting. The S.A.I.D. Listening Style™ Finder is a short assessment that shows you which style you default to and where you have room to grow.
Adaptive Listening® is a workplace communication framework developed by Nicole Lowenbraun and Maegan Stephens. It teaches you to recognize what the other person needs from you in a conversation and adjust your listening approach to match. The framework identifies four listening goals: Support, Advance, Immerse, and Discern.
No. Active listening focuses on showing attention through behaviors like eye contact and paraphrasing. Adaptive Listening® focuses on matching your response to the goal of the conversation. Sometimes the right response is supportive. Other times it’s a challenge, a decision, or simply absorbing the details without jumping in.
Yes. Adaptive Listening® is a skill, not a personality trait. Most people default to one or two styles naturally. The framework teaches you to recognize when a different style is needed and how to shift.
The S.A.I.D. Framework was developed through years of research and tested with enterprise teams at Fortune 500 companies. It draws on communication science, organizational behavior research, and thousands of workshop participants. The framework is detailed in the book Adaptive Listening and explored in Nicole and Maegan’s TED Talk.
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