Adaptive Listening™

Give yourself, your team, and your organization memorable and actionable techniques to cultivate better listening skills and transform the workday.

Adaptive Listening book hero with #1 Amazon release badges

Available for purchase in all formats at:

Please accept marketing-cookies to view this video.
Please accept marketing-cookies to view this video.

Introducing Adaptive Listening™

You know listening matters. But do you have techniques to help you listen the right way at the right time? That’s the power of Adaptive Listening™.

Adaptive Listening™ has the power to improve relationships and the bottom line.

On an individual level, Adaptive Listening™ can increase your ability to influence direct reports, colleagues, leaders, and customers

Adaptive Listening™ can help teams foster trust and build empathetic connections

At the organizational level, Adaptive Listening™ can improve psychological safety, employee satisfaction, engagement, and retention

Book overview

Transform the way you work

Adaptive Listening is for those wanting to improve the way they, and their teams, communicate up, down, across, internally, and externally. Through engaging stories and practical techniques, the authors introduce a new model for listening – one that teaches readers how to process and respond in a way that meets the speaker’s goals during an interaction.

Researched and tested exclusively in the work setting, Adaptive Listening helps readers up-level the under-trained side of communication in a way that moves beyond active listening. Whether listening to direct reports, peers, managers, customers, or stakeholders, both emerging and established leaders will build more awareness about their own listening style and the impact it has on workplace culture. Adaptive Listening includes effective and easy-to-remember techniques that reduce ambiguity and tension amidst the realities of a hectic workday.

Adaptive Listening includes four listening styles and four listening goals. These styles and goals map to each other: Support, Advance, Immerse, and Discern and form the acronym S.A.I.D because, as a listener, you’ll be listening to what’s said (and even what’s not said).

Support, Advance, Immerse, Discern

What’s your S.A.I.D. Listening Style™?

Take our S.A.I.D. Listening Style Finder™ to help you uncover the style you most often use when listening!

Uncover your S.A.I.D. Listening Style™

Meet the authors

And hear from some notable readers.

Maegan Stephens

Maegan Stephens

Senior Director, Communication Services


Maegan Stephens, Ph.D., started earning her “10,000 hours” back when she was a competitive public-speaker in high school and college (yes, that’s a thing). From there, she sharpened her research skills with a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from The University of Texas at Austin. She is the co-creator of the Adaptive Listening™ methodology and currently leads a team of Duarte, Inc. strategists, writers, and speaker coaches to transform the way people communicate.

linkedin.com/in/maeganstephens

Nicole Lowenbraun

Nicole Lowenbraun

Content Director, Executive Speaker Coach


Nicole Lowenbraun, M.S., CCC-SLP, is a communication nerd who uses her unique speech-language pathology background – and decades of business acumen – to help clients excel in speaking, writing, and listening. With a Master’s in Communication Disorders, Nicole is passionate about fostering more inclusive communication in the workplace. She’s a Content Director at Duarte, Inc. and the proud co-creator of Adaptive Listening™ – the new gold standard for listening in the workplace.

linkedin.com/in/nicolelowenbraun

“Great communication is not just about how you present and how you speak. It’s about how you listen. Adaptive Listening teaches the skill you will wish you had learned sooner.”

“Adaptive Listening inspires a major paradigm shift. It will help you realize that your listening skills are just as important as your speaking skills. This is wisdom that will help improve communication across your organization and create a much healthier culture.”

“Feedback starts with soliciting ideas from others, and listening to what they say with the intent to understand their goals before you reply in a way that rewards the candor. That’s easier said than done. Adaptive Listening will teach you how!”

Adaptive Listening™ training

Take our related course

Uncover a better way to listen that goes beyond active listening and paying attention. Learn about the way you prefer to listen, and adapt to meet the needs of others.

Live online or in person

Full course overview

Please accept marketing-cookies to view this video.
Please accept marketing-cookies to view this video.

Awards, podcasts, and media mentions