Embedded Listening
What your result means
Voice
Continuous, representative
Understanding
Cross-stakeholder, strategic use of voice data
Action
Stakeholders co-own and execute solutions themsleves
Communication
Open, ongoing dialogue
Voice
At the embedded stage, voice practices and listening are a cultural norm, continuously integrated into daily routines, with leaders embodying it as a core competency and sharing power with stakeholders. This means:
- Listening is embedded as a cultural norm across the organisation.
- Stakeholders are involved in co-designing and shaping decisions.
- Multiple listening methods run continuously and are integrated into daily practice.
- Leaders embody listening as a defining competency, visible, empathetic, transparent, and sharing power with stakeholders in shaping the organisation.
Understanding
When it comes to analysing feedback, multiple listening streams are integrated with predictive analysis, and leaders embrace collective, transparent sense-making with staff, pupils, and parents. How this looks in practice:
- Data is integrated across multiple listening streams (surveys, forums, digital platforms).
- Predictive and prescriptive analysis anticipates emerging needs.
- Reflection and curiosity are embedded; analysis is a collective, transparent process.
- Leaders embrace humility and transparency, inviting staff, pupils, and parents into sense-making sessions.
Action
When it comes to implementing feedback, co-creation drives systemic reforms, with leaders sharing power, enabling stakeholders to own impact, and championing organisation-wide change. This means:
- Co-creation is the norm: responsibility for solutions shared.
- Systemic reforms (e.g., curriculum, workload, safeguarding) driven by collective insights.
- Stakeholders have ownership of both input and impact.
- Leaders share power: they enable stakeholders to own impact while they hold space, remove barriers, and champion systemic reform.
Communication
Communication is continuous and cultural, with leaders using it to reinforce belonging and organisational identity. This looks like:
- Continuous, transparent, and expected communication.
- Dashboards, forums, and assemblies that visibly show how feedback drives change.
- Listening, which is part of organisational storytelling and identity and reinforces belonging.
- Leaders who use communication to build belonging, showing how listening is part of organisational identity and values.
3 pillars to sustain and evolve Embedded Listening
At the Embedded stage, listening is no longer a project or process. It is the cultural norm and the organisation’s defining way of working.
Your commitment to transparency and partnership has created a resilient community where everyone has a stake in the shared success.
To maintain and deepen Embedded Listening, focus on:
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#1 Keeping feedback loops alive
Ensure that dialogue remains continuous and natural, moving away from “one-off” responses to an ongoing conversation where stakeholders see the real-time evolution of their ideas.
By consistently demonstrating that the loop is never truly “closed,” you reinforce the idea that their voice is a permanent engine for change.
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#2 Revisiting listening practices and mindsets regularly
Periodically audit your systems to ensure they haven’t drifted into a “Structured” level where they feel top-down or mechanical. Use your leadership team to model the core mindsets, such as empathy and psychological safety, to ensure that the way you listen remains as important as the data you collect.
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#3 Staying alert to changes in people, priorities, and context
Actively reassess your voice mechanisms whenever there is a shift in the trust’s demographics, leadership, or external environment to ensure no groups are becoming marginalised.
A listening organisation must remain agile, adapting its methods to ensure that every new staff member, student, or parent feels heard and valued as those who came before them.