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    Interactive assessment

    Empathetic Listening Evaluator

    Assess the quality of your listening across three dimensions, authentic presence, listening without judgment, and emotional responsiveness.

    Empathetic listening is among the most powerful and underused leadership capabilities. Research from the Chartered Management Institute and Harvard Business School shows that leaders who listen deeply generate significantly higher levels of trust, engagement and psychological safety. This diagnostic helps you understand where your listening is strong and where it may be creating distance rather than connection.

    Questions or items
    15 questions or items
    Completion time
    Around 8 minutes
    Dimensions
    Authentic Presence & Attention, Listening Without Judgment, Emotional Responsiveness
    What you receive
    Personalised results with result bands, section scores and development guidance.

    What it covers

    • Authentic Presence & Attention
    • Listening Without Judgment
    • Emotional Responsiveness

    Rate each statement from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree) based on how you actually listen in difficult or important conversations, not casual exchanges. Think of recent one-to-ones, feedback conversations or moments of team tension.

    Results: Personalised results with result bands, section scores and development guidance.

    How this interactive diagnostic works

    Read what it covers here first. Nothing is saved or sent until you continue. Your result is calculated once every required item is answered.

    If it asks for your first name and work email, you enter them in the diagnostic itself. This page sends nothing.

    Statements in this diagnostic

    Statements are grouped by section. Answer each one for the situation named in the instructions, using the scale shown.

    Authentic Presence & Attention

    True listening begins with being genuinely present, not preparing your response while the other person speaks, but fully attending to what they are saying.

    1. When someone is speaking to me, I give them my full attention, I am not simultaneously thinking about what I will say next
    2. I put away distractions (phone, laptop, internal preoccupations) before important conversations
    3. I notice when my attention has drifted and bring it back to the person speaking without judging myself for it
    4. People I lead tell me, or show me through their behaviour, that they feel genuinely heard in conversations with me
    5. I resist the urge to fill silences immediately, I allow space for the other person to continue or deepen what they are saying

    Listening Without Judgment

    Empathetic listening requires the suspension of evaluation, holding off on forming a view until you have truly understood the other person's perspective.

    1. I can listen to a perspective I strongly disagree with without interrupting, rebutting or visibly reacting
    2. I ask questions to understand rather than to challenge, I seek to understand before I seek to be understood
    3. I don't finish other people's sentences or assume I know what they are going to say
    4. I reflect back what I have heard before responding, I check my understanding before offering my view
    5. I can hear criticism or difficult feedback about myself without becoming defensive during the conversation

    Emotional Responsiveness

    Empathetic listening includes acknowledging the emotional dimension of what is being shared, not just the content, so the other person feels genuinely understood.

    1. I notice and acknowledge the emotional state of the person I am speaking with, I don't just respond to the words
    2. I can sit with someone else's distress without rushing to fix it, minimise it or move on
    3. I validate how someone is feeling before offering solutions or advice
    4. I adjust my tone and pace based on the emotional register of the conversation, I don't respond to an upset person in the same way I respond to a factual briefing
    5. After difficult conversations, people feel better for having spoken to me, not worse, and not just the same

    How the result is read

    Your answers are totalled for each section and overall. Each total falls into one of the bands below.

    • Developing, 15 to 33: Significant gaps in empathetic listening. Start with Authentic Presence, the other two dimensions cannot develop without it. For one week, commit to putting your phone face-down in every conversation and saying nothing for the first 30 seconds after someone finishes speaking.
    • Emerging, 34 to 50: Emerging empathetic listening with clear areas of strength and development. Check whether your Authentic Presence and Emotional Responsiveness scores are balanced, most Emerging listeners have one but not both.
    • Capable, 51 to 64: A capable empathetic listener. People generally feel heard in conversations with you. To reach Advanced, focus on Listening Without Judgment, specifically practise reflecting back before responding, and notice how this changes the quality of what people share with you.
    • Advanced, 65 to 75: Advanced empathetic listening. You are the kind of leader people feel safe being honest with, and your conversations produce better outcomes as a result. This is genuinely rare and genuinely valuable. Use it intentionally in the conversations that matter most.

    Sources named in this diagnostic

    • Rogers, C.R. (1980) A Way of Being. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
    • Covey, S.R. (1989) The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. New York: Simon & Schuster.
    • Zaki, J. (2019) The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World. New York: Crown.

    Where to take the next step

    Our coaching skills programmes build listening, questioning and conversation capability for managers and leaders.

    Explore Coaching Skills Training

    Frequently asked questions

    What does the Empathetic Listening Evaluator measure?

    Empathetic listening is among the most powerful and underused leadership capabilities. Research from the Chartered Management Institute and Harvard Business School shows that leaders who listen deeply generate significantly higher levels of trust, engagement and psychological safety. This diagnostic helps you understand where your listening is strong and where it may be creating distance rather than connection.

    How many questions are in the Empathetic Listening Evaluator?

    It contains 15 questions grouped into 3 dimensions: Authentic Presence & Attention, Listening Without Judgment, Emotional Responsiveness.

    How is the Empathetic Listening Evaluator scored?

    Responses are totalled within each section and across the diagnostic, and each total falls into a result band.

    What happens after I complete the Empathetic Listening Evaluator?

    Once the required items are answered, you enter your first name and email to see your results: an overall interpretation, section scores and development guidance.

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