Abstract: Facing the complex and rapidly changing business environment, it is very important for leaders to learn to listen effectively if organizations want to respond quickly. Existing studies have not yet formed a unified definition of the concept of leader listening in the organizational context, and more of them deduced the impact of leader listening on employees’ work attitudes and interpersonal relationships theoretically. While few scholars have systematically conducted empirical studies on the diverse impacts of leader listening at different levels. Therefore, this study places listening in the leader-employee dual interaction context, clarifies the connotation dimension of leader listening, and explores a measurement scale suitable for Chinese organizational context. On this basis, based on the perspective of leadership effectiveness, we try to construct a theoretical framework of multi-level effect of leader listening through three closely related research, specifically exploring how leader listening affects the different psychological perceptions and behaviors of leaders themselves, teams, and employees, and systematically demonstrating the leadership effectiveness of listening at the three levels. This study clarifies the connotation dimension of leader listening, enriches the research level and theoretical perspective of leader listening, and deepens the theoretical understanding of the leadership effectiveness generated by listening.
First, this study explores the connotation dimension of leader listening in terms of both task and relationship, and develops a localized leader listening measurement scale. The lack of a unified view or validation of the basic issues of the connotation of leader listening and the measurement scale has hindered the development of leader listening research. The clarification of the connotation of leader listening in this study lays the foundation for the subsequent in-depth exploration of the phenomenon of leader listening and reveals its multi-level effect, and the localized measurement scale provides a reliable research tool for the subsequent study, thus deepening the theoretical study of leader listening.
Second, this study explores whether leader listening is “enabling” or “burdening” to leader performance from a dynamic perspective. Previous studies have placed more emphasis on the static characteristics of listening, and few studies have examined the double-edged effect of leader listening on the leaders themselves. Based on conservation resource theory, this study constructs a double-edged sword effect model of leader listening on leader job performance, and explores the role of daily self-reflection and daily emotional exhaustion in the relationship between leader listening and leader job performance through two paths: “resource gain” and “resource loss”. Through the two paths, we examined the “enabling” and “burdening” mechanisms induced by leader listening, so as to better verify the role of leader listening in leadership effectiveness at the leader level. This not only enriches the research findings on leader listening at the leader level, but also provides new perspectives for research in the field of leader listening.
Third, this study examines how team members perceive leader listening from a follower perspective. Previous scholars have examined the effects of leader listening on team performance and team learning, and little research has been conducted on the underlying mechanisms, and even more regrettably, little literature has focused on how team members perceive and evaluate leader listening behavior. This study examines the mechanism of leader listening on team followership behavior at the level of leader-team interaction, which not only cleverly explains the interesting and paradoxical phenomenon of leadership distance in organizations by revealing the inverted U-shape relationship between leadership accessibility and team followership behavior, but also further enriches our theoretical knowledge of the leadership effectiveness generated by listening at the team level by exploring the moderating role of team power distance.
Finally, this study analyses the authenticity of leader listening from the perspective of motivational attribution, and constructs a model of the mechanisms of leader listening on employee voice (silence). In leadership research, some scholars have been calling for a dialectical view of positive leadership behavior. Given the differences in listening levels, listening habits and listening skills, this study explores the types of leader listening based on leadership process attribution theory, and examines the dual effects of leader listening on employee voice and employee silence under positive and negative attribution perspectives. This not only enriches the theoretical perspectives of leader listening and provides a new research direction for subsequent studies, but also expands the understanding of the effect of leader listening from an employee perspective.

Key words: leader listening, leadership effectiveness, leader job performance, team followership behavior, employee voice