A Listening Tour is a process of gathering information, perceptions, and ideas from identified stakeholders or participants. This is done through structured conversations in an effort to deepen your understanding of a specific focus area. It may mean diving deep into a specific topic, or going to a higher level and focusing on general ideas or future opportunities for an individual, team, or organization.
The outcome of this work will allow you to make change by transforming what you hear into opportunities for the forward progress and growth of your team or organization.
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👥 PEOPLE
Interviewer: 1
Note Taker (if applicable): 1
**Participants: 5+ [see identify your participant]
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⏱️ **TIME
3 Weeks + ***
*Dependent **on a number of participants
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<aside> 🗃️ Materials Laptop Moderator Guide Note Taking App (or pen & paper)
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A listening tour is used to collect insights and perspectives from the team or group of specific individuals. This project will help you connect with individuals, hear pain points, understand what’s working well, and identify what opportunities that individuals see on a specific or general topic.
Use this play when you are trying to understand...
<aside> 🔥 Important Info: Before starting your listening tour, ask yourself, “What will you do with the information you collect?” If you were to wave a magic wand and get all of these insights right now, what do you plan to do with them? If you can’t answer this question, or don’t currently have the time, resources or people, then 🛑 STOP HERE! 🛑 If you move ahead with a listening tour without being able to take the information and act upon it, likely you will be doing more harm than good, and greatly undermining the relationships and trust that you are building.
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Before you can start speaking to individuals, it is important to make sure you know who you want to speak with. In most cases, depending on the size of our team you can’t speak with every person on the team, but you can make sure that the selection of individuals you speak with covers a wide range. By interviewing individuals with different positions and seniority it will provide you with a large number of perspectives and points of view.
The number of participants will depend on the size and diversity of the population you are looking to get insights from. Ideally, you should create a list of roughly 8-12 individuals for your first listening tour.
<aside> ✨ Tip: # of Participants The best indicator that you know you’ve interviewed enough participants is when you are reliably hearing the same things you’ve already heard.
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