Improving officer-soldier communication through active listening skills training with Army ROTC cadets

Military leaders are tasked with communicating effectively with their subordinates. Active listening skills are vital to this communication; however, an investigation of active listening skills in the military is lacking. Sixty-four Army ROTC cadets participated in a quasi-experimental study to determine the effectiveness of an active listening skills curriculum on developmental counseling. Self-report ratings suggested a positive treatment effect with the cadets in the experimental group from pretest to posttest on the sensing and processing subscales on the Active Empathic Listening Scale (AELS), and both self-report and observer ratings demonstrated a positive treatment effect on the Counseling Skills Scale (CSS) when compared to the control group. The study provides initial evidence on the impact of implementing an active listening skills curriculum on leadership development within developmental counseling in the military.