Terri Lonowski, Soulful Listening®, on Deep Listening, Employee Disengagement, and the Five Elements of Soulful Listening (North Fulton Business Radio, Episode 966)
In this episode of North Fulton Business Radio, host John Ray welcomes Terri Lonowski, Founder of Soulful Listening®, to discuss one of the most costly and underestimated problems in business today: workplace disengagement. A recent Gallup study Terri cites puts employee engagement at about 20% globally, with the impact on the global economy reaching $10 trillion a year. Her answer to that crisis is not a management program or a policy change. It is a deeper kind of listening.
Terri traces the origin of her work to her grandmother, Grandma Helga, who had a way of making people feel seen, heard, and safe simply through her presence. That quality, she realized, was both teachable and desperately needed. She developed Soulful Listening, a neuroscience-informed, five-element framework: self-care, presence, quantum listening (which she describes as what you get when active listening and empathy have a love child), inspired action, and the feedback loop. That last element, she explains, is the piece most leaders miss. When an employee speaks up and never hears back, they fill the silence with a story, and the story is usually “nobody heard me.” Disengagement follows, quietly, one unheard moment at a time.
Terri also shares a vivid example of a high performer at a well-known consulting firm who was deliberately operating at 80% because she felt unseen; eventually, she left, and her supervisor was genuinely shocked when she walked out the door.
John Ray is the host of North Fulton Business Radio. The show is produced by John Ray and North Fulton Business Radio, LLC, an affiliate of Business RadioX®, and is recorded inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta.
Key Takeaways from This Episode
- Workplace disengagement is a $1.2 trillion problem in the U.S. alone, and Terri identifies the lack of deep listening as its core driver.
- Soulful Listening is built on five elements: self-care, presence, quantum listening, inspired action, and the feedback loop. Listening begins well before another person starts talking.
- The feedback loop is the most commonly skipped step. When employees offer ideas and never hear back, they stop contributing, and disengagement sets in.
- Active listening is valuable, but it is not enough on its own because it does not include follow-through. Terri’s framework extends the listening experience beyond the conversation itself.
Topics Discussed in this Episode
00:20 John Ray introduces the show and guest Terri Lonowski
01:42 Terri introduces Soulful Listening and the $1.2 trillion disengagement problem
02:35 The origin story: Grandma Helga and the roots of Soulful Listening
06:09 Gallup research: 20% employee engagement globally and the economic impact
06:41 Why listening is the core antidote to disengagement
07:51 The biggest misconception about listening: it starts before anyone speaks
11:49 Walking through the five elements of Soulful Listening
15:37 How the feedback loop builds trust and enables innovation over time
15:50 How to introduce Soulful Listening into an existing organization
17:25 Why active listening falls short without follow-through
18:14 Signs a leader should watch for: quiet disengagement in the workplace
21:28 What symptoms should prompt a call to Terri
23:19 A CEO success story: scaling from 100 to 250 employees and rebuilding connection
24:09 Terri’s forthcoming book: Soulful Listening for the Workplace
24:48 How to connect with Terri and Soulful Listening
Terri Lonowski, M.Ed., Founder, Soulful Listening®
Terri Lonowski, M.Ed., is a TEDx speaker, listening and communication thought leader, Trusted Vistage Advisor, and Founder of Soulful Listening®.
Her work helps address one of today’s most costly workplace challenges: miscommunication. Through a neuroscience-informed, five-element approach, Terri helps organizations create conversations where people feel heard, valued, and inspired to do their best.
With a master’s degree in educational psychology, Terri brings a rare blend of science, wisdom, and practical leadership experience. She has led human-centered design teams that showcased workforce innovation at The White House twice and served as Chair of the American Counseling Association Foundation. Her TEDx talk, “Nobody’s Listening and It’s Killing Us,” resonated widely by naming a truth many workplaces experience: people rarely leave organizations and relationships first. They begin by leaving conversations where they don’t feel heard.
Terri’s message is clear: listening is not merely a soft skill. It is a pathway from disengagement to expressing greater human potential.
Soulful Listening®
Soulful Listening® helps people turn listening into a pathway from disconnection to greater human potential.
Founded by Terri Lonowski, M.Ed., Soulful Listening is a neuroscience-informed, wisdom-rooted, five-element approach for workplaces, leaders, teams, and everyday life.
Through keynotes, workshops, podcast conversations, and leadership experiences, the work helps reduce miscommunication, build trust, and strengthen how people connect. It creates conversations where people feel heard, valued, and inspired to bring forward their best thinking, ideas, and humanity.
At its heart is a simple truth: people rarely leave organizations, or relationships, all at once. They drift away one unheard moment at a time. Soulful Listening offers a practical and deeply human way back from disengagement to presence, connection, and meaningful action.
About North Fulton Business Radio and host John Ray
Approaching 1,000 episodes and having featured over 1,400 guests, North Fulton Business Radio is the longest-running podcast in the North Fulton area, covering business in our community like no one else. We are the undisputed “Voice of Business” in North Fulton!
The show invites a diverse range of business, non-profit, and community leaders to share their significant contributions to their respective markets, communities, and professions. There is no discrimination based on company size, and there is never any “pay to play.” North Fulton Business Radio supports and celebrates businesses by sharing positive stories that traditional media ignore. Some media lean left. Some media lean right. We lean business.
John Ray is the host of North Fulton Business Radio. John and the team at North Fulton Business Radio, LLC, an affiliate of Business RadioX®, produce the show, which is recorded inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta.
The studio is located at 275 South Main Street, Alpharetta, GA 30009.
You can find the entire archive of shows by following this link. The show is accessible on all major podcast apps, such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, Amazon, iHeart Radio, and many others.
John Ray also operates his own business advisory practice. John’s services include advising solopreneurs and small professional services firms on their value, their positioning and business development, and their pricing. His clients are professionals who are selling their expertise, such as consultants, coaches, attorneys, CPAs, accountants, bookkeepers, marketing professionals, and other professional services practitioners.
John is the author of the five-star-rated book The Generosity Mindset: A Journey to Business Success by Raising Your Confidence, Value, and Prices, praised by readers for its practical insights on raising confidence, value, and prices.
