经济学人 | 为什么说在职场中要学会倾听？

每日双语经济学人 · 公众号 · · 2024-04-25 08:00

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背景介绍：

当谈到现代职场，倾听的重要性是不容忽视的。职场不再仅仅是工作任务的堆砌，它已经演变成一个更为复杂的社交生态系统，需要更多的人际互动、合作和情感投入。在这个环境中，倾听成为建立联系、解决问题和推动合作的关键工具。在职场中，无论是与同事、上司、下属还是客户进行交流，都需要倾听。这不仅仅是在交流过程中保持耳朵敞开，还包括理解对方的需求、关注细节，以及积极参与对话。倾听有助于建立信任，增强人际关系，并提高问题解决的效率。

How to benefit from the conversations you have at work

如何从职场交谈中获益

Stop thinking about your next point and listen to the one being made

不要只顾自己滔滔不绝，也听听别人说了什么

Successful workplaces are usually characterised by good communication. Bosses provide a clear sense of where they want the firm to go; employees feel able to voice disagreements; colleagues share information rather than hoarding it. But being a good communicator is too often conflated with one particular skill: speaking persuasively.

成功工作场所的一个常见特征是良好的沟通。老板清楚指明公司的发展方向，员工可以自如表达不同意见，同事间分享信息而不是互有隐瞒。但是，人们往往将优秀的沟通能力与另一种技能混为一谈：说话有说服力。

In a paper published in 2015, Kyle Brink of Western Michigan University and Robert Costigan of St John Fisher College found that 76% of undergraduate business degrees in America had a learning goal for presentation skills, but only 11% had a goal related to listening.

西密歇根大学的凯尔·布林克和圣约翰费舍尔学院的罗伯特·科斯蒂根在2015年发表的一篇论文中指出，美国76%的商科本科都有关于演讲技巧的学习目标，但只有11%设置了与倾听相关的目标。

Business students were being schooled to give TED talks rather than have conversations. That may have costs. Another study, conducted by Dotan Castro of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his co-authors, found that when people felt listened to by those in supervisory roles their creativity and sense of psychological safety improved.

商科学生接受的教育是去做TED演讲，而不是交谈。这也许是有代价的。耶路撒冷希伯来大学的多坦·卡斯特罗及其他人进行的另一项研究发现，当人们感到自己的意见得到管理者的倾听时，他们的创造力和心理安全感都会提高。

A focus on talking is understandable. The set-piece moments of careers, like job interviews and big presentations, are about transmitting information. The boss gets to be at the podium, the minions get to be in the audience.

看重讲话能力不难理解。许多职业生涯的关键时刻，例如求职面试和大型演讲，都需要传递信息。老板可以站上讲台，下属则坐在观众席中。

Videos of someone giving a speech are much more shareable than someone silently nodding. But interest in what makes everyday communication tick has also risen, as the importance of teams grows and as conceptions of leadership increasingly emphasise softer skills.

某人演讲的视频远远比某人默默点头的视频更容易得到传播。但是，随着团队的重要性与日俱增，且领导力的概念越来越强调软技能，如何做好日常沟通也引起了更多兴趣。

Recent research by Beau Sievers of Stanford University and his co-authors asked groups of MBA students to discuss the meaning of ambiguous film clips. The presence of people perceived to be of high status seemed to impede consensus: these folk spoke more and were readier to reject the explanations of others.

在斯坦福大学的博·西弗斯等人近期所做的研究中，他们让几组MBA学生讨论一些模棱两可的电影片段的含义。如果有公认地位更高的人在场，似乎更难达成共识：这些人说的更多，而且动辄否定别人的解释。

Groups that reached consensus were more likely to have a different character in them: people who were well-connected but not dominant, who asked lots of questions and who encouraged interaction. They made everything align—even the neural activity of their groups.

达成共识的小组更可能包含另一种人：这些人的人脉很广但不盛气凌人，他们经常提问并鼓励互动。这些人的存在让一切都步调一致——甚至是小组成员的神经活动。

Mr Sievers’s research features in “Supercommunicators”, a new book by Charles Duhigg, a journalist at the New Yorker. Mr Duhigg looks at how some people forge stronger connections with others and at the techniques for having better conversations. His canvas ranges more widely than the workplace but some of its lessons are applicable there.

《纽约客》记者查尔斯·杜希格的新书《超级沟通者》介绍了西弗斯的研究。杜希格观察了一些人如何与他人建立更紧密的联系，以及实现更顺畅交谈的技巧。他观察的范围不只限于职场，但其中一些经验教训也适用于职场。

One chapter tells the story of the Fast Friends Procedure, a set of 36 increasingly intimate questions that are particularly effective at turning strangers into friends. The questions were first put together in the 1990s by Elaine and Arthur Aron, two psychologists at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

其中一章介绍了“快速交友程序”，这是一套36个逐渐变得私人的问题，能够特别有效地将陌生人变成朋友。纽约州立大学石溪分校的两位心理学家伊莱恩·阿伦和亚瑟·阿伦在1990年代首次整理出了这套问题。

Their survey was designed for the lab, not the workplace. You should not suddenly start asking new colleagues what their most terrible memory is or how they feel about their mother. But if it is important to build team connections fast, then—Britain, look away now— reciprocal moments of vulnerability do seem to help.

他们的研究是面向实验室的，而不是职场。你可不要突然开始询问新同事他们最可怕的记忆是什么，或者他们对自己母亲的感觉如何。但是，如果必须要快速建立团队连结的话，那么——你要是在英国，就不用看了——相互坦诚自己的脆弱时刻似乎确实有用。

Another chapter looks at ways to bring together people with diametrically opposed views, in this case Americans on either side of the debate over gun control. The difficulty here was in persuading people that they were genuinely being listened to, not dismissed as gun-toting loons or lily-livered liberals.

另一章探讨了如何让观点截然相反的人能够共处，所举的例子是因控枪争论而分为两派的美国人。这里的难点是要让对方相信自己的意见确实得到了倾听，而不是被蔑视为舞枪弄炮的疯子或者内心柔弱的自由主义者。

Mr Duhigg describes an approach called “looping for understanding”, in which people ask questions and then repeatedly distil their understanding of what they have heard back to their interlocutor.

杜希格描述了一种名为“循环理解”的方法——先提出问题，听到对方回答后把自己对其内容的理解提炼出来，反馈给对方，如此不断反复。

Polarised beliefs of this sort are rare inside firms. But looping techniques still have their place: when there are long-running conflicts between individual employees, say, or in negotiations and mediation processes.

在公司里，这种观念两极分化的情况并不多见。但这种循环法仍有用武之地：例如个别员工之间长期闹矛盾时，或者在谈判和调解的过程中。

Mr Duhigg’s advice can seem obvious at times. And his examples do not always translate to the workplace. Sometimes it is more important to make a decision than to excavate everyone’s point of view. Reaching consensus is vital on a jury but less necessary in a corporate hierarchy. There really is a limit to how much vulnerability you want from a leader.

杜希格的建议有时似乎就是明摆着的。他举出的例子也并不总能延伸到职场上。有些时候，做出决定比征求每个人的意见更重要。在陪审团中，达成共识是至关重要的，但在公司层级制度中就没那么必要。你确实也不想看到你的上司展现出太多的脆弱。

But his book is a useful reminder that demonstrable curiosity about other people’s experiences and ideas can benefit everyone. Asking questions, not cutting people off, pausing to digest what someone has said rather than pouncing on breaks in a discussion to make your own point: these are not enough to qualify someone as a supercommunicator. But in plenty of organisations they would still represent good progress.

但他的书给出了有益的提醒：对别人的经历和想法表现出好奇心对每个人都有好处。要提出问题，不打断别人，要停下来消化别人说的话，而不是抓住讨论的每个间隙表达自己的观点：这些都不足以让一个人成为超级沟通者。但在许多组织中，这已经是很大的进步了。

(红色标注词为重难点词汇)

重难点词汇 ：

conflate [kənˈfleɪt] v. 合而为一

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经济学人 | 为什么说在职场中要学会倾听？

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