经济学人 | 在工作中，你应该表现得更友善吗？

每日双语经济学人 · 公众号 · · 2024-12-16 09:00

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背景介绍：

在当今社会，友善与善良成为了一股不可忽视的潮流。从出版界推出的《善意的力量》等书籍，到职业社交平台领英上充满善意的视频，再到众多公司拥抱同情心的价值观，友善正逐渐渗透到社会的各个角落。近期的研究也揭示了友善与高效领导力之间的紧密联系，以及它在改善公司业绩和营造积极企业文化中的重要作用。这一趋势反映了组织演变和外部世界动荡的现状，同时也为摆脱“好人总是吃亏”的偏见带来了社会进步。

Should you be nice at work?

工作中，你应该在表现得更友善吗？

Kindness is in vogue

善良正流行

Kindness is in the air. Publishers produce business books with titles like “The Power of Nice” or, simply, “Kind”. LinkedIn, which is ostensibly a networking site for career-minded professionals, is overrun with sickly videos showing people being improbably generous to the homeless.

空气中弥漫着善意的气息。出版商们纷纷推出了诸如《善意的力量》或直接以《善意》为题的商业书籍，深入探讨这一主题。领英，这一职业抱负者的社交网站，实则充斥着大量触动人心的视频，展示了人们对无家可归者展现出的难以置信的慷慨之举。

Firms publicly embrace the values of compassion: one manufacturer of safety-gear talks of “offering grace internally”, which sounds terribly intrusive .

众多公司亦公开拥抱同情心的价值观，例如一家安全装备制造商谈及“在内部提供恩典”，尽管这一表述听起来略显不合时宜。

The fashion for niceness is both trite and revealing. Trite, because it is really not surprising that people respond well to decent behaviour from colleagues and bosses.

对“友善”的追捧，既显得有些陈词滥调，又颇具深刻的启示意义。说它陈词滥调，是因为人们对同事和上司的得体行为给予积极回应，这一现象早已司空见惯，不足为奇。

It would take a brave author to write a book called “Stand Up for Psychopathy” or “Three Cheers for the Dark Triad”. Revealing, because it shows how the leadership pendulum has swung.

若真有哪位作者敢于撰写《为心理变态者挺身而出》或《为暗黑三性格欢呼》之类的书籍，那无疑将是一次勇敢的尝试。而说它颇具启示意义，则是因为它揭示了领导力钟摆的微妙变化趋势。

A recent meta-analysis of research into niceness and effective leadership, by Andrew Blake of Texas Tech University and his co-authors, concludes that the two do often go together.

德克萨斯理工大学的安德鲁·布莱克及其合著者，近期对友善与高效领导力之间的关联进行了深入的综合分析，得出的结论是这两者往往相辅相成。

Studies into bosses’ agreeableness, one of the “Big Five” personality traits (along with openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion and neuroticism), have found that it is tied to ethical behaviour, workplace trust and psychological safety, among other beneficial things.

他们对老板宜人性的研究——作为“五大”人格特质之一（其他四大分别是开放性、尽责性、外倾性和神经质）——发现宜人性与道德行为、职场信任、心理安全感等积极因素之间存在着紧密的联系。

That, in turn, can improve aspects of a firm’s performance. A recent paper by Charles O’Reilly of Stanford University and his co-authors looked at the relationship between chief executives’ personalities and reviews of their organisations’ culture on Glassdoor, an employee-ratings website. Agreeable bosses were associated with cultures that were more collaborative and innovative.

宜人性反过来又能显著改善公司的各方面业绩。斯坦福大学的查尔斯·奥莱利及其合著者最近发表的一篇论文，探讨了首席执行官的个性与员工评级网站 Glassdoor 上对其组织文化的评价之间的关系。研究表明，亲和力强的老板往往能够营造出更具合作性和创新性的企业文化氛围。

Niceness seems to matter more than it once did. A meta-analysis of research ending in the late 1990s did not find evidence of a strong connection between agreeableness and effective leadership.

友善似乎比以往任何时候都更为重要。1990年代末期一项研究的荟萃分析，并未发现亲和力与有效领导力之间存在显著的关联。

Some of this shift doubtless reflects the way organisations have evolved: teams matter more, along with the social skills that ease co-operation. Some of it may also reflect more volatility in the outside world.

这一转变无疑在某种程度上反映了组织的演变趋势：团队的重要性日益凸显，而促进合作的社交技能也变得更加关键。此外，这也可能在一定程度上反映了外部世界日益动荡不安的现状。

A study by Soo Ling Lim of University College London and her co-authors looked at the performance of MBA students at London Business School across ten academic years, and found that agreeableness improves outcomes when levels of uncertainty about a task—and presumably, the need to work together harmoniously—are higher.

伦敦大学学院的 Soo Ling Lim 及其合著者进行的一项研究，考察了伦敦商学院MBA学生十年间的成就，结果发现，当任务的不确定性水平——即和谐合作的必要性——更高时，亲和力对于提升个人成就具有显著作用。

It is progress to get away from the era of “nice guys finish last”, not least for those people who aren’t guys: women have long suffered more from perceptions of lower competence if they display warmth. But you can have too much of anything, even kindness.

摆脱“好人总是吃亏”的时代无疑是一种社会进步，尤其是对于非男性群体而言。长期以来，女性若表现出友好态度，更容易被误解为能力低下。然而，凡事皆需适度，善良亦不例外。

Agreeableness is not the only trait that matters for a boss: a delightful but highly neurotic person may struggle in stressful situations. Employees vary too: some people care less about empathy and more about money.

亲和力并非老板身上唯一重要的品质：一个讨人喜欢但高度神经质的人，在压力环境下可能会感到十分挣扎。员工的情况也各不相同：有些人可能更看重金钱而非同情。

There are moments—when employees have suffered a personal trauma , for example—when warmth is the most important test of a company’s character. But in other circumstances, different traits matter.

在某些特定时刻——例如员工遭受个人创伤时——友善会成为公司文化中最重要的特质。但在其他情况下，其他特质则可能更为关键。

People who score less well on agreeableness are liable to be less trusting, more competitive and more confrontational. That may not recommend them as friends but could well be an advantage in certain contexts.

亲和力得分较低的人，往往容易缺乏信任，且好胜心、对抗性较强。这虽然可能不利于他们结交朋友，但在某些情况下却可能成为一种优势。

Mr O’Reilly’s paper finds, for example, that different industries attract leaders with varying personality types: bosses in the financial-services industry are comparatively less agreeable, for example, than those who work in health care. Kindness may also count for less in negotiation-heavy roles like sales.

例如，奥莱利的论文发现，不同行业所吸引的领导者具有不同的人格特质：金融服务业老板的亲和力程度往往不如医疗保健行业的老板。在销售等需要大量谈判的岗位上，友善可能也不那么重要。

（红色标注词为重难点词汇）

经济学人 | 在工作中，你应该表现得更友善吗？

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