评论
打印
How to inspire people
如何鼓舞他人
Motivational quotes. Videos of Steve Jobs saying absolutely anything. You do not have to scroll for long on LinkedIn, a networking site ostensibly for people at work, to find “inspirational” content.
励志名言。史蒂夫·乔布斯随便说什么的视频。你不必在领英上刷太久（领英是一个表面上为职场人士提供的社交网站）就能找到“鼓舞人心”的内容。
But much more practical insights can be found in a forthcoming book called “Inspire”, by Adam Galinsky, an academic at Columbia Business School. Take, for example, the importance of vivid imagery as a way of bringing an organisation’s purpose to life.
但在哥伦比亚商学院学者亚当·加林斯基即将出版的新书《鼓舞》中，可以找到更实用的深刻见解。例如，生动的意象是为组织的目标赋予生命力的一个重要方式。
Lots of firms use a succession of tediously abstract words to convey their goal: “change”, “innovate”, “connect” and so on. The result is less a mission than a mood board.
许多公司用一连串冗长抽象的词语来传达他们的目标：“变革”“创新”“连接”等等。这样做的结果与其说是传达了使命，不如说是做了一个情绪板。
Mr Galinsky cites an experiment that showed the effect of more concrete language. In it, teams were asked to design toys and given a vision statement to guide their behaviour.
加林斯基引用了一项实验，展示了更具体的语言所产生的效果。在实验中，团队被要求设计玩具，并给了他们一份愿景陈述来指导设计。
Teams who were handed a statement with more visual language—to create toys that “…make wide-eyed kids laugh and proud parents smile”—produced more engaging toys than teams who were given something more generic.
那些拿到语言更具视觉性的陈述的团队——创造出“……让惊奇地睁大眼睛的孩子欢笑，让骄傲的父母微笑”的玩具——比那些拿到语言更宽泛的陈述的团队创造出了更吸引人的玩具。
Mr Galinsky also points to the power of counterfactual thinking to inspire a sense of meaning. In research he conducted with Laura Kray of the University of California, Berkeley and other co-authors, participants were asked to reflect on important events in their lives, such as their choice of college.
加林斯基还指出，反事实思维具有激发意义感的力量。在他与加州大学伯克利分校的劳拉·克雷及其合著者进行的研究中，参与者被要求反思他们生活中的重要事件，比如选择大学。
Some were also asked to think about how things would have turned out if this event had not taken place. This group attributed greater meaning to the event in question, whether because they concluded fate had played a part in it or because it forced them to think through its consequences more explicitly.
一些人还被要求思考，如果这个事件没有发生，那么情况会如何。无论是他们得出结论，认为命运在其中发挥了作用，还是这个要求迫使他们更清晰地思考了这个事件的后果，总之这组人都因此认为他们所讨论的事件具有更大的意义。
This type of counterfactual thinking can also be used to strengthen employees’ ties to firms: prompting people to imagine a world in which their company does not exist seems to increase a sense of attachment.
这种反事实思维也可以用来加强员工与公司的联系：促使人们想象一个他们的公司不存在的世界，这似乎会增加员工与公司的连接感。
Perhaps the most striking idea in Mr Galinsky’s book is that, instead of bosses motivating people from above, individuals can do it for themselves. One example is a piece of research he conducted with Julian Pfrombeck from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and other co-authors.
或许加林斯基的书中最惊人的观点是，与其让老板从上而下地激励员工，不如让员工自己激励自己。一个例子是他与香港中文大学的朱利安·弗洛姆贝克及其合著者进行的一项研究。
In this study some Swiss citizens who had newly registered with a government employment agency were asked to undertake a 10- to 15-minute exercise in which they reflected on values that mattered to them. They were three times more likely to find a job than those who did not do the exercise.
在这项研究中，一些刚在政府就业机构登记注册的瑞士公民被要求进行10到15分钟的练习，在这个练习中，他们反思了对他们来说重要的价值观。他们找到工作的可能性是那些没有做这个练习的人的三倍。
Managers play a huge role in motivating their people. But inspiration can be bottom-up as well as top-down. Don’t just tell your team what Jobs said. Ask why their jobs matter to them.
管理者在激励员工方面发挥着巨大的作用。但鼓舞可以是自上而下的，也可以是自下而上的。不要只是告诉你的团队乔布斯说了什么。而要问问他们，为什么他们的工作对他们很重要。
