How to Inspire People

激励他人的艺术

词汇：考研 | 句法：四级 | 文本：考研

刘立军供稿

Motivational quotes, Steve Jobs videos, and clips of baby elephants being rescued flood LinkedIn, a professional networking site. While some people might feel energized by reading “We cannot become what we want by remaining what we are” on a Monday morning, others might find it nauseating. Bosses looking to truly motivate their teams should consider more effective strategies than searching for quotes by Paulo Coelho.

在职业社交网站领英上，充满了许多鼓舞人心的名言、史蒂夫·乔布斯的视频以及小象获救的片段。虽然有些人可能在周一早上看到“我们不能通过保持现状来成为我们想要成为的人”这样的句子后感到干劲十足，但另一些人可能会觉得这种内容令人作呕。老板若希望真正激励团队，应该考虑比搜索保罗·柯艾略的名言更有效的策略。

Advice on how to inspire employees can often seem either painfully obvious — be good at your job, be passionate, make your team feel valued — or completely inauthentic. More practical insights, however, are found in Adam Galinsky’s forthcoming book, “Inspire,” from Columbia Business School.

关于如何激励员工的建议，往往要么是显而易见的——要擅长你的工作、充满激情、让你的团队感受到被重视——要么完全不真实。然而，在哥伦比亚商学院即将出版的亚当·加林斯基的新书《激励》中，提供了更加实用的见解。

One key insight is the use of vivid imagery to bring an organization’s purpose to life. Many firms rely on abstract terms like “change,” “innovate,” and “connect,” which can feel more like a mood board than a mission. Galinsky cites an experiment by Andrew Carton from the University of Pennsylvania, which showed that teams given a vision statement with concrete language — like creating toys that “make wide-eyed kids laugh and proud parents smile — produced more engaging toys than those given a generic statement.

一个关键的见解是使用生动的形象来使组织的目标变得鲜活起来。许多公司依赖于像“变革”、“创新”和“连接”这样的抽象术语，这让人感觉更像是一个情绪板而非使命。加林斯基引用了宾夕法尼亚大学安德鲁·卡顿的一项实验，该实验显示，那些被赋予了具体语言愿景的团队——比如创造“让睁大眼睛的孩子欢笑，让自豪的父母微笑”的玩具——比那些拿到语言更宽泛描述的团队，设计出的玩具更加吸引人。

Galinsky also highlights the power of counterfactual thinking to instill a sense of meaning. In research with Laura Kray from the University of California, Berkeley, participants reflected on important life events, such as choosing a college. Some were asked to consider how their lives would have turned out if these events hadn’t occurred. This group attributed greater meaning to these events, either because they saw them as fateful or because it forced them to think through the consequences more clearly. This type of thinking can strengthen employees’ ties to their firms by prompting them to imagine a world without their company, thereby increasing their sense of attachment.

加林斯基还强调了反事实思维的力量，以灌输一种意义感。在与加州大学伯克利分校的劳拉·克莱进行的研究中，参与者回顾了重要人生事件，如选择大学。一些人被要求思考：如果这些事件没有发生，他们的生活会变成什么样子。这组人对这些事件赋予了更大的意义，要么因为他们认为这些事件是命中注定的，要么是因为这迫使他们更清楚地梳理事件的影响。这种类型的思考可以通过促使员工想象一个他们公司不存在的世界，从而加强他们与公司的联结，增加他们对公司的归属感。

A particularly striking idea in Galinsky’s book is that individuals can motivate themselves, rather than relying solely on top-down inspiration from bosses. One example comes from research with Julian Pfrombeck from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In this study, newly registered Swiss citizens with a government employment agency were asked to spend 10-15 minutes reflecting on values that mattered to them. Those who did this exercise were three times more likely to find a job than those who didn’t.

加林斯基书中特别引人注目的一个观点是：激励不必完全依赖管理者从上而下地推动，个体可以自我激励。一个例子来自于香港中文大学朱利安·普罗姆贝克的研究。在这项研究中，新注册的瑞士公民在政府就业机构被要求花10到15分钟的时间思考对他们来说重要的价值观。那些完成了这项练习的人找到工作的可能性是未完成者的三倍。

Further research by Nava Ashraf, Oriana Bandiera, Virginia Minni, and Luigi Zingales found that similar interventions can have dramatic effects in a business setting. Nearly 3,000 employees at a consumer-goods firm participated in a workshop to reflect on pivotal life moments, articulate what mattered to them, and think about how their current jobs matched their sense of purpose. This exercise increased the likelihood of job exits, especially among lower performers, led to more internal job transfers, and improved performance among those who stayed. The heightened sense of what is meaningful to individuals best explains these outcomes: those uninspired by their jobs left or moved, while those whose purpose aligned with their work put in more effort. The overall impact on the firm’s performance was positive, even accounting for the productivity of new hires.

纳瓦·阿什拉夫、奥里亚娜·班迪埃拉、弗吉尼亚·米尼和路易吉·津加莱斯的进一步研究表明，在商业环境中类似的干预措施可以产生显著效果。某消费品公司近3,000名员工参加了一个研讨会，回顾人生的关键时刻，明确对自己重要的事物，并思考当前的工作如何与自己的目标相匹配。结果显示，这个练习增加了离职的可能性，尤其是表现较差的员工，导致更多的内部职位调动，而留任员工的表现有所提升。对这些结果的最佳解释，就是个人的意义感提高了：那些不受工作启发的人离开了或调动了职位，而那些目标与工作一致的人则投入了更多努力。即使考虑到新员工的生产力，这场干预对公司整体业绩的影响依然是积极的。

Managers play a crucial role in motivating their teams, but inspiration can also come from within individuals. Instead of just quoting Steve Jobs, ask your team why their jobs matter to them.

管理者在激励团队方面扮演着至关重要的角色，但激励的力量也可以来自个体内部。与其只是引用史蒂夫·乔布斯的名言，不妨问问你的团队为什么他们的工作对他们而言很重要。

【词汇】

1. instill v. 灌输，使逐渐具有

2. pivotal adj. 关键的，核心的

3. fateful adj. 命中注定的，重大的

（本文图片均来源于网络，仅供学习交流使用，侵删）