如何緩解職場尷尬癥？

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There is a psychologist at Harvard Business School who is dutifully working away at solving one of the biggest problems facing knowledge workers today; I am speaking, of course, of the pervasive problem of awkwardness. Over the past several years, Francesca Gino has published academic papers and popular press articles dissecting the particular social discomfort associated with the workplace. Often, her work has focused on networking, or the gentle art of forming relationships with others who work in your field. She’s found, for example, that people associate networking with actual disgust; she’s also found that the activity becomes markedly more palatable if you focus less on yourself.

哈佛商學院一位心理學家?guī)啄陙礤浂簧釋χR型工人今天面臨的最大問題進行研究;沒錯，說的就是「尷尬癥」。過去幾年里，F(xiàn)rancesca Gino發(fā)表了許多學術論文和通俗文章，解剖和討論這種癥狀。她主要研究如何團隊合作及同事關系。她發(fā)現(xiàn)，實際上人們很厭惡團隊合作;當然，她也發(fā)現(xiàn)如果人們不過度自我關注，團隊合作會變得更加愉快。

Her latest piece, published last week in Harvard Business Review, provides a third tip that is just as useful as the first two: Meeting someone new in a work context will go much more smoothly if only you would stop trying to guess what it is they want from you. In two experiments — one involving students in a laboratory setting and the other involving actual entrepreneurs — Gino and her colleagues find that “catering to another person’s interests and expectations, as opposed to behaving authentically, harms performance.” For the study on entrepreneurs, for example, the researchers examined real pitches to potential investors, and found that when entrepreneurs tried to shape their pitches around what they believed their investors wanted, they were less likely to receive funding than those who simply stuck to a truthful depiction of themselves and their ideas.

Gino在《哈佛商業(yè)評論》上的最新文章提出了一則有用的小貼士：在職場上，不去猜測別人想要什么，與之建立關系會變得更加容易。Gino和她的同事進行了兩個實驗，一個在實驗室環(huán)境下進行，對象是學生，另一個的對象是真正的企業(yè)家。她們發(fā)現(xiàn)，“迎合別人的利益和期望，不表現(xiàn)真實的自己，反而會表現(xiàn)不好”。在對企業(yè)家的實驗中，研究者發(fā)現(xiàn)，當企業(yè)家在宣傳中試著迎合潛在投資者的需要，比起真實宣傳的企業(yè)家，他們募到的資金反而更少。

Likewise, in the lab study, the researchers held a mock job interview, and either told the participating students to try to mold themselves to what it seemed like their interviewer wanted (they called that the “catering” condition) or to behave normally, by presenting their strengths honestly and accurately (this they called the “authenticity” condition). The “interviewer” in this case was a study volunteer, too, who wasn’t aware of the purpose of the research. More often than not, the students cast in the role of interviewer told researchers that they’d be less likely to offer the job to the students in the “catering” condition.

同樣地，在對學生的實驗中，研究者舉行了一次模擬求職面試，隨機地讓一部分學生試著迎合面試官(她們稱這些學生為“迎合”組)，讓另外的學生表現(xiàn)真實的自己(這些學生為“真實”組)。“面試官”是志愿者，并不了解實驗的真正目的。從“面試官”的反饋來看，他們大多不太愿意錄用“迎合”組的學生。

One explanation for this: People are generally pretty bad at guessing at what’s going on in someone else’s head. Research has suggested, for example, that your understanding of what others think of you is more informed by your own opinions of yourself than the feedback that others provide. (Perhaps this can help explain the depressing study out this summer, which announced that “Half Your Friends Probably Don’t Think of You As a Friend.”)

對此種現(xiàn)象的一個解釋是：人們實在很不擅長推測別人的想法。舉栗：研究表明，人們通常都是按照自己的想法，而非別人的真實反饋，來衡量別人如何看待自己。

Beyond that, in the fake job-interview experiment, the interviewees were also asked how nervous they felt, and those in the catering condition reported more anxiety than those in the authenticity condition. So: Trying to guess what a job interviewer or potential investor wants out of you will probably make you nervous, and, chances are, you’ll guess wrong, anyway. As so often is the case, the best advice is the simplest — just be you. Or, at least, a slightly-more-pulled-together and generally-on-top-of-things version of you.

另外，在模擬求職面試的實驗中，“求職者”們需要告訴研究者自己有多緊張。結果顯示，“迎合”組比“真實”組焦慮感更高。也就是說(敲黑板)：猜測面試官或潛在投資者的想法會引起焦慮，而猜錯的比例永遠大過猜對的比例。因此最好最簡單的選擇就是——做自己。至少也得是相對真實的版本。