(单词翻译:单击)
Nobody's perfect. Managers should not forget that
管理者应牢记:人无完人
The arc of current management thinking bends towards virtue. Co-operation is what makes teams purr. Low-ego empathy is the hallmark of a thoroughly modern boss. Purpose matters to employees as much as pay; society looms as large as shareholders.
如今的管理思维往往推崇美德
But appealing to people's better nature, and ignoring their vices, is an incomplete approach. Nor is being good necessarily great for your own career. Take a look at the seven capital virtues and the seven deadly sins laid out in Christian tradition.
但是,一味呼吁善良本性而忽视人性缺点未免有失偏颇
The virtues are chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, kindness, patience and humility; the vices are lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, wrath and pride. In aggregate the first set of qualities is the one for managers to emulate.
七美德是贞洁、节制、慷慨、勤勉、宽容、耐心和谦逊;与之相对应的七宗罪则是色欲、暴食、贪婪、懒惰、嫉妒、暴怒和傲慢
Neither chaste charity nor lustful gluttony have much to recommend them as a management ethos; but only one is a lawsuit waiting to happen. Diligence clearly beats sloth. Greed is out of fashion.
无论是纯洁宽厚还是穷奢极欲,都不是太可取的管理理念;唯一能确信的就是后者甚至会招来一纸诉状
Aiyesha Dey of Harvard Business School and her co-authors have found that excessive materialism on the part of a chief executive can be a warning sign of fraudulent activity and out-of-control risk-taking.
哈佛商学院的艾耶莎·戴伊和她的合著者发现,CEO对于物质生活的过度追求可能滋生欺诈活动、导致风控失灵
Pride is also increasingly seen as problematic: in a paper from 2018 academics identified narcissistic bosses by the size of their signatures and found a correlation with poor financial outcomes at the firms they ran.
人们也愈发认为傲慢会引发问题:在2018年的一篇论文中,研究人员根据签名大小辨认出了自恋的老板,并发现签名越大,他们所经营的公司的财务状况就越糟
Yet saintliness is rare and sinfulness can be underrated. Take envy, for example. By design organisations rely on competition as well as co-operation. A kind person might well be content to applaud other people for their success.
但是,没有几个人能做到至善,而罪行也可能被低估
An envious one will see someone to catch up with. Psychologists distinguish between malign and benign versions of envy. In one, people try to close gaps in status by bringing others down. In the other, they are motivated to improve their own performance.
而善妒的人看到的则是自己要追逐的目标
The recent paper by Danielle Tussing of the University at Buffalo and colleagues discovered a third type of behaviour: people who skipped work or even quit their jobs in order to avoid feelings of envy.
纽约州立大学布法罗分校的丹妮尔·图辛和同事所著的一篇新论文发现了第三种做法:有些人为了避免嫉妒他人而选择旷工甚至辞职
Understanding such emotions is a step towards harnessing them.
要想利用这些情绪,首先就要理解它们