翻译天堂  2016-09-23

Most Work Conflicts Aren’tDue to Personality

Conflict happens everywhere, including in the workplace. When it does, it’s tempting to blame it on personalities.  But more often than not, the real underlying cause of workplace strife is the situation itself, rather than the people involved. So, why do we automatically blame our coworkers? Chalk it up to psychology and organizational politics, which cause us to oversimplify and to draw incorrect or incomplete conclusions. 人与人之间的冲突随处可见，包括在工作场所发生的。当它发生时，人们往往将它归罪于人格。但通常导致工作场合冲突发生的根本原因是当时参与者所处的情形，而不是参与的人。所以，为什么我们总是不经思索的责备我们的同事呢？原因可以记在心理学和公司政治学上，它们让我们太单纯而容易得出错误的或者片面的结论。

There’s a good reason why we’re inclined to jump to conclusions based on limited information. Most of us are, by nature, “cognitive misers,” a term coined by social psychologists Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor to describe how people have a tendency to preserve cognitive resources and allocate them only to high-priority matters. And the limited supply of cognitive resources we all have is spread ever-thinner as demands on our time and attention increase. 这里有个好理由可以解释为什么我们倾向于在情况未明时就匆匆得出一个结论。我们当中的多数人，出于本能，是“认知的吝啬鬼（cognitive misers）”，这是由社会心理学家苏珊·菲斯克（Susan Fiske）和雪莱·泰勒（Shelley Taylor）创造出来的一个术语，这个术语描述了人类倾向于保守使用认知资源，只关注最重要的信息。当分辨是非需要的时间和精力增加时，我们所能得到的有限的认知资源变得非常狭隘。

As human beings evolved, our survival depended on being able to quickly identify and differentiate friend from foe, which meant making rapid judgments about the character and intentions of other people or tribes. Focusing on people rather than situations is faster and simpler, and focusing on a few attributes of people, rather than on their complicated entirety, is an additional temptation. 在人类进化历程中，能幸存下来的人类依赖迅速鉴别和区分敌人和朋友的能力，这意味着要迅速对其它人或部落的品性和意图做出判断。此时将注意力集中在人身上比周边环境更快速和更简单，专注观察对方的少数几个特征，而非注意他们的复杂的全貌，也是一种技巧。

Stereotypes are shortcuts that preserve cognitive resources and enable faster interpretations, albeit ones that may be inaccurate, unfair, and harmful. While few people would feel comfortable openly describing one another based on racial, ethnic, or gender stereotypes, most people have no reservations about explaining others’ behavior with a personality typology like Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (“She’s such an ‘INTJ'”), Enneagram, or Color Code (“He’s such an 8: Challenger”). 定见是保守使用认知资源的捷径，可以快速的做出解释，虽然有时这样会不准确，不公正，和有害。很少有人会对公开讨论别人的人种、种族和性别定见而感到舒适，大部分人接受人格类型学，如迈尔斯-布里格斯性格测试（Myers-Briggs Type Indicator）（“她是'INTJ'类型，内向+直觉+思维+判断类型”），九型人格（Enneagram, or Color Code）（“他是8型人格：挑战者”）。

Personality or style typologies like Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, the DISC Assessment, Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument, Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument and others have been criticized by academic psychologists for their unproven or debatable reliability and validity. Yet, according to the Association of Test Publishers, the Society for Human Resources, and the publisher of the Myers-Briggs, these assessments are still administered millions of times per year for personnel selection, executive coaching, team building and conflict resolution. As Annie Murphy Paul argues in her insightful book, The Cult Of Personality Testing, these horoscope-like personality classifications at best capture only a small amount of variance in behavior, and in combination only explain tangential aspects of adversarial dynamics in the workplace. Yet, they’re frequently relied upon for the purposes of conflict resolution. An ENTP and an ISTJ might have a hard time working together. Then again, so might a Capricorn and a Sagittarius. So might any of us. 人格或行为风格分类学，如迈尔斯-布里格斯性格测试（Myers-Briggs），九型人格（Enneagram），DISC测试，埃尔曼大脑优势评估（Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument），托马斯-吉尔曼冲突模式检测（Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument），等等，被学院派心理学家批评为“有效性和可靠性未被证明或有争议”。（http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-grant/goodbye-to-mbti-the-fad- t_b_3947014.html） 但是，根据考试行业协会（Association of Test Publishers），人力资源学会（Society for Human Resources），和迈尔斯-布里格斯性格测试出版商的资料，这类评估每年在人员选拔，高管训练，团队合作训练和冲突调解中得到几百万次应用。安妮·保罗（Annie Murphy Paul）在她富有洞察力的书《人格分类测试狂信徒，The Cult Of Personality Testing》中，表明这些类似占星术的人格分类只能抓住人类性格多样性里的一小点截图，合在一起也只能解释工作场所冲突动力学的一个小切面。但是，它们经常成为分析冲突原因的依据。例如，一个ENTP类型（发明家类型）和一个ISTJ类型（公务员类型）在一起工作可能步履艰难。再还有，一个摩羯座和一个人马座在一起工作就会冲突不断。这种解释可以放在我们任何一个人身上。

The real reasons for conflict are a lot harder to raise — and resolve — because they are likely to be complex, nuanced, and politically sensitive. For example, people’s interests may truly be opposed; roles and levels of authority may not be correctly defined or delineated; there may be real incentives to compete rather than to collaborate; and there may be little to no accountability or transparency about what people do or say. 发现冲突的真正原因要比做个测试难得多，解决就更难，因为真正的原因往往很复杂，很微妙，有政治敏感。举例来说，员工的工作和他的兴趣爱好可能完全相反了；管理人员的角色和层级没有被正确的定义或描述；公司激励措施可能导致竞争多过合作；员工做或者说没有对应的责任性和透明性，这点被忽视了。

When two coworkers create a safe and imaginary set of explanations for their conflict (“My coworker is a micromanager,” or “My coworker doesn’t care whether errors are corrected”), neither of them has to challenge or incur the wrath of others in the organization. It’s much easier for them to imagine that they’ll work better together if they simply understand each other’s personality (or personality type) than it is to realize that they would have to come together to, for example, request that their boss stop pitting them against one another, or to request that HR match rhetoric about collaboration with real incentives to work together. Or, perhaps the conflict is due to someone on the team simply not doing his or her job, in which case talking about personality as being the cause of conflict is a dangerous distraction from the real issue. Personality typologies may even provide rationalizations, for example, if someone says “I am a spontaneous type and that’s why I have a tough time with deadlines.” Spontaneous or not, they still have to do their work well and on time if they want to minimize conflict with their colleagues or customers. 当两位同事为他们的冲突创造出一套安全的和虚构的说辞时（“我的合作者是一位微观管理者”，或者“我的合作者不关心错误是否纠正了”），谁都不用挑战或者招致组织内其他人的怒火。去想象他们只要了解对方的人格（或人格分类）就能一起好好共事，比去意识到真相是他们必须团结起来去解决问题，比如，去要求老板不要再推动他们相互对抗，或者要求HR给花言巧语描绘的合作美景提供匹配的激励措施，要容易得多。或者，冲突可能是简单的因为团队中有人没有做他/她的工作，此时去谈人格分类作为冲突的原因，从而将注意力从真实原因上分走是危险的。人格分类学什么时候都可以提供合理的借口，比如，如果某人说：“我是心血来潮型人格（spontaneous type），这是为什么我在截止日期前难以完成工作”。不管他们是不是“心血来潮型人格”，如果他们想减少与同事或者客户的冲突的话，他们都必须良好的和按时的完成他们的工作。

When two coworkers create a safe and imaginary set of explanations for their conflict (“My coworker is a micromanager,” or “My coworker doesn’t care whether errors are corrected”), neither of them has to challenge or incur the wrath of others in the organization. It’s much easier for them to imagine that they’ll work better together if they simply understand each other’s personality (or personality type) than it is to realize that they would have to come together to, for example, request that their boss stop pitting them against one another, or to request that HR match rhetoric about collaboration with real incentives to work together. Or, perhaps the conflict is due to someone on the team simply not doing his or her job, in which case talking about personality as being the cause of conflict is a dangerous distraction from the real issue. Personality typologies may even provide rationalizations, for example, if someone says “I am a spontaneous type and that’s why I have a tough time with deadlines.” Spontaneous or not, they still have to do their work well and on time if they want to minimize conflict with their colleagues or customers. 将冲突的原因归于一些假想的理由或者不相干的理由从短期来看易用有趣，但它增加了长期风险，因为真实引起冲突的原因并未被发现或者解决。

So what’s the right approach to resolving conflicts at work?

First, look at the situational dynamics that are causing or worsening conflict, which are likely to be complex and multifaceted. Consider how conflict resolution might necessitate the involvement, support, and commitment of other individuals or teams in the organization. For example, if roles are poorly defined, a boss might need to clarify who is responsible for what. If incentives reward individual rather than team performance, Human Resources can be called in to help better align incentives with organizational goals.

那么，怎样去解决工作中的冲突才是正确的方法呢？

首先，检查导致或加剧冲突的情景模式，通常这会很复杂和涉及多层面。考虑需要组织里哪些个人或者团队参与、支持和承诺来解决问题。举例来说，如果角色定义很模糊，老板需要澄清谁对什么负责。如果激励措施更侧重个人业绩而非团队业绩，人力资源部门需要加入进来，来帮助优化激励措施，使之符合组织整体目标。

Then, think about how both parties might have to take risks to change the status quo: systems, roles, processes, incentives or levels of authority.  To do this, ask and discuss the question: “If it weren’t the two of us in these roles, what conflict might be expected of any two people in these roles?” For example, if I’m a trader and you’re in risk management, there is a fundamental difference in our perspectives and priorities. Let’s talk about how to optimize the competing goals of profits versus safety, and risk versus return, instead of first talking about your conservative, data-driven approach to decision making and contrasting it to my more risk-seeking intuitive style. 然后，考虑冲突双方是否需要冒险改变现状：系统、角色、流程、激励措施或者管理者的层级。要做到这些，可以提问并讨论以下问题：“如果不是我们俩担任这些角色，那任何两个承担这些角色的人可能会发生什么冲突？”举例来说，如果我是一个操盘手而你是风险管理员，我们的观点和看问题的优先级存在根本的差异。让我们来探讨如何优化相互矛盾的目标，如收益vs安全，风险vs回报，不如首先来谈谈你的保守的，数据驱动的决策流程，然后将它与我的更高风险取向的，直觉型决策模式的巨大差异来做做对比。

Finally, if you or others feel you must use personality testing as part of conflict resolution, consider using non-categorical, well-validated personality assessments such as the Hogan Personality Inventory or the IPIP-NEO Assessment of the “Big Five” Personality dimensions (which can be taken for free here). These tests, which have ample peer-reviewed, psychometric evidence to support their reliability and validity, better explain variance in behavior than do categorical assessments like the Myers-Briggs, and therefore can better explain why conflicts may have unfolded the way they have. And unlike the Myers-Briggs which provides an “I’m OK, you’re OK”-type report, the Hogan Personality Inventory and the NEO are likely to identify some hard-hitting development themes for almost anyone brave enough to take them, for example telling you that you are set in your ways, likely to anger easily, and take criticism too personally. While often hard to take, this is precisely the kind of feedback that can help build self-awareness and mutual awareness among two or more people engaged in a conflict. 最后，如果你或者其他人觉得你们必须使用人格测试作为冲突调解方案的一个组成部分，那请考虑使用非归类型的，经过很好的验证过的人格评测方法，比如《霍格性格调查表》（http://www.hoganassessments.com/content/hogan-personality- inventory-hpi），或者使用大五人格维度的IPIP-NEO评估（可以从这里免费获得）。这些测试，都有很丰富的同行审阅，心理测量证据来支持它们的可靠性和有效性，比分类评估方法，类似迈尔斯-布里格斯测试（Myers-Briggs），要更好的解释性格的多样性，因此也能更好的揭示冲突发生的根源。同时，不像迈尔-布里格斯测试（Myers-Briggs）那样提供一份“你好我也好”的报告，霍根性格调查和NEO会倾向于定义一些每个人都能够勇敢接受的具有冲击力的改进意见，比如告诉你，你太自行其是，太容易发怒，对别人的批评太个人化。虽然这很难被人接受，但这恰恰才是可以帮助在冲突中的2个人或更多人建立自我意识和相互意识的人格测试报告。

As a colleague of mine likes to say, “treatment without diagnosis is malpractice.” Treatment with superficial or inaccurate diagnostic categories can be just as bad. To solve conflict, you need to find, diagnose and address the real causes and effects — not imaginary ones. 就像我的一位同事喜欢说的：“不诊而治是庸医”，根据肤浅的或者不准确的人格分类来诊断问题所在就是这样一种庸医。为了解决冲突，你需要去发现，分析和定位真正的原因和影响，而不是臆测一个愿意。