【中文版08】亚当·格兰特：如何用你的慷慨获得回报

【Background】

 【背景介绍】

Increase Productivity Through Generosity, with Adam Grant, Professor of Management, Wharton School

大家好，欢迎来到《全球精英的5分钟成长学院》。在今天的节目中，我们邀请到了沃顿商学院管理学教授亚当·格兰特，他将为我们分享：如何用你的慷慨来提升生产力。

“Although we often stereotype givers as chumps and doormats, they turn out to be surprisingly successful.” So writes Adam Grant in his celebrated book, Give and Take: A ary New Approach to Success. Grant is an organizational psychologist at Wharton who has studied the question of reciprocity in the professional context. His research has found that not only do our interactions with others greatly determine our success, but givers often achieve “extraordinary results across a wide range of industries.”

“在我们的传统印象中，那些给他人提供帮助的人们往往会被当成傻瓜或者出气筒；但事实却截然相反，这类人往往能够取得令人惊讶的成功。”亚当·格兰特在他的名著《给予和索取：革命性的成功新途径》中，写下了这样的评论。格兰特是沃顿商学院的组织心理学家，他把互惠互利这一课题放在专业眼光下进行了审视。亚当的研究表明，在很大程度上，我们和他人的互动方式能够决定我们取得成功还是遭受失败，而那些给予者们往往能够“在形形色色的行业里取得突出的成绩”。

【Course】

【课程】

When I was a freshman in college I took my first job and I was working as an advertising sales associate for the Let’s Go Travel Guides. And my job was to call up a bunch of clients, some were hotel operators and airline people, and try to convince them to advertise their services in the Let’s Go books. And I was just a disaster. I was trying so hard to help my clients that I actually sacrificed my company’s interests along the way. I gave a bunch of discounts that were actually prohibited in my contract. I even refunded a client’s money for the previous year becoming, I believe, the first ad associate in company history to give away money that was on the books from a prior year. And I was just a complete doormat.

当我还是一名大一学生的时候，我得到了第一份兼职工作：作为广告营销助理，为旅游指南《我们出发吧！》这本书进行宣传。我的任务是这样的：我找来一群客户，其中包括酒店的运营者、航空公司的雇员，然后我得努力说服这些人，让他们在工作中为这本旅游指南打广告。然而，这份工作对我来说却成了一场灾难。当时，我想方设法去帮助客户，以至于在这个过程中损害了公司的利益。我给出了大量折扣，而我的雇佣合同上其实是明确禁止我这么做的；我甚至还给一位客户退还了前一年的费用，这让我成为了整个公司有史以来第一个放弃前一年卖书营收的推销员。那时候，我完全就是客户的出气筒而已。

I had this really eye opening experience one day where I actually met an assistant manager at our company whose job was funded by advertising revenue from Let’s Go. And at that point it became clear that I had a responsibility to serve the company’s interests, not only the client’s interests. And I started becoming much more tenacious. Instead of, you know, easily agreeing to every client request I would think about, okay, my responsibility is to try to actually serve and help job creation and bring in as much revenue as possible so that we can support more people working here. And that gave me, I think, the motivation to really try to support as many people as possible and that made me a much more effective negotiator. And I went from having almost zero success at all to setting a series of company records for advertising sales and bringing in the largest new client in company history, as well as the largest ad package in history. And got promoted to Director of Advertising Sales at age 19 and my job was to hire and train and motivate a staff. And this was really all from seeing that my work could make a difference in the lives of others. And that motivated me to step up my game.

直到有一天，我在公司里遇到了一位助理经理，这才打开了我的眼界。这位助理经理的工作经费全部来自《我们出发吧！》书系的广告收入。在这之后，我才明确意识到，自己不仅要照顾顾客的利益，也有责任为公司的利益服务。我在业务中变得越来越坚韧不拔。你懂的，我不再轻易地就同意客户的每个要求；说到底，我的责任是给公司带来切实的利益，并帮助公司创造就业机会，只有努力增加公司收入才能让更多的人过来上班。那次经历给了我动力，让我想要真正帮助尽可能多的人，另一方面也让我在谈判时变得比以前更有效率。我的业绩从微不足道的数额迅速增长起来，而我也创造了公司的一系列广告营销记录，并为公司带来了有史以来最大的客户和最大的一揽子广告。在19岁那年，我被晋升为广告营销总监；而我的职责也变成了雇佣、培训和激励员工。所有这一切，都源于我的一个发现，那就是自己的工作可以改变别人的生活。这激励着我，让我在这场竞赛中不断勇攀高峰。

Helpingis Notthe Enemyof Productivity

帮助他人并不会阻碍生产力的提高

I think a lot of people assume that helping is just a time sink, and so the more time that you spend helping others, the less time you have to get your own work done. And I think there’s a sense in which that’s true, but I’ve also been really pleasantly surprised by a lot of research that I’ve done which actually shows that people who take their time out to help other people, whether it’s making an introduction or sharing knowledge or providing mentoring, actually tend to build stronger relationships and also a wider set of connections. And over time those deep relationships often allow you to get help and support very directly. They also expose you to new ideas and different perspectives that facilitate creativity and innovation, and sometimes enable you to directly solve a problem.

在我看来，很多人都认为帮助别人只是在浪费自己的时间，所以他们会觉得，在帮助别人上花费的时间越多，用来完成自己工作的时间就越少。这不能说完全没有道理。但在大量的研究之后我却惊喜地发现，其实不论是做个介绍、分享知识，还是提供辅导来帮助别人，所有这些花费时间帮助别人的行为，往往会为你带来更牢固的人际关系与更广泛的人脉。随着时间推移，牢固的人际关系往往会在你需要的时刻迅速提供帮助与支持。另一方面，这样的关系网也能让你接触全新的思想、不同的观点，从而促进创新，有时候说不定还能直接帮你解决难题。

I think a lot of people stereotype generous and helpful people as pushovers, as weak, as not tough and driven enough to be successful. And I think that is a myth that we really need to break down. There’s this wonderful executive Sherryann Plesse who really stands out as one of these people. She went through a strengths assessment a couple of years ago and she learned that her greatest strengths were kindness and compassion. And she immediately said to the people who were doing the assessment, “Don’t tell anyone. I don’t want to be known as a kind, compassionate person. I want to be known as tough, achievement oriented, you know, results driven.” And I think that over time what she realized was, actually, many of her role models were these givers, these people who are extremely helpful and generous. And that this was not actually something she necessarily had to hide, but it was actually one of the things that had made her most effective in her job because she was really respected and appreciated as somebody who helped and supported those around her.

我知道，很多人对慷慨而乐于助人者的刻板印象是：这类人不坚定、太软弱，缺乏紧迫感，所以他们无法成功。在我看来，我们真的有必要去打破这种成见。夏立安·普莱斯就是一个很好的例子。她是一位出色的企业高管，同时也是慷慨助人者中一个很好的例子。两三年前，她接受过一次优势评估，得知自己最大的优势是友善和同情心。当时她立刻告诉评估人员，“别告诉任何人这个结论。我可不想因为善良和同情心而出名。人们应该记住我的强硬作风，以及我看重成果的态度，你知道，我一直以结果为导向。”我觉得她后来逐渐意识到了，许多她视为榜样的人物实际上都是给予者，这些人都十分喜欢提供帮助，而且显得慷慨大方。所以对夏立安来说，她完全不用掩盖这一类特质，事实上，正是由于她愿意帮助并支持身边的人，她才得到了别人发自真心的尊敬和欣赏，而这正是她在工作中保持高效率的原因之一。

And I think that what we need leaders to do is basically to teach people to separate helpfulness and generosity and giving from necessarily being timid from. And from, you know, being so trusting and empathetic that you actually get taken advantage of a lot. I think there’s a big difference between actually looking for ways to benefit other people and becoming somebody who’s completely exploited or exhausted by helping other people.

在我看来，领导者所要做的，其实就是要教导人们学会分辨，什么是源于乐于助人、慷慨大方的给予，什么又是迫于胆怯性格的给予？你可以从中发现，只要自己信赖他人、充满同理心，自己同样会受益匪浅。另外我也认为，想方设法让他人受益的人，和那些因为帮助别人而让自己蒙受损失、以至于精疲力竭的人，这两类人之间也存在着极大的差异。

Optimize YourGive/Take Relationships

优化你的给予/索取关系

If you’re an empathetic or a kind hearted person, how do you protect yourself? I think one of the first things to recognize is I do find this range of styles that people bring to their everyday interactions. So on one end of the spectrum we have the givers who do tend to enjoy helping others. On the other end of the spectrum we have what I call the takers – the people who are constantly trying to get as much as possible from others and not contribute nearly as much in return.

如果你是一个富有同理心的善良的人，你要如何保护自己呢？在我看来，首先要分辨人们进行日常互动时的不同风格。在一种极端状态下，存在一些给予者，他们喜欢帮助别人并享受其中；而在另一种极端下，也存在我所说的“索取者”，这类人始终试图从别人那里获得尽可能多的东西，却几乎没有付出什么作为回报。

And it turns out to be somewhat risky to be constantly helping and supporting takers. And one of the things that I’ve been trying to teach in my courses for years and been studying as well is can you learn to recognize the signs of a taker and then scale back your helping and giving. And ask that person either to reciprocate by helping you or even to pay that help forward so that the person is not getting away with self-serving action. And I think that’s one really critical step, is to actually screen the motives of the people around you that you’re really supporting and helping out.

事实证明，长时间去帮助和支持这样的索取者，多少是一种冒险行为。多年来我的课程里一直尝试在做的一件事就是教会我的学生，识别这些“索取者”，并缩减对他们的帮助和付出；同时我也想继续进行深入研究。这样做，你就可以要求这类人跟你保持互惠互利，甚至你可以在他们进行付出之后才帮助他们，以防他们获取帮助之后就自私地离开。所以，非常关键的一步是，你要从你身边那些获得你支持和帮助的人群中，去筛查他们的动机。

Characteristics of a Taker

索取者的特征

How do you spot a taker? I think there are a couple of signals that you can look for. One is, there’s a lot of research showing that takers tend to use I and me as opposed to us and we when talking about accomplishments and successes. You know, claiming as much credit as they can. A second pattern that I really love is an idea that basically gets called kissing up, kicking down. Takers tend to be really good at managing up and trying to flatter and make good impressions on powerful and influential people. But it’s pretty tough to keep up that masquerade in every interaction and if you’re a taker you tend to let your guard down a little bit more when you’re interacting with peers and subordinates. And so I would actually not trust a boss in judging who’s a giver or a taker but actually go to the people who work laterally or below that person.

那么，到底该如何识别这些索取者呢？我觉得你可以寻找以下几个特征。第一，很多研究表明，当提到业绩和成功的时候，索取者往往喜欢用“我”而非“我们”。不难理解，他们这样做，是为了尽可能多地把功劳都归到自己头上。第二种特征则是一种态度，大致可以总结为取悦上级而欺压下级，我很喜欢用这种特征来分辨索取者。通常，这些人确实很善于和上级打交道，他们很会奉承有影响力的人并留下好印象。不过，一个人是很难在所有人际互动中都保持这种伪装的。如果你是一名索取者，你往往会在与同僚和下属进行互动的时候放松警惕，卸下伪装。所以，在判断谁是给予者，谁是索取者的时候，我并不依赖老板的看法，反而会从这个人的平级或下属那里寻找线索。

Opt for “Other-ish”

选择做“倾向利他者”

One of the most surprising findings from my research is that if you are a giver and you spend a lot of your time trying to help others, that’s a risk factor for sinking to the bottom. It’s also a potential catalyst for rising to the top. So generous people are overrepresented if you look at productivity, performance, quality, promotion rates at both the bottom and the top in many organizations. And the question is, what makes the difference? A lot of it, it turns out, has to do with how you navigate the balance between benefitting others and advancing your own interests.

如果你是个给予者，并且花费大量时间帮助他人，那你就存在跌落到底层的风险，这是我研究里最令人惊讶的发现之一。但另一方面，慷慨给予的特质，同样可能帮助你上升到最顶层。因此，如果你从生产力、绩效、工作质量和晋升比例这些维度去观察，你就会发现，在许多组织的顶层和底层人群中，都有较高比例的给予者。问题在于，位于顶层的给与者和位于底层的给予者，他们究竟有什么区别呢？事实证明，他们的差别在于你如何在惠及他人和获取个人利益之间保持平衡，这很重要。

So there’s a group of very generous people that I would consider selfless or purely altruistic who constantly put other people ahead of themselves and end up sacrificing their own interests along the way. And those are the givers who, a lot of evidence shows, are at risk for burning out and being taken advantage of. The givers who try to put others first frequently but also keep their own interests in the rear view mirror, I use the term “otherish” to describe them. They’re not purely selfless. They’re also not purely selfish. They’re trying to think about how can I add value to other people in ways that are either low cost to me – so high win for others but not necessarily a loss for me. Or even, high benefit to others and benefitting me as well – a win-win. And I think that that’s a more sustainable strategy for trying to help others than just sacrificing yourself.

有这样一群慷慨的人，在我看来，他们非常无私、总是把别人的利益放在自己的前面，他们的所作所为会以牺牲自己的利益而告终。很多证据表明，这些给予者很有可能会被利用，甚至会被消耗到精疲力尽的地步。至于那些常把别人放在首位，但也时刻记得关心自己利益的给予者，我把他们称为“倾向利他者”。这类人并不是百分百的无私，但也不会完全只为自己考虑。他们会试着去思考，如何以一种低成本的方式为他人创造价值；毕竟帮助别人获取大量利益，并不是非要让自己去蒙受损失。甚至还有更好的办法：让别人获取很大利益的同时，也会给我自己带来好处，这就实现了双赢的局面。在我看来，相比于牺牲自己，这种帮助他人的方式才是一种更具有可持续性的策略。

【Summary】

【总结】

在今天的课程中，亚当·格兰特向我们讲解了成为给予者的好处，并传授了如何分辨给予者和索取者的技巧，此外，他还提醒我们，在帮助他人和获取个人利益之间维持平衡，是非常重要的。

下面我们来总结本节课的要点：

Helping Is Not the Enemy of Productivity

• Make introductions, share knowledge, and participate in mentoring.

• This will build your support network, should you need assistance in the future.

• Exposure to different perspectives will facilitate problem solving.

• Distinguish helpfulness and generosity from being timid and a push-over.

我们需要明白，帮助他人并不意味着阻碍生产力的提高

首先，在帮助他人时，你可以通过做个介绍、分享知识，或者是提供辅导的形式进行支持；

假如以后你自己需要帮助，之前的这些帮助他人的举动会为你建立一个支持你的人际关系网络；

另外，这样的关系网也能让你接触不同的看法，从而帮助你解决问题；

但是，我们有必要把慷慨助人者的给予，和胆怯或者意志薄弱者的给予区分开来；

Optimize Your Give / Take Relationships

• Ask habitual takers to reciprocate.

• Or, Ask habitual takers to pay it forward.

• Screen the motives of the people you interact with. Identify the takers.

你需要优化你的给予和索取的关系

在面对习惯性索取者的时候，我们得要求他们和我们保持互惠互利；

或者，我们可以要求习惯性索取者先付出一些东西；

我们要从与自己互动的人群中筛查出他们的动机，并分辨出其中的索取者。

Characteristics of a Taker

• Tend to use “I” and “me” instead of “us” and “we”.

• Tend to kiss up and kick down （peers and subordinates are more aware of takers）.

通常情况下，索取者具有以下特征

这类人在表达时，更倾向于使用“我”而非“我们”；

这类人倾向于取悦上级，欺压下级（平级和下属更容易发现索取者的存在）。

Opt for “Other-ish”

• If you are a giver, find a balance between benefiting others and advancing your own interests.

那么，我们应该成为怎样的给与者呢？亚当格兰特的答案是，我们应该选择做“倾向利他者”

也就是说，如果你是个给予者，那就需要在利他和利己之间找到一个平衡点。

本节目英文版音频和视频均由美国Big Think Edge 独家授权，中文版由喜马拉雅制作播出。感谢收听，我们下集节目再见！