《经济学人》双语：在职场中该不该亲和友善？
原文标题 :
Bartleby
Should you be nice at work?
Kindness is in vogue
巴托比专栏
你在职场中应该友善吗？
善良正在流行
[Paragraph 1]
KINDNESS IS IN the air. Publishers produce business books with titles like “The Power of Nice” or, simply, “Kind”.
空气中弥漫着善意。出版商们出版了诸如《善意的力量》或直接以《善意》为题的商业书籍。
LinkedIn, which is ostensibly a networking site for career-minded professionals, is overrun with sickly videos showing people being improbably generous to the homeless.
领英，这个看似专为职场人士打造的社交平台，实际上充斥着大量令人不适的视频，这些视频展示了人们对无家可归者难以置信的慷慨。
Firms publicly embrace the values of compassion: one manufacturer of safety-gear talks of “offering grace internally”, which sounds terribly intrusive.
公司公开拥护同情的价值观：一家安全装备制造商谈到“内部传递优雅”，这听起来极其不合时宜。
[Paragraph 2]
The fashion for niceness is both trite and revealing.
对“友善”的追捧既显得陈词滥调，又颇具启示意义。
Trite, because it is really not surprising that people respond well to decent behaviour from colleagues and bosses.
说它陈词滥调，是因为人们对同事和上司的得体行为给予积极回应，这实在不足为奇。
It would take a brave author to write a book called “Stand Up for Psychopathy” or “Three Cheers for the Dark Triad”.
若真有作者敢于写出《为心理变态者挺身而出》或《为暗黑三巨头欢呼》这样的书籍，那才算是勇敢之举。
Revealing, because it shows how the leadership pendulum has swung.
说它颇具启示意义，是因为它揭示了领导力钟摆的变化趋势。
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A recent meta-analysis of research into niceness and effective leadership, by Andrew Blake of Texas Tech University and his co-authors, concludes that the two do often go together.
德克萨斯理工大学的安德鲁·布莱克及其合著者，他们最近对友善与高效领导力之间的关联进行了综合分析，得出的结论是，这两者往往是相辅相成的。
Studies into bosses’ agreeableness, one of the “Big Five” personality traits (along with openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion and neuroticism), have found that it is tied to ethical behaviour, workplace trust and psychological safety, among other beneficial things.
他们对老板宜人性的研究，这是“五大”人格特质之一（其他四大分别是开放性、尽责性、外倾性和神经质），研究发现宜人性与道德行为、职场信任、心理安全感等积极因素之间存在紧密联系。
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That, in turn, can improve aspects of a firm’s performance.
宜人性反过来又能改善公司的各方面业绩。
A recent paper by Charles O’Reilly of Stanford University and his co-authors looked at the relationship between chief executives’ personalities and reviews of their organisations’ culture on Glassdoor, an employee-ratings website.
斯坦福大学的查尔斯·奥莱利及其合著者最近发表了一篇论文，研究了首席执行官的个性与员工评级网站 Glassdoor 上对其公司文化的评价之间的关系。
Agreeable bosses were associated with cultures that were more collaborative and innovative.
亲和力强的老板往往能营造出更具合作性和创新性的企业文化。
[Paragraph 5]
Niceness seems to matter more than it once did.
友善似乎比以前更重要了。
A meta-analysis of research ending in the late 1990s did not find evidence of a strong connection between agreeableness and effective leadership.
1990年代末期一项研究的荟萃分析，并没有发现亲和力与有效领导力之间存在明显的关联。
Some of this shift doubtless reflects the way organisations have evolved: teams matter more, along with the social skills that ease co-operation.
这种转变无疑反映了公司的发展方向：团队的重要性日益凸显，同时促进了合作的社交技能也日益重要。
Some of it may also reflect more volatility in the outside world.
这在一定程度上也可能反映了外部世界更加动荡不安。
A study by Soo Ling Lim of University College London and her co-authors looked at the performance of MBA students at London Business School across ten academic years, and found that agreeableness improves outcomes when levels of uncertainty about a task—and presumably, the need to work together harmoniously—are higher.
伦敦大学学院的林秀玲及其合著者研究了伦敦商学院MBA学生在10年间的成就，结果发现，当任务的不确定性水平--大概也就是和谐合作的必要性--更高时，亲和力有利于提高个人成就。
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It is progress to get away from the era of “nice guys finish last”, not least for those people who aren’t guys: women have long suffered more from perceptions of lower competence if they display warmth.
摆脱“好人总是吃亏”的时代是一种进步，尤其是对于非男性群体而言：长期以来，如果女性表现出友好，她们更容易被认为是能力低下。
But you can have too much of anything, even kindness.
但凡事都可能过犹不及，善良也不例外。
[Paragraph 7]
Agreeableness is not the only trait that matters for a boss: a delightful but highly neurotic person may struggle in stressful situations.
亲和力并不是老板身上唯一重要的品质：一个讨人喜欢但高度神经质的人，可能在压力环境下难以应对。
Employees vary too: some people care less about empathy and more about money.
员工的情况也各不相同：有些人不那么在乎同情，而更在乎金钱。
There are moments—when employees have suffered a personal trauma, for example—when warmth is the most important test of a company’s character. But in other circumstances, different traits matter.
在某些时刻——例如员工遭受个人创伤时——友善成了公司文化最重要的特质。但在其他情况下，其他特质则显得更为重要。
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People who score less well on agreeableness are liable to be less trusting, more competitive and more confrontational.
亲和力得分较低的人，容易缺乏信任、且好胜心较强、对抗性较强。
That may not recommend them as friends but could well be an advantage in certain contexts.
这可能不利于他们结交朋友，但在某些情况下却可能是一种优势。
Mr O’Reilly’s paper finds, for example, that different industries attract leaders with varying personality types: bosses in the financial-services industry are comparatively less agreeable, for example, than those who work in health care.
例如，奥莱利先生的论文发现，不同行业吸引的领导者具有不同的人格特质：例如，金融服务业老板的亲和力程度不如医疗保健行业的老板。
Kindness may also count for less in negotiation-heavy roles like sales.
在销售等谈判任务繁重的岗位上，善良可能也不那么重要。
[Paragraph 9]
A recent paper by Daniel Keum and Nandil Bhatia of Columbia Business School looks at how changing economic conditions can affect the types of bosses who lead firms.
哥伦比亚商学院丹尼尔·金和南迪尔·巴蒂亚最近发表了一篇论文，探讨了经济条件的变化如何影响公司老板的类型。
The researchers gauge chief executives’ “prosociality” (their concern for the welfare of others) by looking at things like their charitable activities and their language on earnings calls.
他们通过分析首席执行官的慈善活动以及在财报电话会议上的发言来评估其“亲社会性”（即对他人福利的关心程度）。
Prosocial bosses can be slower to restructure firms in bad times, and the authors find that during periods of intensifying competition they were more likely to be replaced by less caring types.
研究发现，亲社会的老板在经济不景气时重组公司的速度更慢，在竞争加剧时期，他们更有可能被不太关心他人的人取代。
When layoffs are necessary, boards don’t want Samaritans in charge.
当公司需要裁员时，董事会通常不希望由过于仁慈的领导者来掌控大局。
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What there is no excuse for is unkindness.
不友善是绝不能被接受的。
There is a basic level of decency, civility and courtesy to which everyone is entitled and from which all organisations benefit.
每个人都有权享有基本的体面、文明和尊重，而所有公司也都能从这种氛围中获益。
Kindness is not a management doctrine. But its absence is a management failure.
友善并不是一种管理理论，但缺乏友善是一种管理失败。
（恭喜读完，本篇英语词汇680左右）
原文出自：2024年9月21日《TE》Business版块
精读笔记来源于：自由英语之路
本文翻译整理: Irene
本文编辑校对: Irene
仅供个人英语学习交流使用。
【重点句子】（3个）
Agreeable bosses were associated with cultures that were more collaborative and innovative.
亲和力强的老板往往能营造出更具合作性和创新性的企业文化。
But you can have too much of anything, even kindness.
但凡事都可能过犹不及，善良也不例外。
People who score less well on agreeableness are liable to be less trusting, more competitive and more confrontational.
亲和力得分较低的人，容易缺乏信任、且好胜心较强、对抗性较强。