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本周你感觉不舒服,总是出问题 。让我们认为这是你和客户之间的一次糟糕的谈判 。
那你是做什么的?你可以和朋友去酒吧,告诉你的伴侣或者打电话给你的母亲 。但这一切都只是一种拖延的方式,很快你就会一遍又一遍地去想这些烦恼 。你担心哪里出了问题,所以你责怪自己或外部环境 。当你感到筋疲力尽时,你会告诉自己忘记过去,展望未来 。
这是对挫折的自然和完全合理的反应,但这在心理上是痛苦的,无益的 。它不能保护你免受同类型的第二次、第三次甚至第四次失败 。
这里有一个更好的方法:你可以和自己达成一个心理协议,在这个过程中你可以问自己一系列简短并且有建设性的问题,并且试图去回答这些问题 。,根据一些新的假设思维的调查结果(听起来像:想象已经发生的事情的其他可能性),这个过程并不难,它会让你减轻挫折带来的痛苦,并在下次更好地应对它 。
假设思考是我们经常做的事情 。“如果我去年没有碰巧遇到老朋友,我肯定会错过得到这份好工作的机会!”或者“如果我接受海外转学,我很可能会升职 。”调查人员对这些想法进行分类,以确定我们为什么以及何时这样认为 。虽然还需要进一步的研究,但这些研究表明,一些特定的假设思维模式对人们从负面事件中恢复尤其有益 。
让我们回到刚才提到的谈判失败的例子 。面对不断变化的客户需求,贵公司正在努力变得更加灵活 。你已经和一个重要的供应商谈过,双方的工作协议应该比平时更开放,这样你就可以针对今年的变化做出调整 。但供应商只同意签订6个月的协议,而不是1年 。你和你的老板都认为这是一次非常失败的谈判 。
所以为了让自己感觉更好,你会重复上表中列出的各种放松练习 。你责怪自己的无能和运气不好;你指责供应商代表和干火鸡三明治的僵化 。“啊,还有呢 。”你和同事去喝醉了,“然后学着‘吃一条缝,长一个智慧’,生活还得继续 。”
但事实上,你从挫折中没有学到任何东西,现在不是继续前进的时候 。恰恰相反 。你需要依次练习这五个步骤:
1. 设想一个更好的结果(一) 。试图用向上假设思维来达成更好的谈判 。注意自己的行为,而不是别人的 。例如,供应商似乎接近同意您关于灵活延长协议的一些建议,但在我们结束谈话之前,是时候吃午饭了 。后来说话的时候,他变得更加固执,不愿意听你的提议 。也许你在休息前问他一个明确的答案,结果会比现在好 。
2. 设想一个更好的结果(二) 。试图使用另一种向上的假设 。为什么呢?这是为了防止你自然地把第一个计划作为唯一的选择 。这个陷阱叫做后知后觉偏差 。显然,你刚刚想到的第一个选择导致了你的自负,好像你从一开始就意识到了 。想象一个更好的解决方案,它可以帮助你避免将失败归咎于简单的人为原因 。以刚才提到的方案为例,假设你在谈判开始就表达了灵活性问题 。这难道不比在下一轮谈判中将整个问题的主动权扔给对方更好吗?
例如,3. 设想导致同一结果的不同方法 。这被称为“半假设思维” 。,与不同供应商的代表就明确规定的内容进行会谈 。第一个讲价格,第二个讲非价格项目 。这将是一次非常不同的经历,但最终会导致同样的结果 。然后,问问自己为什么这些谈话会有同样的结果 。在这种情况下,因为市场瞬息万变,供应商的工作人员太着急了,担心合同的任何变化都会损害他们的利益?这一步的目的是把你的注意力吸引到你从未想过或期待过的障碍上 。之后,你可以回到失败的源头,找到克服障碍的方法 。例如,通过提供一些潜在的补偿来减轻供应商的焦虑,这可能使谈判成为可能,例如在合同有效期内提高价格 。
在4. 设想同一种方法导致的不同结果 。,一个好的或坏的结果可能来自于你所接受的同样的待遇 。想象对方同意并对你提出的灵活延长协议的建议微笑,或者皱眉并坚持不同意 。这一步的目的是强调结果的不确定性 。事实上,在大多数情况下,你的一种做法往往会导致不同的结果 。人们不太接受这种观点 。想要高效恢复,合理关注外界压力很重要 。这一步可以帮助你思考应对外部压力的紧急备案 。
ze:15px;">5. 设想最坏的结局 。下行假设思维一定程度上是恢复心情的小技巧 。想想最糟的可能,而后对自己避开了最糟的结果而加以表扬 。这个步骤还有另外一个目的:加深对刚刚发生的事情的了解 。设想面对合作方的销售下滑,你很想评论一番,但最后你还是不置一词 。显然是合作方不清楚市场走势,但是你意识到在这个关键时刻,过多的评论会使合作方动怒并使事情恶化 。长远地考虑问题,你将会理解供应商在该处境中的敏感心理 。
通过这五步,你可以避免责备、偏见以及其他思维定向,而能够看到全面而细微的失败原因 。你将更好地了解到是什么而不是什么因素造成了这个失败 。上行假设思维让你重新制定计划和改善应对表现 。你可以不必要严格按照你设想的方案行事,因为你已经学会开阔你的思维,将更多的可行技巧包囊其中 。
这个方法已经被管理者和企业家在不同的场合中实践过了 。在精神分裂症的调查研究中发现,假设思维和人际交往有效性之间有联系,如果缺乏假设思维的能力,一定程度上可以解释为社会功能障碍 。神经影像研究表明,假设思维发生的大脑区域与人进行计划活动的区域相同,它可以看作是感性思维与目标设定的互相影响 。
领导者常常告诫自己要从失败中获取最大的回报,但这在一定程度上,忽略了从失败中吸取教训这重要的一步 。训练自己进行假设思维以及详细制定替代方案,是弥补这一步的桥梁,以确保下次能更好应对 。
英文原文
This was not your best week. Something didn’t go right. Let’s say it was a negotiation that didn’t play out your way.
What do you do afterward? You might go to a bar with friends, talk to your spouse, or call your mom. But those are just delay tactics. Soon the ruminating will begin. You’ll wonder what went wrong and blame yourself, others, or external factors. When that becomes exhausting, you’ll tell yourself that you need to forget the past and focus on what’s ahead.
This is a natural and perfectly reasonable reaction, but it’s psychologically painful without much benefit. It won’t prevent you from experiencing the same kind of failure a second or third or fourth time.
There is a better way: a mental protocol through which you ask yourself a series of brief, structured questions and put some effort into answering them. based on new research on counterfactual thinking (which is exactly what it sounds like: imagining alternatives to what just happened), this process is not difficult, and it promises to both ease the pain of the setback and position you to do better next time.
Counterfactual thinking is something most of us do all the time — “If I hadn’t bumped into my old friend last year, I would have missed out on getting this great job with his company!” or “If only I had said yes to that overseas assignment, I probably would have been promoted.” But researchers are now categorizing it into different types and determining why we use them and when. There’s still a lot to be learned, but studies suggest that certain forms of counterfactual thinking can be particularly helpful when people need to recover and improve performance after negative events.
Let’s come back to that just-concluded, unsuccessful negotiation. Your company is trying to be more agile in the face of changing customer demand, and you had asked an important supplier to leave the working agreement more open-ended than usual so you would have the ability to change course during the year. His only concession was to make it a six-month agreement, rather than 12-month, and you and your boss consider this a pretty significant failure.
You avail yourself of a couple of the usual recovery activities listed above. You beat up on yourself for being incompetent and unlucky. You blame the stiff who represented the supplier, as well as those dry turkey sandwiches that the caterer provided. “Ah well,” you say as you drain your beer with a colleague, “lessons learned. Time to move on.”
But actually no lessons have been learned, and it’s not time to move on. Not ye. Instead, follow these five steps, in order:
1.Imagine a better outcome, Part 1. Challenge yourself to conceive of an upward counterfactual, a path that might have led to a better deal. Make sure to focus on your own actions, not someone else’s. For example, your counterpart had seemed close to agreeing to several of your suggestions on flexibility, but then you both took a break. Afterward, he was more adamant. Maybe if you had pressed for an answer before the break, the outcome would have been better.
2.Imagine a better outcome, Part 2. Challenge yourself to think of yet another upward counterfactual. Why? The idea is to combat your natural tendency to fixate on the first alternative scenario as the only one, a trap known as hindsight bias. The apparent obviousness of the first alternative, now that you’ve thought of it, induces overconfidence; you begin to feel as though you were aware of it all along. Imagining a second path to a better outcome helps you to avoid attributing your failure to a simplistic, pat reason. As an example of a second scenario, imagine that you put the flexibility issue on the table at the beginning of the negotiation. Would that have yielded a better outcome than springing it on your counterpart later in the talks, as you did?
3.Imagine a different path leading to the same outcome. This is known as semifactual thinking, or an “even if.” For example, breaking the negotiations into two distinct talks with different counterparts — the first talk being about price and the second about nonprice terms, for example — would have been a very different experience, but it might have led to the same outcome. Next, ask yourself why the outcome might have been the same. In this case, was it because there is widespread worry among the supplier’s staff that the marketplace is shifting rapidly, and they’re afraid to allow any contract change that might hurt their position? The purpose of this step in the failure and recovery process is to reveal obstacles you might not have noticed or articulated. Later on, you can circle back and try to figure out how to overcome them. For example, it might be possible to allay the supplier’s anxiety by offering something else as potential compensation, such as an option to raise prices during the life of the contract.
4.Imagine the same path leading to a different outcome. Think of how a different outcome — better or worse — could have resulted from the same process you followed. Picture your counterpart smiling and saying yes to your suggestion about flexibility. Or frowning and insisting on no changes at all to the contract’s length. One purpose of this step is to highlight the randomness in outcomes. In most cases, the reality is that the very steps you took could have led to different endpoints. People have trouble accepting that. If you’re going to recover effectively, it’s important to maintain a healthy respect for outside forces. This step can also help you think about backup and contingency plans to cope with these forces.
5.Imagine a worse outcome. This downward counterfactual is partly a feel-good tactic. Think of a different path that might have led to a poorer result, and then pat yourself on the back for having avoided it. But there’s another purpose to this step: to broaden your understanding of what just happened. Let’s say you thought about making, but then didn’t make, a comment about your counterpart’s declining sales. The idea would have been to underscore that his company doesn’t have a good grasp of what’s going on in the marketplace, but you realized in the nick of time that the comment might have put him on the defensive and made things worse. Pursue that idea a little further and you might end up with a big-picture understanding of the supplier’s present sense of vulnerability.
By completing these five steps, you avoid blame and bias and other kinds of mental ruts, and you see an enlarged, nuanced picture of the failure. You’re better positioned to know what really did and didn’t cause the setback. And the upward counterfactuals give you a starting point for planning the next go- round and improving your subsequent performance. You may not follow your imagined scenarios precisely, but you’ve learned to stretch your mind to incorporate new possible tactics.
I’ve seen this method work for managers and entrepreneurs in various contexts. The links between counterfactual thinking and interpersonal effectiveness are underscored by research on schizophrenia, which demonstrates that an inability to do the former partly explains patients’ social dysfunction. Neuroimaging studies suggest that since counterfactual thinking happens in the same part of the brain as planning, it might serve as a sort of interface between emotional thinking and goal setting.
Leaders are often told to maximize their “return on failure,” but so far there has been little focus on the specific steps one should take to learn from mistakes. Challenging yourself to use counterfactual thinking and formulate detailed alternative scenarios is one way to bridge that gap and ensure you do better the next time around.
Neal J. Roese |文
Neal J. Roese 是美国西北大学凯洛格商学院营销学教授 。
译言网网友 pign|译 周强|校
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