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【中文标题】工作中什么时候应该承担责任
【原文标题】When to Take the Blame at Work
【登载媒体】商业周刊
【原文作者】Claire Suddath
【原文链接】http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-06-08/when-to-take-the-blame-at-work#r=related-rail-img
我的第一份工资，是我在大学里为一家小型报刊做自由撰稿人挣到的。我通常写一些开创性的文章，比如“油炸糖块：乡村集市上的最爱”、“校园里的未成年人普遍饮酒”和“有人用垃圾做成塑像”。我当时很年轻，又没有经验，从来没人给我解释过“审稿”是什么意思。有一次，一个编辑告诉我，她把我的一篇有关春天时尚服装的文章中的“雨鞋”改成“胶鞋（galoshes）”，我没检查最终版本就交付印刷了。报纸出版后，我惊恐地发现这是一篇讨论五颜六色、带有各种图案的匈牙利肉汤（goulash）的文章。
这是我第一个被出版的错误，其实责任并不在我，但是间接上我也有责任。我向编辑道歉，说没有认真检查最终版本，她也为文章的主题变成炖肉而向我道歉。审稿人也应该向我们两个人道歉，只可惜这家报社没有审稿人，否则也不会出现各种图案的橡胶炖肉的文章。这件事让我如此尴尬，直到现在，我还没有跟任何一个人提起过。但是现在我愿意分享这个故事，尽管说出这件事让我想找个地缝钻进去，但这是一个如何在工作中承担责任的好例子。我当时或许还不了解如何审稿，但是根据心理学家、《推卸责任》一书的作者Ben Dattner所说，我在办公室政治问题上做对了一件事——道歉。
Dattner这样说：“表扬和批评其实都是我们自己的感觉，我们是否感觉到被认可完全关乎于自尊。我们是否认为自己对老板来说有存在的价值？我们是否认为自己是工作中的替罪羊或者经常背黑锅？” Dattner说，当我们在工作中被误解，或者因为不是自己的错误而受到批评时，常常要学会一笑置之。这里面有两个原因：“首先，我们为此所做的解释——‘这不是我的错误，而是这样或者那样’——或许别人根本不耐烦去听完。”等你把故事讲完，你就像一个神经过度紧张的搬弄是非的人。其次，你或许多少要负一些责任，哪怕只有一点点。“总会有那么一些事情，你如果做到了，就可以避免问题的发生。”的确，比如仔细检查你的文章到底是在说雨鞋，还是炖肉。
当出现问题的时候，人们讨厌承担责任。即使证据确凿，我们也会想尽办法躲避指责，而且只要可能，我们都会立即怪罪别人。当然，找出问题的根源，以及是谁引起的问题的确相当重要。如果我们知道为什么这家公立学校教学水平不高；为什么一架飞机会失事；经济衰退是从哪里开始的，或许我们就可以确保下次同样的问题不会再发生。但是，解决方案是绝难被发现的，因为它们往往被埋藏在无数的公司官僚推诿行动之下。2009年，美国国家公共电台《金钱星球》节目统计出196个诉讼案，全是银行间互相起诉，因为他们都倒闭了。有时候，更简单的做法是勇敢地站出来说：“我其实可以做得更好。”即使你认为这根本不是你的责任。
Lynn在密歇根一家咨询公司工作，她的经理经常为了保护自己的面子而牺牲员工的专业名声。她说：“我不得不在其它部门主管面前接受她的批评，而且我还肯定，她把这个事也告诉了我的客户。” Lynn并不大在意，但是如果威胁到她的职业生涯，就是另一回事了。有一次，她的经理又在大老板面前为某些事情批评她，Lynn于是把大老板叫到一边，说明了事情的曲直。她说：“那是几年前的事情了，现在〔我的经理〕认为我很出色，或许只有在她实在找不到人承担责任的时候，才会批评我。”
对于是否接受批评，Lynn表现得颇为精明。只要不伤害她的名声，还能赢得经理的欢心，她就会接受；如果谴责超过了底线，她就会为自己辩解。在北卡罗来纳州一家艺术品拍卖行工作的Ann采取了另一种策略：她不接受错误的指责，但是也不反对。
Ann说：“有一次，我在拍卖行的前台工作，桌子上放着五、六支比克笔。我的老板走过来说：‘谁在看管这些笔？每个人到这里来都可以随便拿走一支！’尽管这种笔买一包还用不了一块钱。”Ann不明白她的老板为什么关心这些笔，但还是把它们收了起来。“十分钟后，他走过来，需要写点东西。‘该死，Ann，你到底把那些笔藏到哪儿去了？’于是我又把笔拿出来。”她并没有道歉，但也没有指出她老板的无理表现。
Dattner说Lynn和Ann的方法都很明智：“在短期里表现得脆弱，会让你在未来变得坚强。”但是，这条规则所适用的犯错类型必须是相对不大严重的错误——比如没有按时准备好报告，或者你负责的一个项目支出超过了预算。如果是违法或者不道德行为的指责，决不能轻易接受。一旦发生这样的事情，规则就变化了。不要说谎，不要欺骗，不要伪造文字证据，也不要让任何人以为你这样做了。为整个团队承担责任和做替罪羊，是两个不同的概念。
还有，如果你在一家报社工作，你或许要学会如何拼写“匈牙利肉汤（goulash）。”
原文：
The first paycheck I earned as a writer came from a freelance job I briefly held at a small newspaper when I was still in college. I covered groundbreaking stories with such headlines as ”Deep-Fried Candy Bars: A County Fair Favorite,” “Underage Drinking Popular on Campus,” and “Local Man Makes Sculptures out of Trash.” I was young and inexperienced, and no one had ever explained the concept of copyediting to me. So when an editor told me she’d changed the term “rain boots” to “galoshes” in a story I’d written about springtime fashion trends, I didn’t check the final version before it went to print. When I saw it in the paper, I was horrified to discover the article appeared as a musing on the colorful, polka-dotted goulash—the Hungarian stew.
It was my first official error and it wasn’t even my fault. But indirectly it was. I apologized to my editor for not checking the final version; she apologized to me for making me write about stew; and our copy editor would have apologized to both of us, except the newspaper was so small it didn’t have one—which is probably how an article about the patterned rubber goulash made it into print. I’m still so embarrassed by this mix-up that I’ve never told the story to anyone until now. But I’m sharing it with you, because while writing this paragraph makes me want to hide under the covers, it’s also a good example of how to take the blame at work. I may not have known how to proof a story back then, but according to Ben Dattner, organizational psychologist and author of The Blame Game, I did the right thing when it came to office diplomacy. I apologized.
“Credit and blame are part of our self-perception,” Dattner explains. “Whether we feel properly appreciated is related to our self-esteem. Do we view ourselves as valued by our employer? Or do we feel scapegoated and wronged in our jobs?” Dattner says that usually when we’re blamed at work for a minor infraction that isn’t our fault, we should just let it go. There are two reasons why: “One, the amount of time it’ll take you to explain, ‘It wasn’t my fault, it was so-and-so’s,’ is probably way more than anyone cares to hear about it,” he says. By the time you’ve conveyed what happened, you wind up looking like a hypersensitive tattletale. Second, the problem probably is your fault—even if just a little bit. “It’s almost always the case that there’s something you could have done to prevent the issue from happening,” Dattner says. Yeah, like double-check that your article isn’t accidentally about goulash.
People hate accepting responsibility when something goes wrong. We avoid blame even when it’s justified, and we’re quick to pin it on others whenever we can. Finding out what went wrong and who caused something to happen can be undeniably important: If we know why certain public schools fail, why an airplane crashed, or where the recession originated, maybe we can make sure the problem doesn’t happen again. But remedies can be incredibly hard to find, and they’re often buried under layers and layers of corporate or bureaucratic buck-passing. In 2009, NPR’s Planet Money counted 196 separate lawsuits that were nothing more than banks suing other banks over the fact that they’d all gone broke. Sometimes it’s just easier to step up and say, “I should have done better,” even when you don’t feel the problem is your fault at all.
Lynn works at a Michigan analytics company and has a manager who routinely sacrifices her employees’ professional reputations to save her own. “I’ve had to take the blame in front of supervisors of other departments, and I’m sure she’s told a client that, too,” she says. Lynn doesn’t mind, except when it impinges upon her career. Once, when her manager tried to blame her for something in front of the top boss, Lynn says she took the boss aside and set the record straight. “That was a couple of years ago,” she says. “Now [my manager] thinks I’m awesome and would probably only blame me if she really had no one else to pin it on.”
Lynn’s pretty canny about what sort of blame she’ll accept; she takes it when it doesn’t hurt her reputation and wins her manager’s favor, but she defends herself when the accusations cross the line. Ann, who works at art auctions in Northern California, uses a different tactic: She doesn’t accept errant blame, but she doesn’t deny it either.
“Once, at one of our auctions, I was working the front desk and there were five or six Bic pens on the table,” Ann explains. “My boss walked by and went, ‘Who’s securing these pens? Someone could just walk away with one of these!’ Never mind they’re like 99¢ for a pack.” Ann had no idea why her boss cared about the pens, but she took them off the table. “Ten minutes later, he needed to write something down and went, ‘Goddammit, Ann, what the hell did you do with all of the pens?’ So I put the pens back.” She didn’t apologize, but she didn’t point out her boss’s irrationality to him, either.
Dattner says both Lynn and Ann have made smart decisions about accepting blame: “Making yourself more vulnerable in short term can make you powerful in long term.” But, he says, the type of infractions this rule applies to must be relatively minor—maybe a report isn’t ready on time, or one of the projects you’re working on came in over budget. Taking the blame never applies to illegal or unethical situations. As soon as something like that happens, the rules change. Don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t cook the books or let someone pretend that you did. There’s a difference between taking one for the team and being the fall guy.
And if you work at a newspaper, you should probably learn how to spell “goulash.”
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狗仔卡
发表于 2012-11-7 10:33
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发表于 2012-11-7 15:57
