WHY YOUR BOSS MAY START SWEATING THE SMALL STTUFF？
為什麼你的上司可能開始對小事緊張?
New sensitivity training at the office focuses on all the little ways a tone-deaf manager can demoralize a staff
新興辦公室敏感性訓練 上司的不知情小動作而導致員工士氣低落
By Julie Rawe
翻譯：郭柏吟
Ever had a boss tell you to keep talking while she checked her Black-Berry? How about a team leader who pronounces your name wrong? Such slights may not mean much individually, but added up they can lead—at least in terms of employee retention—to death by a thousand paper cuts.
曾有老闆在手持黑莓機（*註1）時告訴你她在聽，繼續向她報告嗎? 如果是一位小組組長唸錯你的名字呢? 諸如此類不經意的小錯誤也許不是針對個人，但發生越來越多次會—至少在員工留任方面—使員工越來越痛苦。
As corporations struggle to promote more women and minorities up the ladder, a new workplace buzzword is moving from executive suite to lowly cubicle. Part pop psychology, part human-resources jargon, the term microinequities puts a name on all the indirect offenses that can demoralize a talented employee. Equipped with this handy label, scores of companies, including IBM and Wells Fargo, are starting to hold training seminars that don’t so much teach office etiquette as hold up a mirror showing how such minor, often nonverbal unpleasantries affect everyone.
正當公司掙扎著要替更多女性及少數保留名額升職時，一個新的職場行話正從行政套房轉移到小隔間裡。部份大眾心理學、部份人力資源的行話「細微忽視」，發生在所有導致優秀員工士氣低落的間接冒犯。有了這個小標籤，包括 IBM 和美國富國銀行在內的許多公司正開始舉辦訓練專題研討會，此研討會不教太多辦公室禮儀，而是告訴大家像這種通常是非言語的小小不愉快如何影響每一個人。
This growing awareness is due largely to the efforts of globetrotting consultant Stephen Young, a former chief diversity officer at JPMorgan Chase who has addressed audiences as varied as rocket scientists at Raytheon and readers of Seventeen magazine on the power of small signals. "It's not so much what I say, but what you hear," he says. One of his most effective demonstrations--the one that has left even mighty CEOs stammering--has him role-playing a guy who is less and less interested in what a speaker is saying. "When you do this," Young says of the exercise, "you see performance change right on the spot."
公司會有這種體認主要是因為前摩根大通銀行首席多元化官員，現為環遊世界諮商家史蒂芬楊的努力。史蒂芬向不同的群眾演說細微暗示的影響，包括美國航空及國防承包商雷神公司的火箭科學家和十七歲雜誌的讀者。「重要的不是我說了多少，而是你聽進去多少，」他說。其中一個最令人印象深刻—甚至讓一個總裁結結巴巴—的實際例子，他讓這位總裁扮演一個對演講者說的話越來越沒興趣的角色。「當你做了之後，」史蒂芬在活動中說，「你就會馬上看到成效。」
His goal is to make even hardened executives recognize themselves--or, at the very least, their superiors--when he acts like the bigwig who keeps glancing at his watch during a meeting or cuts off a colleague midsentence to answer his cell phone. "It's not just mumbo-jumbo, feel-good diversity training," says Gerald Lord, V.P. of finance and strategy for Campbell Soup's North American division. After sitting through one of Young's three-hour, Dr. Phil-style seminars last month, Lord is convinced that getting his fellow executives to pay attention to microgestures can help improve Campbell's bottom line.
他的目標是讓甚至是主管級階層承認事實—或者至少是他們的上司—當他在會議中不斷地看錶，或是切斷同事講到一半的話，為的是接聽他的手機。「這不是不知所云、舒服的多元訓練。」康寶濃湯北美分部的金融與策略副總裁傑若羅德說。上個月參加了史蒂芬的一場菲爾博士風格的三小時研討會後，羅德已經被說服讓他底下的管理階層人員注意自己的小手勢，期待能幫助康寶濃湯改善盈虧。
Here's why: many of the companies that already spend big bucks to recruit and train talented employees are bracing for even stiffer competition as baby boomers start to retire amid a shortage of skilled labor. Teaching execs to be on the lookout for microinequities--a term that has bounced around academia since a professor at M.I.T. coined it in 1973--is a cheap way to hold on to hard-won recruits. After all, says Andrea Bernstein, diversity chair at the New York City- based white-shoe law firm Weil Gotshal, "you never know, when somebody leaves, if she would have been the next rainmaker." And no company wants even a single good idea to fall through the cracks because a manager has subconsciously written off the employee making the suggestion.
原因在這：許多已經花大把鈔票招募和訓練優秀員工的公司，正面對更激烈的競爭，因為在具有技能的勞工短缺中，嬰兒潮時代出生的這批人開始退休。教導管理階層人員密切注意微小手勢—1973年一個麻省理工學院的教授創造的新詞，已經在學術界造成衝擊—是一個留住辛苦招募的新進員工的簡易方法。根據擔任紐約市權威威嘉律師事務所的多項職位主席安德烈柏因斯坦說：「畢竟，當有人要離職時，你永遠不會知道這個人是否會帶領下一波離職風潮。」沒有公司希望任何一個好構想被忽略是因為一個經理人下意識地否決員工的提議。
While some recent human-resources initiatives such as "work/life balance" or "wellness" may resonate more with, say, single moms or diabetics, eradicating these subtle slights has an almost universal appeal. Few bosses want to create tension between employees with something as simple as a handshake. But, Young says, when one worker is greeted with a polite how-do-you-do while the guy next door gets a playful pretend-punch, it's clear in an instant who is in the inner circle and who isn't. The same is true when a manager dismisses one person's idea and then embraces it when paraphrased by someone else.
同時，最近一些人力資源主動的提議如「工作與生活平衡」或「健康」可能引起更多例如單親媽媽或糖尿病患者的共鳴，杜絕這些幾乎眾所周知具感染力的輕微不尊重。少數老闆想要用簡單如握手的方式在員工間製造緊張。但是史蒂芬楊說，當一位工作者是以禮貌的問候被接見，隔壁的工作者則是不被當作一回事看來，立即就能明顯得知誰較受重用。同樣道理也可套用在一位經理駁回一位員工的構思之後，又重新接受由他人改述相同想法的情況。
It used to be that these tone-deaf moments were used to buttress discrimination claims. Now they are becoming the basis for those claims, according to Marko Mrkonich, managing director of Littler Mendelson, a San Francisco-based law firm that defends management in disputes with employees. "People are saying, 'I just feel really unwelcome,'" he says.
這些不為人重視的片刻以往是用來支持不公平待遇申訴的，而今卻成為這些申訴的基本，據一家位於洛杉磯，為員工爭端辯護的李特勒曼德森律師事務所的董事總經理馬可墨柯奇的說法：「人們說：『我只是覺得自己真的很不受歡迎。』」。
Of course, even enlightened head honchos know that being mindful of every little thing they do and say won't be easy, but then again, neither is competing in a tight labor market. Says Robert MacGregor, management-development chief at IBM, which recently partnered with Young to start training its 330,000 workers around the globe: "We want to create an environment that's open and inviting to all employees." And it's not just the words he's using but the earnest tone in his voice that show he means it.
當然，就算是開明的頭頭知道要留心注意他們做的事和說的話，也不容易，但他們都不需要在緊縮的勞工市場競爭。IBM最近與史蒂芬楊合夥開始訓練全球330,000位員工，而IBM的管理發展主任羅伯麥奎格說：「我們想要為所有的員工打造一個開放且吸引人的環境。」這不只是他的空口白話而已，在他認真的語調中可以顯現出他是有心實行的。
*註1：Black Berry 是一種商務用移動電話。這種移動電話有相當大的功能，不但可以當電話用，也可以當作手提電腦，比如上網，收發郵件，行程安排，股票查詢，播放電影音樂等功能。