Although power is essential to taking charge and driving change, it makes Leaders vulnerable to two traps that can not only erode their own effectiveness but also undermine their team’s. Hubris—the excessive pride and self-confidence that can come with power—causes people to greatly overestimate their own abilities, while self-focus makes them less attentive to subordinates, diminishing their ability to lead successfully. The authors offer strategies for recognizing and avoiding these pitfalls. They outline how to cultivate humility and empathy as antidotes to hubris and self-focus, through actions such as establishing channels for honest input, creating visible reminders that success is fleeting, immersing oneself in other people’s jobs and experiences, and embedding interdependence in organizational systems. A balanced relationship with power can seldom be developed overnight, but in time, Leaders who follow this advice will boost their own effectiveness and facilitate exceptional performance from their teams.               

对权力保持警惕并不能保证不会滥用权力，我们都容易受到迷惑。尽管权力是负责和领导变革的必要条件，但它会让人容易陷入两个狡猾的陷阱——傲慢和自我专注。这两点不仅会削弱自身效率，还会破坏团队效率。我们研究和教授权力课程已有二十年，采访了全球一百多人，了解他们是如何获得和运用权力的。在本文中，我们提供了识别权力陷阱的策略，以及如何规避它们。

Be wary of power is no guarantee that you are immune to abusing it. We are all susceptible to its intoxicating effects. Essential though power is to taking charge and leading change, it makes you vulnerable to two insidious traps—hubris and self-focus—that can not only erode your own effectiveness but also undermine your team’s. We have studied and taught classes in power for two decades and have interviewed more than a hundred people on five continents about how they attained and exercise it. In this article we offer strategies for recognizing power’s pitfalls, and how to avoid them.

傲慢和自我专注的危险

The Dangers of Hubris and Self-Focus

傲慢的危险——权力带来的过度骄傲和自信——是有据可查的。比如在一项研究中，一些参与者被要求写下他们感到强大的时刻，另一些被要求写下无能为力的时刻。所有参与实验的人拿到一个骰子，可以选择自己或实验人员掷骰子，正确预测掷骰结果的人可以得到奖励。写下无能为力时刻的人中，只有 58% 的人选择自己掷，而所有写下强大时刻的参与者都选择自己掷。简单回忆一次权力的体验，就能导致人们极大高估自己的能力，甚至认为自己可以影响随机掷骰子的程度。

The perils of hubris—the excessive pride and self-confidence that can come with power—are well-documented. Consider a study in which some participants were asked to write about a time when they felt powerful while others wrote about feeling powerless. All were then given a die, offered a reward for correctly predicting the outcome of a roll, and asked if they wanted to throw the die themselves or have the experimenter do it. Only 58% of those who had written about feeling powerless rolled for themselves, while every single participant who wrote about feeling powerful did so. Simply recalling an experience of power can lead people to greatly overestimate their abilities, even to the extent of thinking they can affect a random roll of a die.

如果思考几分钟权力就能产生这样的影响，那么想象一下，身居高管职位多年会怎样？难怪关于CEO 狂妄自大的研究比比皆是。研究表明，经验丰富并因成功而受到称赞的高管会变得过于自信，以至于他们将为收购支付高昂的溢价，董事会缺乏警觉时尤其如此。CEO的傲慢和收购溢价越大，股东损失就越大。如果权力占据了主导，则人人皆输。

If that’s what thinking about power for a few minutes can do, imagine the implications of holding an important position for years. It’s no wonder studies of CEO hubris abound. Research shows that top executives who have experienced and been lauded for success become so overconfident that they’ll pay vastly inflated premiums for acquisitions, especially when board vigilance is lacking. The greater the CEO hubris and acquisition premiums, the greater the shareholder losses. If power goes to your head, everyone loses.

心理学家记录了“简单思考一个人相对于他人权力大小”所产生的影响。在一项研究中，研究人员要求参与者回想那些在美国拥有最多财富和声望的人，或者最默默无闻的人，然后在阶梯上标记自己的位置。回想最有权势的人会让参与者感到相对无能为力，把自己放在阶梯的低处；而回想无名之人会让他们把自己放在更高的位置。然后，参与者接受了著名的眼神读心测验（Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test，RMET）。该测试要求人们从他人眼睛的照片中辨别情绪状态，从而衡量受测者的同理心。那些被引导认为自己位于阶梯高位的人准确率要低得多：权力的感觉让他们不太重视他人的情绪。

Psychologists have documented the impact of reflecting even briefly on one’s power relative to that of others. In one study, researchers asked participants to think about either those with the most wealth and prestige in the United States or those with the least, and then to mark their own position on a ladder. Reflecting on the most-powerful people led participants to feel relatively powerless and to place themselves low on the ladder, while reflecting on the least powerful led them to place themselves higher. The participants were then given a well-known test, Reading the Mind in the Eyes, which measures people’s empathy by asking them to discern others’ emotional states from photos of their eyes. Those who had been led to think of themselves as high-ranking were significantly less accurate; the feeling of power made them less attentive to others’ emotions.

这种不敏感往往反映在管理者不够理解下属之间的关系上。研究表明，绘制人脉图的能力是一种权力源泉——但矛盾的是，随着人们权力越大，他们利用准确感知下级人脉所带来好处的可能性却降低了。这是因为权力引起的自我专注：身处高层的人往往不那么关注下属，也懒得去思考他们的人际关系网。

Such insensitivity is often reflected in managers’ poor understanding of the relationships among subordinates. Research shows that the ability to map networks is a source of power—but paradoxically, as people become more powerful, they are less likely to harness the benefits of accurately perceiving networks below them. That’s because of the self-focus induced by power: People at the top tend to become less attentive to subordinates and can’t be bothered to map their networks.

“看不到”你所领导的人会降低效率。你没法领导不了解的同事——如果人们认为你与他们脱节，并且不关心他们，他们就没有动力或无法尽到最大努力。短期内或许没问题，但最终他们的表现会受到影响，你的领导力可能会受到质疑。

Not “seeing” the people you lead diminishes effectiveness all around. You can’t lead colleagues you don’t understand—and people aren’t motivated or able to contribute their best efforts if they perceive that you are disconnected from and uninterested in them. You might be able to push through in the short term, but eventually their performance will suffer and your Leadership may be called into question.

为了在有效行使权力的同时避免陷阱，领导者必须培养谦逊来作为傲慢的解毒剂，培养同理心作为自我专注的解毒剂。这些品质增加了对学习和利他主义的开放性，而后两者正是利用权力实现超越自身利益的集体目标的关键。

To effectively exercise power while avoiding its pitfalls, Leaders must cultivate humility as an antidote to hubris and empathy as an antidote to self-focus. Those qualities increase openness to learning and altruism—the keys to using power toward a collective purpose that transcends self-interest.

培养谦逊

Cultivating Humility

谦逊意味着需要对自己的能力、成就和局限性有准确认识。几个步骤可以帮你将其灌输给自己和团队。

Humility—freedom from pride or arrogance—requires having an accurate perception of one’s own abilities, accomplishments, and limitations. Several steps can help you instill it in yourself and your team.

让自己接受甚至渴望说“我不知道”。

普里西拉·鲁纳（Priscilla Luna）是加拿大零售食品和药房连锁店Loblaws Companies 的企业运营副总裁。以下是她在职业生涯早期培训药学专业学生时说过的话：“我总是告诉他们，‘当病人想了解他们的药物时，永远不要觉得你必须马上回答他们的问题。如果你完全确定自己的答案，当然可以马上回答。但如果你不是 100% 确定，那请允许自己告诉他们，你要查一下。通过谦虚承认‘我不知道’，你能够建立起信誉和信任。’如今我仍然这样建议我的团队。”

Make it acceptable—even desirable—to say, “I don’t know.” 

Priscilla Luna is the vice president of enterprise operations at Loblaws Companies, a Canadian retail food and pharmacy chain. Here’s what she says about training pharmacy students early in her career: “I always told them, ‘When a patient wants to know something about their medication, don’t ever feel you must answer their question right away. If you know your answer 100%, of course go for it. But if you are not 100% sure, give yourself permission to tell them you’ll look into it. You build credibility and trust by being humble and saying, “I don’t know.”’ I still give this advice to my teams.”

2001 年至 2009 年担任施乐CEO的安妮·马尔卡希（Anne Mulcahy）被同事戏称为“不知道大师”。“当你承认自己不知道某事时，他们实际上（对你）有了信心。”她说。她谦逊的态度为其他人留出了空间，让他们敢于提供专业知识，共同将公司拉回正轨。研究证实，当领导者表现出谦逊时，团队成员的贡献质量会提高，工作满意度、员工留存率、敬业度和学习开放度也会提高。

Anne Mulcahy, the CEO of Xerox from 2001 to 2009, was dubbed “the master of ‘I don’t know!’” by her colleagues. “They actually gain confidence [in you] when you admit you don’t know something,” she says. Her humble approach created space for others to offer their expertise and engage in turning the troubled company around. Research confirms that when a Leader expresses humility, the quality of team members’ contributions improves, and job satisfaction, retention, engagement, and openness to learning rise as well.

建立获取诚实意见的渠道。

当几个团队成员主导讨论时，通常是因为他们确信最了解情况，不需要听取其他意见。但即使是最强大的领导者也不会知道所有答案。研究表明，成员轮流发言的程度是预测团队绩效的最佳指标之一。

Establish ways to obtain honest input. 

When a few team members dominate the airtime, it’s generally out of a conviction that they know best and don’t need to hear from anyone else. But not even the strongest Leaders have all the answers. And studies have shown that the extent to which members take turns speaking is one of the best predictors of team performance.

意识到傲慢开始影响自身领导能力后，维拉·科代罗知道，她需要管理权力的负面影响了。因此，她调整了每周一次的执行团队会议议程，让每个人都有同样的时间报告活动，并分享想法和担忧，从而培养了包容性并建立了共同责任感。她还公开承诺不打断同事，在给出反应前仔细倾听，并要求其他人也这样做。

Having realized that hubris was beginning to affect her Leadership, Vera Cordeiro knew she needed to manage the negative effects of power. So she structured her weekly executive team meetings to give everyone the same amount of time to report on activities and share ideas and concerns. This fostered inclusivity and built a communal sense of responsibility. She also made a public commitment not to interrupt her colleagues and to listen carefully before voicing her reactions, and she asked others to do the same.

领导者可以建立让下属说实话的正式渠道来提升参与度。许多公司通过“全员参与”“开放麦克风”和“随便问”论坛来实现这一目标，这些对话从最高领导团队开始，一直向下延伸到各个层级。VIDA 是一个连接全球设计师和制造商，以大规模生产和销售原创服装及配饰的平台，VIDA的CEO乌玛伊玛·蒙德罗（Umaimah Mendhro）会每周举行一次全体会议。在这些会议中，她会小心翼翼地斟酌希望所有人认可的方法。“如果我是唯一做决定的人，那么我就是团队的天花板，但这还不够好，”她说，“对我来说，最重要的是带着好奇心而不是自我去领导，并坦陈自己的博学与无知。我希望提出问题并有意识地努力倾听，学会了在我的想法被证明错误，而其他人提出了更好的想法时感到开心。认识到自己的局限性并赋予他人权力是一种力量。”

Leaders can encourage broad participation by establishing formal channels for honest input. Many companies do so through “all hands,” “open mic,” and “ask me anything” forums, starting with the top Leadership team and extending all the way down the hierarchy. As the CEO of VIDA, a global platform that connects designers and manufacturers to produce and sell original apparel and accessories at scale, Umaimah Mendhro started weekly all-hands meetings. In them she was careful to model the approach she wanted everyone to adopt. “If I am the only one making decisions, then we are only as good as I am, and that’s not good enough,” she says. “The most important thing to me is to lead with curiosity and not ego, and to be transparent about what I know and what I do not know. I look to ask questions and make a conscious effort to listen carefully, and I have learned to be genuinely excited about all the moments I am proven wrong and others have proposed better ideas than mine. There is power in recognizing your own limitations and in empowering others.”

一些领导者创建了个人渠道来与员工直接对话。安大略省教师养老金计划的首席运营和养老金官特雷西·阿贝尔（Tracy Abel）设立了一个“文化委员会”，由她非常信任的 12 名团队成员组成。他们的工作是给她毫无保留的坦率反馈。当他们对她所说或所做的事情感到不满时，会毫不犹豫地告诉她，他们也可以做她想法的试验田。“这样对我的工作大有裨益，”阿贝尔对我们说，“会让人脚踏实地做事。”

Some Leaders create personal channels to obtain straight talk from their people. Tracy Abel, the chief operations and pension officer at Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, instituted a “culture council” consisting of 12 team members in whom she has a lot of trust. Their job is to give her candid feedback, no holds barred. They don’t hesitate to tell her when they don’t like something she’s said or done, and they serve as a sounding board for her ideas. “It’s invaluable,” Abel told us. “It keeps you grounded.”

有时，诚实反馈的机会自然出现，而最优秀的领导者会抓住它们。希亚兰·海耶斯（Ciarán Hayes）在成为（爱尔兰）斯莱戈县议会的CEO后就这样做了。在察看办公室时，有人告诉他食堂里一张桌子被称为“坦诚桌”，因为坐在那里的人——包括高层、中层管理人员和技术人员——都可以分享他们对所有事务的看法。“我决定就坐在那——而且一如往常，坐在那的每个人都要放下头衔，包括我自己，”海耶斯说，“这是一个完美的环境，可以让你踏踏实实，了解到最真实的情况。”

Sometimes opportunities for honest feedback emerge organically—and the best Leaders embrace them. Ciarán Hayes did so after he became CEO of the Sligo (Ireland) County Council. While being shown around the offices, he was told that a particular table in the canteen was known as the bold table, because those who sat there—a mix of senior and middle managers and technical staffers—shared their opinions about all and sundry. “I determined that would be the table I would sit at—and true to form, everybody at it was ritually cut down to size, including myself,” Hayes says. “It was the perfect environment in which to keep your feet on the ground as well as your finger on the pulse.”

设置可见的提醒标志，告诉大家成功转瞬即逝。

历史学家写道，在每一个乘坐战车穿过街道庆祝胜利的罗马将军背后，都有一个奴隶低语：“Hominem te memento”（“记住你不过是个凡人”）。没有什么能比死亡象征更能抑制无误的幻想，它提醒着我们生活的无常。

Create visible reminders that success is fleeting. 

Historians have written that behind every victorious Roman general riding through the streets in a chariot stood a slave whispering, “Hominem te memento” (“Remember that you are [but] a man”). Nothing dampens illusions of infallibility more than a memento mori, a reminder of the impermanence of our lives.

Facebook 和 Instagram 加拿大的营销主管安德烈·范利乌文（Andrea Van Leeuwen）向我们解释了Facebook是如何提醒员工“皇帝轮流做”。它的总部位于曾经的Sun Microsystems大楼内，但该公司并没有更换大楼前面的独立标志，而是简单地将标志翻转过来，并将Facebook的名字写在背面。“每当有人穿过园区，他们都会看到标志两面，”范利乌文解释说，“这是一个信号，意思是在说，‘今天的成就不一定代表明天的成功’。”她补充说，当有人提出不同观点时，员工会被敦促问问自己，“万一他们是对的呢？”——一个简单而有效的提醒：其他人可以提供有价值的意见。

Andrea Van Leeuwen, the head of marketing at Facebook and Instagram Canada, told us how Facebook reminds its employees of the transitory nature of success. Its headquarters is located in the former Sun Microsystems building, but instead of replacing the free-standing sign out front, the company simply flipped the sign over and put Facebook’s name on the back. “Whenever anyone does a campus walkthrough, they see the sign and its reverse,” Van Leeuwen explains. “It’s a signal to say, ‘Just because you are doing well today doesn’t mean you’ll be around tomorrow.’” She adds that when someone offers a differing viewpoint, employees are urged to ask themselves, “What if they’re right?”—a simple and effective reminder that others have something to offer.

衡量并奖励谦逊。

如果你想更谦逊，你必须对其进行评估，不过这点很难自己做到。一个过度自信的人很容易认为自己是别人见过最谦逊的人，而真正谦逊的人更可能说，“我努力保持谦逊，但经常做不到。”要真实了解自己有多谦逊（或多不谦逊），请让你的同事进行诚实的评估。（有关他们可以考虑的具体标准，请参见边栏“你够谦逊吗？”）

Measure and reward humility. 

If you want to increase your humility, you must measure it. However, you can’t reliably assess it in yourself. An overconfident person is apt to claim, “I am the humblest person you’ll ever meet,” whereas someone who is genuinely humble will be more likely to say, “I try to stay humble, but I often fail.” To get a true picture of how humble (or not) you are, ask your colleagues for an honest assessment. (For guidance on specific criteria they can consider, see the sidebar “Are You Humble?”)

培养同理心

Cultivating Empathy

心理学家已经证明，人们会将自己视为与他人分离和独立，或者相互联系和相互依赖。不奇怪的是，后一种观点激发了更多同理心和合作——可以用来解决权力可能带来的自我沉醉问题。我们可以通过简单的干预来鼓励同理心，例如在阅读包含独立代词（我，我的）的故事时，用相互依赖的代词（我们，我们的）进行替换。

Psychologists have shown that people view themselves as either separate from and independent of others or connected and interdependent. Not surprisingly, the latter perspective inspires greater empathy and cooperation—antidotes to the self-absorption that power can bring. Empathy can be encouraged though simple interventions, such as having someone substitute interdependent pronouns (we, ours) when reading a story containing independent pronouns (I, mine).

新任领导者往往会以自我为中心。他们常常觉得自己有很多东西需要证明，这会让他们的注意力集中在自己身上。除非发展受到阻碍，否则他们会逐渐将自己视为与更大的实体相互依存：公司、社区和国家，最终是人类和地球。这种相互依赖感会使他们产生同理心，理解并分享他人感受。维拉·科代罗开始通过静坐冥想来帮助自己对抗自我专注的倾向。她告诉我们，定期的冥想“让我更加理解员工和我们的非政府组织所服务的家庭，提醒我牢记组织社会使命的首要地位”。通过将同理心与组织的使命联系起来，科代罗在明智行使权力的发展道路上迈出了重要一步：承认我们都是人类大家庭的一分子。

New Leaders tend to be self-focused. They often feel they have a lot to prove, and that takes their attention inward. Unless their development is stunted, they gradually come to see themselves as interdependent with larger entities: company, community, and country, and ultimately humanity and the planet. That sense of interdependence allows them to develop empathy: the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. Vera Cordeiro turned to meditation to help her counter a tendency toward self-focus. Developing a regular practice “helped me have more empathy for my staff and the families our NGO serves, reminding me of the primacy of our social mission,” she told us. In connecting empathy with her organization’s mission, Cordeiro took a fundamental step along the developmental path to exercising power wisely: embracing the recognition that we are all part of one human family.

以下做法可以帮助你和团队培养同理心：

The following actions can foster empathy in yourself and your team.

亲身体验他人工作。

你越是融入别人的现实，就会越有同理心。对于一线员工的贡献，一个曾经做过入门级工作并致力于结识低级员工的经理，与从中级职位起步、走出办公室仅是为了与客户和投资者共进商务午餐的同事相比，会更加懂得赞赏。

Immerse yourself in other people’s jobs. 

The more embedded you are in someone else’s reality, the more empathy you’ll feel. A manager who once held an entry-level job and makes a point of getting to know lower-level workers will appreciate the contributions of frontline personnel more than will a colleague who started in a mid-level position and ventures out of his or her office only for power lunches with clients and investors.

加拿大贝尔（Bell Canada）招聘的应届毕业生要在呼叫中心和零售职位上工作八周，以获得一线客户服务经验，为未来的管理职位做准备。安大略省教师退休金计划有一项计划，员工可以通过该计划到企业的另一部分“旅行”，在那里工作一段时间，然后再回到日常角色。我们研究了美国和欧洲的社会企业，在这些企业中，社会性工作者和技术人员会相互影响，以更好地了解他人的工作。

Recent-graduate hires at Bell Canada spend eight weeks in call center and retail positions to gain frontline customer-service experience in preparation for future management roles. The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan has a program whereby employees can “take a trip” to another part of the business, working there for a while before returning to their usual roles. We have studied social enterprises in the United States and Europe in which social workers and technical staffers shadow one another to gain a better understanding of others’ work.

亲身体验他人的现实可以培养对同事的同理心，并认识企业各部分间的联系，从而为打破孤岛，为加强协作创造条件。

Experiencing someone else’s reality firsthand builds empathy for colleagues and an appreciation for how various parts of the business are linked, creating the conditions to break down silos and enhance collaboration.

用讲故事的形式让事情更贴近个人。

当然，让自己沉浸于另一个人的工作环境并不容易实现。听别人的故事是一种有效的替代方法，同样可以建立同理心。通过为讲故事创造空间，组织可以帮助大家跳出自己的角度。

Use storytelling to make things personal. 

It’s not always possible, of course, to immerse oneself in another person’s job. Hearing others’ stories is a powerful alternative that likewise builds empathy. By creating space for such storytelling, organizations can help people transcend their own perspectives.

Rogers Sports & Media的全国销售副总裁珍妮丝·史密斯（Janice Smith）告诉我们，在疫情开始时的“安全谈话”会议催生了一波同理心，并在弗洛伊德（George Floyd）事件后的抗议活动中持续存在。“这些勇敢的人走到一起，分享他们的个人经历和痛苦往事，带着最深的脆弱性和透明度，”她说，“这些会议创造了一个安全空间，他们创造的信任不仅是一种及时安慰，而且非常强大，能够改变人生。来自各个级别和业务领域的同事聆听了这些故事，从中学习，获得启发后成为更好的人。它改变了公司的文化。”

Janice Smith, the vice president of national sales at Rogers Sports & Media, told us that a wave of empathy was generated by “safe talk” sessions at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and continued during the protests after the murder of George Floyd. “These are brave individuals who come together and share their personal experiences and stories of pain, with the deepest vulnerability and transparency,” she says. “These sessions are a safe space, and the trust they create is not only a comfort in a time of great need but immensely powerful and life-changing. Colleagues from all levels and every area of the business listen to these stories, learn and educate, get inspired, and become better people. It’s been a game changer for company culture.”

在组织系统中嵌入相互依赖性。

企业还可以通过在其系统中培养相互依赖的意识来对抗自我专注。微软已从其绩效评估流程中删除评级，重新将评估重点放在协作上。经理会首先问员工，“你是如何为他人的成功做出贡献的？”然后他们想知道，“你的成果是如何建立在其他人的工作、想法和努力之上的？”在评审过程中，他们还鼓励员工反思：“你本可以采取哪些不同的做法？”这种方法突出了这样一个现实，即员工不是在真空中工作，他们需要彼此，而且他们的行为会对同事产生影响。在这样的系统中你很难一直自我专注。

Embed interdependence in organizational systems. 

Companies can also combat self-focus by building an awareness of interdependence into their systems. Microsoft has removed ratings from its performance review process, refocusing evaluations on collaboration. Managers first ask employees, “How did you contribute to the success of others?” They then want to know, “How did your results build on the work, ideas, and efforts of others?” During the review process, they also encourage reflection with the question “What could you have done differently?” This approach spotlights the reality that employees don’t work in a vacuum, they need one another, and their actions have consequences for their colleagues. It’s hard to remain self-focused in such a system.

在疫情期间，VIDA的CEO 乌迈伊玛·门德罗（Umaimah Mendhro）和她的团队希望加强员工对组织与社区和环境相互依存关系的认识。因此，他们使 VIDA 成为一家公益公司——一个营利性实体，其法律定义的目标中包括了对员工、社区、社会和环境产生积极影响。“我们不想陷入到忽视社会责任的境地，”门德罗解释说，“这是一个平衡权力的问题。成为一家公益公司后，我们在结构和法律上建立了问责制，决不会纯粹为了利润而滥用权力。如果我离开，有另一个投资者或买家，他们就会知道他们得到了什么：一家有责任感的公司。”

During the pandemic, VIDA CEO Umaimah Mendhro and her team wanted to strengthen awareness of the organization’s interdependence with the community and the environment. So they made VIDA a public-benefit corporation—a for-profit entity whose legally defined goals include making a positive impact on workers, the community, society, and the environment. “We do not want to fall into a place where we lose sight of our social responsibilities,” Mendhro explains. “It’s a matter of balancing power. By becoming a public-benefit corporation, we have structurally and legally created this accountability never to abuse power purely for profit. If I am no longer there, if we have another investor, or a buyer, they will know what they are getting: a company aligned with this accountability and responsibility.”

走出你的公司，进入现实世界。

为了认识你对他人的影响并培养对他们的同理心，你必须超越公司范围，进入生活经历与自己截然不同的社区。这种个人体验对于摆脱自我沉迷和正确看待自己和业务目标是非常宝贵的。

Step out of your company and into the real world. 

To appreciate your impact on others and develop empathy for them, you must move beyond the confines of your company and into communities whose lived experience is profoundly different from your own. This personal engagement is invaluable to shedding self-absorption and putting yourself and your business goals in perspective.

印度企业Mahindra Group 的董事长安纳德·马辛德拉（Anand Mahindra）了解这种联系的必要性。他的母亲出身贫寒，对出身富贵的人（比如他的父亲）抱有合理的怀疑态度。她确保自己的孩子能够遇到特权殿堂之外的人，她认为他们是“社会中坚”：那些了解生活艰辛，知道独立自强的人。她将马辛德拉送到一所公立学校（这个学校的孩子与他的背景截然不同），而不是精英子女通常就读的私立学校。他告诉我们，母亲灌输给他的对特权的不安让他最初远离了家族企业。直到后来家族需要他时，他才加入公司，在那里他对特权的敏感成为了重要力量。他说：“我得出的结论是，也许行使权力的最佳方式，最负责任的方式，就是对它产生建设性不适。”与整个世界保持联系是产生这种不适的关键所在。

Anand Mahindra, the chairman of the Indian conglomerate Mahindra Group, understands the need for such connections. His mother, who came from a modest background, raised him with a healthy skepticism about those born to money (as his father was). She made sure her children met people from outside the halls of privilege, whom she saw as “the salt of the earth”: those who know about life’s hardships and about making it on one’s own. She sent Mahindra to a government-run school, attended by children from backgrounds very different from his own,rather than one of the private institutions typically attended by the children of the elite. The unease with privilege this instilled in him led Mahindra initially to stay out of the family business, he told us. Only later, when his family needed him, did he join the firm, where his sensitivity to the perils of privilege became an important strength. “I’ve come to conclude that perhaps the best way to exercise power, the most responsible way to wield power, is to have a very constructive discomfort with it,” he says. Staying connected to the world at large is key to developing such discomfort.

我们已经在年轻人和经验丰富的高管身上看到了与现实世界接触的积极影响。如果一个来自富裕家庭的大学生在快餐店找一份暑期工作，他会知道处于底层意味着什么，并会对靠最低工资生活是多么艰难有所感悟。在老城区学校或流浪收容所担任志愿者的银行高管会对金融机构的社会角色有不同看法。无论你的身份和地位如何，与周围的社区互动都会有助于抵制自我专注。

We’ve seen the positive impact of engagement with the real world manifested in young people and seasoned executives alike. A university student from an affluent family who takes a summer job at a fast-food restaurant will know what it means to be at the bottom of a hierarchy and will have some insight into how tough it is to live on a minimum wage. A banking executive who volunteers at an inner-city school or a homeless shelter will think differently about the social role of financial institutions. Whatever your stature and status, engaging with the community around you will help you resist self-focus.

与权力的平衡关系很难在一夜之间形成。毕竟，不仅是情绪，我们的想法也在起作用。正如维拉·科代罗发现的那样，即使我们为了崇高的目的而行使权力，我们仍然容易受到其腐蚀作用的影响。但是，通过培养谦逊和同理心，并实施确保真正的权力共享和问责制的组织结构，我们可以避免傲慢和自我专注的双重陷阱。这样做的领导者将提高自己的效率，并促进团队的卓越表现。小说家、诺贝尔奖获得者托妮·莫里森（Toni Morrison）简明扼要地总结了其中的机遇与挑战。她曾经告诉她的学生：“如果你有一些权力，那么你的工作就是赋予其他人权力。”

A balanced relationship with power is seldom developed overnight; after all, our emotions, not just our thoughts, are in play. And as Vera Cordeiro discovered, even when we exercise power for a noble purpose, we remain vulnerable to its corrosive effects. But by cultivating humility and empathy and implementing organizational structures that ensure true power-sharing and accountability, we can avoid the twin pitfalls of hubris and self-focus. Leaders who do so will boost their own effectiveness and facilitate exceptional performance from their teams. The novelist and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison summed up the challenge and the opportunity succinctly. “If you have some power,” she used to tell her students, “then your job is to empower somebody else.”

朱莉·巴蒂拉娜是哈佛商学院威尔逊教席工商管理教授（the Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School），也是哈佛肯尼迪学院格莱茨曼教席社会创新教授（the Alan L. Gleitsman Professor of Social Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School），是社会创新与变革倡议的创始人和教职主席。

蒂齐亚娜·卡夏罗是多伦多大学罗特曼管理学院组织行为学和人力资源管理教授，并任职Integrative Thinking项目德索泰尔教席（the Marcel Desautels Chair）。

她们合著有《所有人的权力：如何运作？为何属于每个人？》（Power, For All: How It Real Works and Why It’s Everyone’s）（Simon & Schuster出版社，2021年出版），本文编选自该书。

朱莉·巴蒂拉娜（Julie Battilana）

蒂齐亚娜·卡夏罗（Tiziana Casciaro）| 文

永年 | 译   时青靖 | 校   孙燕 | 编辑

本文刊载于《哈佛商业评论》中文版2021年第10期