【中英双语】变革期的领导秘诀在于同理心
The Secret to Leading Organizational Change Is Empathy
by Patti Sanchez
I'm working with a CEO who’s in the midst of rethinking her company's strategy so it can better meet customer demands and thrive financially. These are major changes that will affect every aspect of how the firm operates — from the services it offers to the structure of her organization.
最近我与一位重新思考公司战略的CEO合作，希望更好地满足客户需求，并实现财务成功。这些都是重大变化，将影响从提供服务到组织架构的公司经营的方方面面。
When I sat down with the CEO and her executive team to think through their communication plan, I asked not about the change itself, but about how her employees might feel about what's ahead. We started with her team because, in my work as a communication consultant, I've observed the same thing time and time again: how information is communicated to employees during a change matters more than what information is communicated. A lack of audience empathy when conveying news about an organizational transformation can cause it to fail.
我跟CEO和执行团队坐下来思考沟通计划时，并没有问具体如何变，而是问员工对变化可能怎样感受。我们从她的团队开始，因为我从事沟通顾问时一次又一次地观察到同样的情况，即变动过程中如何向员工传达信息比信息内容本身更重要。传达有关公司转型的消息时如果缺乏同理心，会导致失败。
Studies on organizational change show that leaders across the board agree: if you want to lead a successful transformation, communicating empathetically is critical. But the truth is that most leaders don't actually know how to do it. In fact, at Duarte, the communication consultancy where I'm Chief Strategy Officer, we conducted a survey of over 200 leading company executives and found that 69% of respondents said that they were planning to launch or are currently conducting a change effort. Unfortunately, 50% of these same execs said they hadn’t fully considered their team’s sentiment about the change. Worse, about half said they were just approaching the change “going on gut.”
对公司变革的研究表明，所有领导者都认为，如果想转型成功，认真沟通至关重要。但事实上，大多数领导者并不清楚该怎么做。我在沟通咨询公司Duarte担任首席战略官，公司调研200多位知名公司高管后发现，69%的受访者表示计划启动或正经历变革。不幸的是，50%的高管表示没有充分考虑团队对变革的看法。更糟糕的是，近一半人表示变革时基本“靠直觉”。
If you are a company leader hoping to undertake a successful organizational change, you need to make sure your team is onboard and motivated to help make it happen. The following strategies can you help you better understand your employees'perspectives.
如果领导者希望成功实现公司变革，就要确保团队充分了解情况并积极协助实现目标。可以通过以下策略更好地了解员工的看法。
Profile Your Audience at Every Stage
每个阶段都要明确受众
精通变革的顾问通常会建议，领导者启动变革计划时想好各种受众的角色。不过，考虑到整个过程中人们的需求会随之发展，应在每个阶段重新评估对象情况。
Change consultants typically advise leaders to create personas of various audiences when they kick-off a change initiative. But, considering that people’s wants and needs will evolve throughout the process, you should reevaluate these personas during every phase of the journey.
With the CEO I mentioned earlier, we first created audience personas that mapped to key employee segments in the company by level and function. Then we interviewed individual employees in each segment to get a sample perspective on typical mindsets. During the interviews, we asked questions designed to uncover beliefs, feelings, questions, and concerns about the company’s current strategy. We also asked if there were specific changes they hoped management would (or would not) make.
之前提到的CEO案例中，我们首先按层级和职能了解公司关键员工的分布。随后我们采访每个领域的员工，了解典型的思维模式。访谈中我们会问及员工对公司当前战略的信任程度、感受、问题和担忧等等，还问他们希不希望管理层做出具体改变。
Using the insights from these interviews, we were able to identify how each employee segment felt about the change effort, and planned communications based on whether they were excited, frightened, or frustrated. Employees who were excited about the change, for example, received communication that encouraged them to motivate their reluctant peers.
利用访谈中收集到的意见，我们可以了解各员工群体对工作变动的感受，根据具体兴奋、害怕或沮丧情况安排沟通情况。例如，与对变革感到兴奋的员工沟通时，会鼓励他们带动不太积极的同事们。
As your organizational transformation unfolds and you enter new phases of the change, make sure you repeat the interviewing and empathetic listening process. That way, you can gauge how people are feeling over time, and tailor your communication to match their mood.
随着公司开展转型并进入变革新阶段，请重复访谈过程并认真倾听。如此便可了解人们的感受如何随时间变化，并根据当前情绪确定沟通方式。
Tell People What to Expect
描绘未来场景
While you may need to keep some facts private during a transition, the general rule is that the more informed your people are, the more they’ll be able to deal with discomfort. So, learn about your team’s specific fears, then acknowledge them openly.
虽然过渡期间有必要对一些情况保密，但一般来说，员工了解得越多，就越能应对变动过程中的不适。所以要了解团队里的恐惧情绪，然后公开答复。
While working with the CEO who was making strategic shifts in her company, we talked about how she could acknowledge some of the fears revealed in a company-wide survey. One employee had expressed concern that the changes would cause talented employees to leave, which would lead to a greater burden on remaining employees.
与领导公司战略变革的CEO合作时，我们讨论了调查中发现担心情绪后如何应对。一名员工担心变动将导致有才能的员工离职，留下的员工负担加重。
In the next company-wide meeting, the CEO acknowledged there was worry about brain drain, then shared statistics about how the recent company turnover was designed to reduce the number of low performers and alleviate resulting drag on other employees. She also explained how the HR department was redoubling its efforts to speed up the recruiting process and add more rigor to interviews to ensure new hires were more likely to be high performers.
之后一次全公司会议上，CEO承认担心人才流失，随后介绍了一些数据，内容是近期公司人员流转主要是减少绩效一般的员工数量，从而降低对其他员工造成的拖累。她还解释说人力资源部门正加倍努力加快招聘，面试时遵守严格的标准，确保新入员工素质优秀。
Having the CEO talk about the departures in an open company forum might seem like a dicey proposition when HR usually prefers to keep exit details private. But feedback from employees afterward showed that the CEO was able to build credibility and trust by addressing the fear of talent loss head-on.
人力资源部门往往对离职的细节保密，此时CEO公开谈论离职话题可能有些冒险。但事后员工的反馈表明，如果CEO敢于正面应对人才流失导致的恐惧，就可以建立信任。
Involve Individuals at All Levels
要确保各级员工均知情
A transformation won’t succeed without broad involvement. A large European retail bank modeled this well during an organizational overhaul. Following a “dialogue-based planning” model, the CEO created a top-level story for the bank, then asked his executive directors to add a “chapter,” sharing details relevant to their departments. Each director then asked their own team to add to the chapter, incorporating ideas about how a change would impact them and their unique responsibilities. This continued down five levels, all the way to branch managers, and helped every impacted individual understand their part.
没有广泛的参与，转型就无法成功。一家大型欧洲零售银行在大型变革期间就做了成功的尝试。采用“基于对话的规划”后，CEO先从顶层角度讲述了银行未来发展的故事，再要求执行董事添加“章节”，分享与其部门相关的详细信息，随后每位董事要求自己的团队各自添加章节，包括变动对其职责将产生何种影响。这一过程持续向下囊括了五个级别，一直到分公司经理，确保受影响的人们都了解变革对自身的影响。
An exercise like this can help everyone feel like an active participant with something valuable to add. At that same bank, the director of retail operations wrote about how customers wanted the banking process to be faster. When members of the branch staff read this, they added that document imagers broke down frequently, which was a major headache and caused regular slowdowns. In the end, these frontline employees ended up bringing about a practical, useful change at the organization — one that improved things for all parties.
类似行动可让身处其中的每个人都觉得自己是积极参与者，可以贡献一些价值。在同一家银行，零售业务总监写到客户希望银行业务流程加快。支行员工读到后补充说，文档成像器经常发生故障，是个很头疼的问题，而且经常导致业务处理速度下降。最后，一线员工想出了实际且有用的调整方式，结果各方都很满意。
Business practices evolve rapidly, but there’s one technique business leaders should always rely on to effectively motivate and lead: empathic communication. Develop and show empathy for everyone involved in your corporate transition, and you’ll lead a team that feels valued, included, and driven to help your initiative succeed.
商业行为发展迅速，但企业领导者应时刻不忘怀有同理心，实现有效激励和领导。要对参与公司转型的每个人表现出同理心，如此一来团队会感受到重视和包容，也充满动力，团结推动公司成功。
Patti Sanchez is chief strategy officer at Duarte, Inc., where she creates persuasive presentations for global brands and causes. She is also a coauthor, with Nancy Duarte, of Illuminate.
巴蒂·桑切斯是Duarte，Inc首席战略官，为全球品牌和事业介绍很多有说服力的案例。她还曾与南希·杜瓦特（Nancy Duarte）合著有《启发》一书。
