職場神功"凌波微步" 報告壞消息要分4步走

Dear Annie: I've been following your columns about promotions over the past year or so, and I finally got one. The trouble is, it comes with some nasty conditions. The person who had this job before me let my department's performance slide to an unacceptable low, mainly because he didn't want to fire anybody -- even though there are a few people here who haven't done any real work in years. These same people have also influenced other team members, so their productivity has fallen too.

親愛的安妮：這幾年我一直在看你寫的關於升職的專欄，現在終於有了想請教你的問題。這個問題使得局面非常糟糕。我這個職位上的前任使部門業績下滑到了不可接受的程度，原因主要在於他不願解僱任何人——即使有的人幾年裏都沒有真正做過什麼事。這些人還影響到了其它團隊成員，最終使得其他人的工作效率也降低了。

So now what I have to do is "turn things around," my boss said, by letting a few people go and giving shape-up-or-ship-out evaluations to some others. I have no experience with giving this kind of bad news, and I really dread these conversations. Do you or your readers have any advice on how to do this, or how not to? -- Management's Messenger

因此我的老闆告訴我，我現在需要“扭轉局面”，解僱一些人，同時評估其他人的表現，告訴他們，“要麼好好幹，要麼滾蛋”。我沒有傳達這類壞消息的經驗，也非常恐懼這類談話。請問您或您的讀者能不能給我一些建議，告訴我應該怎樣做？或者說怎麼才能不幹這個苦差事呢？——“管理層信使”

Dear M.M.: "If you were hoping for a way around the unpleasant emotions that accompany the delivery of bad news, I'll have to disappoint you, because there isn't one," says Geoffrey Tumlin, who heads Austin-based communications firm Mouthpeace Communications and wrote a new book called Stop Talking, Start Communicating: Counterintuitive Secrets to Success in Business and in Life.

親愛的“管理層信使”：“如果你想找到某種方法來避免傳達壞消息時的不愉快情緒，我恐怕要讓你失望了，因爲這種方法並不存在”，傑弗裏•圖姆林說。圖姆林是總部位於奧斯丁的溝通管理公司Mouthpeace Communications的CEO。圖姆林還寫了一本新書，書名爲《停止說話、開始溝通：職業與人生成功的反直覺祕訣》（Stop Talking, Start Communicating: Counterintuitive Secrets to Success in Business and in Life）。

Tumlin gets where you're coming from. He is often called in when managers have put off doing the inevitable for so long that whole teams and departments have crashed. "It's amazing to see how problems can cascade through an organization because no one wants to get rid of a problem employee," he says. At the same time, he understands why bosses like your predecessor procrastinate: "Firing people is hard."

圖姆林非常理解你的處境。每當公司管理者一再推遲告訴員工壞消息，以至於整個團隊或部門都被拖垮後，人們就會找圖姆林來扭轉局面。圖姆林說：“很神奇的是，一點小問題就能把公司拖到要垮的程度，而原因僅僅是沒人願意開除問題員工。”然而同時，他也理解管理者們（比如你的前任）一再拖延傳達壞消息的原因：“解僱別人是一件艱難的事情”。

Nothing can make it easier, but Tumlin offers four tips for getting it done:

沒有什麼方法能使這件事變得更容易。但圖姆林還是給出了四條建議：

1. Get straight to your core message. "Your core message is easy to identify, because it's always the thing you don't want to say -- whether it's 'We're switching vendors' or 'We have to let you go' or 'We should stop seeing each other,'" Tumlin says. So get straight to the point. "Trying to sugarcoat it won't help, and may even confuse the other person, which just makes it harder for them," he notes.

1．直奔主題。“主題很好識別，它總是你說不出的那句話——有可能是‘我們要換供應商了’，也可能是‘我們得開除你’，或者‘我們不要再見面了’，”圖姆林說。因此還是直奔主題吧。他說：“想說得好聽一點沒有用，反而可能使聽者感到困惑，以至於接受事實對他們來說更加艱難。”

2. Stick to your guns. If you've ever been talked out of a decision, you already know how tough this one can be. "People will say things like, 'But we've worked together for 15 years! You're not really letting me go, are you?'" notes Tumlin. "Or they will try to talk about the reasons. But resist the temptation to get pushed, cajoled, or charmed off your message."

2．堅持到底。如果你有被說服放棄一個決定的經歷，你就知道堅持到底有多麼艱難了。“他們會說，‘可是我們一起工作15年了！你不是真的要我走人吧？’”，圖姆林說。“或者他們會問你這麼做的原因。但是一定要抵抗住誘惑，不要因爲被逼迫、哄誘或被別人的魅力所折服而敗下陣來。”

3. Explain yourself, but not too much. Tumlin recommends fitting the message and the reason for it into a single sentence -- for instance, "We're letting you go because we're taking this whole department in a different direction." If you want to say more, that's okay, "but do it by repeating the point. Don't add any new information, or you'll encourage the discussion to drift away from what you need to say."

3．解釋原因，但不要解釋太多。圖姆林建議用一句簡單的話來概括你的決定和這麼做的原因——比如，“我們解僱你是因爲要改變整個部門的發展方向”。你想多說一些也可以，“但是要反覆陳述一個原因。不要增加其它信息，否則談話會偏離正軌。”

4. Get out of the conversation. Letting the discussion drag on is usually a mistake, Tumlin says. "Naturally you can answer factual questions like, 'When's my last day?' or 'What happens to my 401(k)?' or offer to get any practical answers you don't have," Tumlin says. "But beware of trying to answer any speculative or probing questions, again because they can confuse the issue and drag you away from your point."

4．結束談話。沒完沒了地討論通常是失策的行爲，圖姆林說。“你可以自然地回答一些事實性的問題，比如‘我哪天離開？’，或者‘我的401K保險怎麼辦？’如果你不知道某個事實性的答案，也可以主動提出幫忙詢問，”圖姆林說。“但需注意，不要回答任何推測性或試探性的問題，原因還是一樣：你的回答會混淆問題，導致談話偏離正軌。”

In this situation, Tumlin adds, "It's a simple formula: Be clear, be concise, and be gone." The not-so-hot evaluations you'll have to deliver are, however, a different story. "An evaluation, even a negative one, is really the opposite of firing someone," he notes. "That's because it should be an ongoing discussion, not a one-time event, and because you're hoping to keep the people you'll be speaking with, assuming they can get better at their jobs."

圖姆林補充說，在這種情況下，“有一個簡單的公式，那就是：清晰、簡要、結束。”然而，傳達不那麼敏感的評估結果，就是另一回事了。“傳達評估結果，即使是負面的，也與解僱完全不同，”圖姆林指出。“這是因爲，傳達評估結果不是單一的事件，而是持續的交流。你的願望是對方能夠留下來，前提是他們能改進工作。”

With that in mind, Tumlin advises you get the firings over with first, and then wait a bit before giving feedback, for two reasons. First, firing someone -- say, an employee who's a known slacker -- is a form of feedback to the whole team, he points out. "Everyone will be watching, of course, so give it a couple of weeks and see how that percolates through," he says. "You may find that some people's behavior changes for the better." If so, you'll have one less tough topic to tackle.

考慮到這一點，圖姆林建議你先解僱需要開除的員工，一段時間之後，再對其餘員工進行批評。原因有二。首先，圖姆林指出，對於整個團隊來說，解僱某人——比如某個衆所周知的懶怠員工——已經是某種形式的反饋。“所有人理所當然都會看到這件事，因此可以等上幾個星期，看看這事會起到什麼效果，”圖姆林說。“你可能會發現，某些員工表現變好了。”如果確實如此，你需要處理的棘手問題就又少了一個。

Second, Tumlin says, evaluations that make a difference require specific examples of the behavior you want to change. "The least effective feedback is always too general, like 'You're not good with clients.' That doesn't tell the other person anything useful, and it's too easy to dismiss," Tumlin says. Instead, a particular example -- "You talked over Client A in that meeting last Tuesday" -- tells exactly where an employee needs to focus her efforts.

其次，圖姆林說，想要批評發揮作用，你必須指明想要別人改變的具體行爲。“太籠統的反饋通常是最無效的，比如‘你不擅長和客戶打交道’。這句話沒有給員工任何有用的信息，也很容易被忽視，”圖姆林說。相反，一個具體的例子——“你在上週二的會議上打斷了客戶甲的發言”——確切地指出了員工需要在哪方面做出更多努力。

"You're new in this job, so maybe you don't have an example yet. But if you want these evaluations to matter, wait until you do," says Tumlin. "It shouldn't take long."

“你剛開始做這份工作，因此可能還沒碰到過類似的例子。但想要對員工的批評發揮作用，你最好等遇到類似的例子再提，”圖姆林說。“應該不用太久，你就會碰到。”

Talkback: If you've ever been fired or had to fire someone, what made the bad news more (or less) bearable? What was the most useful evaluation you ever got? Leave a comment below.

反饋：你有沒有被解僱過，或者有沒有解僱過別人？哪一點使這個壞消息更加（或不那麼）令人難以接受？你得到過的最有用的批評是什麼？請在下面發表你的評論。