一位将军的危机处理之道

    一切顺利时当领导很容易。出了问题，才是真正考验人的时候。这个时候，你会如何自处呢？

    本周二，在阿斯彭召开的《财富》杂志（Fortune）科技头脑风暴大会上，美国将军斯坦利•麦克里斯特尔在“领导力经验”(Lessons in Leadership)环节讨论中分享了非常个人化的体会，同在这个环节发言的嘉宾还包括惠普(Hewlett-Packard)执行副总裁托德•布莱德利。2010年，麦克里斯特尔是前美国驻阿富汗总司令，《滚石》(Rolling Stone)的一篇报道称，麦克里斯特尔及其助手瞧不起美国总统。麦克里斯特尔在这次会上表示，这篇报道不准确，结果导致他辞职，他的军旅生涯也就此终结。

    如今，这位四星上将已经成功转型，他带领的咨询公司McChrystal Group正在帮助惠普这样的公司改变它们的运营方式。除了给出很多领导力建议，笔者主持的这场讨论会的一大亮点是麦克里斯特尔前所未有的坦率直言，他谈到了那场个人危机、危机心得以及自己应对危机的方法，我们或许也能以这些方式从危机中汲取力量。

    “哦，我认定这是我人生的一个拐点。现在我无法改变这一点。没人能改变过去。

    我要做的是，在余生中为人处世都要做到让跟我打交道说一声："跟那篇报道里说的完全不一样啊。"

    所以，我没有直接驳斥那篇报道，我要以行动来驳斥。

    这么做要付出很大代价。沉默让人痛苦。让一个人保持缄默，既不能说出来，也不能写出来，搞得人每天都想狂喊。

    每天都想大声喊出来，一天天的这种感觉会稍好一些，但每天都是这样。

    大多数领导人都经历过这样的时期——做好准备，什么对你是重要的：你的核心是什么？什么东西别人不能从你这里拿走？

    要明白这一点，如果你任由别人决定你的人品或自我评价，如果你任由他们去做，他们就会让你陷入非常尴尬的境地。

    因此，你必须自己掌握决定权。（财富中文网）

    It's easy to be a leader when things are going well. The true test comes when things fall apart. How do you handle yourself then?

    General Stanley McChrystal delivered very personal wisdom at Fortune Brainstorm Tech in Aspen on Tuesday during a "Lessons in Leadership" session that also included Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) EVP Todd Bradley. McChrystal was the commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2010 when a Rolling Stone profile portrayed him and his aides as contemptuous of the President. The story, which McChrystal says was inaccurate, led him to resign and end his military career.

    The four-star general's reinvention now has him leading the McChrystal Group, a consulting firm that helps companies like HP change the ways they operate. While dispensing plenty of leadership advice, the gem of this session, which I moderated, was McChrystal's stunning candor--speaking as he has not before about his crisis, the lesson from it, and the approach any of us might take to gain strength from an embarrassing setback.

    "Well, I decided to myself, that that was an inflection point in my life. And I couldn't change that now. You can't change the past.

    And what I was going to try to do is conduct myself every day for the rest of my life in a way that would cause anybody who saw or dealt with me to say, "That's not congruent with the tone of that report."

    So, rather than take on the report directly, I decided to take it on indirectly and just try to disprove it by my conduct.

    You pay a big price when you do that. Silence hurts. When you keep your mouth shut and you don't write about it, you don't talk about it, and every day you want to scream.

    You want to scream out every day—a little less every day, but every day you do.

    Most leaders go through something like that…Get yourself ready to what's important to you: What's the core of you? What can't people take away from you?

    And realize that if you give to other people the opportunity to determine your dignity or your sense of self-worth—if you outsource that to them—they can leave you in a bad place.

    So you've got to decide.