特朗普悖论：人们讨厌他的地方，正是很多领袖人物的特质

    2014年春天，我完成了一部关于领导力的书稿，但由于出版行业内部的混乱，这本书要到下个月才能正式出版。在这本书的索引中，就有唐纳德·特朗普和卡莉·费奥莉娜这两人的词条。（特朗普是纽约著名地产大亨，费奥莉娜曾任惠普CEO，这两人今年均宣布将代表共和党参加2016年总统大选。）

    倒不是说我对共和党提名争夺战有先见之明，实际上我压根没料到今年的选情会如此具有娱乐性。在那本书中，我重点讨论了一个对于想在竞争高度激烈的职场中获得成功的人来说至关重要的话题：庞大的领导力产业经常为毫无疑心的大众开具一些“领导力秘诀”，但这些秘诀往往与基于社会学和日常观察得出的个人成功最佳途径存在巨大的脱节。在很多情况下，很多人在真实世界中获得的成功，恰恰来自那些与典型的“领导力秘诀”截然相反的行为。

    因此，你不能指望那些愤愤不平的选民解释为何特朗普一路领跑。特朗普身上实际体现了很多能够让人成功的领袖特质，只不过这些特质和一些领导力专家所兜售的那种截然相反而已。比如以下这几个例子。

    唐纳德·特朗普喜欢在任何事情上“冠名”，包括他盖的楼。他还喜欢抓住任何机会大讲自己的成功故事。他的这种行为，既不符合我们大多数人喜欢的谦谦君子的标准，也不符合作家吉姆·柯林斯在《从优秀到卓越》一书中所做出的研究结论。柯林斯在书中指出，最成功的企业都是由所谓的“第5级领导者”领导的，这种领导者既有强烈的决心，又有谦逊的品质。那么这是怎么回事儿呢？

    大量研究表明，自恋、自信（甚至是过度自信）和自我展示，才是更容易使人获得领导角色的特质，而不是很多人印象中的谦逊。这是因为，要想被选择，你首先要获得别人的注意。此外还有所谓的“单纯曝光”效应。我们总是倾向于选择自己熟悉的东西，因此在无数次重复“特朗普”的名字之后，它当然就成为一个人们熟悉的名字。虽然我们嘴上总是说不喜欢狂妄自大的人，但我们内心深处其实还是喜欢自信而专横的人，因为他们会给予我们信心。这种情绪是会传染的，而且这种人看起来也更像胜者。我们都想选择胜者，因此也就会选择那些貌似知道自己在干什么的人。

    特朗普还喜欢随意歪曲事实。他号称曾写过一本有史以来最畅销的商业书，这个牛皮当然吹得太大了。他某些方面的商业头脑和成功故事也显然言过其实——毕竟以他的名字命名的赌场已经宣告破产。不过这都没关系。说实话，这个特质对领导者来说并没有那么重要。领导者说谎的频率和技巧都要超出常人。就连一些最受尊敬和最富有的人，也熟练掌握了给真相添枝加叶、添油加醋的本事。比如甲骨文CEO拉里·埃里森和许多其他软件界人士一样，夸大了他的产品可用性和功能。另外还有史蒂夫·乔布斯。乔帮主的神技“现实扭曲力场”，形象地描述了他是怎样用极为牛掰的混淆视听能力，将假的说成真的，将无的说成有的。这个过程又被人称做“自我实现的预言”。

    有这些特质的不仅仅是特朗普。卡莉·费奥莉娜身上也展示了一种我在很多成功的人身上都看到过的特质——不承认失败，而且要为职业生涯的方方面面都渲染上“正能量”。看着她，你想象不到她是被惠普从CEO职务上赶走的；在她任内，她主持了惠普对康柏电脑的收购，把惠普与这样一个行将就木的低利润业务绑在一起，使惠普现在不得不谋求将其剥离；同样是在她任内，她还裁掉了数万名员工。传闻被重复得多了，就会被当成事实。而且不管怎样，就算领导者自己不躬身自省，也会有很多人对他们进行事后诸葛亮式的批评。

    星巴克CEO霍华德·舒尔茨最近号召商业领导者们做“仆人式的领导者”。他的本意是好的。但如今CEO的薪水往往已经超过普通员工300倍以上，实在难说哪家公司真正实行的是“仆人式领导”。

    为什么在所谓的“领导力秘诀”和真正的商业成功之间有如此巨大的脱节？社会生物学和社会心理学早已发现，有利于个体的未必有利于群体，反之亦然。群体和个体的成功并不是高度相关的。举个例子：当惠普将费奥莉娜解雇后，费奥莉娜拿着一笔天价遣散费离开了公司，但惠普的股价却没有上涨，她和继任者解聘的几万名惠普员工的日子也没有过得更好一些。

    另外，大多数关于领导力的演讲、书籍和博客，描述的都是我们希望领导者们所具有的品质。所以我们经常会讲一些独特的、不同寻常的甚至是英雄式的人物和事件，而没有意识到，正是这种独特性才成就了这样的故事。哪怕这些故事是真的（虽然往往都是编的），它们也不能很好地指导我们面对真实世界。

    那么我的建议是什么呢？首先，我们应该了解一些使人成功的特质背后的社会科学，至少是从某些方面。比如社会对某些行为的经济惩罚，尤其是对男人，实在太轻了。研究表明，在日常生活中说谎不仅是普遍现象，而且大部分都不会受到惩罚。此外还有证据表明，在硅谷的企业领导者中，自恋者赚的钱比不自恋者更多，而且在CEO位置上待的时间也更长。改变世界的唯一方式，就是首先了解世界是怎样运行的。

    其次，我们应该认真审视一下自己的行为。在很多令人讨厌的领导者上位的过程中，我们是不是也扮演了推波助澜的角色？只有当我们不再为克莱蒙特研究院商学教授珍·里普曼·布鲁门所称的“有毒的领导者”找借口时，事情才会开始变化。

    与此同时，我对今年选情的预测是：唐纳德·特朗普跑将会领跑民调，而且今年的提名战将比大多数人预计的要长得多。因为特朗普拥有很多我们讨厌，但同时还在奖励的领导力特质。（财富中文网）

    本文作者Jeffrey Pfeffer是斯坦福商学院的组织行为学教授。他的新书《Leadership B.S.: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time》将于2015年9月由哈珀柯林斯出版社出版。

    译者：朴成奎

    审校：任文科

    In the spring of 2014, I turned in a book manuscript about leadership that, because of the turmoil within the publishing industry, will only be published next month. In the index for that book: entries for Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina.

    I wish I could say I was prescient about the unfolding race for the Republican nomination, but I wasn’t even thinking about this ever-entertaining spectacle. Instead, I was trying to address a topic that’s vitally important to individuals who want to thrive in today’s intensely competitive work world: the enormous disconnect between the leadership prescriptions regularly offered to an unsuspecting public by the enormous leadership industry and what social science and everyday observation suggest is the best path to individual success. For the most part, real-world success comes from behaviors that are precisely the opposite of typical leadership prescriptions.

    So, no, you don’t have to look to angry, disaffected voters to explain the Trump phenomenon. Trump actually embodies many of the leadership qualities that cause people to succeed—albeit they are pretty much the opposite of what leadership experts tout. Here are a few examples.

    Donald Trump puts his name on everything, including his buildings, and touts his success at every opportunity, behavior that contradicts both the common-sense belief that we prefer people who don’t self-promote and research that best-selling author Jim Collins published in Good to Great. Collins noted that the most successful companies were run by so-called “Level 5 leaders,” who had both fierce resolve but were modest and self-effacing. What gives?

    Numerous studies show that narcissism, not modesty, and self-confident, even overconfident, self-presentation lead to leadership roles. This is partly because to be selected, you first need to be noticed. There is also the “mere exposure” effect. We prefer what feels familiar to us, and after endless repetitions of the name “Trump,” it certainly feels familiar. And even though we say we want people who don’t self-aggrandize, we secretly like the confident, overbearing people because they provide us with confidence—emotions are contagious—and also present themselves like winners. We all want to associate with success and pick those who seemingly know what they are doing.

    Trump also takes liberties with the facts. No, he did not write the best-selling business book of all time, as he claimed. And some aspects of his business acumen and success are clearly exaggerated—after all, Trump-named casinos went into bankruptcy. No matter. Telling the truth is an overrated quality for leaders. Leaders lie with more frequency and skill than others. Some of the most revered and wealthiest people mastered the skill of presenting a less than veridical version of reality. Larry Ellison, like many people working in software, exaggerated the availability and features of products. And then there’s Steve Jobs. The phrase “reality distortion field” says a lot about Jobs’ fabulous ability to make things that weren’t true become true through his assertions of their truthfulness, a widely known process called the self-fulfilling prophecy.

    And it’s not just Trump. Carly Fiorina exemplifies another trait I see among the most successful—not admitting to setbacks and presenting a positive spin on every aspect of one’s career. Watching her you wouldn’t know that she was forced out of her CEO job at Hewlett-Packard; presided over HP’s acquisition of Compaq, thereby cementing the company’s leadership position in a dying, low-margin business that is now being spun off; and orchestrated the layoffs of tens of thousands of employees. Accounts repeated often enough become taken as truth. And in any event, leaders will get enough criticism and second-guessing without doing it to themselves.

    Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s recent call for servant leaders is well intentioned. But at a time when CEO salaries have soared to more than 300 times that of their companies’ average employees, there’s not too much servant leadership going on.

    Why is there such a disconnect between prescriptions for what people should do and what really produces career success? Sociobiology and social psychology have recognized for decades that what is good for the individual is not necessarily what is good for the group, and vice versa. Group and individual success are not highly related. Case in point: Fiorina left HP with an enormous severance package when she was ousted, but no, the company’s stock price didn’t flourish nor did the thousands laid off by her and, for that matter, by her successors.

    Another piece of the puzzle: most leadership talks, books, and blogs describe aspirational qualities we wish our leaders possessed. So we tell stories about unique, heroic, unusual people and situations—not quite realizing that the very uniqueness probably makes such tales, even if they are true (and they are often not), a poor guide for coping with the world as it exists.

    My recommendation? First, understand the social science that speaks to the qualities that make people successful, at least by some definitions: the economic penalties, particularly for men, from being too nice; research that shows that lying in everyday life is both common and mostly not sanctioned; and the evidence that narcissistic leaders in Silicon Valley earn more money and remain longer in their CEO roles. The only way to change the world is by first understanding how it really works.

    And second, we should take a hard look at our own behavior; how we are complicit in producing leaders of precisely the type we say we don’t want. It is only when we stop making excuses for what Claremont business professor Jean Lipman-Blumen has appropriately called “toxic leaders” that things will change.

    In the meantime, my prediction: Donald Trump is going to dominate the polls and the nomination contest a lot longer than most people expect. Because he has many of the leadership characteristics we say we abhor even as we reward them.

    Jeffrey Pfeffer is the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. His latest book, Leadership B.S.: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time will be published in September 2015 by HarperCollins.