说得好。乔尔•加芬克尔写过一本有趣的书《领先之道：三步提升职业发展》（Getting Ahead: Three Steps to Take Your Career to the Next Level），深入阐释了这一理念。加芬克尔培训过很多公司高管，包括甲骨文公司（Oracle）、Google、亚马逊公司（Amazon）、星巴克（Starbucks）以及其他很多大公司。如果希望在公司内部得到晋升，必须从老板以及同事和下属那里获得诚恳的反馈意见。他说：“人们肯定会对你有一些看法。了解这些看法是很明智的做法。”

    加芬克尔认为，大多数人都不清楚别人究竟是如何看待自己的。加芬克尔表示，来自亚马逊公司的一位客户告诉他：“有位同事说起话来让所有人都昏昏欲睡。这位同事很有才干，但话太密，周围的同事不胜其烦，最终只好让他走人了事。但他永远也不会知道事情的原委，因为没人告诉过他，他也从未问过别人对他的看法。”这个人的职业生涯没什么前途，但他永远也没法知道是为什么。

    请求别人为你提供建设性的批评意见很不容易。加芬克尔称：“你可能担心听到一些不希望听到的话，也可能担心如果你向别人征求意见，对方会觉得你缺乏安全感。”有一种方法很管用，那就是组建非正式的顾问团队，这些顾问都是你信得过的同侪，你相当尊重他们的意见。皮克斯电影公司（Pixar）将其称为“智囊团”。

    加芬克尔说，如果某位导演的电影遇阻，“资深电影厂商会让智囊团介入，评估电影进程，然后花两个小时的时间直言不讳地给出反馈意见。”

    无可否认，这对导演来说无异于一种煎熬。加芬克尔在书中提到，皮克斯电影公司总裁埃德•卡特穆认为：“还有机会弥补的时候就弄清电影的问题所在总比上映后从观众口中听到这些批评要好得多。”

    反馈：你的老板是否定期进行绩效评估？如果你是老板，在业绩评估方面是否有过拖延？原因何在？欢迎留言评论。

    译者：李玫晓/汪皓

    Good point. In an intriguing book, Getting Ahead: Three Steps to Take Your Career to the Next Level, author Joel Garfinkle takes this idea quite a bit further. Garfinkle, who has coached executives at Oracle (ORCL), Google (GOOG), Amazon (AMZN), Starbucks (SBUX), and many other big companies, says that if you want to move up in your company, you need to get honest feedback; not just from your boss, but from peers and subordinates as well. "People do have an opinion about you," he says. "It's wise to know what it is."

    Most of us have only a hazy idea of how others see us, Garfinkle believes. A cautionary tale: A coaching client at Amazon "told me he had a colleague who tended to suck all the oxygen out of the room," Garfinkle says. "This person was brilliant, but he talked way too much and annoyed everyone around him, so people tuned him out. But he never knew this, because nobody told him, and he never asked anyone how he was perceived." The man's career went nowhere, and he never knew why.

    Asking for constructive criticism is hard, Garfinkle acknowledges: "You may worry that you'll hear something you don't want to know, or you may be concerned that, by asking, you'll be seen as insecure." One approach that works is to assemble an informal team of advisors -- trusted peers whose opinions you respect -- that the filmmakers at Pixar call a "brain trust."

    When the director of a movie project hits a snag, Garfinkle explains, "a group of senior filmmakers called a brain trust steps in, evaluates the film in progress, and gives brutally honest feedback for about two hours."

    Admittedly, this sounds like an ordeal for the director. Still, says Pixar's (DIS) president Ed Catmull in Garfinkle's book, "It's far better to learn about problems [with a film] while there's still time to fix them than from the audience after it's too late."

    Talkback: Does your boss give regular performance reviews? If you are a boss, have you ever procrastinated giving them? Why? Leave a comment below.