假如他的长期目标只是继续目前的工作。那就找出他内心的真实想法。雷诺兹称自己曾有一位客户，她的上司抱怨她是一个傲慢自大、自诩为万事通的团队领导人，与你的那位下属一样。雷诺兹说道：“我问她为什么对团队其他人有如此高的优越感，她回答说，因为其他人都不像她那样关心能否实现卓越。但她也表示，自己之所以重视当前的职位，一个重要原因是，成为其他人眼中优秀的团队领导者，对她具有重要意义。”

    雷诺兹让她相信，她在别人眼中并不是优秀的领导者，因为“优秀的领导者善于倾听。当她开始真心倾听其他人的意见时，她才发现，其他团队成员根本不是她想象的那么愚蠢。当然，她之所以能够改变自己的行为，唯一的原因是这符合她自己的需要，与其他人的需求无关。”

    只要提出足够多的合适问题，你或许会得到惊喜。例如，你可能会发现，这个人根本不愿意领导一支团队。雷诺兹表示：“或许，他认为领导团队拖累了自己。或许他之所以对其他人的建议缺乏耐心，是因为自己不得不考虑这些建议，而这给他造成了干扰。如果是这样，让他单枪匹马才是合理的决定，将他的那些了不起的想法交给其他人来执行。”

    当然，在询问前谁也不知道会得到怎样的答案。雷诺兹说道：“只有在人们真正想改变的时候，他们才会做出改变。而实现他们自己的目标——而不是你的目标——永远是最好的理由。”所以，她补充道，弄清他的目标是“一种常识”，但“它并不是人们的习惯做法。”祝你好运。

    反馈：你是否曾说服同事改变自己的行为？哪些方法有效（或无效）？欢迎评论。（财富中文网）

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓

    Suppose his long-term goal is simply to keep doing what he’s doing. Find out why. Reynolds says she coached one client whose boss complained she was an arrogant know-it-all team leader like yours. “When I asked her why she was so condescending toward everyone else on the team, she said that no one else cared about excellence as much as she did,” Reynolds says. “However, she also said that a big reason why she valued her role was that it was very important to her to be seen as a good team leader.”

    Reynolds convinced her she wasn’t seen that way, because “good leaders listen. Once she started working on listening to other people, she realized they weren’t so dumb after all. But the change in her behavior came about only because it served her own purposes, not someone else’s.”

    Ask enough of the right questions, and you could get a surprise. You might discover, for instance, that this person would rather not be leading a team at all. “Maybe he sees working with a team as just slowing him down. Maybe he’s impatient with others’ suggestions because it annoys him to have to consider them,” says Reynolds. “If so, it could make a lot more sense to let him work alone, and let other people implement his great ideas.”

    But you’ll never know unless you ask. “People don’t change unless they really want to, and achieving their own goals—not yours—is always the best reason,” Reynolds says. So finding out what those goals are is “common sense,” she adds. “But it isn’t common practice.” Good luck.

    Talkback: Have you ever persuaded a colleague to change his or behavior? What worked (or didn’t)? Leave a comment below.