人际智商决定职业生涯

    个性在某些方面就像一个管弦乐队。正如一个管弦乐队拥有打击、弦乐、木管、铜管和键盘等乐器，以及指挥一样，个性有其动机和情绪，知识和智能，对行动的规划和自我管理。个性演奏着我们的生活乐章。

    我跟耶鲁大学(Yale University)的大卫•卡鲁索和北卡罗莱纳大学( University of North Carolina)的阿比盖尔•潘特一起观察人们理解个性的能力是否始终如一地呈现多样化。我们测试了人们在12个与个性有关的领域（或更多，这取决于研究阶段）解决问题的能力。我们在每一个研究中都发现，擅长解决某一领域问题的人也擅长解决其他大多数领域的问题。例如，一位懂得爱说话与精力充沛往往相依相伴的测试对象也更擅长发现存在问题的目标——比如“永远讲真话”，因为这个目标可能会导致一些不得体或以其他方式造成伤害的言论，具体取决于一个人对真相的认知(personal truths)。那些在某一特定领域的推理能力差强人意的人士，往往也不擅长分析所有其他领域的问题。它表明，人们理解个性的知识能力存在很大差异，一些人在这方面的能力高于其他人。

    现在，让我们回过头来谈谈那位难以想象自己对其他人造成的影响的工程师，以及那位厌倦板凳科学的化学师。

    熟悉那位工程师的人都明白，他并没有意识到他的选择引发了其他人的猜疑——他无意妨碍别人，也根本不明白在这件原本很容易解决的人际关系问题上，他已经打乱了其他人的生活。

    让熟悉那位化学师的人们非常高兴的是，她终于意识到，当一个板凳科学家并不是她的人生使命，但出于为她着想起见，他们真希望她能够在职业生涯的早期就意识到这一点。

    一旦我们认识到，人们理解个性的能力存在显著差异，我们就可以采用一种新视角来解读下面这种现象：有些同事表现得非常出色，而其他同事却时常做出次优选择，他们的行为总是适得其反。仅仅知道这一点就可以帮助我们应对他们的缺点，同时理解他们可能面对的挑战。

    企业领导者和人力资源教育者也可以采用一些方式来增强员工对个性的理解：

    1. 我们可以制定培训项目，向人们传授涉及人的个性和我们如何看待彼此的知识。这些项目可以包括对个性线索，个性特征及其影响，人们如何设定合理与有问题的个人目标等问题的概述。一些依托于学校开展的社交和情绪学习课程（这些课程经常包括与个性相关的信息）的研究表明，相对于没有学过这些科目的学生，那些有机会学习的学生往往会表现出行为上的优势。旨在向成年受众传授个性知识的培训项目或许也可以产生类似的积极作用。

    2. 我们可以让员工接受有效的人机智商心理测试，比如我正在与卡鲁索和潘特开发的“人际智商测试”(TOPI)。这些尺度使得人们用来理解个性的推理类型变得明确可见，有助于确认在这方面表现强势的人士。无法使用这类尺度之前，我们可以暂且使用那些测量情商的有效工具。研究心理测试的心理学家们现在已经发现，光是接受测试就能带来一定的好处：平均而言，如果一个人接受优秀的心理测试，得分获得周到的解释，他或她的幸福感往往会得到提升。

    3.我们或许可以重构聘请专家帮助那位化学师这类人力资源活动，转而致力于解决与个性有关的问题。理解个性的规律是一项并非每个人都具备、但人人都需要的技能，需要时寻求这方面的帮助合情合理。

    Personality is in some ways like an orchestra. Just as an orchestra has its percussion section, strings, woodwinds, brasses, keyboards, and a conductor, personality has its motives and emotions, knowledge and intelligence, plans for action, and self-management. Personality performs the music of our lives.

    I joined with David R. Caruso of Yale University and Abigail T. Panter of the University of North Carolina to see if people varied consistently in their ability to understand personality. We tested people's problem-solving about personality in 12 areas (or more, depending upon the research phase). In each study, we found that people who were good at problem-solving in one area were good at problem-solving in most of the others. For example, a test taker who understood that talkativeness and high energy-level often go to together was also better at identifying problematic goals such as "always telling the truth" -- which can lead to tactless or otherwise hurtful remarks, depending upon one's personal truths. Those who reasoned poorly in a specific area tended to be less good in all the other areas. This suggested that people possess a broad intellectual capacity to understand personality -- and that some people are better at it than others.

    Now, consider that engineer who had trouble imagining his impact on other people and the chemist who had tired of bench science.

    Those who knew the engineer understood that he was unaware of how dubious his choices seemed to others -- he hadn't intended to disturb others and simply didn't appreciate the disruption in their lives he had caused over what might otherwise have been a readily solved personnel issue.

    Those who knew the chemist were delighted she finally realized that being a bench scientist was not her calling, but wished for her sake she had realized it earlier in her career.

    Once we recognize that people vary dramatically in their abilities to understand personality, we have a new explanation of why some of our colleagues do so well, whereas others make sub-optimal choices and behave in counterproductive ways. Just knowing that can help us deal with their shortcomings and understand the challenges they may face.

    There are also ways for business leaders and HR educators to foster understanding in this area:

    1. We can develop training programs that teach people about personality and how we perceive one another. These programs could include overviews of clues to personality, of personality traits and their implications, and of how people set reasonable vs. problematic personal goals. Research on school-based social and emotional learning programs -- which often include information about personality -- indicates that students who have the opportunity to learn these subjects go on to exhibit behavioral advantages relative to those who don't. Programs aimed to teach personality for an adult audience may well have similar positive effects.

    2. We could provide employees access to valid mental tests of personal intelligence like the Test of Personal Intelligence (TOPI) that I am developing with Caruso and Panter. These scales make tangible the kinds of reasoning that people use to understand personality and help to identify people who are strong performers in the area. Pending the availability of such scales, valid measures of emotional intelligence may serve as a stopgap. Today, psychologists who study psychological testing have found that testing alone confers benefits: People who take a good mental test and receive a thoughtful interpretation of their scores benefit on average in their sense of well-being.

    3. We might reframe the relevant HR activities such as the expert who helped the chemist, as problem-solving about personality. Understanding the rules of personality is a skill set not everyone has -- or needs to have -- and it's reasonable for people to seek help in this area when they need it.