The secret to great opportunities? The person you haven't met yet | Tanya Menon

I started teaching MBA students

翻译人员: Yiran Wang 校对人员: Lingbo Yang

17年前我开始教授

17 years ago.

MBA课程

Sometimes I run into my students years later.

有时会在几年之后 碰到以前教过的学生

And when I run into them, a funny thing happens.

当我遇见他们时 有个很有意思的现象

I don't remember just their faces;

我不仅记得他们的脸

I also remember where exactly in the classroom they were sitting.

也记得他们坐在 教室的哪个位置

And I remember who they were sitting with as well.

和谁坐在一起

This is not because I have any special superpowers of memory.

这不是因为我有什么 记忆超能力

The reason I can remember them

我之所以能记得学生们

is because they are creatures of habit.

是因为他们都是 跟着习惯走的人

They are sitting with their favorite people in their favorite seats.

总会与最喜欢的人 坐在最喜欢的位子

They find their twins, they stay with them for the whole year.

他们会找一个形影不离的伙伴 然后一整年都和他待在一起

Now, the danger of this for my students is they're at risk

他们这样做是有风险的 当学生们离开大学步入社会

of leaving the university with just a few people

他们很可能只认识很少的人

who are exactly like them.

并且还与他们很像

They're going to squander their chance for an international, diverse network.

他们会浪费掉接触国际化 多样化关系网的机会

How could this happen to them?

这是如何发生的呢

My students are open-minded.

我的学生们思想开放

They come to business school precisely so that they can get great networks.

他们来到商学院正 是为了扩大社交圈子

Now, all of us socially narrow in our lives, in our school, in work,

我们所有人的社交圈都很有限 在生活 学校 工作中都是如此

and so I want you to think about this one.

因此我希望大家可以 思考一下这个问题

How many of you here brought a friend along for this talk?

你们当中有多少人 带了朋友来听讲座

I want you to look at your friend a little bit.

我希望你看看自己身边的朋友

Are they of the same nationality as you?

他们与你是否国籍相同

Are they of the same gender as you?

是否性别相同

与你的种族是否一样

Are they of the same race?

Really look at them closely.

仔细好好看看他们

Don't they kind of look like you as well?

他们是不是也有点像你自己

(Laughter)

（笑声）

The muscle people are together,

身强体壮的在一起

and the people with the same hairstyles

发型相似的人在一起

and the checked shirts.

穿着差不多衬衫的人在一起

We all do this in life.

在生活中 我们都会如此

We all do it in life, and in fact, there's nothing wrong with this.

实际上这样做并没有什么错

It makes us comfortable to be around people who are similar.

与自己相似的人在一起 让我们感到自在

The problem is when we're on a precipice, right?

问题是当我们遇到困难时该怎么办

When we're in trouble, when we need new ideas,

当我们遇到麻烦 需要新的想法

when we need new jobs, when we need new resources --

想换个新工作 或是需要新的资源

this is when we really pay a price for living in a clique.

这就是我们为小圈子生活 付出代价的时候

Mark Granovetter, the sociologist, had a famous paper

社会学家马克·格拉诺维特 有一篇著名论文

叫做《弱关系的力量》

"The Strength of Weak Ties,"

and what he did in this paper is he asked people

他在这篇论文中询问人们

how they got their jobs.

是如何找到工作的

And what he learned was that most people don't get their jobs

他从中了解到 大多数人得到工作

through their strong ties -- their father, their mother, their significant other.

并不是通过关系紧密的人 例如父亲 母亲或伴侣

They instead get jobs through weak ties, people who they just met.

相反 他们会通过那些刚认识的人 关系不紧密的人获得工作

So if you think about what the problem is with your strong ties,

因此 思考一下你和 身边最重要的人

think about your significant other, for example.

比如你的伴侣 之间出了什么问题

The network is redundant.

这种人际网是多余的

Everybody that they know, you know.

他们认识的每个人你也都认识

Or I hope you know them. Right?

我希望你也认识他们

与你关系不紧密的人 你今天刚见过的人

Your weak ties -- people you just met today --

they are your ticket to a whole new social world.

他们才是你打开 社交大门的通行证

The thing is that we have this amazing ticket to travel our social worlds,

事实上 我们都拥有这张通行证

but we don't use it very well.

但是并没有善加利用

Sometimes we stay awfully close to home.

有时候 我们和家庭成员异常亲近

And today, what I want to talk about is:

现在 我想要说的是

What are those habits that keep human beings so close to home,

那些让人类如此恋家的习惯是什么

and how can we be a little bit more intentional

我们如何能更积极地

about traveling our social universe?

对待扩大社交圈子这件事

So let's look at the first strategy.

我们先来看第一条策略

The first strategy is to use a more imperfect social search engine.

第一条是说 要使用不完美的社交搜索引擎

What I mean by a social search engine

这里的社交搜索引擎

is how you are finding and filtering your friends.

指的是你如何找到和筛选你的朋友

And so people always tell me,

因此人们经常跟我说

"I want to get lucky through the network.

我想要通过社交获得好运

I want to get a new job. I want to get a great opportunity."

我想要一个新工作 我想要获得很棒的机会

我会说 这是很困难的

And I say, "Well, that's really hard,

because your networks are so fundamentally predictable."

因为你的社交圈子 根本上来讲是可预测的

Map out your habitual daily footpath,

详细列出你一天生活的轨迹

and what you'll probably discover is that you start at home,

你很可能发现每天从家里出发

you go to your school or your workplace,

去学校或者去工作

you maybe go up the same staircase or elevator,

你可能走同样的楼梯或电梯

you go to the bathroom -- the same bathroom --

你去同样的洗手间

and the same stall in that bathroom,

同一个洗手间位置相同的隔间

最后你会去健身房

you end up in the gym,

then you come right back home.

之后回到家里

It's like stops on a train schedule.

这就像是列车停靠的站点一样

It's that predictable.

完全可以预测

It's efficient, but the problem is, you're seeing exactly the same people.

它很高效 但问题是 你见到的都是相同的人

Make your network slightly more inefficient.

让你的人际网络不太高效

Go to a bathroom on a different floor.

去另一层楼的洗手间

You encounter a whole new network of people.

你会遇到从来没遇到的人

The other side of it is how we are actually filtering.

另一方面 我们实际上也在进行筛选

And we do this automatically.

我们自动进行筛选

我们在见到某人时 会先打量一番

The minute we meet someone, we are looking at them, we meet them,

we are initially seeing,

通过第一眼观察

"You're interesting."

便会判断 这人很有趣

"You're not interesting." "You're relevant."

这人很无聊 这人用得着

We do this automatically. We can't even help it.

我们会自动开始筛选 根本无法控制

And what I want to encourage you to do instead is to fight your filters.

我鼓励大家对抗这种筛选机制

I want you to take a look around this room,

我希望你环视这间屋子

and I want you to identify the least interesting person that you see,

找出你看到的最无趣的人

and I want you to connect with them over the next coffee break.

然后在下一次茶歇时 和他认识一下

And I want you to go even further than that.

我希望你更进一步

What I want you to do is find the most irritating person you see as well

找到那个让你看上去觉得 最招人讨厌的人

and connect with them.

跟他认识一下

What you are doing with this exercise is you are forcing yourself

这项练习是强迫你自己

to see what you don't want to see,

去观察那些你不想看到的

to connect with who you don't want to connect with,

去认识那些你不想认识的人

to widen your social world.

这样就扩宽了你的社交圈

To truly widen, what we have to do is,

如果想要真正地扩大你的圈子

we've got to fight our sense of choice.

我们需要对抗我们的感觉

We've got to fight our choices.

对抗让你做出选择的感觉

And my students hate this, but you know what I do?

我的学生都很讨厌这样做 但你知道我是怎么做的么

I won't let them sit in their favorite seats.

我不让他们坐在自己喜欢的座位上

我让他们换其他位置坐

I move them around from seat to seat.

我迫使他们和不同的人一起

I force them to work with different people

so there are more accidental bumps in the network

因此在社交圈中就出现了 更多意外的碰撞

where people get a chance to connect with each other.

通过这些碰撞 人们有机会认识彼此

And we studied exactly this kind of an intervention at Harvard University.

我们在哈佛大学 对这种干预方法进行了研究

At Harvard, when you look at the rooming groups,

在哈佛 你观察室友群体时

there's freshman rooming groups, people are not choosing those roommates.

大一新生并不选择自己的室友

They're of all different races, all different ethnicities.

他们来自不同种族 不同民族

Maybe people are initially uncomfortable with those roommates,

也许人们一开始会感觉不自在

但令人惊讶的是

but the amazing thing is,

at the end of a year with those students,

一年之后

they're able to overcome that initial discomfort.

同学们能够克服一开始的不适

他们能够发现和其他人 深层次的共同点

They're able to find deep-level commonalities with people.

So the takeaway here is not just "take someone out to coffee."

这里的关键不只是 带某人去喝咖啡

It's a little more subtle.

而是更微妙的东西

It's "go to the coffee room."

是 去咖啡厅

When researchers talk about social hubs,

研究者谈论社交中心时认为

what makes a social hub so special is you can't choose;

社交中心的特殊之处 在于你无法选择

you can't predict who you're going to meet in that place.

你不能预测你会在那儿遇到谁

And so with these social hubs, the paradox is, interestingly enough,

在这里 一个有趣的悖论是

要想达到随机性

to get randomness,

it requires, actually, some planning.

实际上需要一些规划

In one university that I worked at,

在我曾经工作的一所大学中

there was a mail room on every single floor.

每一层楼都有一间收发室

What that meant is that the only people who would bump into each other

这意味着 在那里遇到的人

are those who are actually on that floor

都工作在同一楼层

他们通过其他方式也总能遇到

and who are bumping into each other anyway.

在另一所我曾工作的大学中 只有一件收发室

At another university I worked at, there was only one mail room,

so all the faculty from all over that building

因此全楼的教职工

would run into each other in that social hub.

都会在这个小中心遇到彼此

A simple change in planning,

只是在规划上做一个小的改变

a huge difference in the traffic of people

就会带来人员流动的巨大差异

and the accidental bumps in the network.

也会产生社交圈中意外的碰撞

Here's my question for you:

问大家一个问题

What are you doing that breaks you from your social habits?

为了改掉社交习惯 你做了哪些事情

Where do you find yourself

你会去哪些地方

in places where you get injections of unpredictable diversity?

与各种各样的人不期而遇

And my students give me some wonderful examples.

我的学生给出了一些很棒的示范

They tell me when they're doing pickup basketball games,

他们会去篮球场 与陌生人打篮球

or my favorite example is when they go to a dog park.

我很喜欢的一个想法是 一些学生会去小狗公园

They tell me it's even better than online dating when they're there.

这些学生表示这比网上约会更好

So the real thing that I want you to think about

因此 我需要你们思考的是

is we've got to fight our filters.

我们需要对抗自己的筛选机制

We've got to make ourselves a little more inefficient,

我们需要让自己更低效一些

and by doing so, we are creating a more imprecise social search engine.

这样就产生了 一个更不精确的社交搜索引擎

And you're creating that randomness,

你们就创造出了随机性

还有那些好运气 在结识更多人的过程中

that luck that is going to cause you to widen your travels,

through your social universe.

帮助你扩宽社交圈

But in fact, there's more to it than that.

而事实还不仅如此

Sometimes we actually buy ourselves a second-class ticket

有时候我们会在结识他人的过程中

给自己一些不利条件

to travel our social universe.

We are not courageous when we reach out to people.

我们不够勇敢去主动认识他人

Let me give you an example of that.

我来给大家举一个例子

A few years ago, I had a very eventful year.

几年前的一个多事之秋

That year, I managed to lose a job,

我辞掉了工作

I managed to get a dream job overseas and accept it,

接受了一个梦寐以求的海外工作

I had a baby the next month,

下一个月我怀孕了

I got very sick,

我非常虚弱

I was unable to take the dream job.

无法从事那项工作

And so in a few weeks, what ended up happening was,

结果就是 在几周之后

I lost my identity as a faculty member,

我教师的身份没有了

and I got a very stressful new identity as a mother.

新的身份是一个充满压力的母亲

What I also got was tons of advice from people.

我从其他人那里获得了很多建议

And the advice I despised more than any other advice was,

在这些建议中 我最鄙视的一条就是

"You've got to go network with everybody."

你得去和每个人打打交道

When your psychological world is breaking down,

当你的内心世界濒临崩塌

the hardest thing to do is to try and reach out

最困难的事情就是尝试

and build up your social world.

主动建立自己的社交圈

And so we studied exactly this idea on a much larger scale.

因此我们在更大范围 上研究了这个观点

What we did was we looked at high and low socioeconomic status people,

我们观察了社会经济地位高 和地位低的两组人

and we looked at them in two situations.

将其置于两种情况

We looked at them first in a baseline condition,

我们先以基准情况进行观察

when they were quite comfortable.

他们表现都十分自如

And what we found was that our lower socioeconomic status people,

之后我们发现 社会经济地位低的人们

when they were comfortable, were actually reaching out to more people.

会在主动接触更多人的 时候感到更加自如

他们希望认识更多人

They thought of more people.

They were also less constrained in how they were networking.

相比于社会经济地位更高的人群

地位低的人在结交朋友时也更放得开

They were thinking of more diverse people

than the higher-status people.

想要接触更多样化的人群

然后我们让他们考虑失去工作

Then we asked them to think about maybe losing a job.

We threatened them.

以此作为一种威慑

And once they thought about that,

当他们一旦开始思考这一点

the networks they generated completely differed.

他们构建的社交网变得完全不同

The lower socioeconomic status people reached inwards.

社会经济地位低的人不再接触外界

They thought of fewer people.

他们会考虑到更少的人

They thought of less-diverse people.

多元化程度也降低

The higher socioeconomic status people thought of more people,

社会经济地位高的人 会考虑到更多的人

they thought of a broader network,

和更宽的社交圈

they were positioning themselves to bounce back from that setback.

他们会认定自己会 不惧困难 重新振作

Let's consider what this actually means.

我们思考一下这意味着什么

Imagine that you were being spontaneously unfriended

设想你的社交圈里所有人都与你

by everyone in your network

解除好友关系

other than your mom, your dad and your dog.

除了你的爸爸妈妈和你家的狗

（笑声）

(Laughter)

This is essentially what we are doing

这本质上就是我们正在做的事情

at these moments when we need our networks the most.

在我们最需要朋友的时刻

Imagine -- this is what we're doing. We're doing it to ourselves.

想象一下 这就是我们正在对自己做的事

We are mentally compressing our networks

我们在精神上压制自己的关系网

when we are being harassed, when we are being bullied,

当我们受到侵犯时 当我们被欺负时

when we are threatened about losing a job,

当我们被威胁失去工作时

when we feel down and weak.

当我们感觉低落和脆弱时

We are closing ourselves off, isolating ourselves,

我们封闭了自己 隔离了自己

creating a blind spot where we actually don't see our resources.

产生了一个盲点 令我们看不到自己拥有的资源

We don't see our allies, we don't see our opportunities.

我们看不到自己的盟友 看不到自己机会

How can we overcome this?

我们应该如何克服这一点呢

Two simple strategies.

有两条简单的方法

One strategy is simply to look at your list of Facebook friends

第一条很简单

and LinkedIn friends

查看你的脸书和领英网好友

just so you remind yourself of people who are there

提醒自己有哪些人在联系人列表里

beyond those that automatically come to mind.

而你却没想起来

And in our own research, one of the things we did was,

在我们自己进行的研究中

我们参照了克劳德·斯蒂尔 在自我肯定方面的研究

we considered Claude Steele's research on self-affirmation:

simply thinking about your own values,

即 从优势角度思考 你自己的价值关系网

networking from a place of strength.

你自己的价值关系网

What Leigh Thompson, Hoon-Seok Choi and I were able to do is,

雷恩·汤普森 崔洪熙和我发现

那些能够先肯定自我的人们

we found that people who had affirmed themselves first

were able to take advice from people

可以接受来自他人的建议

who would otherwise be threatening to them.

而不是把他们当做威胁

Here's a last exercise.

下面我们进行最后一个小练习

I want you to look in your email in-box,

我希望你们看看自己的电邮收件箱

and I want you to look at the last time you asked somebody for a favor.

看看最后一次你向他人 寻求帮助的时候

And I want you to look at the language that you used.

看一下你的措辞

Did you say things like,

你是不是提到

"Oh, you're a great resource,"

你真是太重要了

or "I owe you one,"

我欠你一个人情

"I'm obligated to you."

我对您感激不尽

All of this language represents a metaphor.

这些话语都代表了一种寓意

It's a metaphor of economics,

是一种经济学的说法

of a balance sheet, of accounting,

像会计学里面的收支平衡表

of transactions.

是一种交易

And when we think about human relations in a transactional way,

当我们以交易的角度思考人类关系

it is fundamentally uncomfortable to us as human beings.

作为人类的我们会感到很不舒服

We must think about human relations and reaching out to people

我们必须用一种更人性的方式

去思考人类关系和与他人交往

in more humane ways.

Here's an idea as to how to do so.

给大家提供一个解决方法

Look at words like "please," "thank you," "you're welcome" in other languages.

观察其他语言中 请 谢谢 不客气 等等词汇

Look at the literal translation of these words.

是如何表达的

Each of these words is a word that helps us impose upon other people

这几个词都帮助我们在关系网中

in our social networks.

让别人接受我们

And so, the word "thank you,"

因此 谢谢 这个词

if you look at it in Spanish, Italian, French,

在西班牙语 意大利语 法语中分别是

"gracias," "grazie," "merci" in French.

gracias grazie merci

Each of them are "grace" and "mercy."

它们都含有grace(优雅)和mercy(仁慈)

They are godly words.

它们都是神圣的单词

There's nothing economic or transactional about those words.

这些话语中没有经济交易的含义

The word "you're welcome" is interesting.

不客气 这个词则很有趣

The great persuasion theorist Robert Cialdini says

伟大的说服理论学家 罗伯特·科拉迪尼说

we've got to get our favors back.

我们需要别人能对我们的帮助以回报

So we need to emphasize the transaction a little bit more.

因此我们会稍微带上一点交易色彩

He says, "Let's not say 'You're welcome.'

他表示 我们不要说 不客气

Instead say, 'I know you'd do the same for me.'"

改成说 我知道你也会这样对我的

But sometimes it may be helpful to not think in transactional ways,

但有时候 也许不从交易角度思考

to eliminate the transaction, to make it a little bit more invisible.

把交易的意味冲淡一些 会更有帮助

And in fact, if you look in Chinese,

事实上 如果参考中文

the word "bú kè qì" in Chinese, "You're welcome," means,

You're welcome 是不客气

"Don't be formal; we're family. We don't need to go through those formalities."

意思是 我们都是自家人 用不着客套

And "kembali" in Indonesian is "Come back to me."

在印度尼西亚语中 不客气是kembali 意思是再来找我

When you say "You're welcome" next time,

当你下次说 You're welcome 时

think about how you can maybe eliminate the transaction

思考一下如何能够 消除这种交易的感觉

and instead strengthen that social tie.

从而设法加强社交联系

Maybe "It's great to collaborate," or "That's what friends are for."

也许换成 与你合作很愉快 这就是朋友应该做的 会更好

I want you to think about how you think about this ticket that you have

我还希望大家可以思考一下你拥有的

to travel your social universe.

打开人际网络大门的钥匙

Here's one metaphor.

有一个比喻

It's a common metaphor: "Life is a journey." Right?

它很普通 说的是 生活就是一次旅行

It's a train ride,

它是一次火车之旅

and you're a passenger on the train,

如果你是列车上的乘客

and there are certain people with you.

身边会有一些特定的人

Certain people get on this train,

有些人会乘坐这趟列车

and some stay with you, some leave at different stops,

有些人会陪着你 有些人会在不同的车站离开

new ones may enter.

新的人又会上车

I love this metaphor, it's a beautiful one.

我喜爱这个比喻 它很美

But I want you to consider a different metaphor.

但是我希望你能思考另一个比喻

This one is passive, being a passenger on that train,

因为这个比喻太被动了 作为列车的乘客

and it's quite linear.

你的轨迹太单调了

You're off to some particular destination.

你总会在某个特定地点下车

Why not instead think of yourself

为什么不把自己想成是

as an atom,

一个原子

在社交的宇宙中

bumping up against other atoms,

maybe transferring energy with them,

与其他原子碰撞

bonding with them a little

也许与他们传递能量

and maybe creating something new

与他们建立亲密联系

on your travels through the social universe.

甚至创造出新的东西

Thank you so much.

非常感谢

And I hope we bump into each other again.

我希望我们能够再次见到彼此

(Applause)