领导应该中止休假,回来处理应急事件吗?
克拉克:领导度假期间突发紧急事件,应该怎样处理?伊朗危机和澳大利亚森林大火提供了一些教训。
Last week I arrived at work to find a dispiriting pile of advice had accumulated in my inbox over the new year break on how to be a great leader. 6park.com 新年假期后我刚上班就发现,在假期期间,我的收件箱里关于如何当个好领导的各种建议堆积如山,令人头大。 6park.comThe list was long and familiar. Be authentic. Inspire purpose. Embrace uncertainty. None of it mentioned one bit of advice that the past few weeks have shown all sorts of leaders could use: when to cut short a holiday and get back to work. 6park.com这个清单很长,但没什么新意:要真诚;要让下属觉得工作有意义;要拥抱不确定性。过去几周的事件表明了一条任何领导都能采用的建议,但没有哪封信提到它:什么时候应该中止假期,回来工作。 6park.comThis is a tricky thing to navigate in an age of work-life balance, when the boss is supposed to set an unplugged, logged-off example to underlings. Yet the crisis in Iran and the Australian bushfires have offered an unhappy set of lessons about what not to do. 6park.com在强调工作与生活的平衡、老板应该为下属做出“彻底关机”榜样的时代,这是一个棘手问题。然而,伊朗危机和澳大利亚森林大火提供了一些不愉快的教训,告诉我们哪些处理方式是不行的。
The first is simple: when disaster hits, don’t just sit there and say nothing. Only the churlish would have begrudged Boris Johnson a holiday after a hectic year of Brexit and electioneering. 6park.com 第一条很简单:当灾难发生时,不要无动于衷、一言不发。在退欧与大选的繁忙之年结束后,只有刻薄鬼才会对鲍里斯?约翰逊(Boris Johnson)去休假感到不满。 6park.comAnd when the British prime minister flew to the Caribbean island of Mustique for a New Year break, no one knew the US was about to assassinate an Iranian commander in Iraq, where hundreds of UK troops are stationed. But his silence in the immediate aftermath of the January 3 attack was odd and self-defeating. 6park.com当这位英国首相飞到加勒比的马斯蒂克岛度新年假时,没人想到美国正计划在伊拉克(有数百名英国军人驻扎于此)刺杀一名伊朗将军。但他在1月3日的袭击后没有立即发声,显得既奇怪又有损形象。 6park.comHe could have forestalled at least some of the predictable criticism lobbed at him for being away if he had said something, anything, faster. 6park.com假如他尽快发布声明——不论说什么都行,那么他就可以堵住一些可以预期的、指责他置身事外的批评。
Better yet, he could have done what Google boss, Sundar Pichai, did in 2017 when one of his employees wrote an inflammatory memo blasting the company’s diversity policies. Mr Pichai had just started a summer family holiday when the flap erupted but immediately returned to work to deal with it. The employee was quickly fired. 6park.com 如果他可以学习谷歌(Google)老板桑达尔?皮查伊(Sundar Pichai)在2017年的处理方式,那就更好了。当年他的一名雇员写了一份煽动性的备忘录,抨击谷歌的多元化政策。事件爆发时,皮查伊刚开始他的夏季家庭度假,但他立即返回公司处理此事。该雇员很快就被解雇了。 6park.comThe Google row was trivial compared with what is happening in the Middle East but the lesson still applies: no boss ever loses by cutting short a holiday to manage problems in the office. 6park.com这场谷歌风波相比于中东局势显得微不足道,但是道理是相通的:老板暂停假期回到办公室处理问题,是绝不会有损失的。 6park.comThat rule should be even more obvious when it is your job to deal with the problem. Yet David Elliott shows it is not. Mr Elliott was in the army before he became emergency services minister last year in the Australian state of New South Wales and is fond of colourful banter. “I will rip your head off and s— in the hole,” he joked on Facebook last month to a friend whose media coverage had just outshone his own. 6park.com如果你的工作就是处理这类问题,那么这项规则应该就更明显了。然而戴维?埃略特(David Elliott)的表现是一个反例。在去年成为澳大利亚新南威尔士州应急服务部长之前,埃略特在军队任职,而且喜欢开带颜色的玩笑。上个月,他在Facebook上对一名媒体报道比他多的朋友开玩笑说:“我要拧下你的脑袋,对着那个洞拉**(原话为s--- in the hole——译者注)。” 6park.comMr Elliott soon had plenty of headlines himself after inexplicably heading off to Europe on a Christmas holiday as his state was ravaged by horrific bushfires. 6park.com埃略特自己很快就登上了大量头条,因为他所在的州被可怕的森林大火重创,他却令人难以置信地前往欧洲度圣诞假了。 6park.comAs one commentator asked: “What is the point of having an emergency services minister who goes on holidays during a state of emergency?” Mr Elliott abruptly cut short what he admitted had been an “inexcusable” absence and flew home. 6park.com正如一名评论员所问:“如果一名应急服务部长在紧急时期出去度假,那要他有什么用?”埃略特立即中止度假——他承认这是一次“不可原谅的”缺席——并飞回了家。 6park.comYet his effort pales before that of Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, a leader who has comprehensively demonstrated how not to handle a holiday, with or without a crisis. 6park.com然而他的表现在澳大利亚总理斯科特?莫里森(Scott Morrison)面前相形见绌。莫里森完全是个反面教材,全面地展示了处理假期的哪些方式不行——不论有没有危机。
Even the most junior worker understands the importance of leaving an out-of-office message when going on leave so people know who to contact in your absence. When Mr Morrison went on a family holiday to Hawaii last month, no official public notice was issued about the trip. One journalist who asked the deputy prime minister’s office who was in charge was referred back to the prime minister’s office, which later suggested that rumours Mr Morrison was holidaying in Hawaii were incorrect. As it turned out he was, until he too was forced to make a humiliating retreat home as the bushfire death toll mounted. 6park.com 连最初级的职员也明白,在休假时留一份外出提示很重要,这样人们才知道当你不在时应该联系谁。当莫里森上周前往夏威夷度家庭假时,没有发布任何关于该旅行的官方公开通知。一名记者曾向副总理办公室询问是谁在主事,得到的回复是请联系总理办公室。总理办公室后来表示,莫里森在夏威夷度假的消息是不实谣言。事实证明,他确实在度假。直到森林大火导致的死亡人数持续上升,他才不得不同样灰溜溜地撤退回家。 6park.comYet that was not the end of it. Another leader might have made a contrite apology at such a time and left it at that. Mr Morrison did express regret but he also tried to defend his absence with the memorable observation that Australians understood he was not personally needed to put out the flames. 6park.com然而,这还没完。其他领导人在这种情况下,也许会做出懊悔的道歉,然后不再多加解释。莫里森确实表示了后悔,但他还试图为自己的缺席辩护,说出了一番令人难忘的言论:澳大利亚人能够理解,扑灭森林大火并不需要他本人在场。 6park.com“They know that, you know, I don’t hold a hose, mate, and I don’t sit in a control room,” he told a radio interviewer. “The brave people who do that are doing that job.” 6park.com“他们明白,呃,我并不用抓着灭火水管,老弟,而且我也不用坐在控制室里,”他对一名电台记者说,“负责这些事情的勇敢的人们都在尽职工作。” 6park.comIt was a final, unfortunate reminder that there are times when one learns a lot more about one’s leader when they are away from their desk, not behind it. 6park.com这是一条终极而不幸的提醒:有时候,当领导离开办公桌而不是坐在办公桌后时,人们能对这位领导有更多了解。
|