We tend to romanticize leadership. When friends are promoted to managerial positions, we slap them on the back, tell them that they finally made it, and congratulate them for their hard work. Our reactions are understandable. Occupying a leadership role often comes with more prestige, financial resources, flexibility, and future employment opportunities. We often forget, however, that there is a flipside to this coin — leadership is hard and exhausting work.
我们倾向于将领导力浪漫化。当朋友被提升到管理职位时，我们会拍拍他们的背，告诉他们，终于成功了，并祝贺他们的努力工作。我们的反应是可以理解的。担任领导职务通常会带来更多的声望、财政资源、灵活性和未来的就业机会。然而，我们常常忘记，这枚硬币也有另一面——领导力是一项艰苦而累人的工作。
Leaders have many responsibilities (e.g., budgeting, hiring and firing, paperwork), requiring them to perform diverse tasks and to monitor progress on a multitude of goals. In addition to managing their own performance, leaders are also accountable for their followers’ performance. Employees tend to bring their worries and anxieties to work with them and expect their leaders to manage those too. For example, research suggests that when followers struggle with emotional issues, they approach their leader more often than their coworkers, thinking that it is the leader’s job to help them cope with emotional distress at work. When compounded with getting work done, management of followers’ emotions can exhaust leaders’ own energy, leaving them depleted and unengaged at work. No wonder that survey data suggest that the majority of leaders are exhausted and unengaged at work. For example, in 2017, Gallup reported that only 38% of managers and executives are engaged at work (the number is 29% for middle-level managers). Given these disconcerting numbers, we were interested in developing an intervention that enhances leaders’ engagement at work.
领导有许多责任（例如预算、招聘和解雇、文书工作），要求他们执行不同的任务，并监督各种目标的进展。除了管理自己的表现，领导者还要对下属的表现负责。员工往往会带着他们的担忧和焦虑与他们一起工作，并希望他们的领导也能处理好这些事情。例如，研究表明，当下属有情绪问题时，他们会比同事更频繁地接近他们的领导，认为领导的工作是帮助他们应对工作中的情绪困扰。在完成工作的同时，管理下属的情绪会耗尽他们自己的精力，让他们在工作中精疲力竭、无所事事。因此，调查数据显示，大多数领导人在工作中疲惫不堪、无所事事。例如， Gallup在2017年的报告中指出，只有38%的管理者和高管在工作中投入了精力（中层管理者的比例为29%）。考虑到这些令人不安的数字，我们有兴趣开发一种干预措施，以提高领导者在工作中的参与度。
In a study forthcoming in Journal of Applied Psychology, we draw from positive psychology research to develop and test a short daily intervention that helps leaders remain energized throughout the day at work. Research suggests that leaders’ sense of self is closely tied to their leadership role, and leaders care about being successful in their role. For this reason, we expected that an intervention that asks leaders to reflect upon positive aspects of themselves as leaders may energize them by reversing their depletion and improving their engagement.
在即将发表在《应用心理学杂志》上的一项研究中，我们从积极心理学研究中得出结论，开发并测试一种短期的日常干预措施，帮助领导者在一整天的工作中保持精力充沛。研究表明，领导者的自我意识与他们的领导角色密切相关，领导者关心的是在他们的角色中获得成功。由于这个原因，我们期望一项要求领导者反思自己作为领导者的积极方面的干预，可以通过扭转他们的消耗和改善他们的参与来激励他们。
The intervention is simple. Leaders take a few minutes in the morning to think and write about three things that they like about themselves and that make them a “good leader.” The leaders in our study wrote about personal qualities that they valued (e.g., “I am a good leader because I’m willing to take a stand in the face of injustice”), skills they possessed (e.g., “I am a good leader because I consider others’ opinions”), and achievements they were proud of (“I am a good leader because I helped my team meet deliverables during a crisis”). We ran two studies to investigate whether the intervention helps.
干预很简单。领导者在早上花几分钟的时间思考并写下他们喜欢自己的三件事，这三件事使他们成为“好的领导者”。“领导人在我们的研究中写了个人素质，他们价值（例如,“我是一个优秀的领袖，因为我愿意在面对不公正的时候找到自己的立场”），他们拥有技能（例如，“我是一个好的领导者，因为我考虑别人的意见”），和他们引以为傲的成就（我是一个好的领导者，因为我帮助我的团队满足交付在危机”)。我们进行了两项研究来调查干预是否有帮助。
The first study was a daily field experiment with a sample of leaders whom we surveyed for two workweeks. In half of the workdays, first thing in the morning, leaders reflected and wrote about three skills, achievements, qualities, capabilities, or traits that they liked about themselves and that they thought made them good leaders. On the other days, leaders wrote about daily activities not relevant to leadership (we wanted to make sure that the intervention effects were not simply due to writing or taking time to reflect). We then surveyed the leaders multiple times a day. We found that on days when leaders took a few minutes in the morning to reflect and write about aspects of themselves that make them good leaders, they subsequently felt less depleted and more engaged, and they reported having a positive impact on their followers. These effects lasted until the evening, suggesting that leaders felt more positive at home too on intervention days. In a second field experiment, we replicated the energizing effect of the intervention and found that the effect was stronger for employees who hold leadership positions within their organization. These employees self-identify more strongly as leaders and may derive more benefits from interventions that tap into their identity as leaders.
第一个研究是对我们调查了两个工作周的领导者进行每天的实地实验。在一半的工作日里，每天早上的第一件事就是，领导者会反思并写下他们喜欢自己的三种技能、成就、品质、能力或特质，并认为这些特质使他们成为优秀的领导者。在其他日子里，领导者们写的是与领导力无关的日常活动（我们希望确保干预的效果不仅仅是由于写作或花时间去反思）。然后我们每天对这些领导人进行多次调查采访。我们发现，当领导者在早上花几分钟时间反思并写下自己的一些方面，这些方面使他们成为优秀的领导者时，他们随后会感觉精力更充沛，更投入，并且报告说他们对下属产生了积极的影响。这些影响一直持续到晚上，这表明在干预的日子里，领导人在家的感觉也更积极。在第二个现场实验中，我们复制了干预的激励效应，发现对于在组织中担任领导职务的员工，这种效应更强。这些员工更强烈地将自己定义为领导者，并可能从干预中获得更多好处，这些干预可以挖掘他们作为领导者的身份。
Those aspiring to leadership positions should recognize that leadership can be demanding and exhausting. Such self-awareness may motivate leaders to engage in activities that protect their energy at work. Second, taking a few minutes in the morning to think and write about aspects of oneself that make one a good leader is likely to energize leaders and to make them more influential at work. Finally, followers can help their leaders too. Followers tend to approach their leader for help requests more often than other coworkers and have ample opportunity to express gratitude. Expression of gratitude can benefit leaders’ as well as followers’ own well-being and may offset some of the daily depletion that leaders tend to experience at work.
那些渴望得到领导职位的人应该认识到，领导能力的要求可能很高，而且很累人。这种自我意识可能会促使领导者从事一些保护他们工作能量的活动。其次，在早上花几分钟时间思考和写下自己的一些方面，这些方面可以让一个人成为一个好的领导者，这可能会激励领导者，让他们在工作中更有影响力。最后，追随者也可以帮助他们的领导者。跟随者比其他同事更倾向于向他们的领导寻求帮助，并有足够的机会表达感激之情。表达感激之情不仅对领导者有利，对追随者也有好处，还可能抵消领导者在工作中所经历的日常损耗。