在同一個地方跌倒的人，缺少的是假設思維 |雙語哈評
你感覺這周不在狀態，總有些事情不對勁。讓我們姑且將之當作是你與客戶的談判不順利吧。
然後你怎麼做呢？你可能和朋友去酒吧，跟伴侶述說或者給你媽打電話。但是所有這些都只不過是拖延的辦法，很快你就會反覆琢磨這些煩心事。你糾結哪裡出錯了，於是責備自己或者外部環境。當你感到精疲力盡的時候，你才會告訴自己，要忘記過去，放眼未來。
這是一種面對挫折自然而然的並且完全合理的反應，但在心理上卻是痛苦無裨益的。它不能夠使你免受第二次、第三次甚至第四次同樣型別的挫敗。
這裡有一個更好的方法： 你可以和自己達成一個心理協議，在這個過程中你可以問自己一系列簡短並且有建設性的問題，並且試圖去回答這些問題。 根據假設思維的一些新的調查成果（聽起來像是：設想已經發生的事的另外一些可能），這個過程並不困難，它會使你減輕挫折帶來的痛苦，下次能夠更好地應對。
假設思維是我們經常做的事——“如果我去年沒有碰巧遇見老朋友，我肯定會錯過得到這份好工作的機會！”或者“如果我接受海外調動，就很有可能會升職。”調查人員將這些思維分門別類，來判定我們為什麼並且在什麼時候會這樣想。雖然還有待深入研究，但這些研究表明一些特定的假設思維模式尤其利於人從負面事件中恢復過來。
讓我們回到剛剛提到的不成功的談判例子中去。面對不斷變化的客戶需求，你的公司正試圖變得更加靈活。你已經跟一個重要的供應商談過，雙方的工作協議要比往常更加開放，這樣你就可以為應對今年的變化作調整。但是供應商只同意籤六個月的協議，而不是一年。你和老闆都認為這是一次非常失敗的談判。
於是你為了使自己好受點，又重蹈覆轍之前清單羅列的種種放鬆做法。你責備自己的無能和不走運；你責怪供應商代表的死板，還有那些乾巴巴的火雞三明治。“啊，還有。”你和同事去大醉了一場，“然後學會‘吃一塹，長一智’，生活還得繼續。”
但是實際上你並沒有從挫折中學到什麼，並且現在還不是繼續往前走的時候。恰好相反。你需要按順序踐行這五個步驟：
1. 設想一個更好的結果（一）。 設法使用上行假設思維，更好地達成協商。關注自己的行動，而不是他人的。例如，供應商似乎已經接近同意你在靈活延長協議方面的一些建議，但還沒談完就到午休時間了。後來接著談的時候，他顯得更加固執，不願意聽取你的提議。也許你在休息前要求他給出明確的答覆，結果會比現在的好。
2. 設想一個更好的結果（二）。 設法使用另一個上行假設。為什麼？這樣做是為了防止你自然而然地將第一個方案當作唯一的選擇，這種陷阱被稱為hindsight bias （事後聰明偏向）。很顯然，你剛剛想到的第一個選擇導致了你的自負，就好像你一開始就意識到了這點。設想一個更好的解決方法，可以幫助你避免將失敗歸結於一個簡單的人為原因。用剛剛提到的方案做例子，設想你在協商的開始就把靈活性的問題表達出來，這難道不比你在下一輪的協商中將整個問題的主動權拋給對方更好嗎？
3. 設想導致同一結果的不同方法。這被稱為“半假設思維”。 例如，與不同的供應商代表談論界限明確的內容——第一場談論價格，第二場談論非價格專案，這將會是一個迥然不同的體驗，但最終會導致相同的談論結果。然後，問問你自己為什麼這些談論結果會相同。在這個案例中，是因為市場快速變化，供應商的工作人員過於焦慮而擔心合同上的任何變動都會危害他們的利益？這個步驟的目的就是讓你注意到那些你從沒有想過或者預料到的阻礙。此後，你就可以重新回到失敗的源頭，找出克服阻礙的辦法。例如，通過提供一些潛在的補償來減輕供應商的焦慮，也許就使得談判變得可能，比如在合同的有效期內能夠提高價格。
4. 設想同一種方法導致的不同結果。 一個好的或者壞的結果，可能來自於你採用的相同處理辦法。設想對方對於你關於靈活延長協議的建議表示同意並施與微笑，或者皺眉頭並堅持不同意。這一步驟的目的是強調結果的不確定性。在大多數情況下，事實上是你的一種做法往往能導致不一樣的結果。人們不太好接受這種看法。如果你想高效地恢復過來，合理地重視外部壓力是很重要的。這一步可以幫助你思考應對外部壓力的應急備案。
5. 設想最壞的結局。 下行假設思維一定程度上是恢復心情的小技巧。想想最糟的可能，而後對自己避開了最糟的結果而加以表揚。這個步驟還有另外一個目的：加深對剛剛發生的事情的瞭解。設想面對合作方的銷售下滑，你很想評論一番，但最後你還是不置一詞。顯然是合作方不清楚市場走勢，但是你意識到在這個關鍵時刻，過多的評論會使合作方動怒並使事情惡化。長遠地考慮問題，你將會理解供應商在該處境中的敏感心理。
通過這五步，你可以避免責備、偏見以及其他思維定向，而能夠看到全面而細微的失敗原因。你將更好地瞭解到是什麼而不是什麼因素造成了這個失敗。上行假設思維讓你重新制定計劃和改善應對錶現。你可以不必要嚴格按照你設想的方案行事，因為你已經學會開闊你的思維，將更多的可行技巧包囊其中。
這個方法已經被管理者和企業家在不同的場合中實踐過了。在精神分裂症的調查研究中發現，假設思維和人際交往有效性之間有聯絡，如果缺乏假設思維的能力，一定程度上可以解釋為社會功能障礙。神經影像研究表明， 假設思維發生的大腦區域與人進行計劃活動的區域相同，它可以看作是感性思維與目標設定的互相影響。
領導者常常告誡自己要從失敗中獲取最大的回報，但這在一定程度上，忽略了從失敗中吸取教訓這重要的一步。訓練自己進行假設思維以及詳細制定替代方案，是彌補這一步的橋樑，以確保下次能更好應對。
英文原文
This was not your best week. Something didn’t go right. Let’s say it was a negotiation that didn’t play out your way.
What do you do afterward? You might go to a bar with friends, talk to your spouse, or call your mom. But those are just delay tactics. Soon the ruminating will begin. You’ll wonder what went wrong and blame yourself, others, or external factors. When that becomes exhausting, you’ll tell yourself that you need to forget the past and focus on what’s ahead.
This is a natural and perfectly reasonable reaction, but it’s psychologically painful without much benefit. It won’t prevent you from experiencing the same kind of failure a second or third or fourth time.
There is a better way: a mental protocol through which you ask yourself a series of brief, structured questions and put some effort into answering them. based on new research on counterfactual thinking (which is exactly what it sounds like: imagining alternatives to what just happened), this process is not difficult, and it promises to both ease the pain of the setback and position you to do better next time.
Counterfactual thinking is something most of us do all the time — “If I hadn’t bumped into my old friend last year, I would have missed out on getting this great job with his company!” or “If only I had said yes to that overseas assignment, I probably would have been promoted.” But researchers are now categorizing it into different types and determining why we use them and when. There’s still a lot to be learned, but studies suggest that certain forms of counterfactual thinking can be particularly helpful when people need to recover and improve performance after negative events.
Let’s come back to that just-concluded, unsuccessful negotiation. Your company is trying to be more agile in the face of changing customer demand, and you had asked an important supplier to leave the working agreement more open-ended than usual so you would have the ability to change course during the year. His only concession was to make it a six-month agreement, rather than 12-month, and you and your boss consider this a pretty significant failure.
You avail yourself of a couple of the usual recovery activities listed above. You beat up on yourself for being incompetent and unlucky. You blame the stiff who represented the supplier, as well as those dry turkey sandwiches that the caterer provided. “Ah well,” you say as you drain your beer with a colleague, “lessons learned. Time to move on.”
But actually no lessons have been learned, and it’s not time to move on. Not ye. Instead, follow these five steps, in order:
1.Imagine a better outcome, Part 1. Challenge yourself to conceive of an upward counterfactual, a path that might have led to a better deal. Make sure to focus on your own actions, not someone else’s. For example, your counterpart had seemed close to agreeing to several of your suggestions on flexibility, but then you both took a break. Afterward, he was more adamant. Maybe if you had pressed for an answer before the break, the outcome would have been better.
2.Imagine a better outcome, Part 2. Challenge yourself to think of yet another upward counterfactual. Why? The idea is to combat your natural tendency to fixate on the first alternative scenario as the only one, a trap known as hindsight bias. The apparent obviousness of the first alternative, now that you’ve thought of it, induces overconfidence; you begin to feel as though you were aware of it all along. Imagining a second path to a better outcome helps you to avoid attributing your failure to a simplistic, pat reason. As an example of a second scenario, imagine that you put the flexibility issue on the table at the beginning of the negotiation. Would that have yielded a better outcome than springing it on your counterpart later in the talks, as you did?
3.Imagine a different path leading to the same outcome. This is known as semifactual thinking, or an “even if.” For example, breaking the negotiations into two distinct talks with different counterparts — the first talk being about price and the second about nonprice terms, for example — would have been a very different experience, but it might have led to the same outcome. Next, ask yourself why the outcome might have been the same. In this case, was it because there is widespread worry among the supplier’s staff that the marketplace is shifting rapidly, and they’re afraid to allow any contract change that might hurt their position? The purpose of this step in the failure and recovery process is to reveal obstacles you might not have noticed or articulated. Later on, you can circle back and try to figure out how to overcome them. For example, it might be possible to allay the supplier’s anxiety by offering something else as potential compensation, such as an option to raise prices during the life of the contract.
4.Imagine the same path leading to a different outcome. Think of how a different outcome — better or worse — could have resulted from the same process you followed. Picture your counterpart smiling and saying yes to your suggestion about flexibility. Or frowning and insisting on no changes at all to the contract’s length. One purpose of this step is to highlight the randomness in outcomes. In most cases, the reality is that the very steps you took could have led to different endpoints. People have trouble accepting that. If you’re going to recover effectively, it’s important to maintain a healthy respect for outside forces. This step can also help you think about backup and contingency plans to cope with these forces.
5.Imagine a worse outcome. This downward counterfactual is partly a feel-good tactic. Think of a different path that might have led to a poorer result, and then pat yourself on the back for having avoided it. But there’s another purpose to this step: to broaden your understanding of what just happened. Let’s say you thought about making, but then didn’t make, a comment about your counterpart’s declining sales. The idea would have been to underscore that his company doesn’t have a good grasp of what’s going on in the marketplace, but you realized in the nick of time that the comment might have put him on the defensive and made things worse. Pursue that idea a little further and you might end up with a big-picture understanding of the supplier’s present sense of vulnerability.
By completing these five steps, you avoid blame and bias and other kinds of mental ruts, and you see an enlarged, nuanced picture of the failure. You’re better positioned to know what really did and didn’t cause the setback. And the upward counterfactuals give you a starting point for planning the next go- round and improving your subsequent performance. You may not follow your imagined scenarios precisely, but you’ve learned to stretch your mind to incorporate new possible tactics.
I’ve seen this method work for managers and entrepreneurs in various contexts. The links between counterfactual thinking and interpersonal effectiveness are underscored by research on schizophrenia, which demonstrates that an inability to do the former partly explains patients’ social dysfunction. Neuroimaging studies suggest that since counterfactual thinking happens in the same part of the brain as planning, it might serve as a sort of interface between emotional thinking and goal setting.
Leaders are often told to maximize their “return on failure,” but so far there has been little focus on the specific steps one should take to learn from mistakes. Challenging yourself to use counterfactual thinking and formulate detailed alternative scenarios is one way to bridge that gap and ensure you do better the next time around.
Neal J. Roese |文
Neal J. Roese 是美國西北大學凱洛格商學院營銷學教授。
譯言網網友 pign|譯 周強|校
