Are you a team player?
你是一个有团队精神的人吗?
We hear a lot about team building these days. Team-building gurus are hired by some corporations to lecture us on how to work more effectively with each other. And they organise awaydays - a time employees spend together away from their usual workplace.
这些日子以来,我们听了不少关于团建的事。部分公司请来一些团建权威进行演讲,教大家如何相互提高工作效率。而且,团建活动一般安排在休息日——也就是职员们能一起离开平常工作地点的时候。
Here in the UK, employees can take part in activities such as Zombie boot camps where military instructors train you how to fight walking 'dead people'. For the brainier office workers amongst us there are crime investigations modelled on popular TV dramas like Sherlock Holmes and CSI.
在英国,职员们可以选择诸如僵尸训练营这一类活动,教官会训练大家如何打败那些“行尸走肉”。而对于其中聪明的上班族们来说,可供选择的有模仿诸如夏洛克、福尔摩斯和CSI这类流行电视剧的犯罪调查项目。
Stressed-out city workers might have ukulele lessons made available to them. Why is that a good team-building exercise? Ukulele teacher Lorraine Bow says: "The fact that they can play a musical instrument within an hour is quite a fulfilling thing, really. It's not competitive - it's quite easy to do and a bit less intimidating than a guitar…"
不堪重负的市政府工作人员则可以选择尤克里里琴课程。为什么说这项活动适于团建呢?尤克里里琴教练罗琳·鲍表示:“他们能弹奏一小时以内的乐器其实是很有成就感的,真的是这样。他们不需要和别人比——很容易就能做到,而且比吉他要更容易上手一些。”
Actually, a horse might be a bit more intimidating than an instrument. The animals are used by a company in Abu Dhabi which teaches leadership through horse training. Basically, you have to go in a yard with a horse and persuade it that you're the boss by using body language.
实际上,骑马可能相比弹乐器而言要困难一些。阿布扎比的一家公司就通过教驯马而提升领导能力的服务。参训者主要是把马牵到院子里,并用身体语言说服它服从自己。
Kelly Eide, co-founder of True Leadership, says: "The horses don't care if your hair is purple, if you're a man or a woman, if you're old or young... It transcends all of those cultural boundaries - age, gender, religion, tradition etc. - so that's a perfect fit. And in an organization where you really need groups of people to gel, who come from backgrounds which have no common norms, you can teach that most efficiently with a horse."
True Leadership公司的联合创始人凯利艾德表示:“马儿可不管你是否染了一头紫色的头发,也不管你是男士还是女士,亦或是年轻还是年迈...它超越了所有的这些文化界限——年龄,性别,宗教信仰,传统习俗等等——所以选择马儿是最合适不过的了。而当你真的想要让一群来自不同文化背景地区的人相互配合,驯马就是最行之有效的方式了。”
And the horse feels instinctively whether or not you are a natural leader. So if after you've done a good presentation your boss offers you a carrot, you'll know where he might have learnt it from.
马儿也会凭感觉识别你是不是他天生的主人。所以如果下次你表现良好而被奖励一根胡萝卜时,你就能知道你的老板是从哪学来的这一套了。
词汇表
team building
团队建设
guru
领袖,权威
corporation
公司,企业
effectively
有效地
awayday
息工日
workplace
工作地点,工作场所
boot camp
训练营
brainier (brainy)
更为精明的
stressed-out
(因精神压力)精疲力尽的
ukulele
尤克里里琴
fulfilling
充实的,令人满意的
competitive
竞争的
leadership
领导能力
to persuade
说服
body language
肢体语言
to transcend
超越
to gel
(团队成员)相互磨合