领导者的魅力太大 不一定是好事儿

We tend to judge everything from sports teams to entire nations by the charisma of their leaders — or to be more specific, by how much personal charm, force of personality, and ability to inspire they possess. Historians call it the Great Man Theory, which holds that certain people are born with qualities that enable them to rise to the top and lead the multitudes.

不论是一支运动队，还是整个国家，我们都倾向于通过领导者的魅力来判断一切——或者更具体地说, 判断他们拥有多少个人魅力、人格力量和激励能力。 历史学家称之为伟人理论, 认为某些人天生就具有能够爬到顶端并领导众人的品质。

In the business world, charisma is particularly valued attribute, as evidenced by the 2012 Harvard Business Review article "Why You Need Charisma." The article describes a pseudonymous example, Paul Lee, and his ability to win over potential investors and others through personal magnetism so compelling that he can take a half-hour commuter flight and emerge with a plane full of new friends. As the article's author, Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, wrote: "His leadership model involves making sure all feel that they are special and will have their particular needs met, yet also feeling that they are all in it together."

在商界, 魅力就是特别有价值的象征。在2012年的《哈佛商业评论》(Harvard Business Review)的文章《为什么你需要魅力》上，就证明了这一点。这篇文章描述了一个假名的例子, 保罗 · 李, 描述了他通过个人魅力赢得潜在投资者和其他人的能力, 因为魅力太大，他可以搭乘时常仅半小时的通勤飞机后, 就结识了满满一架飞机的好朋友。 正如这篇文章的作者, 哈佛商学院教授的罗莎贝·摩丝·肯特所言:"他的领导模式包括确保所有人都感到自己是特别的, 并且能够满足他们的特殊需求, 同时也要感觉到他们在一起是很必要的，他们是一个整体。"

Since charisma is so potent, you might think that a leader couldn't get enough of it. But as it turns out, that's not the case. In a newly published study in the Journal of Personality and Psychology, researchers collected the charisma scores for hundreds of business leaders calculated using the Hogan Development Survey, a psychological test, and then compared them to how their peers, subordinates and bosses actually assessed their effectiveness.

因为魅力本身就极具吸引力，所以你可能会认为领导对此属性都倍加青睐，也希望自己越有魅力越好。 但事实证明, 并非如此。 在《个性与心理学杂志》上发表的一项研究中, 研究人员收集了数百名商业领袖的魅力分数, 这些领导者是通过霍根发展调查的(一个心理测试), 然后让与他们同一级别的下属和老板对他们的效率进行实际的评估。

The researchers found that as charisma increased, so did others' perception of a business leader's effectiveness — but only up to a point. Leaders at low and high ends of the charisma spectrum, as it turned out, were perceived as less effective than those who were judged to have only moderately magnetic personalities.

研究人员发现, 随着个人魅力的增强, 其他人对商业领袖效率的看法也会变味——但只是在一定程度上。 事实证明, 领导者的魅力值太高，反而会被认为不如那些被认为拥有适当魅力值的领导者。

"Our findings suggest that organizations may want to consider selecting applicants with mid-range levels of charisma into leadership roles," said Jasmine Vergauwe, a doctoral student at Belgium's Ghent University and the study's lead author, in a press release, "instead of extremely charismatic leaders."

"我们的研究结果表明, 一个组织可能更希望选择具有一个具有中等领导魅力的申请者担任领导角色,"比利时根特大学的教授的博士生、该研究报告的主要作者贾思敏·维尔高乌(Jasmine Vergauwe)在一份新闻稿中表示,"而不是极具魅力的领导者。"