Status Shuffle状态洗牌

Another perceived impediment to effective teamwork is the way status is recognized within a corporate climate. Even when a team is composed of members who want to be there, are committed to the process, and are willing to communicate openly with each other, a team’s progress can be hobbled by the simple fact that team members are at different levels within a company hierarchy. 

有效团队合作的另一个障碍是在公司氛围中如何识别状态。即使当一个团队由希望参加会议，致力于流程并愿意彼此公开交流的成员组成时，团队成员处于公司中不同级别这一简单事实也可能阻碍团队的进步层次结构。

Once a team gets working, that initial willingness to communicate can go right out the  window if nobody feels comfortable disagreeing with the VP at the end of the table or nobody considers that the new junior salesperson might have something worthwhile to say.

一旦团队开始工作，如果没有人在表格末尾与VP意见不合，或者没有人认为新的初级销售人员可能有话要说，那么最初的沟通意愿就会消失。

I like to think of our positions within a company as a combination of rank and status. Your job title is your rank and responsibilities within an organization. Your status is given to you by other people, or taken away by other people (either to your face or behind your back). In most cases someone with a high rank is going to be granted a great deal of status by coworkers—that’s the nature of a corporate ladder. Status isn’t just granted in regard to rank however; it depends on competence, communication, work ethic, leadership, personal relationships, and any number of other workplace variables. 

我喜欢将我们在公司中的职位视为职位和地位的结合。您的职务是您在组织中的职务和职责。您的身份是由其他人给予的，或者是由其他人带走的（无论是正面还是背面）。在大多数情况下，具有较高地位的人将被同事授予很高的地位-这是公司阶梯的本质。但是，地位不仅仅取决于等级。它取决于能力，沟通，职业道德，领导才能，个人关系以及其他许多工作场所变量。

When a team is assembled of members who hold different ranks as well as differing status levels, it’s very easy for it to collapse under the weight of all the ensuing deference to hierarchy.11 If a team is to succeed, rank and status must be leveled—at least for specific, strategic periods.

当一个团队由拥有不同等级和不同地位级别的成员组成时，很容易在随之而来的所有对等级制度的尊重的压力下崩溃。11如果团队要成功，就必须对等级和地位进行分级-至少在特定的战略时期内。

You don’t think status matters? Test it for yourself with this exercise: 

你认为地位不重要吗？通过以下练习自己进行测试：

• Get a normal deck of 52 playing cards. Divide the deck in half so that you are working with only two suits: one red suit (either hearts or diamonds), and one black suit (spades or clubs).Shuffle these cards.

•获得一张普通的52张扑克牌。将卡座分成两半，这样您就只能使用两套西装：一套红色西装（心形或菱形）和一套黑色西装（黑桃或球杆）。

• Assemble a team of six to ten people.

•组建一个六到十人的团队。

• Everybody in the group selects one card from the deck, keeping it secret from the group. At this point no one knows what their card means. Put the card face down, to the side. It will not be used in Round 1.

•小组中的每个人都从卡组中选择一张牌，将其保密。在这一点上，没人知道他们的卡意味着什么。将卡正面朝下放在一边。第一轮将不会使用它。

Round 1. Have the team huddle to come up with as many ideas as they can for a holiday party. The ideas should be detailed and cover all bases including specific foods (appetizers, main courses,desserts), drinks, entertainment, decorations, prizes, locations,and so on. This is a numbers game: the group must come up with as many ideas as possible, and you are to give them only 45–60 ­seconds total. Stop the ideation exercise after that time.

第1轮。请团队成员提出一个尽可能多的度假聚会创意。创意应该详尽，并涵盖所有基础，包括特定食品（开胃菜，主菜，甜点），饮料，娱乐，装饰品，奖品，地点等。这是一个数字游戏：小组必须提出尽可能多的想法，而您总共只能给他们45-60秒。在那之后停止构想练习。

Round 2. All team members take their card and place it in front  of them face up so that the other members can see it. Now explain to the group that the rank of one’s card represents one’s status in the group: ace is the lowest status; king is the highest (the suit does not matter). Again, the rank of the card is that person’s status in this meeting. Once each member knows the status of the other members, the group continues the conversation, this time each member playing the status that is on his or her card. 

第2轮。所有团队成员都将他们的卡片正面朝上放置在他们面前，以便其他成员可以看到它。现在向小组说明一张卡片的等级代表该小组中的一个身份：ace是最低状态；国王是最高的（西装没关系）。同样，卡片的等级是该人在此会议中的身份。一旦每个成员都知道其他成员的状态，组就会继续进行对话，这一次每个成员都在播放其卡片上的状态。

As members interact with each other, remind them tobe aware of the status of the person they are talking to. Givethem three to five minutes for this conversation. Note: Do not remind them that their task is to come up with ideas for the holiday party! Allow them to take natural ownership for the progress of this meeting.

当成员彼此互动时，提醒他们要注意与之交谈的人的状态。给他们三到五分钟的对话时间。注意：不要提醒他们，他们的任务是为假期聚会提出想法！让他们自然拥有这次会议的进度。

Very often people fall immediately into the trap of using the three to five minutes to emphasize their rank, drive their own agenda, and undercut every idea that isn’t theirs. The group almost completely loses sight of the point of their time together, which is to come up with ideas. They become singularly focused on their own agendas and where they are on the ladder.

很多时候，人们立即陷入使用三到五分钟来强调自己的等级，制定自己的议程并削弱所有非他们的想法的陷阱。小组几乎完全忘记了他们在一起的时间点，即提出想法。他们变得单调地专注于自己的议程和阶梯上的位置。

Round 3. Now the color of one’s card matters. If one’s card is a red  suit, the player aligns and agrees with other red-card holders only;if a black suit, he or she aligns and agrees with other black-card holders only. Encourage the group to interact with one another and to actively form teams within the team. Have them fight for their team’s ideas and put down the other team’s ideas; in other words, lower the other team’s status in the group while actively raising their own team’s status. Give them three to five minutes for this portion of the round. Again, do not remind them that their task is to come up with ideas for the holiday party! Allow them to take natural ownership for the progress of this meeting.

第三回合。现在，一张卡的颜色很重要。如果某人的牌是红色西装，则玩家只能与其他红牌持有者对齐并同意；如果是黑西装，则他或她只能与其他黑卡持有者对齐并同意。鼓励小组彼此互动，并积极组建团队。让他们为自己团队的想法而战，并放下另一个团队的想法；换句话说，在积极提高自己团队的地位的同时，降低团队中其他团队的地位。在此轮的这一部分中，让他们三到五分钟。同样，不要提醒他们，他们的任务是为假期聚会提出想法！让他们自然拥有这次会议的进度。

By the time those final three to five minutes are up, a number of people are usually shouting at each other and group ideation has devolved into attacks and accusations. No matter what anyone has to say, no matter what ideas are being presented, everyone is fully consumed with proving their rank, working from their own motivations, and driving their own agenda.

到最后三到五分钟结束时，通常会有很多人互相喊叫，而集体观念已演变成攻击和指责。不管任何人怎么说，无论提出什么想法，每个人都会被证明自己的地位，以自己的动机努力并制定自己的议程而全神贯注。

Which round generated the most ideas? The answer is always  clear: Round 1. Even though the group had only 45–60 seconds to work with, they got the job done. More ideas were generated in that round than in the second or third rounds of three to five minutes, and usually more than in both of those final rounds combined. The most notable thing about this exercise is how fast people slip from divergent thinking into convergent thinking without realizing that they had the power of choice.

哪一轮产生的创意最多？答案总是很明确：第一轮。尽管小组只有45-60秒的工作时间，他们还是完成了工作。与第二轮或第三轮（三到五分钟）相比，在这一轮中产生的想法更多，通常比最后两轮的总和还多。这项练习最值得注意的是，人们在没有意识到自己拥有选择权的情况下，从分歧思维转变为趋同思维的速度有多快。

They had a choice to use their rank as motivation to inform both individual and collective perspectives, and they had a choice to use it to drive their individual agendas. The team with a focused goal—a team in which every member was an equally valued participant—got the job done splendidly. The minute that individual agenda became more important than the mission, and teaming within the team took place, the mission failed.

他们可以选择用自己的等级来激发个人和集体观点的动机，也可以选择使用等级来推动自己的个人议程。目标明确的团队-每个成员都是同等价值的参与者-出色地完成了工作。当个人议程变得比任务重要时，以及团队内部进行团队合作的那一刻，任务失败了。

When I run this exercise in my programs and ask participants  which round felt more like the meetings everybody is used to going to, just about everybody votes for Round 2 or 3. Those rounds exem�plify what happens so often in real-world business situations: goals get knocked sideways by a room full of rank, status, emotions, personal agendas, and personal alliances.

当我在程序中运行此练习并询问参与者时，每个回合都更像是每个人都参加的会议，几乎每个人都为第二回合或第三回合投票。这些回合体现了在实际业务环境中经常发生的情况：目标被充斥着等级，地位，情绪，个人日程和个人同盟的房间所影响。

These can be difficult traps to avoid, though again, not every team in a business is going to be—or needs to be—a perfectly egalitarian democracy. There are certainly situations in which the status and company hierarchy is appropriate within the team. However, we’re looking at what goes wrong within teams, and if your team is struggling with communication, teamwork, trust, morale, creativity, risk taking,or adaptability, there’s a fair chance that its troubles are related to howstatus is being played out within the group. 

这些可能是很难避免的陷阱，尽管并非是每个企业中的每个团队都将成为（或需要成为）一个完全平等的民主国家。在某些情况下，团队中的状态和公司层次结构是适当的。但是，我们正在研究团队中出现了什么问题，如果您的团队在沟通，团队合作，信任，士气，创造力，冒险精神或适应性方面苦苦挣扎，则很可能其问题与状态的发挥有关在组内。

If a person is speaking as a job title rather than as a team member, the team is going to be negatively impacted.12 Few things squash open communication faster than a higher-up speaking from on high. There may be times when  people need to marry themselves to a specific agenda that is basedon their rank and job title; yet if that agenda doesn’t fit with a team’s agenda, the team suffers as do the individuals within it. Alignment is imperative.

如果一个人以职位名称而不是团队成员的身份发言，则会给团队造成负面影响。12很少有人会比从上而下的高发言更快地压缩开放式沟通。有时候，人们需要根据自己的职级和职称将自己嫁给特定的议程；但是，如果该议程与团队议程不符，团队和其中的每个人都会遭受痛苦。对齐势在必行。

All of the outside measures of status that we bring with us to a  team are much better set aside when a team begins to work together.Exhibiting your own status is not synonymous with achieving a team goal, and if you’re mostly concerned with the betterment of your own position rather than that of the team, you are working against the team (and quite possibly lowering your position outside the team). 

当团队开始合作时，我们带给团队的所有外部地位指标都最好保留。展示自己的地位并不等于实现团队目标，并且如果您最关心的是改善您自己的位置而不是团队的位置，您正在与团队合作（并且很可能降低您在团队外部的职位）。

If cliques—teams within the team—form around perceived status of members and begin to undermine each other, that works against the team’s success. If you are concerned with giving credit to an idea because you happen to like the person who comes up with it, or discrediting an idea because it comes from someone else, there’s little chance the best ideas will get the support required from the team (recall Del Close’s improv adage: “The worst idea with great support will go much further than the best idea with no support”).

如果团体（团队内部的团队）围绕着成员的感知状态形成并开始互相破坏，那么这不利于团队的成功。如果您是因为喜欢某个创意的人而想赞美某个创意，或者因为某个创意来自别人而让一个创意声名狼藉，那么最好的创意很少会得到团队的支持（召回Del Close的即兴格言：“有最好支持的最坏主意比没有支持的最佳主意要远得多”。

In the fall of 2014 in a Duke Fuqua Exec Ed program, I had the experience of running a “status leveling” exercise similar to the one I described above with a group that included a U.S. Navy captain who had been one of my biggest improv skeptics. Time after time as we ran through exercises, he didn’t feel he was getting any usable takeaways (“I can’t imagine going back to my superiors and suggesting any of this. 

2014年秋天，在杜克·富夸（Duke Fuqua）Exec Ed计划中，我经历了一次与我上述类似的“状态平衡”练习，其中包括一个美国海军上尉，他是我最大的即兴怀疑论者之一。在我们进行练习时，他一次又一次地感到自己没有得到任何有用的收获（“我无法想象回到上司并提出任何建议。

We don’t have time for this”.) In the status exercise his group had fantastic success coming up with ideas in the first, 45-second round; then it promptly imploded, generating zero ideas in ten minutes from rounds two and three combined. 

我们没有时间做这件事。”）在状态练习中，他的团队在第一轮45秒的比赛中提出了很多想法，取得了巨大的成功。然后迅速爆发，在第二轮和第三轮相加后的十分钟内产生了零个想法。

The impact of this destructive meeting and the idea of setting rank aside—for a brief period, even within a hierarchy such as the military that functions on rank—hit the captain like a torpedo. Status leveling was now something he could make time for, and from that point forward the captain became the biggest improv advocate in the class, creating strong links to real-world applicability and discovering places to use a variety of improvisational tools and techniques, even within the ranked hierarchy of the military.

这次破坏性会议的影响和搁置职位的想法-在很短的时间内，甚至在像军方这样的等级体系中-都像鱼雷一样击中了船长。现在他可以腾出时间来提升状态，从那时起，船长成为班上最大的即兴倡导者，与现实世界的适用性建立了牢固的联系，并找到了使用各种即兴创作工具和技术的地方，甚至在军队的等级制度。

That captain’s “conversion” always puts me in mind of the team dynamics of an exceptionally high-functioning military team who know how to level status very effectively: the Blue Angels. The Blue Angels squadron is the United States Navy’s premier flight demonstration team, performing all across America. These flying aces are famous for their precision formations and coordinated, split-second maneuvering—a thrilling sight to anyone who’s ever watched them in action. What may be less known is how the team conducts postflight team debriefings, in which they beautifully demonstrate status leveling.

那个队长的“转变”总是让我想到一个高功能的军事团队的动态，他们知道如何非常有效地提高地位：蓝色天使。蓝天使中队是美国海军首屈一指的飞行表演队，在美国各地都有演出。这些飞行王牌以其精确的编队和协调一致的瞬间操纵而闻名，这对于任何曾经观看过它们的人来说都是激动人心的景象。人们可能不太了解的是团队如何进行飞行后团队汇报，他们在其中精美地展示了状态提升。

 At the beginning of debriefings the members of the Angels liter�ally remove their rank, pulling off their varying stripes and insignias and setting them aside: rank is not useful in getting the most honest assessment of what went wrong and right with a flight, so—for the meeting—it is suspended. 

在开始汇报时，天使成员从文学上删除了他们的等级，拉开了他们各种各样的条纹和徽章并将它们放在一边：等级对于获得最诚实的航班错误和正确评估没有帮助，因此（对于会议）已暂停。

The only moment in which rank matters comes at the start of the debriefing, when the team captain speaks first and lets the other pilots know what he did wrong and how he could improve. With that example set, everyone else in the room is compelled to speak just as freely about what they can do to improve their performance. Every Angel ends his contribution to the debriefing by saying “Glad to be here”—a simple credo that powerfully puts the team and the operation above the individual.

等级问题的唯一时刻是在汇报开始时，即队长首先讲话并让其他飞行员知道他做错了什么以及如何改善。设置好该示例后，会议室中的其他所有人都被迫自由地谈论他们可以采取哪些措施来提高绩效。每个天使都通过说“很高兴来到这里”来结束对汇报的贡献，这是一个简单的信条，有力地将团队和行动置于个人之上。