????我們大多數人都希望順順利利地度過每一個工作日。畢竟，我們中很少有人會主動找人扯皮打架。

????盡管如此，跟同事相處可不像公園漫步那般愜意，而這種緊張關系會影響我們的工作表現。有時候，我們部門中某位員工根本就不適合從事手頭那份工作——他們為人浮夸，生性挑剔，缺乏興趣，平庸無能，催生出一種有可能拖垮每一個人的有毒環境。

????大家不妨思考一下這個例子：在一家公司，由于長達一年的招聘凍結期，幾個工程團隊的人手嚴重不足。工程師們勞累過度，CEO擔心他們可能無法按時完成任務。于是，這家公司就成立了一個跨團隊委員會，以便決定如何公平地把新員工分配給相關團隊。然而，這個委員會的負責人是一位有獨立見解的工程師，出了名地喜歡爭辯，批評他人。所有委員非常輕松地就首位新員工應該被安排在哪里達成共識，但隨后就出現了問題。這位首席工程師希望把下一個新員工分配給一位得意門生負責運營的不太重要的團隊；其他委員表示反對，他們認為這樣做將會使組織失調。這位工程師沒有選擇讓步，而是分頭找幾位委員談話，充滿敵意的爭辯口吻讓這幾位委員覺得他想一手遮天。委員們花了一些時間討論他的行為，有幾位還因為這件事夜不能寐。就這樣，一件原本簡單的事情被搞得混亂不堪，耗費了大量寶貴的時間。

????再看看另一個例子。在一家制藥公司，一位負責研發工作的科學家聘請了一位化學師。來公司時，她帶著幾位前同事撰寫的一組熱情洋溢的推薦信，起初看起來也確實很有才華。但大約一個月后，這位新員工的表現就只能算是勉強合格。這位上司明確指出，她的表現差強人意，遠未達到他的期望值。她解釋說，她知道自己掉隊了，但會迎頭趕上。不幸的是，這個問題隨后仍然存在。最終，上司召來人力資源部一位同事與她談話。經過一系列交談，這位化學師開始承認，她已經對自己的工作失去了興趣，需要做出改變。被勸離這家公司6個月后，她加入了另一家公司的營銷部門，很快就干出了一番成就。這個故事有一個圓滿的結局，但這位化學師的上司真希望她更早地理解、承認自身的愿望，這樣或許就可以讓她自己（以及她所在的研發團隊）免于經受這段令人失望的插曲。

????與上述監理工程師和新晉營銷專家相類似的員工面臨一些涉及到理解自身和他人個性的復雜問題。我們需要具備在這個領域進行推理的能力，我稱之為“人際智商”(personal intelligence)。一旦我們對這方面的理解失敗，我們就可能做出有損我們的工作關系，或許還會傷及聲譽的錯誤選擇。

????我在2008年提出了“人際智商”這一概念，部分原因是為了整合心理學學界對于人們如何理解自身和他人個性這個問題的最新見解。這種理解包括對以下領域的新研究：自我認識，對他人的知覺(person-perception)，為什么小孩似乎能夠“讀懂小伙伴的心靈”，以及我們如何使用自己所掌握的性格特征知識來預測別人的行為。人際智商就是推斷分析這種個性系統的能力。

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????Most of us would prefer to get through the workday without a scuffle. After all, very few of us are actively looking for a fight.

????That said, getting along with our colleagues is no walk in the park, and this tension can influence our performance. Sometimes, an employee in our department is simply the wrong person for the job -- their own grandiosity, critical nature, lack of interest, or incompetence leads to a toxic environment that drags everyone down.

????Consider this example: At one company, several engineering teams were understaffed, owing to a yearlong hiring freeze. The engineers felt overworked, and the CEO was concerned about missing long-term deadlines. The company formed a cross-team committee to decide how to fairly allocate new hires to the teams. However, the head of the committee was an independent-thinking engineer who had a reputation for being argumentative and critical of others. The committee easily agreed on where the first new hires should be allocated, but there were issues after that. The lead engineer wanted to assign the next hire to a protégé of his who ran a less-important team; other members objected that would misalign the organization. Rather than backing down, the engineer went to several committee members individually and argued with them in a way that they perceived as hostile and controlling. The committee members spent time discussing his behavior, and a few of them lost sleep over the issue. The whole process was far more time-consuming and messy than it needed to be.

????Or consider the research scientist in a pharmaceutical company who had hired a new chemist. She came with an amazing set of recommendations from her former colleagues, and indeed appeared remarkably talented. After a month or so, however, the new hire was performing at a barely adequate level. When the supervisor pointed out the discrepancy between his expectations and her performance, she explained she had fallen behind but would catch up. Unfortunately, the issue persisted. Finally, the supervisor called in a colleague from human resources to speak with her. Over a series of conversations with HR, she began to acknowledge that she no longer found her profession interesting and she needed a change. Six months after she was counseled out of the organization, she joined the marketing division of another firm, where she blossomed. This story had a happy ending, but the supervisor wished the chemist had understood and acknowledged her own desires sooner so she might have saved herself -- and his workplace -- some considerable disappointments.

????Employees like the supervising engineer and the newly minted marketing specialist face complex issues that involve understanding their own personalities and those of others. We draw on an ability to reason in this area I call "personal intelligence." When our understanding in this area fails, we can make poor choices that compromise our working relationships and, perhaps, our reputations.

????In 2008, I introduced the concept of "personal intelligence" in part to organize an emerging understanding I saw taking place within psychology of how people understand their own and others' personalities. This understanding included new studies on self-knowledge, person-perception, how children seem to be able to "read the minds" of their friends, and how we use our knowledge of traits to anticipate the behavior of other people. Personal intelligence is the capacity to reason about this personality system.