????2014年春天，我完成了一部關于領導力的書稿，但由于出版行業內部的混亂，這本書要到下個月才能正式出版。在這本書的索引中，就有唐納德·特朗普和卡莉·費奧莉娜這兩人的詞條。（特朗普是紐約著名地產大亨，費奧莉娜曾任惠普CEO，這兩人今年均宣布將代表共和黨參加2016年總統大選。）

????倒不是說我對共和黨提名爭奪戰有先見之明，實際上我壓根沒料到今年的選情會如此具有娛樂性。在那本書中，我重點討論了一個對于想在競爭高度激烈的職場中獲得成功的人來說至關重要的話題：龐大的領導力產業經常為毫無疑心的大眾開具一些“領導力秘訣”，但這些秘訣往往與基于社會學和日常觀察得出的個人成功最佳途徑存在巨大的脫節。在很多情況下，很多人在真實世界中獲得的成功，恰恰來自那些與典型的“領導力秘訣”截然相反的行為。

????因此，你不能指望那些憤憤不平的選民解釋為何特朗普一路領跑。特朗普身上實際體現了很多能夠讓人成功的領袖特質，只不過這些特質和一些領導力專家所兜售的那種截然相反而已。比如以下這幾個例子。

????唐納德·特朗普喜歡在任何事情上“冠名”，包括他蓋的樓。他還喜歡抓住任何機會大講自己的成功故事。他的這種行為，既不符合我們大多數人喜歡的謙謙君子的標準，也不符合作家吉姆·柯林斯在《從優秀到卓越》一書中所做出的研究結論。柯林斯在書中指出，最成功的企業都是由所謂的“第5級領導者”領導的，這種領導者既有強烈的決心，又有謙遜的品質。那么這是怎么回事兒呢？

????大量研究表明，自戀、自信（甚至是過度自信）和自我展示，才是更容易使人獲得領導角色的特質，而不是很多人印象中的謙遜。這是因為，要想被選擇，你首先要獲得別人的注意。此外還有所謂的“單純曝光”效應。我們總是傾向于選擇自己熟悉的東西，因此在無數次重復“特朗普”的名字之后，它當然就成為一個人們熟悉的名字。雖然我們嘴上總是說不喜歡狂妄自大的人，但我們內心深處其實還是喜歡自信而專橫的人，因為他們會給予我們信心。這種情緒是會傳染的，而且這種人看起來也更像勝者。我們都想選擇勝者，因此也就會選擇那些貌似知道自己在干什么的人。

????特朗普還喜歡隨意歪曲事實。他號稱曾寫過一本有史以來最暢銷的商業書，這個牛皮當然吹得太大了。他某些方面的商業頭腦和成功故事也顯然言過其實——畢竟以他的名字命名的賭場已經宣告破產。不過這都沒關系。說實話，這個特質對領導者來說并沒有那么重要。領導者說謊的頻率和技巧都要超出常人。就連一些最受尊敬和最富有的人，也熟練掌握了給真相添枝加葉、添油加醋的本事。比如甲骨文CEO拉里·埃里森和許多其他軟件界人士一樣，夸大了他的產品可用性和功能。另外還有史蒂夫·喬布斯。喬幫主的神技“現實扭曲力場”，形象地描述了他是怎樣用極為牛掰的混淆視聽能力，將假的說成真的，將無的說成有的。這個過程又被人稱做“自我實現的預言”。

????有這些特質的不僅僅是特朗普。卡莉·費奧莉娜身上也展示了一種我在很多成功的人身上都看到過的特質——不承認失敗，而且要為職業生涯的方方面面都渲染上“正能量”。看著她，你想象不到她是被惠普從CEO職務上趕走的；在她任內，她主持了惠普對康柏電腦的收購，把惠普與這樣一個行將就木的低利潤業務綁在一起，使惠普現在不得不謀求將其剝離；同樣是在她任內，她還裁掉了數萬名員工。傳聞被重復得多了，就會被當成事實。而且不管怎樣，就算領導者自己不躬身自省，也會有很多人對他們進行事后諸葛亮式的批評。

????星巴克CEO霍華德·舒爾茨最近號召商業領導者們做“仆人式的領導者”。他的本意是好的。但如今CEO的薪水往往已經超過普通員工300倍以上，實在難說哪家公司真正實行的是“仆人式領導”。

????為什么在所謂的“領導力秘訣”和真正的商業成功之間有如此巨大的脫節？社會生物學和社會心理學早已發現，有利于個體的未必有利于群體，反之亦然。群體和個體的成功并不是高度相關的。舉個例子：當惠普將費奧莉娜解雇后，費奧莉娜拿著一筆天價遣散費離開了公司，但惠普的股價卻沒有上漲，她和繼任者解聘的幾萬名惠普員工的日子也沒有過得更好一些。

????另外，大多數關于領導力的演講、書籍和博客，描述的都是我們希望領導者們所具有的品質。所以我們經常會講一些獨特的、不同尋常的甚至是英雄式的人物和事件，而沒有意識到，正是這種獨特性才成就了這樣的故事。哪怕這些故事是真的（雖然往往都是編的），它們也不能很好地指導我們面對真實世界。

????那么我的建議是什么呢？首先，我們應該了解一些使人成功的特質背后的社會科學，至少是從某些方面。比如社會對某些行為的經濟懲罰，尤其是對男人，實在太輕了。研究表明，在日常生活中說謊不僅是普遍現象，而且大部分都不會受到懲罰。此外還有證據表明，在硅谷的企業領導者中，自戀者賺的錢比不自戀者更多，而且在CEO位置上待的時間也更長。改變世界的唯一方式，就是首先了解世界是怎樣運行的。

????其次，我們應該認真審視一下自己的行為。在很多令人討厭的領導者上位的過程中，我們是不是也扮演了推波助瀾的角色？只有當我們不再為克萊蒙特研究院商學教授珍·里普曼·布魯門所稱的“有毒的領導者”找借口時，事情才會開始變化。

????與此同時，我對今年選情的預測是：唐納德·特朗普跑將會領跑民調，而且今年的提名戰將比大多數人預計的要長得多。因為特朗普擁有很多我們討厭，但同時還在獎勵的領導力特質。（財富中文網）

????本文作者Jeffrey Pfeffer是斯坦福商學院的組織行為學教授。他的新書《Leadership B.S.: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time》將于2015年9月由哈珀柯林斯出版社出版。

????譯者：樸成奎

????審校：任文科

????In the spring of 2014, I turned in a book manuscript about leadership that, because of the turmoil within the publishing industry, will only be published next month. In the index for that book: entries for Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina.

????I wish I could say I was prescient about the unfolding race for the Republican nomination, but I wasn’t even thinking about this ever-entertaining spectacle. Instead, I was trying to address a topic that’s vitally important to individuals who want to thrive in today’s intensely competitive work world: the enormous disconnect between the leadership prescriptions regularly offered to an unsuspecting public by the enormous leadership industry and what social science and everyday observation suggest is the best path to individual success. For the most part, real-world success comes from behaviors that are precisely the opposite of typical leadership prescriptions.

????So, no, you don’t have to look to angry, disaffected voters to explain the Trump phenomenon. Trump actually embodies many of the leadership qualities that cause people to succeed—albeit they are pretty much the opposite of what leadership experts tout. Here are a few examples.

????Donald Trump puts his name on everything, including his buildings, and touts his success at every opportunity, behavior that contradicts both the common-sense belief that we prefer people who don’t self-promote and research that best-selling author Jim Collins published in Good to Great. Collins noted that the most successful companies were run by so-called “Level 5 leaders,” who had both fierce resolve but were modest and self-effacing. What gives?

????Numerous studies show that narcissism, not modesty, and self-confident, even overconfident, self-presentation lead to leadership roles. This is partly because to be selected, you first need to be noticed. There is also the “mere exposure” effect. We prefer what feels familiar to us, and after endless repetitions of the name “Trump,” it certainly feels familiar. And even though we say we want people who don’t self-aggrandize, we secretly like the confident, overbearing people because they provide us with confidence—emotions are contagious—and also present themselves like winners. We all want to associate with success and pick those who seemingly know what they are doing.

????Trump also takes liberties with the facts. No, he did not write the best-selling business book of all time, as he claimed. And some aspects of his business acumen and success are clearly exaggerated—after all, Trump-named casinos went into bankruptcy. No matter. Telling the truth is an overrated quality for leaders. Leaders lie with more frequency and skill than others. Some of the most revered and wealthiest people mastered the skill of presenting a less than veridical version of reality. Larry Ellison, like many people working in software, exaggerated the availability and features of products. And then there’s Steve Jobs. The phrase “reality distortion field” says a lot about Jobs’ fabulous ability to make things that weren’t true become true through his assertions of their truthfulness, a widely known process called the self-fulfilling prophecy.

????And it’s not just Trump. Carly Fiorina exemplifies another trait I see among the most successful—not admitting to setbacks and presenting a positive spin on every aspect of one’s career. Watching her you wouldn’t know that she was forced out of her CEO job at Hewlett-Packard; presided over HP’s acquisition of Compaq, thereby cementing the company’s leadership position in a dying, low-margin business that is now being spun off; and orchestrated the layoffs of tens of thousands of employees. Accounts repeated often enough become taken as truth. And in any event, leaders will get enough criticism and second-guessing without doing it to themselves.

????Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s recent call for servant leaders is well intentioned. But at a time when CEO salaries have soared to more than 300 times that of their companies’ average employees, there’s not too much servant leadership going on.

????Why is there such a disconnect between prescriptions for what people should do and what really produces career success? Sociobiology and social psychology have recognized for decades that what is good for the individual is not necessarily what is good for the group, and vice versa. Group and individual success are not highly related. Case in point: Fiorina left HP with an enormous severance package when she was ousted, but no, the company’s stock price didn’t flourish nor did the thousands laid off by her and, for that matter, by her successors.

????Another piece of the puzzle: most leadership talks, books, and blogs describe aspirational qualities we wish our leaders possessed. So we tell stories about unique, heroic, unusual people and situations—not quite realizing that the very uniqueness probably makes such tales, even if they are true (and they are often not), a poor guide for coping with the world as it exists.

????My recommendation? First, understand the social science that speaks to the qualities that make people successful, at least by some definitions: the economic penalties, particularly for men, from being too nice; research that shows that lying in everyday life is both common and mostly not sanctioned; and the evidence that narcissistic leaders in Silicon Valley earn more money and remain longer in their CEO roles. The only way to change the world is by first understanding how it really works.

????And second, we should take a hard look at our own behavior; how we are complicit in producing leaders of precisely the type we say we don’t want. It is only when we stop making excuses for what Claremont business professor Jean Lipman-Blumen has appropriately called “toxic leaders” that things will change.

????In the meantime, my prediction: Donald Trump is going to dominate the polls and the nomination contest a lot longer than most people expect. Because he has many of the leadership characteristics we say we abhor even as we reward them.

????Jeffrey Pfeffer is the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. His latest book, Leadership B.S.: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time will be published in September 2015 by HarperCollins.