As an Iranian refugee who grew up in rural east Tennessee, and someone who studied, lived and worked in over 30 countries,
作为一名在田纳西州东部农村长大的伊朗难民,以及在30多个国家学习、生活和工作的人,
I thought I knew how to navigate across cultures and languages.
我以为我知道如何跨越文化和语言。
I was wrong.
我错了。
There I was, day one of business school, getting my bearings and hearing an alien language.
在商学院的第一天,我就在那里,了解了自己的方位并听到了一种外星语言。
It wasn't English, French, or my native Persian.
不是英语、法语或我的母语波斯语。
It was a bouillabaisse of languages, jargon from across the organizational multiverse: the corporate world, the nonprofit sphere, international development and the public sector.
它是各种语言和术语的大杂烩,来自各个组织领域:企业界、非营利领域、国际发展和公共部门。
It was weird.
这很奇怪。
In business school, I thought I'd learn about leadership styles.
在商学院,我想我会学习领导风格。
What I found were leadership languages.
我发现的是领导力语言。
And I learned that by becoming conversant in these languages that I could communicate with and contribute to all of these worlds.
我了解到,通过熟悉这些语言,我可以与所有这些世界进行交流并为所有这些世界做出贡献。
So how does one become multilingual?
那么如何才能变得多语言呢?
Here's my story.
这是我的故事。
In college, I went to West Africa to study microfinance and economic empowerment.
大学期间,我去西非学习小额信贷和经济赋权。
Seeing a large public health need, I cofounded and led a nonprofit collecting medical supplies and money.
看到巨大的公共卫生需求,我与人共同创立并领导了一个收集医疗用品和资金的非营利组织。
We saw what collective action could yield, and we were creative with our advocacy and our fundraising, with campaigns like "Band Aids for Benin."
我们看到了集体行动可以产生什么,我们在宣传和筹款方面发挥了创造力,开展了“贝宁创可贴”等活动。"
Along the way, I studied different leadership styles: autocratic, democratic, laissez faire, servant, collaborative, transformational and more.
在这个过程中,我研究了不同的领导风格:专制、民主、自由放任、仆人式、合作式、变革式等等。
I read books, attended trainings and I even had the privilege to study with some of the greats and to work with General Colin Powell and Dr. Maya Angelou.
我读书,参加培训,我甚至有幸与一些伟人一起学习,与科林·鲍威尔将军和玛雅·安杰洛博士一起工作。
After all of this, I became convinced that there's no best type of leadership.
经历了这一切之后,我开始相信不存在最好的领导力。
So many of us just default to one style or another, similar to how we're born with our native tongue.
我们中的许多人只是默认了一种或另一种风格,就像我们生来就有母语一样。
But this default style doesn't work in every situation.
但这种默认风格并不适用于所有情况。
Many leaders obsess over leadership style when really they just need to get over themselves.
许多领导者痴迷于领导风格,而实际上他们只需要克服自己。
Sorry, leader, it's not about you.
抱歉,领导,这与你无关。
What's more useful is to adapt and personalize your leadership to be the leader the situation and the people involved need.
更有用的是调整和个性化您的领导力,使其成为情况和相关人员所需的领导者。
It's not so much style as language, the living vernacular of each discrete community and culture.
与其说它是风格,不如说是语言,是每个独立社区和文化的活方言。
The successful leader will aspire to be multilingual, to speak fluently with all groups and to translate among them.
成功的领导者将渴望精通多种语言,与所有群体流利交谈并在他们之间进行翻译。
In 2012, while working at the Omidyar Network, I was one of the sponsors of a two-year study of 12 impact investing funds.
2012年,在Omidyar Network工作时,我是一项为期两年的12只影响力投资基金研究的发起人之一。
One of the "ahas" of this project was that the most successful funds were those led by multilingual leaders,
该项目的“ahas”之一是,最成功的基金是由多语言领导者领导的基金,
people that could communicate across the corporate, nonprofit, philanthropic and public policy perspectives.
能够从企业、非营利组织、慈善机构和公共政策角度进行沟通的人。
These leaders also made sure that others on their team were multilingual.
这些领导者还确保他们团队中的其他人精通多种语言。
This came to me as a bit of a surprise.
这让我有点惊讶。
I expected the secret sauce to be in sophisticated financial modeling or some other type of complex analysis.
我预计秘诀在于复杂的财务建模或其他类型的复杂分析。
According to this study, the multilingual leader will describe their work as being unremittingly financially driven -- business speak,
根据这项研究,多语言领导者会将他们的工作描述为不懈的经济驱动--商业术语,
moving the needle on social and environmental challenges -- nonprofit and philanthropic speak,
解决社会和环境挑战--非营利组织和慈善机构的发言,
while addressing systemic market failures -- public policy speak.
同时解决系统性市场失灵--公共政策的发言。
The study further found the need to be conversant into four industry languages.
该研究进一步发现需要精通四种行业语言。
Those are finance, nonprofit, government and international development.
这些是金融、非营利组织、政府和国际发展。
The multilingual leader was something that seemed very familiar to me.
这位多语言领导者对我来说似乎非常熟悉。
This really rang true based on my own experience of patchworks across these sectors, and it took me back to that first weird day in business school.
根据我自己在这些领域拼凑的经历,这听起来确实是真的,这让我回想起在商学院的第一天奇怪的一天。
Now that we've described the how, let us turn to the what.
既然我们已经描述了如何,让我们转向什么。
Where should leaders focus?
领导者应该关注哪里?
I will modestly propose three topics that cut across issues, and together we'll double-click on one of them.
我将谦虚地提出三个跨越问题的主题,然后我们一起双击其中之一。
Data, climate, power.
数据、气候、电力。
How each of these sectors measure the impact and even the timing, the tempo and the tools that they use for each could not be more different.
这些部门如何衡量影响,甚至每个部门使用的时机、节奏和工具都有很大的不同。
Say you're the private sector at one end.
假设你是一端的私营部门。
You have accounting on a daily, a weekly, a monthly and quarterly increments.
您可以按每日、每周、每月和季度增量进行会计核算。
The public sector.
公共部门。
You're working on multi-year election cycles.
您正在研究多年选举周期。
The nonprofit and philanthropic sector, well, you may give yourself 15 years or even a generation to reach a goal.
对于非营利和慈善部门,你可能会给自己15年甚至一代人的时间来实现一个目标。
Yet all of these sectors must come together to reach these outcomes.
然而,所有这些部门必须齐心协力才能实现这些成果。
To make it real, let's look together about how these sectors can come together to address power with the focus on gender equality.
为了实现这一目标,让我们一起看看这些部门如何联合起来,以性别平等为重点解决权力问题。
Say you're a public sector leader.
假设你是一名公共部门领导者。
You have the unique ability to create equity, a level playing field, so everyone has a fair shot.
您拥有创造公平、公平竞争环境的独特能力,因此每个人都有公平的机会。
You can create regulations and incentives to increase the use of gender data.
您可以制定法规和激励措施来增加性别数据的使用。
You can set goals for women on boards and in public office.
您可以为董事会和公职人员中的女性设定目标。
You can practice gender budgeting and you can mandate paid care.
您可以实行性别预算制,也可以强制执行付费护理。
Say you're a leader in the business sector.
假设您是商业领域的领导者。
You can design products and services that unleash the economic power of the female customer.
您可以设计释放女性客户经济实力的产品和服务。
You can fortify and diversify your supply chain with women-owned businesses,
您可以通过女性拥有的企业来巩固供应链并使其多元化,
and you can invest in your female talent pipeline with pay equity and leadership opportunities so that your corporate decisions are more inclusive.
您可以通过薪酬公平和领导机会投资女性人才管道,使您的企业决策更具包容性。
Or maybe you work in philanthropy or international development.
或者您可能从事慈善事业或国际发展工作。
You can help remove the barriers, whether formal or informal, that influence how power is distributed.
您可以帮助消除影响权力分配方式的障碍,无论是正式的还是非正式的。
You can fund the research and training that both the public and the private sector need to do their part.
您可以资助公共和私营部门尽自己一份力量所需的研究和培训。
You can fund campaigns and grassroots efforts that influence social and cultural norms.
您可以资助影响社会和文化规范的活动和基层工作。
And you can help get women in decision-making roles in their households, in their communities, in their countries and in economies.
您还可以帮助妇女在家庭、社区、国家和经济中发挥决策作用。
The multilingual leader can be conversant and use the languages of all of these sectors to identify the root causes,
多语言领导者可以精通并使用所有这些部门的语言来找出根本原因,
and then collaborate together to find the solutions to these complex issues.
然后共同合作寻找这些复杂问题的解决方案。
So here is over 20 years of experience distilled into one sentence.
这里是20多年的经验浓缩成一句话。
Don't fret over your leadership styles, focus on your leadership languages.
不要担心你的领导风格,专注于你的领导语言。
So over to you, leader.
所以交给你了,领导。
Which languages are you going to learn next?
接下来你要学习哪些语言?
Thank you.
谢谢
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