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A chancellor in tears. A prime minister talking openly about the great pressures of his job. It is hard to think of another time when two top leaders of a G7 country put their personal frailties on display in the way the UK’s Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer did this week.
一位泪流满面的财政大臣，一位公开谈论其工作巨大压力的首相。很难想象还有哪个七国集团(G7)国家的两位最高领导人，能像英国的蕾切尔•里夫斯(Rachel Reeves)和基尔•斯塔默(Keir Starmer)本周那样，将自己的脆弱展现在公众面前。
Reeves did so unwillingly, in the painful glare of the House of Commons, where she struggled to contain her all too visible distress over something that, at the time of writing, remains a mystery.
里夫斯是在下议院(House of Commons)刺眼的聚光灯下勉强这样做的。她很难掩饰自己对某件在撰写本文时仍是谜团的事情所表现出的明显痛苦。
Starmer was more controlled, telling weekend newspaper interviewers his recent bouts of political havoc came as he was facing the firebombing of his London family home, Iran missile strikes and a G7 meeting in Canada within days of a Nato summit in The Hague.
斯塔默表现得更加克制，他在接受周末报纸采访时表示，最近一连串的政治动荡发生时，他正面临着伦敦家中遭遇燃烧弹袭击、伊朗导弹袭击，以及在海牙(The Hague)北约峰会几天后前往加拿大参加七国集团会议。
Both cases say much about our complicated and often contradictory responses to a leader who shows vulnerability.
这两种情况都充分说明了我们对展现脆弱的领导者所表现出的复杂且常常矛盾的反应。
It has long been conventional wisdom that a boss who is prepared to reveal fear, uncertainty or some other form of uselessness is in luck.
长期以来，人们普遍认为，愿意坦露恐惧、不确定或其他无能之处的老板反而是幸运的。
It’s thought they will be more trusted and respected, especially by younger staff who are said to yearn for “authenticity”, and are therefore more valuable to an organisation.
人们认为，他们会更受信任和尊重，尤其是在那些被认为渴望“真实感”的年轻员工中，因此对组织来说更有价值。
It helps that some of the world’s best known corporate leaders have endorsed this idea. “I think one of the perhaps most undervalued characteristics of leadership is vulnerability and asking for help,” former Starbucks boss, Howard Schultz, told an interviewer in 2017.
一些世界知名的企业领袖对这一理念表示支持，这无疑起到了积极作用。前星巴克(Starbucks)首席执行官霍华德•舒尔茨(Howard Schultz)在2017年接受采访时表示：“我认为，领导力中或许最被低估的特质之一，就是展现脆弱和主动寻求帮助。”
When former Expedia chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, left the travel group to run Uber, he was lauded for telling Expedia staff he was “scared” about making the move.
当Expedia公司前首席执行官达拉•霍斯劳沙希(Dara Khosrowshahi)离开这家旅游集团，前往执掌优步(Uber)时，他因坦言对这一转变感到“害怕”而受到Expedia公司员工的称赞。
There is indeed research suggesting it pays to impart inner wobbles. Yet if it really were obvious, why does the evidence suggest relatively few leaders are willing to own up to any form of weakness?
确实有研究表明，表达内心的动摇是有益的。然而，如果这一点真的如此明显，为什么证据显示，只有少数领导者愿意承认自己的任何弱点呢？
When author Jacob Morgan surveyed 14,000 employees around the world for his 2023 book, Leading With Vulnerability, he asked how many of their bosses showed the qualities of a vulnerable leader.
雅各布•摩根(Jacob Morgan)在为其2023年著作《以脆弱引领》进行调研时，向全球14,000名员工发起问卷，询问他们的上司中有多少人展现出了脆弱型领导者的特质。
Only 16 per cent said their leaders had done anything like asking for help, admitting to mucking up or revealing genuine feelings.
只有16%的人表示，他们的领导曾经做过诸如寻求帮助、承认失误或流露真实情感之类的事情。
I suspect this is because, as with so much else in working life, context is all.
我怀疑这是因为，和职场中的许多事情一样，情境就是一切。
There are times when a leader who reveals any form of feebleness will be penalised, as Starmer has been this week.
有时候，领导者一旦表现出任何形式的软弱，就会受到惩罚，正如斯塔默本周所遭遇的那样。
As a BBC interviewer asked one of the prime minister’s allies on Wednesday, “Don’t you think he’s coming across as terribly weak?”
正如BBC一位采访者在周三问首相的一位盟友时所说：“你不觉得他看起来非常软弱吗？”
Starmer’s problem was timing.
斯塔默的问题在于时机。
Signs of vulnerability can look like damage control, or an excuse, if they come after a leader is already in trouble rather than before.
如果领导者在陷入困境之后才表现出脆弱的迹象，这些迹象可能会被看作是在事后补救，或者被当作借口。
Chief executives who ignore this lesson risk being less appealing to investors, according to a recent paper by academics in the US.
美国学者最近发表的一篇论文指出，忽视这一教训的首席执行官可能会变得对投资者不那么有吸引力。
They did a series of experiments to see how people reacted after reading an interview with a fictional tech chief executive before an earnings forecast.
他们进行了一系列实验，观察人们在盈利预测前阅读一位虚构科技公司首席执行官采访后的反应。
In some interviews, the CEO said that although he was good at public speaking, “When I make a speech, I frequently get nervous — my mouth gets dry, and my hands get sweaty.”
在一些采访中，这位首席执行官表示，虽然他擅长公开演讲，但“每当我演讲时，常常会感到紧张——嘴巴发干，手心出汗。”
In others, he said: “I’m good at public speaking, and when I make a speech I’m never nervous.”
他还说：“我擅长公开演讲，演讲时从不紧张。”
It turned out that if the more vulnerable version of the CEO issued good financial news, people were more inclined to find the forecast credible and rate the company an attractive investment.
结果显示，如果表现得更为脆弱的首席执行官发布了利好的财务消息，人们更倾向于相信这一预测的可信度，并认为该公司是一个有吸引力的投资对象。
If he had bad news, it went down badly. But the response was softened if the CEO appeared more vulnerable.
如果他带来坏消息，大家的反应通常会很激烈。但如果首席执行官表现得更脆弱一些，大家的反应就会缓和。
Crucially, this softer reaction only came when the boss showed signs of vulnerability before the bad news, not afterwards.
关键在于，只有当老板在宣布坏消息之前表现出脆弱时，员工才会有更温和的反应，而不是在消息公布之后。
This makes sense, and I suspect it explains at least part of the reaction to Starmer this week.
这是有道理的，我怀疑这至少在一定程度上解释了本周人们对斯塔默的反应。
Things are more complicated when it comes to Reeves, and not just because there was an actual market sell-off after Starmer initially failed to back his tearful chancellor, prompting investor fears she would be sacked.
涉及到里夫斯时，情况就更加复杂了，这不仅仅是因为在斯塔默最初未能支持这位泪流满面的财政大臣后，市场真的出现了抛售，投资者担心她会被解职。
Her wrenching display of distress also came after the bad news of a party rebellion over reforms she had strongly backed. But no one witnessing the harrowing images of her anguish could imagine they were anything but genuine. We live in an age when emotional honesty is rare and valued, even if, as Reeves has shown, it can also be jolting to watch.
在她强烈支持的改革因党内叛变而传来坏消息后，她痛苦的情绪爆发了。但目睹她极度痛苦画面的人，无不相信她的情感是真实的。我们生活在一个情感坦率稀缺却备受珍视的时代，即使如里夫斯所展现的那样，情感的流露有时也会令人震撼。