When the Going Gets Tough：当艰难的时刻

It’s often quite a revelation to my program participants that just a bit of heightened self-awareness can lead to a great improvement in communication skills. However, there are unavoidable moments in the  workplace when things are not working out so well and, for any number of reasons, communication is not smooth and clear. It’s easy to promote your personal brand and perform necessary self-audits when everything is going right—you’re well rested, deadlines have been met, and the people you are talking to are smiling back at you. It’s a much harder task to maintain your brand (and your composure) when someone is delivering a difficult message to you or perhaps even attacking your abilities or your integrity.

对我的计划参与者来说，经常是一个很大的启示，即只要提高一点自我意识就可以大大提高沟通技巧。但是，在工作场所中有不可避免的时刻，情况不能很好地进行，并且由于多种原因，沟通不畅通。在一切顺利的情况下，提升个人品牌和进行必要的自我审核很容易-您已经休息了，已按时完成任务，与您交谈的人都对您微笑。当有人向您传达困难的消息，甚至攻击您的能力或诚信时，维护您的品牌（和镇定）是一项艰巨的任务。

Let’s look at the concepts of personal brand and self-auditing  within real-world stresses and pressures. Think about being in a tough interview or in a meeting where superiors are giving you critical feedback. Those kinds of situations happen every day in business and your brand has to be able to maintain its integrity even when the workday gets tough.If you are curious how the mettle of your integrity holds under attack, please feel free to test it out in “Can You Take It,” an extension of the exercise above: 

让我们看看现实世界中压力和压力下的个人品牌和自我审计的概念。考虑参加艰苦的面试或开会，上级会向您提供重要的反馈。这类情况每天在业务中都会发生，即使工作日变得艰难，您的品牌也必须能够保持其完整性。如果您好奇自己的诚信精神如何受到攻击，请随时在“您可以接受吗？”以上练习的扩展：

Find one or two trusted colleagues or friends. Begin a short presentation to them and have the other person(s) interrupt you with challenging questions (distractions), give you hard feedback (pushback), and pick apart everything you say (criticism). Selfaudit how you handle these challenges in real time, and then debrief with your team. Get their honest feedback and coaching notes on how well you did under stress. And as always, take notes and be thoughtful about your experience to further deepen your “after-action review” and transfer your learnings to your decisionmaking abilities in real-life situations.

寻找一个或两个值得信赖的同事或朋友。开始向他们做简短介绍，让其他人用具有挑战性的问题（分散注意力）打扰您，给您硬性反馈（回推），并挑剔您的所有言论（批评）。对您如何实时应对这些挑战进行自我审核，然后与您的团队进行汇报。获得他们在压力下的表现的诚实反馈和指导说明。与往常一样，记笔记并考虑您的经历，以进一步加深“事后回顾”，并将您的学习成果转化为现实生活中的决策能力。

I’ve run this exercise hundreds of times, and as a side note it’s interesting to me that very few people see much of a challenge in being the person who is criticizing and doing the picking apart. We all seem to feel that we’re pretty good at dishing out difficult messages. In truth most people are really bad at this, because they are not self-auditing and gauging the impact they are having. To be blunt it is simply not enough to get a tough message out of your mouth.  

我已经进行了数百次练习，作为一个附带说明，对我来说很有趣的是，很少有人会觉得成为批评和分拣的人面临很大的挑战。大家似乎都觉得我们很擅长发出困难的信息。实际上，大多数人对此确实很不好，因为他们没有自我审计和评估自己正在产生的影响。直言不讳，仅仅从嘴里传达出一个艰难的信息是远远不够的。

If you are an EQ-minded leader—someone who chooses to lead with caring and empathy for others—it is always important to understand the impact you’re having on the person receiving the message and equally im�portant that the difficult words are understood properly. In this case,however, “Can You Take It?” is more about being on the receiving end and learning how to hear and process something negative (tough questions, criticism, active pushback) without immediately assuming it is a personal attack. There is no real trick to the exercise—the value is just in running the simulation and getting the opportunity to really feel what it’s like to summon self-auditing skills under a very stressful situation.

如果您是一个有情商的领导者（选择领导关怀和同情他人的领导者），那么了解您对接收信息的人的影响总是很重要，同样重要的是，理解困难的单词正确地。在这种情况下，“您能接受吗？”不仅仅是在接收端，学习如何听到和处理负面的内容（棘手的问题，批评，积极的推翻），而不必立即假设这是人身攻击。该练习没有真正的窍门，其价值仅在于运行模拟并有机会真正感受到在压力很大的情况下召唤自我审计技能的感觉。

When you feel your brand is under attack, here are the skills you need to draw on:

1. Don’t let it get personal. Be consistent with the brand you want to project. Know your hot-button issues and words. Stand up for the points you need to defend without being defensive. Develop your own ways to maintain brand integrity in stressful situations without counter-provoking.

当您觉得自己的品牌受到攻击时，需要使用以下技巧：

1.不要让它变得个性化。与您要投射的品牌保持一致。了解您的热键问题和措辞。站起来，无需防守即可防守。开发自己的方法来在压力很大的情况下保持品牌完整性，而不会引起反驳。

2. Love thy brand. Be confident in your brand and who you are as an individual. Your brand has to be sturdy enough to withstand attacks. If it has been developed carefully and with authenticity,it deserves to be protected.

3. Be open to being incorrect. You should be open to the fact that there might be some truth in a harsh critique. Remember, if you are going to take strategic risks, mistakes and wrong answers will invariably be made. Your job is not to be right 100 percent of the time (a baseball hitter who succeeds three out of ten times is a superstar); your job is to find the right answers and implement the right solutions and lead teams to success. Base your judgments on professional rather than personal criteria and be open to learning.

4. Stay physical. Maintain eye contact. Maintain posture. Control body gestures—don’t allow yourself to get to fidgety. Breathe.Breathe. Breathe and smile.

2.爱你的品牌。对您的品牌和个人身份充满信心。您的品牌必须足够坚固才能承受攻击。如果它经过精心开发并具有真实性，就应该受到保护。

3.公开不正确。您应该对严厉的批评中可能存在某些事实持开放态度。请记住，如果您要承担战略风险，则总是会犯错误和错误的答案。您的工作不是100％正确的（一位棒球打手，每10次成功3次就是超级巨星）；您的工作是找到正确的答案并实施正确的解决方案，并带领团队取得成功。根据专业而非个人判断来判断，并乐于学习。

4.保持身体健康。保持目光接触。保持姿势。控制身体的手势-不要让自己变得烦躁。呼吸，呼吸。呼吸并微笑。

5. Keep the heat down. Don’t react too quickly or too emotionally  to anything. Control the cadence of your reaction time and speech. Empathize: try to look at what someone is saying from their perspective. Stay focused on engagement.

6. Avoid the riptides. Don’t surrender what you can control—your tone, your presence, the cadence of your thoughts, your nonverbal communication. If you do get caught up responding too quickly in the moment, reestablish the pace. Ask for some time to process and remove yourself from the strong current. Get a breath of fresh air and recompose yourself before reengaging in the conversation.

5.降低热量。不要对任何事情反应太快或太情绪化。控制您的反应时间和语音的节奏。移情：尝试从别人的角度看别人在说什么。专注于参与。

6.避免骑行。不要屈服于您可以控制的一切—您的语气，身临其境，思想节奏，非语言交流。如果您当时确实反应太快，请重新确定步调。要求一些时间来处理并使自己摆脱强势潮流。重新呼吸之前，请呼吸新鲜空气并重新适应自己。

7. Be present. Don’t shut down as soon as you hear something negative. Don’t get caught in your own head, thinking of counterarguments while the person addressing you is still speaking. Stay in the moment and process carefully all that is being said. Think slow. Breathe.

7.在场。听到负面消息后，请勿立即关机。当与您交谈的人仍在讲话时，不要被自己的头脑所困扰，不要想到反驳。保持片刻，仔细处理所有所说的话。想慢点。呼吸。